Tairbaz

a girl and her 4 psychotic uncles

Spiders? Hate them but see their use. Mosquitoes? Begrudgingly acknowledge that they like... feed bats. But can anyone explain what the fuck ticks are doing that's helpful??? Because frankly I'm not convinced they're doing anything nice for anyone

ticks are a massive source of protein for the many many creatures that eat them, same as mosquitos. they're integral to the food chain.

also, parasites of all kinds are incredibly important to ecosystems for many reasons: they help keep populations- especially of large herbivores and predators- low and healthy, they help individuals develop immune strength, and they are often integral parts of their food webs.

much of life is parasitic. it's a very successful life-plan and food strategy. dont hold it against them: blood is a really nutritious food and the creatures they target (generally) have a lot of it. it's not their 'fault' they have the capacity to carry even smaller parasites/diseases. that's just how life is

Deer is big creature, has microbe community inside it making it super good at digesting plant, turning plant into easy nutrients.

Small creatures would like nutrients. Deer is too big to eat, hoards all the nutrients. RUDE! Not everybody can be a wolf! Not fair :(

Tick bites deer. Tick takes tiny bit of deer's blood, falls off deer. Tick now contains deer's nutrients

Small creature eats tick. Nutrients in deer go into small creatures.

In this way, deer can become food for spiders, birds, lizards, beetles, ants. It couldn't happen without ticks. They are the portable snack packs of the forest

What about fleas? I hate those little bugs

I think there's nothing wrong with being disgusted by parasites, it's just an instinct that evolved to stop little guys from taking all your nutrients.

And infectious diseases spread really easily by contact with blood, so the snack packs of the forest are also like public transportation systems for blood-borne pathogens.

But outside of your very understandable desire as an organism to keep your blood inside and pathogens outside, parasites are an amazing and thought provoking aspect of life's diversity.

Wild animals can have dozens of different species of worms and arthropods living on or in them. (Most big animal species even have their own parasites that can only live on that animal.) To the parasite, animals are worlds; a deer is like a planet inhabited by its own fauna, just like deer inhabit the landscape.

Isn't it awe-inspiring that you can go into a habitat and see animals inhabiting it, but each animal IS a habitat with its own animals...

And it keeps going! Parasites often have their own parasites, called hyper-parasites! And hyper-parasites can have hyper-parasites! How many layers of animal are there?!?

Parasites are symbiotic creatures that decrease the fitness of their partner, but "parasite=harmful" is not quite right, since parasitism interlocks the fates of organisms in complex ways. Sometimes a parasite has to spend the first part of its life cycle in one animal, and the second part in another totally different animal. How do they get there? Maybe the second animal eats the first one. The parasite needs this predator-prey interaction to happen to continue life! If the predator turns to other prey, the parasite can't live. But if the predator loses its other prey and has nothing to eat except that prey, well that might seem like a good thing except now there are 27 of you in the same predator's digestive tract, and the predator is now weak and struggles to hunt. If your host starves, you are all dead for certain!

Parasites in a situation with two hosts, one predator the other prey, sometimes might change the prey's behavior to make it easier for the predator to catch. This might be considered helping the predator. Is the parasite "harming" the predator or just taking a cut of the profits when it makes a kill? It's complicated!

Another way to do it is to be a parasite that lives inside a parasite that lives on the outside of an animal, and when the animal grooms itself and bites the ectoparasite out of its fur, the parasite living inside the parasite can now grow inside the host animal.

Parasites' impact on their hosts' behaviors impacts the whole environment! For example maybe a herd of deer likes to browse on the tender shoots down in the swamp, but they do not like the swarms of mosquitoes. By driving off the deer, the mosquitoes help the orchids in the swamp survive. If a bison wallows in the dirt to get rid of parasites, it creates a disturbance that gives rise to a little mini habitat for flowers that can't survive in the tall, less disturbed grass. If parasites make it unhealthy for animals to live crammed in a small area, they might be driven to disperse and move to new habitats, or to have a system of migrating from place to place. If a large animal is itchy and scratches itself against a tree and rubs the bark off, that might kill the tree, which is bad for the tree but great for the woodpeckers that need standing deadwood to hunt for food.

Speaking of woodpeckers, we have recently learned that woodpeckers transmit lichens and mosses to new places! And woodpeckers also were found to harbor freshwater diatoms...which should be found in freshwater streams, but perhaps got onto the bird when it was taking a bath...why does a bird take a bath? Perhaps to get rid of parasites...?

...Basically, everything is so interconnected that a flea could affect an unimaginable number of things. Parasites weave together the ecosystem in ways we barely understand.

