i really like old species descriptions

the species in question

The creature

neope goschkevitschii caterpillars ฅ^>⩊<^ฅ | piyo_bug on ig

AAAWWWWWWEEEEEEE. SO CUTEEE!!!! (⁠๑⁠♡⁠⌓⁠♡⁠๑⁠)

BABIES 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

does this

THESE MFS FIGURED OUT HOW TO TIPPY TAPPY THEY LITTLE FUCKIN TOES??!

@weevilsdaily

The Tippy Tabbler

me when i dum-de-dum

guy who has a mental health condition that comes and goes: i’m cured this time actually i can feel it

same guy when they start having symptoms again: what the fuck is happening and why

Brook's Squat Frog aka Brook's Burrowing Frog (Glyphoglossus brooksi), family Microhylidae, Sarawak, Borneo

photographs by Forrest Galante

my mind hand touched a hot memory stove

logged the fuck in

(x)

what if you were reallllllly into this species of cute hairless guys so you kept cloning them as domesticated sex slaves endlessly and farmed their sperm for production of a hybrid worker caste to serve you

i can't stop thinking about this. the species of ants they clone are still around and exist in the same territory as these ants. what if you like. fought a guy in the Ant Wars who was clearly like some fucked up mule cousin of yours. what if you stumbled into the queen chambers of a destroyed colony of your enemy species to find domesticated sex pet versions of your brothers in captivity along with males of the other species. what the actual fuck are ants doing to each other out there

Biology is always finding new ways to be fucking weird

Quick correction, the other species isn’t in the area.

I was just listening to an interview with one of the authors of the paper, and he pointed out that while sperm parasitism is actually not uncommon among ants, it’s really weird that this particular population just held onto and kept cloning this other species of ants to make hybrid workers when there isn’t a local population to be sperm donors.

some species are even obligate sperm parasites! But the species isn’t!! Absolutely buckwild!!!

The more that I (trans dude) participate in "men's things" the funnier it is to me to realize so much of ostensible 'the way guys are' is shaped socioeconomically.

Men "care less about their appearance"? Men's clothing tends cheaper, sturdier, but also more boring and featureless. You have to work a lot harder to find interesting cuts or styles or vibrant colors. Shorter hair is far more forgiving to style- I can roll out of bed and examine myself in the mirror and think 'hey, that bedhead look is pretty solid and workable'. Cosmetics 'for men' tend packaged for bulk and convenience and seldom will tell you what their scents actually are so if you like smelling a certain way you have to work harder to think about it.

Even down to men's underwear has a much thicker waistband so it's more likely to show above your pants! I can dress the same way in the exact same pants with different underwear and one of them shows above the waistline and the other doesn't.

And sure we can argue the idea that this marketing exists because it's what men want (IMO, a bit naive considering how large and powerful corporations are / the very sorry state of the ostensible invisible hand) but then I can point to experience working at a daycare and tell you that every three year old boy wants ponytails and his nails painted and likes purple or pink, wants to be a princess, wants to wear costume skirts and dresses, because those things are exciting and pretty- and when those boys turn four or five and start to shy away from them, their response is not a refinement of taste nearly as often as it is one of anxiety and dread- that he has learned those things attract him unwanted attention or admonishment or scolding.

Boys are taught what is safe to want, what they 'should' want. And as a man who intends to enjoy being a man with exactly as much color and glitter as I please, the hollowness of the facade has never been more obvious. Nor more aggravating, considering how much genuine harm and misery comes from it. Manly dudes who really like being "conventionally masculine" aren't going to crumble into dust if walmart stops differentiating some shampoo brands as 'womanly' and some as 'manly'- and he might decide he really likes the way this fruity sparkle body wash makes him smell.

One of my still most-popular posts is about how gender of choice should be universal, and this is another chunk of it- social forces that, if we're being bluntly honest, are mostly after our money, have a vested interest in trying to tell us what to want. That men 'should' want this, and women 'should' want that, and the vast beautiful sphere of human experience is carved up haphazardly and each half flicked aside, here, this is for you, in casual ignorance that what we may literally need to survive wasn't in our allotted chunk. "Aberrant" men- men of color, disabled men, queer men- are forced to see this more and more dramatically, but it affects even the most normative socially accepted men. And this is men- the people who, in patriarchal, misogynist societies are getting ostensibly the better deal!

The Great Male Renunciation--specifically, the fact that a very small group of men in Europe "abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful" and "henceforth aimed at being only useful" (Flügel)--did so much fucking damage to men as a whole. A lot of people blame Beau Brummell; but it wasn't just him, he was simply the articulator and the poster child. The colonial powers had a fashion revolution, decided beauty and adornment were womanly, and that has been that ever since.

That's what's behind all of what OP has articulated above about male fashion. It is slightly "tail wagging the dog" to blame marketing firms, when the kickoff of this started much earlier, and is actually colonial in nature. Many groups of men of colour have bucked this, incorporating their own culture into their fashion, pushing back against the colonial pressures to wear drab suits and things; but we are still very much under the influence of 18th century Europeans.

I think the most insidious thing is the "the only thing men are allowed to be is useful". This attitude is pervasive, and even affects butches that aren't men! The idea that men are simply utilities or tools at best, this is how men are objectified. And if you're a disabled man, you're not a man anymore, you're not worth anything and it is very hard not to see this attitude as "you don't deserve to live if you aren't useful".

The 1960s-1970s attempted to have a fashion revolt about this, but it was quashed by the 1990s. Now that the internet has happened, connecting people all over, you see some types of rebellion taking root. But aside from the rise in fundamentalism and manosphere cults, by now we're all in the grip of having to buy our clothes rather than make them, which means corporations dictate what's available to wear--something which isn't even dictated by companies' hired shoppers and designers anymore, it's done by predictive algorithms that allegedly predict what people will buy based on what they bought before.

But we're still stuck in "the only thing men are allowed to be is useful", and it's horrid. Men are allowed to be things other than useful! Men are allowed to be beautiful! Men are allowed to be playful! Whimsical! Colourful! Joyful even!

spiny lobster conga line😎

Gives you the potion that turns you into a buge