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[biologist-with-a-blog]

I don't normally write anything besides essays and articles, but I got really inspired by @derinthescarletpescatarian's short story Original Sin.

So here's a short story of my own:

The Rite

I didn’t know

I knew enough. I knew I was doomed, though it still came as a shock. I knew I committed a heinous act worthy of punishment. And, somehow, I always knew I would eventually be caught and put on trial.

But like I mentioned, when the judge found me guilty, I was still surprised. Perhaps because of the sentence. Perhaps because it was still my greatest fear come true.

The Rite instils fear in enough people for major crime to be almost non-existent these days. They don’t condemn burglars or drug users to the Rite, except in a few rare cases. Only those who committed the worst crimes. Perhaps the only form of major crime that is able to “survive” is a mob. I’m not part of a mob.

I don’t know why I did it. It hardly mattered in that moment (it hardly matters now if you ask me). All that mattered was I was about to experience the Rite.

I knew the stories. I knew that when it was first introduced, rumors quickly spread on the viciousness and relentlessness of this punishment. I knew how every single criminal wakes up from the Rite screaming and crying. I knew that the Rite was 100% effective in preventing convicts from returning to crime. I knew I was scared.

I was told it feels like it lasts millions of years, though mere minutes pass outside the realm of the Rite. I was told you feel worse than you could ever feel outside of that place.

They were wrong.

When I entered the Rite, my heart was beating so loud I thought I would go deaf. I think I would have had a panic attack, were it not for… it.

I wasn’t alone. There was someone, something there besides me. I hadn’t expected that. I had expected utter loneliness. Just me and my punishment. But it was there. And it welcomed me, somehow made me feel comfortable and at ease. I realized this was the buildup before the fall. First I get treated like a king, then my inevitable torture happens. This time, I was wrong.

It was kind and nurturing, asking me about my life and the crime I commited. It asked if I felt regret. I said yes, but somehow it knew I was lying. I admitted that I wasn’t sure.

Then it looked at me.

And I mean, really looked at me. Its eye... or eyes... stared through me. I experienced something unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It felt like hours were passing… Days… Months! It showed me the experiences of others. As if it wired my brain directly to the brains of those who came before me. For the first time in my life I truly understood what it was like to be someone else. Consciousnesses merged together and I was no longer. There was only we. Us.

It was overwhelming. Scary. Harrowing. But at the same time… blissful and wonderful. This was no punishment. This was mercy.

And I regretted.

I awoke screaming and crying for my mother. I was me again. Just me. Being more than one? Part of a whole? Multiple simultaneously? It is unlike anything. It rewrites you, changing you forever. I awoke in my own, singular body but I was someone else.

I am someone else than before.

Because now I know.

[biologist-with-a-blog]

People on my local lost and found cat page get real mad about people helping their neglected outdoor cats because they mistake them for strays. Don't want someone feeding or taking in your cat? Don't let it out.

If I hadn't taken in and fed the hungry cat I found a few years ago she probably would have died as she was starving and out in freezing temperatures. Turned out she'd been missing for over a month after escaping her carrier during a house move. But nah, according to these people I should have just ignored her. No wonder so many missing cats on this page never get found.

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Hey Derin, mind if I take this idea of a punishment void and run with it?

I read Original Sin. It made my heart very full. thank you

Glad you liked it!

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Long story short, Cards Against Humanity bought a section of landon the US/Mexico border to prevent construction on Trump's border wall, only for Musk to trespass on CAH's property instead and dump construction materials from SpaceX there instead.

This isn't the first time SpaceX has shown a lack of regard for people who aren't Musk in the area (for just one recent example, regulators say that SpaceX regularly illegally dumps pollutants in nearby water supplies) but this time as CAH intended to keep the land pristine from the harm from racist billionaires, they're now suing him.

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Hot take

Night furies are actually perfectly evolved for hunting and killing other dragons and the only reason they aren't a dragon-hunting species like the death song or deathgrippers are is because DreamWorks couldn't have their adorable main character dragon be a "cannibal"

(below I'm gonna try to summarize what we've figured out in a convo with friends on discord)

(also tw animal death via predator)

First of all yes I'm aware that pretty much every decision made about their design was with consideration of the effect it would make on human audiences but hear me out

Night furies are most iconically known as dive-bombers. They are built for speed, high maneuverability, night-time camouflage and for striking targets from above. If we remove human settlements out of the equation (which would not have existed long enough to actually influence night fury evolution, come on), what does that leave us with?

