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If we’re gonna talk about animals evolving to do things they weren’t meant to we’ve gotta talk about Thylacoleo

Thylacoleo, for the uninitiated, was Australia’s equivalent of the sabre-tooth cat. It was the size of a leopard, murdered rhino-sized marsupials with sharp teeth and huge claws, and looked like this:

Its closest living relative is this:

Yes, the most vicious mammalian carnivore Australia has ever produced is most closely related to a herbivorous furry cube.

What the fuck.

It’s obvious when you check out Thylacoleo’s teeth. Most mammalian carnivores have a similar setup: incisors, canines, premolars and molars. Dogs have it, cats have it, we have it. Thylacoleo’s teeth look like this:

You’ve got pincer-like incisors in the front, giant sharp-edged molars in the back, and no canines to speak of. 

That last bit’s the important part. Canines are most useful for holding meat, so herbivores tend to shrink them down to nothing. Thylacoleo’s lack of proper canines show its ancestors were originally herbivores. But because you can’t just re-evolve features once they’re gone, it had to make do with what it had. Hence those ridiculous fucking teeth, which were nevertheless perfect for grabbing and chopping meat just like every other carnivore’s teeth do.

tl;dr: at some point in time a bunch of vegans decided to weaponise their limitations to kill everything and by god did they do it

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🍑 Petch 🍑

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My First Strawberry!, Part 3 (Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6)

Hand-fed strawberry = the best kind of strawberry!

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Worm?

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This Aquarium Picks The Naughtiest Penguin Of The Month

We thought that cats were absolutely shameless creatures but it turns out that penguins are no better either. 

Photos by National Aquarium of New Zealand - Via Bored Panda

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Bats illuminated by lightning

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Spectacled Eider (Somateria fischeri)

…is a large species of sea duck native to the coasts of Alaska and Siberia. Like other sea ducks the spectacled eider dives for its meals which usually consist of molluscs and crustaceans. The spectacled eider like other eider species is sexually dimorphic as males sport a striking white, black and green coloration while females have a more modest chocolate brown coloration. During the breeding season eider pairs will move inland to tundras close to the sea to lay their young.

Phylogeny

Animalia-Chordata-Aves-Anseriformes-Anatidae-Merginae-Somateria-fischeri

Image Source(s)

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Hey friends. It’s Friday. You make your weekend a good one.

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ice pigeons are a fancy pigeon breed named for their coloration. this is an old breed - charles darwin participated in breeding new color varieties of ice pigeon.

source: (x)