Random fact: Although jumping spiders can't move their eyes, they can move their retinas to change their field of view. It's as if they're looking through a window.
If the spider is clear enough, you can even see the retinas moving through the cephalothorax:
Image sources: Melvyn Yeo, M.F. Land, and wmaddisn
And this is how we know that jumping spiders dream!
Scientists at Harvard observed that jumping spiders' retinas move as they sleep, proving that jumping spiders have periods of REM (rapid eye movement) aka dreaming sleep!
Jumping spiders also twitch their limbs as they sleep, just like a dog or cat "running" in their sleep.
Pink crab spider, Thomisus onustus, Thomisidae
Despite the common name, this species exhibits a wide range of coloration including pink, white, yellow, green, brown, or a combination of any of those. Like other flower crab spiders, they are able to change their color over a matter of days to more closely match their environment. Found in Eurasia and northern Africa.
Photo 1 by paulf84, 2 by wildchroma, 3 by sonic7730, 4 by ffigon, 5 by marie-ruel, 6 by marketaz, 7 by dbenvenuti, 8 by mammal, 9 by alexis_orion, and 10 by talgar-t64
There's something so deeply calming about watching megafauna prance and gambol about like they're little lambs
Bison pronking is already so magical, and then the double rainbow and the happy birdsong just put it way over the top
see i think what people get caught up in is going "oh this and that are fetish art......hey did you know x thing is a fetish...pretty crazy right.....this piece of art is actually a fetish for the artist........" and like. see the problem is thinking that devalues the art. i don't think something being a fetish or sexual in nature or whatever actually detracts from any meaning or emotional weight something could have. i don't think "horny" is a worthless or meaningless emotion and i don't see why exploring it in art is any different from "sadness" or "happiness" or "anger". does that make sense? im just sayin we should examine why we view sexuality as inherently detracting/meaning less in art than other things
this blew up so lightning round:
"as long as they're not posting it publicly"/"well its not always horny dont assume its horny": you're missing the point, this is a post about how horny is an emotion of equal artistic value to any other and if people want to post their fetish art i think that's fine
"i was raised christian/came from a christian background and this was a hard thing i had to learn but so important"/"the idea of sexual feelings being less worthy of showing is christian": i'm proud of you you're doing great. also that's true
"it's more interesting actually"/"fetish art ends up being better bc people put a lot more focus into their work when they're obsessed with it": you're right
"stop it with the horny jail thing": you're also right
tiltingplanet asked:
Have any cursed facts about hyraxes?
bunjywunjy answered:
we like to toss around the “oh hyraxes are the closest living terrestrial relative to elephants, surprise!” fact a lot (especially on bar trivia nights), but this fact is actually a tad more apparent than it appears! (appearant! apparears?)
take the hyrax.
(gently. take hyrax gently.)
while they may look VERY similar to a rodent at first glance, if we pop the hood for a second we find something much weirder.
behold, the feet!
hyrax feet are modified plantigrade, and are SO modified that they’re pretty clearly more than halfway to being these things:
also. they got fuckin tusks.
Y’all in the American SW and west Mexico better check the national hurricane center and your weather for this weekend and next week.
Hurricane Hilary is about to make landfall and that whole desert area is supposed to get a years worth of rain or more. Death Valley is supposed to get twice the annual rainfall. Severe winds, massive flooding, and landslides are all strong possibilities.
This is gonna get ugly. Please spread the word. This is a majorly anomalous event and people may be unaware of the threat headed their way.
Flash floods are definitely gonna kill people, so here’s your regularly scheduled PSA:
Desert soil does not absorb a significant amount of water. It reaches maximum saturation very very quickly, and all the rest of the water rushes downhill. Even if you can’t tell that the ground is not perfectly flat, the water can. And it will move. Quickly. No, faster than that. Nope, still faster. If you try to cross moving floodwater, you will get swept downstream and probably die.
This goes for cars, too. I’ve seen entire vehicles getting swept downstream in flash floods because the driver thought they could cross the “puddle” and Found Out.
Stay safe, y’all.
A couple of inches of moving water is more than enough to move a car. Don't fuck with it.
HURRICANE ADVICE FROM A FLORIDIAN!
Make sure you've got shelf-stable food and water for everyone in the house, including pets. The rule of thumb is a gallon per person per day. Freeze water bottles if you want cold water.
Make sure you have enough meds!
Make sure you have batteries, candles, flashlights, and a manual can opener.
Make sure your electronics, including backup batteries, are charged. Unplug things you don't want fried in case of a power surge.
Don't tape your windows, it doesn't help and you'll just be stuck scrubbing goo off of them later.
Put a mug of frozen water in it in your freezer with a quarter on top of it. If your freezer defrosts, the ice will melt and the quarter will sink and tell you you need to throw things out.
