#learning about ecosystems

[presswoodterryryan]

🌟 Growth, Giggling, and Giant Tadpoles: Alice Explores Ariel's Amazing Science Paper!

Discover the wonder of life, the power of potatoes, and the bravery of a bunny named Fluffernutter in this totally true science adventure by Alice! By Alice (with minor assistance from Fluffernutter, Esq.) 🧩 Breaking News: Living Things are Basically Superheroes My big sister Ariel (a.k.a. the amazing Queen of Brains and Butterflies) just finished another mind-blowing paper! This time, she’s…

[serpentface]

Sketch of a typical Wardi house (small), located adjacent to farmland on the Briya river floodplain.

Most houses are made with mudbrick and with a smooth outer coating, sometimes plastered or otherwise decorated (this one has fairly minimal decorative painting). The climate is dry overall and mudbrick is the most economical and resistant building material available (though it does require more maintenance than in outright arid climates due to regular and sometimes very heavy winter rains), with the use of wood generally being reserved for maintaining the structural integrity of the roof and portals. These houses are fairly effective at insulation, and a well-constructed home will not have dramatic temperature gradients between hot days and cool nights.

Some homes lack doors altogether and use fabric or straw drapes; actual doors are hung by pintles and made with wood and/or woven reeds. Domestic chimneys have not been invented anywhere in general, and smoke in a small house like this will be removed (not the most efficiently) through small tubes in the walls and via the door/windows. Cooking hearths in these smaller houses are usually placed in the center of the building, which goes a little ways to allowing smoke to disperse.

Flat mudbrick roofs are in use in some places, though pointed thatched roofs like these are more common in all but the driest areas due to better shedding rainfall/occasional snow accumulation. Thatching is made with straw or papyrus, location depending, and can become very thick as a byproduct of routine maintenance on old houses.

Misc bits:

-bell windchimes on each side of the house (wards off ghosts and makes a pretty sound).

-little clay guardian lion over the doorway (most houses will have one on each side, though those not overseeing entrances may be hidden in the thatching or buried to fully embed their protective qualities).

-dung fuel being dried on one of the walls.

-koli plant right outside (easy low maintenance fruit and vegetables)

[entomologize]

Fun fact: there is a group of moths that has evolved to live specifically in the algae-covered fur of sloths. Sloth moths, if you will.

A single three-toed sloth can have up to 120 individual adult moths on it at a time, and may even have a mix of moth species.

But what do the caterpillars eat? The algae? No.

About once a week the sloth sloooowly descends to the base of a tree, does a little wiggle, and drops a big one. So big that it may lose a third of its body weight in a single dump.

And when they go, female moths take the opportunity to lay their eggs on the fresh pile. That is what the caterpillars eat. And when the moths emerge as adults, they fly off to find some nice sloth fur to crawl into.

Why do they do this? The sloth fur gives them protection from predators, potential nutrients from algae and ~secretions~, and the perfect ride to the Next Big Thing™.

Photos taken by Suzi Eszterhas, wildlife photographer and trustee of the Sloth Conservation Foundation.

[mychemicalanimalia]

what do you think my zoology teacher would think if she knew i was using the knowledge i gain in that class to run a tumblr account where i assign animals to my chemical romance songs

[garryoakenthusiast]

So last fall, me and my mother dug up the entirety of our front lawn. We planted a couple shrubs & small trees, but otherwise over the winter it looked pretty bleak 😅

But now finally here's the new plantings for this year! It was really important to me to plant things native to this region of the pnw, though there are a handful of things, like California lilac and western lupines, that are not technically from around here, but close enough.

June plum (with some new licorice fern) and flowering red currant (also a tiny slim leaf onion off to the side) ignore the neighbour's boxwoods LOL

Yarrow & kinnickinnik, and western lupines

now some of the new stuff! The first one is common camas, tufted hair grass, sea blush, and western red columbine. the second is Oregon stonecrop, licorice fern, and some mosses.

The stone and gravel is sort of a budget-friendly experiment in recreating the rocky garry oak environment that much of our area used to be. Last year we noticed that we actually have a tiny garry oak that showed up! I'll take pictures once the leaves start opening up.

