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I've seen posts going around claiming that petting animals is basically tricking them into thinking they're being groomed, and it's bugging me because, like, there's no trickery afoot. Petting and scritching are grooming activities. They help to dislodge loose fur and foreign objects and more evenly distribute protective oils, among other things. Primates are social groomers, and the human impulse to scritch is the legacy of our primate ancestors. We see an animal we like, even a dangerous one, and the monkey brain says "groom that thing".

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Izutsumiii

My fave character so far

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woims

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in the Egyptian wing of the museum and my boyfriend is like "what are all the time periods of ancient Egypt" and I'm like predynastic, early dynastic, old kingdom which is when the pyramids were built, first intermediate, middle kingdom, second intermediate, new kingdom which includes amarna period and yugioh, third intermediate, and then all the late period stuff and macedonian and roman eras. and he's like run that by me one more time

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‼️CICADAS‼️

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For those who have overactive guilt complexes like me…

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You roll up to the Wizard Battle and your opponent takes out his spellbook but it’s just one of these

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things to say to bugs when science finally unlocks the secrets of human-bug communication:

im not hurting you i am taking you to a safe place

do you eat weird crumbs cause i found some im willing to share

you can bite me if you want but id rather be no-bite friends

i like your big colorful eyes, very stylish

please dont crawl into my sleeves

(sings a duet with a cricket)

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baby mite's first swim................

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CRABS

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2024. your alex (alexa has been made gender neutral) wakes you up with an alarm at 5:30…. you thought you didn’t need to wake up until 7, but your work’s schedule app shows that the scheduling ai changed the schedule overnight, following the termination of your coworker brandyn, and your alarm was automatically adjusted. you feel like shit. “alex,” you say, “i need to call in. i feel horrible…” you hold still as alex’s camera scans you and they analyze your appearance for signs of illness. “you appear to be feeling fine,” they say, “are you sure you want me to go ahead with that request?” you grimace…. you’re exhausted. you steel yourself for whatever consequences are to come…. “yes,” you say. “alright,” says alex, “i’m submitting your request now.” your phone buzzes on your wrist - the request has been received. a second notification. you’ve been terminated for falsifying a sick day request. a third - this one is from the property management company that owns your apartment - after receiving notice of your termination, the leasing ai has elected to evict you. within 24 hours, your smart home security will no longer recognize you as a resident. alex starts to count down

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the paralyzed cicadas I picked up from a failed cicada killer nest are the perfect material to show off some cool features of insect anatomy! (although the wasp’s venom would keep them alive for her larvae to eat, I froze them to make sure they’re fully dead for dissection).

cicadas are powerful, fast fliers, and all of their thorax is taken up by a bulk of reddish, stringy flight muscles, which I’ll talk more about later. this cicada is a female, so her abdomen is full of white, elongated eggs that she will insert into tree bark with the bladed ovipositor at her rear.

the male cicada’s abdomen, however, is almost entirely empty, and that air-filled space is used as a resonator for his loud calls. the biggest structure visible there is a curved pair of muscles that deforms the tymbals, producing a click with every contraction.

here's a view of the complete muscle, and the tymbals themselves which look like overlapping plates on his belly. if you're curious what the white frosted appearance is, some Neotibicen have a coat of waxy powder or pruinescence; this male N. tibicen is particularly pruinose.

onto the flight muscles:

powered flight is a pretty complex mechanism in any organism, and is never so simple as just flapping wings up and down, but most insects power their flight in a really unintuitive way (at least for us vertebrates): they contract muscles in their thorax that aren’t even attached to the wings!

this method of flight is called indirect flight, in contrast to the direct flight of the dragonflies and mayflies where each of four wings is directly attached to a muscle and can flap on its own.

instead, most insects have a longitudinal (image 1 above, d below) pair and a vertical (2, c) pair of muscles that deform the shape of abdomen, pulling the upper segment of the thorax (notum) up and down, and this moves the wings which are attached to the notum. useful indirect flight gif from wikipedia found here

even if compressed manually, the dead cicadas "flap" their wings due to the motion of the notum:

insect flight is a lot more complicated than this simplified look at them, but I think these cicadas offer a pretty good look at how most insects get around essentially by squishing themselves internally!

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