Rodentia - Blog Posts
Capybara 5-1-23
It’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to figure out using textured brushes is important- this lil round man was good practice
i goofed around in ableton and blender and now there's a thing!! ✨️
rodentia vol. 1 is a small selection of tracks i've accumulated while worldbuilding for a larger narrative project about rodents. it is cozy and wistful and the beginning of more to come. enjoy if you like rats and all of their important cousins.
~ keith
okay, to the average person's credit, prairie dogs and marmots at least share a tribe: Marmotini. this tribe also includes chipmunks and other ground squirrels, including some wacky characters like the distinctly patterned Ictidomys family:
...and Sciurotamias, the rock squirrel* family!! rock on, little dude!!!!
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now groundhogs, as we all know, are marmots (family Marmota), the family which shares its tribe's etymological root.
a prairie dog resembles a marmot (vaguely), but they have their own family!! and it's Cynomys!! Which is derived from Greek for dog mouse. you gotta admit, that thing is pretty dogmouse.
anyways, i'm trying to assess the subspecies of the guy from the meme. it's not the White-Tailed Prairie Dog, who has a nifty dark coloration on its face and stuff.
my guess would be... Black-Tailed? idk, someone smart and observant help. ok bye
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(*not to be confused with the rock rats... they are entirely different guys)
just saw this clip and i think itd make a funny reaction image what do u think... does it have potential
Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel Callospermophilus lateralis
9/25/2023 Tahoe, California
Why do men have nipples?
it's not just human men, it's all placental mammals!
pour one out for all of the "I found this weird lump on my male cat's chest, what is it" posts on r/cats
the short answer is: because it's easier.
so, natural selection is lazy. it tends to take the quickest and easiest path to any given solution and can only work with what it already has, so it's really reluctant to drop traits that aren't actually hurting anything by being around! like male nipples.
and since male and female mammals in general start as the same weird little flesh tadpole thing and only start to diverge a couple months into development, it's waaaay easier to just leave male mammals with mostly non-functional nipples than it is to patch them out and maybe bork up something with the female nipples by mistake.
tldr: it's because evolution is naturally lazy.
a fun fact about springhares: they glow pink under UV light! scientists speculate it's possible predators may be UV-sensitive, but also contend it could be a big evolutionary accident.
(Image credit: Olson et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-83588-0)
Another such rodent that glows for some??? reason is the Southern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys volans)
(Image credit: Lee H. Rentz)
russian art doll lookin thang