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[aficionadoenthusiast]

You can always take a candid of them, because they’re always doing something cute

[aficionadoenthusiast]

Uncharismatic Fact of the Day

African dwarf frogs don't have good table manners, but you can't really blame them. This species has neither a tongue nor teeth, and must use their front feet to shove food down their throats.

(Image: An African dwarf frog (Hymenochirus boettgeri) by James Gathany)

If you send me proof that you’ve made a donation to UNRWA or another fund benefiting Palestinians– including esim donations and verified gofundmes– I’ll make art of any animal of your choosing.

[aficionadoenthusiast]

Bat Star (Patiria miniata)

Family: Cushion Star Family (Asterinidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Unassessed

A small species of starfish found in a variety of habitats across the Pacific coast of North America, the Bat Star is named for the thin membrane that runs between its "arms", which has been compared to the wings of bats. Highly variable in appearance, members of this species are usually red with five arms but may also be yellow, brown, pink, blue or black and have anywhere from 4 to 9 arms, especially after enduring an injury or an awkward regeneration of a lost limb. As with all starfishes a Bat Star's arms are lined with chemical-sensitive cells and small light-detecting organs comparable to crude eyes, and through the use of these organs (as well as the numerous tiny tube-like feet lining their undersides) they crawl slowly along the seafloor in search of algae, carrion and immobile or slow-moving animals; lacking teeth or jaws, they feed by enveloping prey with their arms and then extending their stomachs out of a small mouth in their centre, externally digesting their food and absorbing the nutrients released as a result. Each individual Bat Star is either male or female, and when the waters around them are sufficiently warm females freely release huge number of tiny eggs into the water to be externally fertilized by gametes released by males.

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Image Source: Here

[aficionadoenthusiast]

🌱An Earth Goddess for Earth Day 🌱

Art prints

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This machine kills AI

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polo_reef on ig

[aficionadoenthusiast]

You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

[aficionadoenthusiast]

oh and I sincerely believe that Poseidon telling Percy "You're my favorite child" was absolutely a manipulation tactic/power play and it worked

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[aficionadoenthusiast]

hwat do we think gamers. good fit or too early 2000s?

[aficionadoenthusiast]

im having feelings about the uffington white horse again

[aficionadoenthusiast]

"fuck it we ball" is for stress about the future "it is what it is" is for stress about the past and "this too shall pass" is for stress about the present thank you for coming to my TED talk

[aficionadoenthusiast]

My sister is doing pet play with women on roblox and I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s probably a kink for the others involved

[aficionadoenthusiast]

every person can feel freddie’s presence in their souls when they sing MAMAAAAAA UUHHHH, I DONT WANNA DIE, I SOMETIMES I WISH I’VE NEVER BEEN BORN AT ALL with all the air in their lungs i’m not joking

[aficionadoenthusiast]

my friend told me that her boyfriend got her a super cool rock while they were on vacation together and you would not BELIEVE my disappointment when i realized she was talking about her engagement ring

[aficionadoenthusiast]

Alec, grumbling: Great, we're surrounded.

Jace, calm: Excellent. We can attack in any direction.