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today I got around to organising some parts of my room and finally found a place to stash all my snacks. Also went out to buy some food and on my way home I got distracted by a cute small mouse. I'm always curious about their inner workings, especially since most mice I've met have been very friendly and trusting. How would I feel if something the size of a high rise just picked me up, kept me warm and tried to feed me something somewhat palatable after I just survived nearly being eaten

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i don’t think people understand how much of life is grief. not just people dying, but losing the version of yourself you thought you’d become. grieving the city you had to leave. the friends you lost not in argument, but in silence. the summer that will never come back. the feeling that maybe you peaked at 12 when you were reading books under the covers and believing in forever

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The haunting ancient Celtic carnyx being played for an audience. This is the sound Roman soldiers would have heard their Celtic enemies make.

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go on more walks. walk for no reason. walk to solve a problem. walk to blow off steam. walk to get outside. walk to listen, read, and learn. walk to escape distractions. walk to improve your health. walk to think. a simple walking habit can change absolutely everything.

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Biodiversity can be achieved through executive dysfunction!

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Actually mice do get nosebleeds

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Actually mice do get nosebleeds

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he is sitting and pondering

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Any starter bugs for someone trying to unlearn fear of bugs and such? Bumblebees and butterflies and moths are pretty okay with me, but I don't want to be afraid of the natural world just because I was raised that way.

I also happen to think that beetles can be cute and nice and amiable. Here, check these out...

Shiny Blue Monkey Beetle (Hoplia caerulea), family Scarabaeidae, Languedoc-Roussillon, France

photograph by Fritz Geller-Grimm 

Golden Scarab (Chrysina resplendens), family Scarabaeidae, found in Central America

photograph by Pascal Goetgheluck

Purple Flower Beetle (Chlorocala africana oertzeni), EAT A TASTY BANANA!!!, family Scarabaeidae, found in Tanzania

Other subspecies are green.

photograph by Richard Nakamura (@richards_inverts)

Green Scarab (Pelidnota prasina), family Scarabaeidae, Finca Heimatlos Eco Lodge and Farm, near Puyo, Ecuador

photograph by Eerika Schulz

Bee Beetle (Trichius gallicus zonatus), family Scarabaeidae, France

photograph by Gabriel Buissart

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Rainy day in Kyoto

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« Whenever a land hermit crab is lucky enough to come across an empty shell (sometimes because a behavioural ecologist put it there) and if no one else is around, it will stop, take a closer look and probably try on the new shell for size. If it likes what it finds it will keep the new home and continue on its way. However, if the shell is too big the crab won’t pass on by, but will sit quietly next to it, sometimes for as long as 24 hours. In that time other crabs will probably amble past and wonder what’s going on. Then a spontaneous hermit party breaks out. Don’t get too excited, though, because the main thing that happens when hermit crabs get together is they start forming queues.

A gaggle of hermit crabs clustered around a big empty shell will sort themselves out into a size-ordered line with the biggest at one end, leading to the smallest at the other. This orderly formation is called a vacancy chain, and people form them too, of jobs and houses. The crabs work out who goes where by clambering around and feeling up each other’s shells. Sometimes, if there are lots of hermits in the area, several queues will form around a single, large vacant shell and then things get a bit more interesting: a tug-of- war ensues. The biggest crabs will wrestle over the coveted empty shell while the little ones further down the line will shift queues like supermarket shoppers speculating on which checkout will move fastest.

Eventually, one queue will win control of the empty shell and, in a flurry of claws, everybody in the successful line moves house. Each crab slips out of its old shell and into the newly abandoned shell of the crab one place ahead of it in the queue. They all get a new shell, one size bigger, and quickly scuttle off, once again going their separate ways. Behavioural ecologists have worked out that forming vacancy chains provides benefits for all the crabs involved; adding just one new shell can efficiently provide new homes, of just the right sizes, for a whole gang of hermits. »

— Helen Scales, Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells

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2005

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@crxmes