flannelfishguy

[flannelfishguy]

Usnea amblyoclada

Rock beard lichen

Usneas are delighful. If you tug on their little branches (gently), you’ll find that they are springy! Due to the tightly compacted fungal-hyphae that makes up its main structure. And I feel like you can see how tightly wound U. amblyoclada is just but looking at it poking straight out from vertical rock surfaces. This shrubby-looking little lichen has divergent branches that grow up to 10 cm long in bushy bunches. The surface of the long, thread-like lobes are covered in small fibrils, and even smaller soredia. It can be found in southern North America and southern South America, where it typically grows on rock in canyons and shaded areas between 200 and 2530 m elevation. Hanging out there on cliffs–ready to spring! 

images: source | source | source | source | source

info: source | source

[flannelfishguy]

Usnea strigosa

Bushy-beard lichen, strigose beard lichen

Strigose is one of those fun words that is a contronym! In botany it refers to being covered in short, stiff hairs, but in zoology, it refers to grooves or furrows! I think in the case of U. strigosa, you can easily tell which meaning we are using. This fruticose lichen grows an erect, shrubby thallus up to 5 cm long of cylindrical, dichotomous branches. Thin, perpendicular, spiny branchlets known as fibrils densely cover the main branches. Coloration is gray-green to beige, with the base and apothecia concolorous with the main thallus. Terminal apohecia can grow up to 5 mm in diameter, with a fibril covered margin so they look like little suns! U. strigosa grows on smooth bark worldwide, so keep an eye out for this gorgeous pal in forested areas near you! How could you not love this hairy kid, huh? Such a cool pal. 

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[flannelfishguy]

I present to you the absolute critter: the honeycomb catfish

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baby seal spotted. at the creek #thecreek

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huge shout out to this little kid for writing my favorite poem

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elephant trunk snakes are absolutely ridiculous. That's a creature alright.

[flannelfishguy]

does iNaturalist really help research? Or it's just for fun and to help U feel love for the wildlife around U?

Yep! Research Grade observations are called that for a reason, they be and are used by plenty of researchers! There have been papers written on iNaturalist data, species have been described via iNaturalist, and so on. I personally have collected and sent specimens to multiple researchers who have contacted me because of my iNaturalist observations even

Though it is also fun :>

[flannelfishguy]

as someone who refers to themself as a birder and has centered a lot of my life around birds: you have got to stop taking birding so fucking seriously

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One day I was sunbathing in the garden it got too hot for Lorcan but she didn’t want to be inside on her own so I made her a blanket fort to keep her cool & she was pretty happy

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‘While bats can only sense the outer shapes and textures of their targets, dolphins can peer inside theirs. If a dolphin echolocates on you, it will perceive your lungs and your skeleton. It can likely sense shrapnel in war veterans and fetuses in pregnant women. It can pick out the air-filled swim bladders that allow fish, their main prey, to control their buoyancy.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

-Ed Yong, An Immense World

[flannelfishguy]

thought it was a one-off thing, but i've now seen multiple pictures and videos of red-bellied woodpeckers touching other birds with their tongue at bird feeders. why are they suck little freaks?

[flannelfishguy]

Sparkle on! It's Friday! Don't forget to be yourself!

[flannelfishguy]

just because youre made of stardust & other gay shit doesnt mean that a bug isnt. be nice to a bug today

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Tove is actually a botanist

[flannelfishguy]

i like w,hen ......... theres a Big scaresy fantasies beast ok .... and then the big beast has a litter of babies,,,., and the babeis are veryvery small . ok

[flannelfishguy]

Cats getting caught doing crimes

[flannelfishguy]

let's eat biofilm with mama