[cementcornfield]

Watched (listened) to this at work over the last two days and found it REALLY interesting. They go into the Bengals current cap situation and try to approach the offseason in conservative/bengals-like ways and STILL they manage to sign tee, ja'marr, and trey AND acquire some solid free agents to help the o-line/defense. Even when it comes to cash spending (and how stingy the bengals typically are with that), Jake keeps track of the average amount of cash spent over previous offseasons and they keep it within that range! Just a very fascinating look into what's possible and actually realistic in terms of how the organization could approach this Very Important Offseason™️

[astral-schools]

for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

some zoom-ins cause i was kinda just messing around w the shading but it turned out pretty good

[worldofgoo]

it seems like people are able to acknowledge that even places "corrupted" by human habitation can still count as nature but also i feel like culturally we're still at war with anything that we cant manage/own/control (lawn mowing is a big example)

[sidhewrites]

like i think the thing is, you don't have to like certain animals or plants to know they're important. I only recently learned there are species of mosquitos that are vital pollinators to their local ecosystems, but even the ones everyone knows and hates are a major part of the food chain, moving calories and protein around in ways few other species do. Parasites and predators both are important for keeping the herbivore population down, which allows the plant life to thrive. Nothing exists purely to be evil, and it's a mistake to think nature is all sunshine rainbows and flowers.

Death decay and disease are important to the balance of life, but that doesn't mean we have to be comfortable with it. I don't like mosquitos anywhere near me. Scorpions terrify me, and certain bugs still make me feel disgusted. But my feelings don't matter when it comes to the ecosystem.

Everything evolved to fill a specific and necessary role. The world doesn't exist to serve our comforts or preferences. We don't have to love it, we just have to accept it.

[projectcatzo]

[dandyshucks]

also it'd be rly funny if one day he was idly looking at the pins on my bag and notices one that looks like a Sinnoh gym badge that he recognizes bc of something he'd seen at one point so he asks me about it and I go like "oh yeah, this line of pins is all the gym badges from Sinnoh" and he thinks it's just like... tourism decorations or smth so he makes a teasing joke about me having wishful thinking of wanting to beat all the gym leaders in battle and I look at him all confused like "no those are real ? i did do that ??" and he's like WHAT ?? WHY DID U NEVER MENTION IT BEFORE ????

bro i am SHY and i dont like to talk about big things like that esp if it takes me longer to achieve than the average person !!! i would much rather share cool facts about nature that i learned or show u the latest creative project I worked on !!!

[sag-dab-sar]

If saving nature via a conservation park makes refugees/IDPs out of indigenous people, it isn't real conservation: it some sort of unrealistic fantasy ideal of nature free of human touch. Humans are an important keystone species regardless of how much we like to demonize ourselves as some sort of plague killing the planet.

[one-little-nerd-stayed-home]

Not to be an insufferable agriculture nerd but CORA CORA NO DO NOT SPREAD SEEDS FROM THE MILKY WAY ON THIS ALIEN PLANET PLEASE you're going to reinvent downy brome or crested wheatgrass or god forbid Kudzu PLEASE DO NOT.

Like I am definitely not opposed to a garden but don't just spread seeds willy nilly!! Best case nothing will grow and you've wasted your very limited seed stock but worst case? Have you considered the cascading ecological and agricultural effects Cora? Have you???

(Although IRC most seeds are only viable for between 1 and 60 yrs so after 600 years maybe it's fine.)

[owormy]

I genuinely think someone being a bug hater is a dealbreaker on whether we can date or not

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I think someone put the brain of a mouse or maybe a squirrel inside my head at some point because all winter I was like “I crave nuts and seeds” and now that it’s getting warmer and brighter out my brain keeps going “it’s fruit time”

Like, modern transportation has made it possible to move many fruits all over the world (in theory) all the time! But the primal early plesiadapiform part of my brain is like “you must eat what is available this season”

[worldofgoo]

I do kind of get offended when my art or interests are described as child-like even if it's potentially true... they feel like MY interests and MY art, I'm not like, apeing childhood or trying to go back, it's just who I am as a result of my experiences? I think I just don't see a clear distinction between me-then and me-now as different people, so I don't feel any need to enforce that binary within myself.