They aren't built for catching fish for sure, they aren't very hydrodynamic and their head is round, wide, and their teeth are dull. Honestly, the monstrous nightmare is much better suited for catching fish, with its long neck, almost pelican-like jaw and rhamphorhynchus teeth

Compare to

Yeah the jaws look kinda like a porpoise of some sort but for that the whole body would have to be a lot more aquatic imo. The light fury looks a lot closer to an aquatic diver, it has a sleeker body, rounded fins instead of spikes, and a long neck.

I don't really see them hunting land animals either, they just don't look like they're adapted for that minus the resemblance with large felines and even then, they're too large to effectively hunt in forests.

The one thing I can kinda imagine them hunting is large mainland megafauna, but we're working with a setting that takes place pretty much exclusively on islands. And overall, dragons are the only abundant species there with the exception of fish and human-bred sheep and chickens.

In general, night furies have duller teeth, smaller claws and are smaller than most dragons. Disregarding the movies making Toothless weirdly OP, a night fury would be disadvantaged against most dragons in a 1v1 fight and besides, it has four huge weak spots that would highly discourage it from a direct physical fight - the primary and secondary tail fins. One unlucky rip in the membrane and the night fury is fucked.

The night fury however noticeably resembles falcons, given their dive-bombing ability and high maneuverability.

Falcons too have smaller beaks and weaker claws compared to most birds of prey, and for that they compensate by simply picking up speed, balling up their talons and Punching. Really. Hard.

And they use that ability to kill other birds, even much larger ones, by knocking them right from the sky.

Here, the night fury's plasma blast works the same way as a falcon's punch. Dragons are fire-resistant, so what the plasma blast does is really just a densely packed bolt of energy that has the effect of either stunning or outright killing prey by damaging its spine. And what the plasma bolt doesn't do, rapid contact with the ground would finish. And if even that doesn't do it, the night fury's wide jaws and dull teeth are just fine for simply clamping around the unlucky dragon's neck and strangling it, like a lion or a pitbull.

The night-time camouflage allows the night fury to soar for extended periods of time perfectly unnoticed in the night sky, and by the time it strikes, the dragon wouldn't even know what's coming.

Unless

Say the hunting night fury is aware of other dragons sleeping under the trees, as most dragons probably would at night (village raids aside, most dragons seem to be diurnal), so how does the night fury get them in position where it can use its signature attack? Well, there's That Iconic Screech Of Death. Since in the movies it tends to appear not just during dive-bombings but also when charging up a blast, I imagine it's something the night fury is able to control to some degree. So by simply fake-diving in close proximity to sleeping dragons, it can effectively terrify them into leaving their hideout and fly out into the open where it can easily take them out.

I dunno, the possibility of night furies as predators to other dragons just makes so much sense to me, I really don't know what other reasons there would be for them to evolve these particular adaptations.

And one more little headcanon to add to this whole rant - since night furies are significantly smaller and less equipped for dragon vs dragon fights and are primarily speed-based predators, I imagine there is this very likely scenario:

There is one dragon who resembles a hyena, a lil bit

Ok, rant over

[biologist-with-a-blog]

who else remembers the entire Doctor Who crew dancing to 500 miles with David Tennant because it’s the purest thing you’ll see today

[biologist-with-a-blog]

@petrichoronafox

Reminder: Bi Visibility Day is September 23. Remember to leave cookies out for Freddie.

[biologist-with-a-blog]

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Camera-trapping data revealed in a new study show a steady recovery of tigers in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex over the past two decades.

The tiger recovery has been mirrored by a simultaneous increase in the numbers of the tigers’ prey animals, such as sambar deer and types of wild cattle.

The authors attribute the recovery of the tigers and their prey to long-term efforts to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to restore key habitats and water sources.

Experts say the lessons learnt can be applied to support tiger recovery in other parts of Thailand and underscore the importance of the core WEFCOM population as a vital source of tigers repopulating adjacent landscapes.

The tiger population density in a series of protected areas in western Thailand has more than doubled over the past two decades, according to new survey data.

Thailand is the final stronghold of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), the subspecies having been extirpated from neighboring Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over the past decade due to poaching, habitat loss and indiscriminate snaring...

Fewer than 200 tigers are thought to remain in Thailand’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, only a handful of which are sufficiently undisturbed and well-protected to preserve breeding tigers. 

The most important of these protected areas for tigers is the Huai Kha Khaeng Thung Yai (HKK-TY) UNESCO World Heritage Site, which comprises three distinct reserves out of the 17 that make up Thailand’s Western Forest Complex (WEFCOM). Together, these three reserves — Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, Thungyai Naresuan West and Thungyai Naresuan East — account for more than a third of the entire WEFCOM landscape.

