Latest Posts by hello-i-am-insane - Page 2
it may have been done many times at this point but I'll always be a sucker for the 'monster that mimics the sound of a human calling out/screaming for help' trope it still hits
What animal can change their gender?
fish do, more often than you think!
many fish are capable of sex changes, though whether it’s male-to-female, female-to-male or bidirectional depends on the species.
these sex changes come in two major flavors though- changes that are induced by external factors, or changes that happen naturally at a set point in an animal’s lifecycle.
in the first group, for example, we have the clownfish!
clownfish live in family groups with one large female and multiple smaller attendant males. but if the female dies, one of the males will step in, bulk up, and transition from male to female! (so basically, Finding Nemo should have gone WAY differently)
CLOWNFISH learned TRANS YOUR GENDER
and in the other camp, we can look at the sheepshead wrasse- a large ocean fish where dominant males duel each other to control access to a large population of breeding females!
except that when a female sheepshead wrasse reaches a certain age, she goes through some major life changes- by growing a fuCKING ENORMOUS CHIN and transitioning from female to male!
SHEEPSHEAD WRASSE learned TRANS YOUR GENDER
and really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg! animals are basically doing weird sex bullshit every single second of every single day, these are just the easiest examples I could come up with.
In many cultures, ethnic groups, and nations around the world, hair is considered a source of power and prestige. African people brought these traditions and beliefs to the Americas and passed them down through the generations.
In my mother’s family (Black Americans from rural South Carolina) the women don’t cut their hair off unless absolutely necessary (i.e damage or routine trimming). Long hair is considered a symbol of beauty and power; my mother often told me that our hair holds our strength and power. Though my mother’s family has been American born for several generations, it is fascinating to see the beliefs and traditions of our African ancestors passed down. We are emotionally and spiritually attached to our hair, cutting it only with the knowledge that we are starting completely clean and removing stagnant energy.
Couple this with the forced removal and covering of our hair from the times of slavery and onward, and you can see why so many Black women and men alike take such pride and care in their natural hair and love to adorn our heads with wigs, weaves, braids, twists, accessories, and sharp designs.
Hair is not just hair in African diaspora cultures, and this is why the appropriation and stigma surrounding our hair is so harmful.
I mad agree with this.
WHAT IF…?
https://twitter.com/archeometrie/status/1170031822614474752?s=12
someone: hey what do you think of (paranormal topic)
me, wise in the ways of the unexplained: well its either real or its fake
This is the single best thing I have ever reblogged.
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That's what everyone wants... Some mucus with their corn. ☹️
the phrase "tolerant left" pisses me off because technically i'm left but i'm NOT tolerant. if you say dumb shit i'm not gonna be like "uwu you're entitled to your opinion, peace is the best option" i'm fuckimg DESTROYING you. think before you say private healthcare has good incentives
Līču-Laņģu Cliffs, Latvia
Emotionally constipated and repressed fictional men are SOOOO sexy..... not real men though. get in touch with your emotions ugly
Tag Yourself, I’m Pro!
Which phytoplankton are you? 👀
And for a closer look at each phytoplankton group and the real traits that correspond to the characteristics listed:
(I spend ages trying to get these all perfect 😤)
There’s no such thing as a jellyfish.
From the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute: "By all accounts, jellyfish are creatures that kill people, eat microbes, grow to tens of meters, filter phytoplankton, take over ecosystems, and live forever. Because of the immense diversity of gelatinous plankton, jelly-like creatures can individually have each of these properties. However this way of looking at them both overstates and underestimates their true diversity. Taxonomically, they are far more varied than a handful of exemplars that are used to represent jellyfish or especially the so-called “true” jellyfish. Ecologically, they are even more adaptable than one would expect by looking only at the conspicuous bloom forming families and species that draw most of the attention. In reality, the most abundant and diverse gelatinous groups in the ocean are not the ones that anyone ever sees.“
...and it’s this dude right here 😂
[Image ID: A Facebook post. The original poster’s name and icon have been redacted. The post reads:
Some times I get tired of being the “nice disabled person”. ‘curb cutouts make things much easier for moms with strollers.’ I don’t care. Mobility impaired people literally can’t get off the sidewalk without them. ‘Captions are great for kids who are learning to read.’ Yeah, and they are also a necessity for deaf people. here’s my hot take. Disabled people should not have to frame accessibility in a way that helps abled people to get the accommodations they need to live a decent life. /end ID]
Underrated biological design no. 84: the tendency for bottom dwelling marine browsers to become helmet shaped munchkins.
thank FUCKING CHRIST tumblr is still functional enough for this. can you imagine if we’d had to confine this all to twitter and risk like, the official oreo’s brand account tweeting about destiel to sell their gay oreos
Giant whale sharks have hundreds of tiny teeth-like structures around their eyes
https://sciencespies.com/nature/giant-whale-sharks-have-hundreds-of-tiny-teeth-like-structures-around-their-eyes/
Giant whale sharks have hundreds of tiny teeth-like structures around their eyes
Whale sharks, the majestic creatures that also happen to be the world’s largest fish, are far more gentle than the name suggests. They swim lazily around tropical waters, filter-feeding on plankton.