Get everything that's not nailed to a foundation out of your yard. That dead branch hanging on by a thread? Time to get it down (it was probably time to do that three days ago, but now’s better than never).
Park away from powerlines and trees if you can. Rain makes the ground soft and then trees fall over.
Have an evacuation plan to a shelter. Evacuate if they’re telling you to.
If you start to flood, don't go in your attic. You'll get trapped if the water rises too high and you can't hack through your roof. This happened to a lot of people in Texas and Louisiana. Get ON the roof.
Be safe, be well <3
What the fuck?
???? WHAT???
Ngl, "tropical storm in death valley" was not on my 2023 bingo card.
Drainage on our roads is shitty in SoCal, don't attempt to drive through water deep enough to touch your bumpers and don't attempt to walk across moving water, water only as deep as your ankles can knock you down and sweep you away.
Predicted wind speeds are similar to strong Santa Anas, so lock things down like you would for that, though keep in mind that yeah the combination of heavy rain and wind leads to more felled trees than just wind.
Take photos of the inside of your home now; flood insurance fucking sucks here and if you're in a possible flood zone you want as much documentation of your home and belongings as possible in case you need to make a claim.
Freezing water bottles also means you've got a lot of ice in your freezer if power goes out, and safe potable water once it thaws, so freeze bottles of water to have something to keep your fridge and freezer cool and store more water regardless of if you want cold water.
The flooding will keep getting worse after the storm. You're not safe because the winds let up and the water stopped falling. The waters will rise after, and keep rising. You may drive out through a shallow puddle the next morning and think you must still be safe through that puddle on your return with ice, water, and non-perishables, but you need to check the depth of that standing water on the road every time, until the water starts to go back down.
Put *all* your water bottles in the freezer. People above are hinting but seriously, as much as you can fit. Your fridge is the best insulated box in your house. If you can keep it cold you may save your food and meds. So freeze all that water you already have right there, let it cool your fridge until you need it.
Through the storm itself you're in tornado/hurricane mode: most secure place in the building. I know it's contrary to earthquake precautions and may make your skin crawl, you need to be in that closet with no windows and no exits to the outside in the middle of the building.
If you might lose running water (damage to municipal plumbing or wells run on the power grid), fill all your regular water containers, pet bowls, water troughs while the water is clean. Fill bathtubs or buckets--or big storage tubs, garbage cans, whatever is watertight--with tap water. You won't trust standing water to be human-potable, but you can use it to flush and for cooling/rinsing when you've got no a/c but it's still August. Don't underestimate the value of sticking your head in a clean-ish bucket of water when you have been in post-hurricane power outage for three days.
Keep yourselves safe, folks!
A BEAR ATE MY BEST HUMMINGBIRD FEEDER.
Rude.
Someone tell that bear he's not supposed to eat that with the skin on.
I live in South Africa. And if you live in South Africa and you have any contact with people from the US or Canada you might have run into a question about wildlife like lions and elephants roaming our streets. Most South Africans get pretty offended by questions like this. We are a civilized country, our large and dangerous wildlife gets contained in properly fenced parks.
I use to get offended by this until I visited a few places in Canada and realized that the reason why you ask is that some of your large and dangerous wildlife does simply roam the countryside and sometimes make excursions into town.
This honestly blew my mind. What do you mean, you have bears just walking around? What the hell?
north americans don't all encounter deadly megafauna on our porches and front lawns but it happens often enough that we all think this is a reasonable amount of gigantic animal to happen to your house. so when we think of africa we kinda imagine it like this:
like. if we had elephants here. this is what we would be putting up with on the regular. what do you mean you guys are more sensible than us.
TELL ME AGAIN HOW AUSTRALIA IS THE DEATH COUNTRY
We have two spiders and (apparently) 12 snakes but we don’t have lions, bears, wildcats, AND crocodiles.
We sometimes have crocodiles and large boas in certain areas. We don’t have to worry about a bear attacking our halloween decor. Or moose deciding to joust on the front lawn.
Maybe similar to Africa, America’s fear of Australia is because you all assume our wildlife is exactly as huge and space-invadey.
oh yeah i forgot about the gators
I live halfway between two large cities in a pretty damn suburban area and hearing the sentence “did you hear there was a bear* spotted on [road that is pretty built up and I don’t think of as wild at all]” only left me a little surprised. My mother once saw what she described as a coyote going to school- just walking around a university campus.
so.... yes I was absolutely picturing elephants reaching over your back yard fences for some tasty leaves.
* Ursus americanus for clarification not homosexual sapiens
Couple years ago we had a bear in the market of downtown Ottawa. Ottawa has a population of 1 million, and it made it to the largest market (byward), and had to be removed with sedatives.
yeah, like. the US is big. a lot of it is much wilder than you think.
nora-yoko