Now, a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation documents a steady recovery of tigers within the HKK-TY reserves since camera trap surveys began in 2007. The most recent year of surveys, which concluded in November 2023, photographed 94 individual tigers, up from 75 individuals in the previous year, and from fewer than 40 in 2007.

Healthy tiger families  

The study findings reveal that the tiger population grew on average 4% per year in Hua Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest and longest-protected of the reserves, corresponding to an increase in tiger density from 1.3 tigers per 100 square kilometers, to 2.9 tigers/100 km2. 

“Tiger recoveries in Southeast Asia are few, and examples such as these highlight that recoveries can be supported outside of South Asia, where most of the good news [about tigers] appears to come from,” said Abishek Harihar, tiger program director for Panthera, the global wildcat conservation organization, who was not involved in the study.

Among the camera trap footage gathered in HKK-TY over the years were encouraging scenes of healthy tiger families, including one instance of a mother tiger and her three grownup cubs lapping water and lounging in a jacuzzi-sized watering hole. The tiger family stayed by the water source for five days during the height of the dry season.

The team of researchers from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Kasetsart University, and India’s Center for Wildlife Studies deployed camera traps at more than 270 separate locations throughout the HKK-TY reserves, amassing 98,305 days’ worth of camera-trap data over the 19-year study period.

Using software that identifies individual tigers by their unique stripe patterns, they built a reference database of all known tigers frequenting the three reserves. A total of 291 individual tigers older than 1 year were recorded, as well as 67 cubs younger than 1 year [over the course of the study].

Ten of the tigers were photographed in more than one of the reserves, indicating their territories straddled the reserve boundaries. The authors conclude that each of the three reserves has a solid breeding tiger population and that, taken together, the HKK-TY landscape is a vital source of tigers that could potentially repopulate surrounding areas where they’ve been lost. This is supported by cases of known HKK-TY tigers dispersing into neighboring parts of WEFCOM and even across the border into Myanmar.

Conservation efforts pay off

Anak Pattanavibool, study co-author and Thailand country director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Mongabay that population models that take into account the full extent of suitable habitat available to tigers within the reserves and the likelihood that some tigers inevitably go undetected by camera surveys indicate there could be up to 140 tigers within the HKK-YT landscape.

Anak told Mongabay the tiger recovery is a clear indication that conservation efforts are starting to pay off. In particular, long-term action to strengthen systematic ranger patrols to control poaching as well as efforts to boost the tigers’ prey populations seem to be working, he said.

“Conservation success takes time. At the beginning we didn’t have much confidence that it would be possible [to recover tiger numbers], but we’ve been patient,” Anak said. For him, the turning point came in 2012, when authorities arrested and — with the aid of tiger stripe recognition software — prosecuted several tiger-poaching gangs operating in Huai Kha Khaeng. “These cases sent a strong message to poaching gangs and they stopped coming to these forests,” he said."

...ranger teams have detected no tiger poaching in the HKK-TY part of WEFCOM since 2013.

-via Mongabay News, July 17, 2024

[biologist-with-a-blog]

GET YELLED AT

photos by carl bergstrom

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Pretty Pretty Please I Don't Want to be a Magical Girl

While I’d want this concept to mostly be a lighthearted comedy, since that’s more my forte, the north star (heh) of this premise would be the loss of passion for something you once loved, feeling the pressure/expectations of sticking with something that you’re “a prodigy” at and the subsequent burnout. How hard do you fight for an old passion or at what point do you just let it go? Is it even okay to give up when so many people are counting on you? 

Sounds bleak but I promise I’m an optimist and that will always reflect in my work :)

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Everybody has such cool stuff... I'm taking your fossils. You can take one of these

Tagging @sthrena @petrichoronafox @seraphina-cat @smallishghost @kleefkruid @tryingandfailingandlearning @a-sunfish @goodtimeobtainer

Thank you @anti-homophobia-cheese for the tag! This one is super fun!

Tagging @cha-melodius @zwiazdziarka @orchidscript @firenati0n @read-and-write- @gayrootvegetable @alasse9 @caterpills @xthelastknownsurvivorx @cultofsappho @love-has-a-way-ofgrowingbackward and anyone else that wants to play!

[biologist-with-a-blog]

ARE YOU A BONE OR BLOOD PERSON.

ARE YOU A VOID OR ABYSS PERSON.

ARE YOU A ROT OR DUST PERSON.

[biologist-with-a-blog]

Reason to Live #11282

   Quiet bird coos.  – Guest Submission

(Please don't add negative comments to these posts.)

[biologist-with-a-blog]

God I love “We’re enemies, but we’ve been enemies for a long time, which is sort of like being friends.” Great trope.