I’m so sure that the first scene with the napping Dromaeosauruswas inspired by the discovery of a sleeping troodontid - Mei Long. Because of it we actually know that some dinosaurs slept with tails around their forms, and heads under their wings. Which, in my opinion, was just adorable.
ok so the sneaky male is not a new concept. so i will now proceed to infodump
ok there’s a species of bird with three male sexes. they’re called ruffs.
these are two of the three ruff males variants– theyre clearly identifiable as males, even if theyre different from one another. these two males make up 99% of all males. the territorial “independent” male(^) is a chad. he makes a big territory with lots of ladies. but there will also occasionally be a satellite male(^) in the mix. they wont hold a territory of their own– theyll just hang out with the territorial males. satellite males are tolerated by the territorial males because… it makes them look better with the girls? i cannot explain this. but it works out for these guys. this is not really relevant to the sneaky male of prehistoric planets, but…
this here? is. uh. well, I posted this in order to represent a femaleruff but…
it could just as easily be a faeder. faeders are the “sneaky males” of the ruff species. they make up 1% of the male population and
they have the biggest testicles out of all the males. humungo balls
and just like the sneaky male pterosaur, they’ll slip in with the females, have lots of great sex, and then get confronted by the main guy who owns the territory. and you know what they do about it?
they have gay sex. they literally have gay sex. this is a real life bird who, 1% of the time, spawns with MASSIVEBALLS and GIRLISH PLUMAGE for the purpose of DECEPTION…………….
except…. not really? because the other males REALLY like having sex with the faeders. like a lot. they will prioritize having gay sex with the faeders over breeding with a female. in fact, apparantly they will let the faeder top. and hang out with the faeder, as a dude and bro, after mating season is over and all the females have vanished.
which implies that they know damn well faeders arent females. they just love gay sex. wikipedia suggests its because gay ruff sex appeals to the lady ruffs but id like to think theyre just having a bit of fun.
full confession i am but a simple autistique regurgitating stuff i learned from tertiary sources like fkcing wikipedia ages ago. this is exactly one of the things id think is too good to be true so please take with a grain of salt
[Image ID: a roly-poly on dirt with an inset image of a coiled roly-poly. Text at the top of the image says “Ew! Pill Bugs!” The coiled roly-poly has a speech bubble saying “No! I am extremely cool!” while the other roly-poly has a speech bubble saying “We are actually crustaceans! And we can remove heavy metals from the soil!” The bottom of the photo has a watermark for Joseph Berger at BugWood.org. End ID]
I’d like to clarify that sure, they can remove heavy metals from the soil, but unless the isopod is then removed from the environment, it will die and release the heavy metals back into the soil. But that doesn’t mean they’re useless! They are incredibly important to the nutrient cycle in an ecosystem because they consume and help break down dead vegetable (and animal!) matter.
Incidentally, the fact that they remove heavy metals from the environment is one of the reasons you shouldn’t feed wild-caught isopods to pet reptiles and amphibians!