Of course, you should still treat your dog or cat for fleas...but that's part of your symbiosis with the dog or cat, so even the space where a flea should be, is a space where organisms are bound together.

something I don't understand is why we make an exception for pathogens. if there's some intrinsic value in the current species of life on earth continuing to exist, why is it a good goal to eradicate a strain of bacteria? why are we excited that we're close to exterminating guinea worm?

With microorganism pathogens, they evolve so fast that we probably couldn't do lasting damage to the ecosystem. The extinction of a strain of bacteria is no more disruptive than any of the wild evolutionary stunts bacteria are constantly pulling.

Death is a neutral part of nature, even extinction is a neutral part of nature, and this isn't contradictory to the intrinsic value of life. Killing an animal is permissible under some circumstances, and that animal individually was a unique event in the history of the cosmos, it was a Life.

Destroying a species could also be permissible, but it would be the absolute gravest, most serious form of taking life. You would have to know what you were doing as fully as that could be known. I think these cases are mainly limited to creatures that are obligate human parasites, they have a relationship with humans and almost nothing else. That is a relationship we're allowed to terminate, because it is OUR relationship, there are no links in it that don't include us directly.

But that's just my opinion

...What about flies? I've heard that they're basically useless, but I don't particularly believe that. I've just never been able to ask and find an answer.

Flies are important in all the ways mentioned above (biting flies in tundra are important for moving caribou from place to place, for example) but they are also really important as scavengers and as pollinators!

Maggots do a really good job at cleaning up rotting corpses, garbage and feces of animals quickly. Without them, our world would be full of a lot more poop and dead bodies, and that doesn't sound like a good or healthy place to live.

It sounds disgusting, but maggots even have an application in medicine to clean up dead and rotting tissue in a wound. The maggots eat dead flesh but won't touch the living flesh.

Flies are pollinators just as much as bees are, and they pollinate some flowers that bees don't visit. For a familiar example, flies are really important pollinators of mangoes. When you eat a delicious mango, a fly did that for you. Thank you, flies.

gotta talk more about maggots bc its super cool

the whole "maggots in medicine" thing is still used! sure, they arent the only way to remove dead tissue, but they work really well and are very cheap!!! if for whatever reason you cant get medical attention and have any necrotic tissue, get some maggots (not just off the ground, there are medical grade maggots out there that are ideal) and sprinkle those bad boys on there! theyll nibble off all the bad tissue and leave the healthy parts of you alone!!!

that said, be careful if you find or get non-medical maggots. some people can actually have an allergy to them, and they do carry diseases like salmonella (im pretty sure thatll only transmit if you eat them, but dont quote me on that). if you need maggots for something but cant get medical grade, reptariums usually have em

I think it's also important to understand that ONLY flies stand between us and a world littered with stinking rotting corpses. I know everyone talks about vultures and other large scavengers as keeping the world clean, but they're only complementary to the activity of maggots. Flies find absolutely every single dead body left on land unless it's sealed completely airtight or frozen solid, the flies lay thousands upon thousands of eggs and then the maggots clean every tiny microscopic scrap of soft tissue from the skeleton. Vultures, opossums, rats, coyotes, and even other scavenging insects simply are not equipped for that total deep-cleaning process. They can all come by and eat their fill of everything they can reach and there will still be plenty of gunk clinging to those bones that only maggots could have taken care of. And while maggots take just days to do their job, microbial activity alone can take months, during which that gunk is breeding some of the deadliest pathogens on the planet. If carrion-eating flies disappeared overnight things might go fine for a little while, but every single animal that ever dies on land or washes ashore would take longer to rot away than it has for most of the history of life on Earth, slowly but surely piling up quicker than anything could eliminate it all. In just a couple years, there'd be enough overlooked rodent corpses alone that you could smell their stench wafting from every meadow, forest and mountain in the world. And by the time you could smell it, you'd possibly already have anthrax, which is one of the soil microbes that surges in an older corpse.

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

sometimes someone is acting selfish because they just didnt think you had any interest in what theyre hogging. sometimes you dont get invited to the movies because your friend could have sworn that you said no. sometimes you think someone is mad at you because theyre bad at hiding how little sleep they got. we are all like little worlds that briefly crash into one another from time to time and we just arent physically capable of seeing the whole picture at once in those moments. and learning that really changed everything!

In my head, I call this "vase of flowers" thinking.

See, when I started driving, I would get irritated by people who drove Soooo Slowly... like, the ones who slow down to 10 MPH to take a turn kind of slow. And then one day I was taking a vase of flowers to an event, and even though I'd strapped it in carefully you can bet I was taking the turns extra carefully to keep it from tipping over, slowing way down, and... oh.

