Reblogged

Have you ever heard of the long-tailed mouse (Pseudomys higginsi)? Growing up to 13.8 in (35 cm) from head to tail, this species is the only rodent native to Tasmania. This omnivore feeds on plants, fungi, and invertebrates. Scientists think its extra long tail is used for balance. When threatened, its large hind feet help it to leap away from foes.

Photo: Bruce Deagle, CC BY 4.0, iNaturalist

wandering-teapot

Reblogged

expressions-of-nature

by Ksenia Kudashkina

wandering-teapot

Reblogged whale-in-that-case

electronicgallery

Museum Asks People To Recreate Paintings At Home, Gets 30 New Impressive Photos

It appears that boredom lies behind the most creative ideas. That's why quarantine has produced some of the most entertaining activities. One of them is the Getty Museum challenge, that so many of you have already seen in our previous article here.

www.boredpanda.com

delphinidin4

Narcissus taking a selfie is the ACTUAL best.

simplyclockwork

These are REALLY cool

notallfay

These are art in themselves, in a some of them point out what lockdown was like for us, they’re expressed themselves in a really cool way. But I think these are going to be talked about in the future.

sufficientlylargen

@elodieunderglass I see that you are in this series

elodieunderglass

No series would be complete without!

#faves

wandering-teapot

Reblogged adventures-in-poor-planning

jessica-drewz

The Shortest Day. Words by Susan Cooper, illustrations by Carson Ellis.

wandering-teapot

Reblogged azures-grace

serps-up

so happy and free

reachartwork

this is going to be a silly reblog but i have kind of a fixation on animal qualia and the idea of an animal's umwelt, so i ended up wondering whether pudding was actually "enjoying" this.

which meant i went and read about snail brains.

here's the bad news, at least by human standards:

snails do not have anything like a centralized brain. their nervous system is made up of small clusters of neurons (ganglia) that mostly handle very local tasks. they don't have a cortex, they don't build big integrated models of the world, and they almost certainly don't experience things like appreciation, anticipation, or savoring.

pudding is not looking at the sky and thinking it's beautiful.

snail eyes are basically light sensors - they can tell bright from dark, but not form images. snail "taste" is done through chemoreceptors on their tentacles and around their mouth. those receptors don't produce flavor the way ours do; they just detect chemical compounds and sort them into "approach," "ignore," or "avoid."

so there's no evidence that snails enjoy food, or wind, or views, the way mammals do.

and that does sound kind of sad. but then i thought that maybe we are asking the wrong question.

snails do have valence. they detect aversive things (like salt or dryness) and withdraw from them. they detect non-aversive or beneficial conditions (like moisture) and stay extended. when pudding is stretched out like this, it means his nervous system is basically saying "this is safe; nothing is wrong."

if we define pleasure not as our human experience of dopamine and reward chemicals but instead as "the absence of aversion" - a state where the organism is open to its environment instead of defending itself - then this does count as something positive, even if it's extremely nothing like human enjoyment.

pudding isn't appreciating the wind. but his body is registering humidity, safety, and the ability to keep functioning, and that matters to him in the only way his nervous system can make things matter. he does not think "this is great, this is awesome, i love the weather", because he doesn't think in the way we do at all, but the neurological action in his ganglion tell his body that he is safe, that the moisture is an acceptable level, that it's not too dry or windy, and that there's nothing imminently threatening.

i think a lot of the sadness comes from assuming that a good life has to look like ours: full of enjoyment, meaning, and aesthetic experience. but a snail isn't missing those things. its world just isn't built to include them.

snails don't have a sense of flavor. they don't even have tastebuds. this seems like a gimme, right? but again that might be asking the wrong question about what "taste" is. biologically speaking, it's chemoreception. we taste sweet because it indicates high value, high calorie sugar molecules. we taste salty for salt, umami for proteins. so in what way does pudding's chemoreceptors differ from ours instrumentally? we can say "by our human perspective, pudding can't experience "preference" or "savoring" or "anticipation of delicious food"", but from pudding's perspective we have radically overengineered ourselves for the task at hand. pudding can tell what's salty, what's high value, what has the chemicals he needs. the functional outcome is that he can discriminate food souces based on their composition. is that not taste?

so maybe the point isn't "this is sad because he can't enjoy it," but "this is a reminder that minds come in radically different shapes, and value doesn't have to be rich to be real."

wandering-teapot

Reblogged veganfairylights

shamebats

Oh, you eat animal products? Isn't it hard? Where do you get your fiber? Do you take supplements? Yikes, I could never do that. I had to buy organic free range meat and eggs for someone who's on an animal product diet once and it was sooo expensive, it's definitely only something for rich people haha. My uncle was on a strict animal product diet, you know? Yeah, he died. Colon cancer. It's a risky thing, this trend, you have to know what you're doing and really make sure you get proper nutrition, but most people go on it thinking it'll make them healthy but then they just eat junk food and wonder why they feel bad and are constipated all the time. Not everyone has the time and energy to learn how to safely prepare meat, and it's so bland too! Do you ever crave a tasty, well-seasoned seitan steak? I actually tried cow's milk once, it was so weird, I'd rather have the real stuff, straight from the plant like nature intended. My mom was on a carnivore diet for 3 months and she felt so bad, her doctor actually told her to stop. It's definitely not for everyone, but I guess you have your reasons. Did you know it's like really bad for the environment? Yeah, uses lots of water, poisons lakes with poo, and they torture the animals to death and workers get PTSD from it. People think "animal based" means natural but actually most of it comes from factory farms. Just thought you should know, you probably didn't think of that when you decided to start this diet. I could never deny myself plants like that, must take a lot of restraint. Most people don't last long. Are you sure you don't want the chickpea curry? Not even a little bit? Haha, just teasing, you meat eaters are so sensitive.