What the fuck those things are real I thought it was just a cartoon
I thought the same thing when I moved to Arizona
Little velociraptor
Lads
ok but roadrunners are so cool, I can seldom think of a bird more velociraptor-like
more people need to know they’re real because look at this, this is some real walking with dinosaursshit
they have powerful legs allowing them to run up to 20mph and leap to impressive heights with ease
they are extremely swift and fearless, quick enough to take down a sizable rattlesnake and other large prey animals like lizards and mice
they have several unique adaptations to thermoregulate, such as the dark patch of feathers on their back which acts as a solar panel to absorb heat, or its crest that either releases or absorbs heat by exposing its skin
they have these long, stiff tailfeathers that they use as a counterbalance when running, very reminiscent of the rod-like tail of a dromaeosaur
and they are capable of bursts of flight/gliding with incredibly beautiful plumage
I’m genuinely shocked how many people think they’re made up, they are real and they are AWESOME
I wanted to look up what kind of dogs the vikings had in order to make a historically accurate shitpost meme, but while googling “viking dog”, figuring I’d find pictures of some kind of big cool war dogs or dogs used for hunting moose and bear, but instead I found this
the noble vallhund
herder of cows and biter of ankles
This is literally a viking corgi.
The Pembroke Welsh Corgi developed starting roughly 1,000 years ago from a mix of the 3,000yo breed that was the historical Cardigan Welsh Corgi (first brought to Wales with Celtic groups emigrating from continental Europe), and Spitz type dogs that were brought in with the Viking raids 1,000 years ago.
Corgis are a mix of Viking and Celt, and that’s neat. The vallhund is literally very close family to at least the Pembroke corgi.
There are a number of Scandinavian dog breeds that might be also associated with Vikings, most of which are spitzen. The Norrbottenspetz, Karelian Bear Dog, Finnish Lapphund, Icelandic Shepherd, Finnish Spitz, etc.
Special additional shout out for the Norwegian Lundehund, which was developed to hunt puffins. (Lunde means puffin). They look like a generic medium dog at first.
Except they have secret weapons just for clambering over rocks to get puffins. They have six fully-formed and muscled toes per foot, as well as extreme range of motion in their joints.
Today I learned that the university of Coimbra in Portugal has a great 18th-century library, the Biblioteca Joanina, that maintains a colony of bats to effectively control the population of paper-eating insects called papirófagos. These bats are less than an inch long. They roost during the day behind the bookcases and come out at night. There doesn’t seem to be any English word for papirófago, a cursory search turns up no details about what sort of insect they are, and ngl I am slightly concerned about them as a phenomenon. But I think my overarching point here is clear:
This library keeps tiny bats that look after the books.
I’m here for tiny bats saving books.
Aaaahhh!!
What good and noble tiny flitters!!!! <3
My nayme is Batt And wen its nite On sylente wings I flye to fite
The lybrarie’s My battlefielde Papir’fagoes Haffe to be killed
This is such an awesome video of people helping an anaconda cross the street! I just love it. It’s a great reminder that people can be really awesome sometimes.
Everyone was being safe here, too - no one attempts to handle the snake, all they do is stop traffic.
ok, before I get a bunch of messages and reblogs like “Oh! I’ve seen this! It’s all over my neighborhood!” I am gonna kill your hopes and dreams right now by saying what you are most likely seeing is Xanthoria parietina, which is super common pretty much everywhere and grows on just about everything. But, if your neighborhood happens to be a wind-swept, rocky, coastal habitat in Europe or northern Africa, this might actually be your guy! X. aureola is has a thick, golden-yellow to orange, foliose thallus made up of narrow, strap-shaped, overlapping lobes. It rarely produces apothecia, which are flat, round, and concolorous with the upper surface. It grows on nutrient-rich or siliceous rocks and cliffs along the seashore, and occasionally on walls and old wood.
Venerating celebrities is out, venerating lichens is IN! Public figures will let you down and devastate you emotionally but you know who would never do that to you? D. venustum. They’re your unproblematic fave now. Deal with it.
This crustose lichen grows in thick, white rosettes dotted with black or chalky gray apothecia. It colonizes calcium-rich rocks and human-made surfaces in open areas of northern Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Greenland.
Dark lichens are easily overlooked compared to their flashier cousins, but when you get up close and personal, you can see how stunning they truly are! This strongly lobed, foliose lichen grows in rounded rosettes closely attached to vertical, siliceous rock. It has a dark olive to brown to black upper surface, and a dark, rhizinate lower surface. It produces dark brown to black soredia, and only rarely, sorediate-encircled apothecia. M. disjuncta grows in boreal and montane habitats in North America, Europe, northern Asia, and central Africa.
Can you believe this little little gray spot is a lichen? It’s true. A. trolocularis is a foliicolous lichen, meaning it grows on the surface of long-lasting leaves.
A little inside peak into Lichenaday HQ–when I search for images of a lichen, a lot of times I get pictures like this:
This is a picture from a botanical collection (The New York Botanical Garden in this one) of a lichen specimen. And a lot of times, these pictures are not that great. Like in this picture, it is hard to know what you are supposed to be looking at because there’s a big, dry, dead leaf with a bunch of splotches on it. And believe it or not, this is one of the better ones I’ve seen! Because A. trilocularis, the subject hear, is kinda just a splotch on a leaf, and this was the only picture of it I could find that actually like, shows *the leaf.* For a lot of other lichens, once they are dried and aged, they don’t look like the living specimen at all, and the pictures are often from such a distance that you can’t tell what the F you are looking at. But those are the only pictures I find for lots of species. I avoid posting them because they are usually not great to look at and not super helpful for field ID purposes, but I thought I’d share this one so you get an idea of the substrate for this little splotchy fella.
