[IDs: 1: a roly poly, sometimes called a pill bug, on a miniature hammock hung between two small plant stems. 2: a tag that reads "#oh my god its him its. the chill pill" End IDs]

Still in awe that more than zero people in the world believe corals are just inanimate mineral formations, or that sea anemones are plants, or that sea urchins are just stationary objects, or that so many people didn’t know that every single seashell in the world comes from the death of its original owner and isn’t “molted” or “shed” from live snails. People deserve to know marine invertebrates as well as they do so many other animals :(

#they don’t swap shells?? is that only the lil hermit crabs?? do they also not make their own shells??? I am confused #like I didn’t think snails swapped but are they the only ones who make them??

With the exception of a couple cephalopods, all spiral seashells are made by snails! The same shell grows with the snail its entire life and a hermit crab is simply a crustacean that learned to re-use the remains of dead snails :)

but what about this ?

I never heard of this and the fact that a sea anemone evolved to make exactly a fake snail shell is positively blowing my mind. A hermit crab isn’t even shaped that way. An anemone and a snail are completely different phyla. It must end up coiling the same way as a snail shell simply because it keeps growing with the hermit crab! It has to start as a curved aperture for the particular way a hermit crab retracts and the only way to make it keep growing is to spiral forward and then there’s just no way it’s not gonna come out exactly like a snail! That’s so ludicrous!!! The anemone does this so it’ll have the same crab as long as it lives?! It just keeps adding to the shell so the crab never feels the need to change!!?!?!

was looking up more and this is literally so cool nature is awesome

from here

they're preparing for the Queen

WE MADE IT GIRLS 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀

Convergent evolution is wild, bc like, crabs keep evolving to look the same but aren’t closely related, nature is just like: BIG MEATY CLAWS, little legs, pincers, head, tiny eyes, let’s do it again!

and trees look the same but oak trees are more closely related to rose bushes than they are pine trees, fucked up

nature just likes these damns shapes:

but on the other hand, mammals flying with powered flight?? That shit only happened ONCE and it had to do some janky shit to get there, especially with bat immune systems

like bat’s immune systems are HYPER-POWERED as well as repress most of their inflammatory reactions because in order to fly they needed a bonkers-high metabolic rate which unfortunately also create waste products from the process called “free radicals” that damage cells

however, despite these free radicals they manage to live up to FORTY YEARS, which is super long for a species their size, because their immune system are basically always ON and in an anti-viral state that make them incubators for disease due to warfare between their jacked immune systems and disease 

bats are so gdamn weird, I love them, no other mammal has been able to copy off their homework and accomplish the same shape, and for that they are the anti-crab of the natural world, God bless

It really worked out for them too, like it’s a hell of a lane and they have it all to themselves, so they’ve really filled their niche.  There are more bats than almost any other kind of mammal. Like, there are a higher number of individual bats, but also the most KINDS of bat.

For example there are about 30 million white-tailed deer alive in the world, whereas there are 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats living in ONE single colony in Texas. But also, there are about 43 species of deer on the whole planet, 38 species of feline, 34 species of canine…  and about 1,300 species of bat.

It is estimated that one out of every five living mammals on Earth is a bat, or, to put it another way, if you took every single mammal on the planet and counted them as individuals, 20% of those animals would be some kind of bat.

this youtube thumbnail makes me lose control

shut the hell up and think about rubber ducky isopods

it’s impossible to communicate concepts to another person in exactly the way you envision them, because nobody experiences reality in exactly the same way, and not only do i refuse to come to terms with this fact but i will spend the rest of my life making my entire mind fall apart over it. this sounds more tormented than it is i just wish i was a mantis shrimp looking at the secret colors

i would give anything to be you

Crabmmunism

There’s a lot of talk about crabs on my dash today so guys please go google the Chinese mitten crab

look at he mitten