Now, biologists have discovered the enigmatic giants have a curious trick up their sleeve – teeth-like scales adorning their eyeballs. It appears to be the whale sharks’ version of eyelids, and one we haven’t seen in any other vertebrate.
“Eyeballs face a potential risk of damage from mechanical, chemical and biological hazards,” the researchers write in a new paper describing the find.
“This report elaborates on adaptations of the eyes of the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), including the discovery that they are covered with dermal denticles, which is a novel mechanism of eye protection in vertebrates.”
Dermal denticles, also known as placoid scales, are the tiny tough scales that cover sharks and rays. But although they are scales as we think of them, they’re also structurally very similar to teeth, and include an inner core of pulp, a middle layer of dentine or bony tissue, and a hard enamel-like coating on top.
We already knew that many sharks – including whale sharks – are covered with these denticles. However, finding them on the eyeballs of these fish is quite the surprise.
Eye denticles of the whale shark. (Tomita et al., PLOS One, 2020)
That’s partially because it’s long been assumed whale sharks don’t have to use their sense of sight much: their eyes are incredibly small compared to the rest of their body, and they don’t have a lot of midbrain, the part of the brain that processes vision.
“However, the highly protected features of the whale shark eye, in contrast to the traditional view, seems to suggest the importance of vision in this species,” the team argues in their study.
Researchers took a CT scanner to a preserved whale shark eyeball, as well as taking ultrasounds of two captive live whale sharks at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.
3D rendering of the morphology of each eye denticle. (Tomita et al., PLOS One, 2020)
As well as discovering the eye denticles, the researchers also elaborated on the mechanisms whale sharks use to retract their eyes back into their head. Most of the time this can be for just a short period of time, however not always. Once, a particularly unfortunate shark ended up with its eyes retracted for 10 days after it was transferred to a new aquarium from Taiwan to Atlanta, Georgia.
“It is likely that whale sharks maintain their vision during eye retraction because the pupils of the whale sharks in this study were not completely covered with surrounding white tissues when their eyes had retracted, though their visual field would be much more restricted than when their eyes are positioned normally,” explain the researchers.
“In fact, the animal that kept its eyes retracted for approximately 10 days at the Georgia Aquarium appeared to have no problem navigating the exhibit space, until its eyes returned to their normal positions suddenly and, apparently, spontaneously.”
So, while whale sharks aren’t exactly a fearsome predator of the ocean, these two eye-protecting features are a fearsome competitor to… eyelids.
The research has been published in PLOS One.
#Nature
I think about these lifestyles every goddamn day
I think it’s attractive when girls...
Yeah, that’s it.
👣some cryptid banners i made for my room! they're just felt and hot glue. rbs are appreciated, so please don't re-post! 👣
✨live, laugh, lurk!✨
Why are all dating app options like “long-term” “short-term” “date’s” “friends” where’s my option for “wants to get married and live out a cottagecore life in the countryside”
Can I have a cursed giant creature fact?
sure! at lengths of over 55 feet and weights of 600 pounds, our friend the Oarfish surely qualifies :)
we don’t know a whole lot about the world’s longest bony fish, aside from that it rarely comes to the surface and inspired most of the Sea Serpent legends floating around. they’re fairly rare and live only in the Abyssopelagic Zone, around 3,300 feet down. but this is old news to everyone who’s seen the info posts about these guys going around, so what’s so cursed about this? well, I’ll tell you!
have you ever wondered what the Oarfish gets up to, way down there? we didn’t realize this until we started sending ROVs and submarines into the deep sea to observe live ones, but Oarfish are... a little nontraditional as fish go.
see, they don’t normally swim horizontally all majestic-like like in the pictures up there, it turns out that instead they spend their time just kind of... hanging vertically in the water column.
motionless, staring at the surface with all 50+ feet of them vanishing into the darkness below.
and I don’t know about you but frankly, I find that a little creepy.
Today is Denim Day, one of the last days of April which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Denim Day is a movement to show solidarity to the survivors of sexual assault. I'm taking a stand, well more sitting in this photo, for other survivors like myself. It may not seem like a rebellious act, putting on a pair of jeans, but it is. The young woman's abuser was set free after the conviction because "her jeans were too tight to be removed without help implying consent". Telling her story, being seen, and holding people accountable for their actions are steps towards ending assault culture. #denimday https://www.instagram.com/p/B_lTRl8D5fAm4PGvGRXIGtrad731ZEF8VrKTqw0/?igshid=s8v80iqwhyos
We’re only finding out recently that a lot of animals have colors and patterns that we cannot see because they’re outside of our visual range. It calls to attention how much of the world we can’t experience because our senses are limited. When we shine UV lights on them, they glow pink or blue, but these are the colors that we CAN see…. they could be a bunch of different colors, which we SEE as all pink. It’s also interesting to consider that most of these animals are not aware of having glowing patches on their bodies…. isn’t it also possible that we have skin or hair patterns that were not aware of? . . (There is actually some research out there to support the idea that our own skin fluoresces as well and that there are gender differences in the pattern and glow.) Other places to see my posts: INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK / ETSY / KICKSTARTER