Naming a kid anytime soon? Have you considered the name Coralliza? And they can go by Liza, and people will be like, “oh, like Liza Minnelli?” and they can be like “No, like the lichen.” This crustose lichen is described as coralloid, or coral-like in growth form. It grows in 2 mm thick patches of cracked, grainy, bright yellow thallus. It has flat-disked, yellow apothecia, often with a gray or black tint. C. coralliza is ornithocoprophilic, meaning it likes to grow where there is lots of bird poop! So you can often find it near coasts or high in the mountains, growing on rocks and roofs frequented by perching birds. Maybe not what you want to name your kid after, but maybe it would be a reminder that even beautiful things can some out of shitty situations.
You all and your stupid memes got me to sign up for this Dracula email thing, and so in order to celebrate, I am sharing this “bloody eye” lichen, H. nicoyense! It reminds me of that moment where Johnathan cuts himself while shaving and the Count’s “eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury.” Kinda, I mean, these apothecia remind me more of a jelly donut then anything. But I gotta do what I can to keep these cats hip and cool for you kiddos! This crustose lichen was described in 2006, and thus far has only been found in a few montane forests in Central America. Tropical lichens are largely understudied, which is such a pity when they are out there being as adorable as this lil guy. If only more people cared about lichens and lichen research. But hey, if we can revive interest in a 125 year old gothic novel, surely we can get people interested in cuties like these right?
This lichen is very texture. Like think of a texture, and E. hispidula probably has it. Descriptions I have found include pannose (the texture of felt or woolen cloth), spiny, filamentous, hair-like, beard-like, jelly-like (only when moist), and my personal favorite, ‘Brillo-pad’ texture. It has a dark olive to brown to black, fruticose thallus of short, lateral branchlets. E. hispidula grows on damp, siliceous rocks in the northern hemisphere, adding a little pop of texture to the world since probably like, 40 MYA or whatever.
So often when I see the scientific names of lichens, I wonder if the people who named them bothered trying to say them out loud. I think mughicola sounds like a sneeze. Not necessarily a bad name, but maybe something easier to pronounce next time, ok guys? This crustose lichen has a glossy, beige-yellow, bumpy thallus. It produces apothecia with an undulating margin and orange-brown to dark brown discs which often appear paler due the a layer of chalky pruina. L. mughicola grows on the lignum (woody tissue under the bark) of conifers in boreal forests. It has been found in North America and Europe, but its range likely extends into northern Asia.
This foliose lichen grows in small roundish-patches or narrow lobes. The upper surface varies in color from gray to brown when dry (darker in shaded areas), becoming bright green when moist. Lobe tips and occasionally surface area covered in coarse soredia. The lower surface is black with thick black rhizines. A distinctive feature of P. rubropulchra is the bright red-orange medullary layer at its core. This is due to the presence of skyrin. What is skyrin? I don’t know what do I look like a chemist? For our purposes, it makes red. P. rubropulchra grows on trees and rocks in eastern North America, eastern China and Russia, and Japan. Apparently it is a common snack for slugs, which doesn’t really surprise me because looking at that medulla makes me think of flamin-hot cheetos and now I’m hungry. Thanks, lichens.
I would have never thought lichens could be vulgar, but here it is guys–the most vulgar lichen out there. O. vulgata is a script lichen, meaning that it has long, slit-like, lirellate apothecia. Also I hate the word slit. Anyhow, O. vulgata has a smooth, pale gray to tan, green-tinted thallus. Its apothecia are black, but variable in shape–from straight to curving to squiggly to star-like. So how to identify it in comparison with the vast array of other script lichens? By its longer conidia, of course! What’re conidia? Conidia are well, it’s complicated. They are tiny, asexual, spores that serve as the male gametes. So like, sperm! Kinda. Don’t worry too much about. All you gotta know is that O. vulgata’s conidia are really long. Now you know why it’s so vulgar! This lichen grows on smooth tree bark in humid, shaded areas throughout the world.
Being an American living in Germany, I do not have access to many of the snack foods and candies I grew up with, and they often slip my mind. So imagine reading the word “starburst” and remembering that Starburst candy exists out there in the world somewhere and you do not have access to it. Trying so hard to focus on this lichen but all I can think about are tiny chewy fruit cubes … Anyway, P. endococcinodes is a foliose lichen with a gray-brown to gray-green upper surface and frequent, black-disked apothecia. It grows on rock and occasionally bark in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. It has a characteristic red medulla (inner layer made up of fungal hyphae) which I imagine is the same color as a red starburst, which is probably the best original Starburst flavor, though I am partial to orange myself. Wait, lichens, yes. And this is how P. endococcinodes got its species name (“endo-” meaning inner and “coccin” meaning scarlet and “-odes” meaning to have the nature of).
I found some bird books this weekend at a table top sale at Bridgemere Garden Centre. My favourite book was this one about Finches. Just look at those neon feathers! A very beautiful and agile little bird. I’m brimming with ideas, so this evening will be spent in the studio with my sketchbook. xoxo