And, like, there are definitely unpleasant people in the world. There are definitely people who are toxic, or just don't care about other people, or have a pattern of hurtful behavior. But there are a lot of people who are just trying to deliver a vase of flowers.

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

sometimes someone is acting selfish because they just didnt think you had any interest in what theyre hogging. sometimes you dont get invited to the movies because your friend could have sworn that you said no. sometimes you think someone is mad at you because theyre bad at hiding how little sleep they got. we are all like little worlds that briefly crash into one another from time to time and we just arent physically capable of seeing the whole picture at once in those moments. and learning that really changed everything!

In my head, I call this "vase of flowers" thinking.

See, when I started driving, I would get irritated by people who drove Soooo Slowly... like, the ones who slow down to 10 MPH to take a turn kind of slow. And then one day I was taking a vase of flowers to an event, and even though I'd strapped it in carefully you can bet I was taking the turns extra carefully to keep it from tipping over, slowing way down, and... oh.

And, like, there are definitely unpleasant people in the world. There are definitely people who are toxic, or just don't care about other people, or have a pattern of hurtful behavior. But there are a lot of people who are just trying to deliver a vase of flowers.

Edward Harper, my Call of Cthulhu character

People used to comment on web comics.

People used to comment on fanfiction.

People used to comment on fanart.

People used to comment on OCs.

I hate "content" culture.

I hate "consuming content" and scrolling immediately to the next thing.

People used to be excited about the art that other people created.

People used to want to share that excitement with creators.

I hate this future.

Once someone tagged art that I made with "woah" and I think about it at least once a week. Someone else said "oh neat" once. Someone else WROTE A WHOLE DAMN POEM IN THE COMMENTS. Anyways even just one word can change how someone sees their art. You don't even have to think about it too hard. You could put a keyboard smash and I'd probably cry from joy.

I'm also trying hard to interact more, I understand that it's hard to break away from opening your phone and being in Content Consumption Mode.

my CoC character and his professor

and some expression practice

A character concepts for my friend's Call of Cthulhu campaign. They're indigenous and I based their clothing off a photo of my ancestors

i have the opposite of that “everyone is an npc” mentality people have embraced where i’m instead like. the person next to me in line has someone they can’t wait to go home to, the person picking up their mail has felt devastation before, everyone in this grocery store is doing their sunday shopping, maybe the person that just honked at me is having the worst day of their life, my neighbor has doctors appointments and favorite foods and a song they can’t stand to hear anymore… you are all fully realized complex people and that is overwhelming me on a spiritual level…

Phew. This one took, uh… a bit longer than expected due to other projects both irl and art-wise, but it’s finally here. The long-awaited domestic animal infographic! Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space to cover every single domestic animal (I’m so sorry, reindeer and koi, my beloveds) but I tried to include as many of the “major ones” as possible.

I made this chart in response to a lot of the misunderstandings I hear concerning domestic animals, so I hope it’s helpful!

Further information I didn’t have any room to add or expand on:

all the art for my pathfinder campaign which finally concluded so I'm finally able to post the assets

Unpopular opinion but literally not one person in the world should have their human rights violated

If one person's rights can be waved away, so can yours

yes, even those people.

Fuck it, adding on: This is why it's frustrating to see criminal defense lawyers getting a bad rep.

The right to a fair trial is a human right. In practice, a fair trial necessitates a lawyer. This means that even if somebody committed the worst crimes you could possibly imagine, they still deserve a lawyer.

Somebody has to defend them as a matter of human rights. As one of my professors said, way back in my first semester at uni: "Everybody deserves to have somebody in their corner."

nb the source of criminal defense attorneys getting a bad rep is always, always copaganda. same with the incredibly bullshit narrative of “if you didn’t do anything wrong then why do you need a lawyer?” the purpose of both these terrible stupid pro-cop arguments are to deny you your legal rights. 

Someone else said it very well here on this website:

A government whose people lose their rights once they become criminals has a very vested interest in making their critics criminals.

I hate that I’m always trying to find cool biology themed stuff to wear but all the “nature inspired” clothing companies just have like two crossed arrows or a minimalistic mountain on a sweatshirt. Fucking lame, that’s barely even nature-adjacent. Put the life cycle of a salamander on a jacket, put hyena skeleton patterns on leggings, put a damn field guide of birds of prey on a peacoat and THEN you can have my money. Do NOT give me a shirt with a leaf on it that says “stay wild” or some bullshit I would much prefer clothing that broadcasts to everyone around me how many teeth an adult Jaguar has or how some pitcher plants can catch and digest rats.

recommendations from the notes :)

ame the grafted

ame the grafted