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If there are trees you aren’t alone

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fake relationship but its a king and his concubine that was once an amazing soldier but he couldn’t go up the ranks for whatever reason so the king was like listen. hear me out. you can be my strategy dude. u just gotta be okay w walking around shirtless a lot. and soldier dude is like man that’s an UPSIDE and yknow they end up falling in love

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GOOD MORNING!

Today's paper is an old one (for neuro, at least) hailing from 1979. The authors explored the visual system in the brains of echolocating and non-echolocating bats-- if you didn't know that some bats don't echolocate, now you do.

They tried a couple different methods, including removing one eye and looking for the destruction of downstream neurons and injecting the eye with an early form of anterograde tracers (psst: these are just chemicals that travel down neurons the same way information does, depositing chemical along the way, so you can see what neurons are connected).

They found that, generally, the echolocating bats had a "less developed" visual processing pathway. Some areas were smaller, some seemed less connected to the eye, and some didn't have the cellular complexity of the same areas in non-echolocating bats. This all makes sense: a bat that navigates more with sound doesn't need to process visual information as thoroughly. Better to leave more of the brain for hearing.

Just for fun, here is one of the echolocating bats (Myotis lucifugus, or little brown bat, photo from Bat Conservation International):

And here is one of the non-echolocating bats (in the paper it is called Pteropus giganteus, but the modern nomenclature is Pteropus medius; regardless, it's an Indian flying fox and I got this photo from Wikipedia):

Thanks for appreciating bats with me today!

Cotter, J.R., & Pentney, R.J.P. (1979). Retinofugal projections of nonecholocating (Pteropus giganteus) and echolocating (Myotis lucifugus) bats. J. Comp. Neuro. 184: 381-400.

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REBLOG IF THIS RELATES TO YOU:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

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By using antibodies from a human donor with a self-induced hyper-immunity to snake venom, scientists have developed the most broadly effective antivenom to date, which is protective against the likes of the black mamba, king cobra, and tiger snakes in mouse trials. Described in the journal Cell, the antivenom combines protective antibodies and a small molecule inhibitor and opens a path toward a universal antiserum.

Continue Reading.

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there is actually one reason i would willingly join the army and that's to desert my unit and betray my country on the eve of battle

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"came back wrong" sure yeah that's cool i guess "came back suicidal" now you're talking

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someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue

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There are two types of writers:

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

2. 'I didn't account for the rotation of the planet and how that affects the constalations while my characters stargazed at different times of year, I have failed as a writer, and this entire thing is trash'

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does anyone have the foggiest

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I'm not a hater but so much shit is stupid

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im still losing it over the "how did high schoolers write 600 word essays before chatgpt" post. 600 words. that is nothing. that is so few words what do you mean you can't write 600 words. 600 words. this post right here is 45 words.

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I don’t like being referred to as a boy

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i hate how you get desensitized to the cool stuff in your WIP if you've been writing it for a long time so when you read back over it you're like "this isn't as cool as i thought :(" but it still is! you just read it too many times