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Gilbert et al. (2025)

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Friendly reminder that biology / biological sex is not immutable.

If you’re on HRT, you’re literally changing your biology. It alters your epigenetics and affects gene expression. Don’t fall for lies that trans people can only change their social gender.

This goes double for cis ‘allies’ who say shit like “trans women are biological males who identify as women”

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Timelapse fungus gifs

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Favorite bird genre has got to be 'that's literally just a dinosaur'

Groove-Billed Ani

Hoatzin

Pheasant Coucal

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baby horseshoe crabs

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Behold the pocket-sized western pygmy possum! (Cercartetus concinnus). One of the world’s smallest possums, this species typically weighs just 0.5 oz (14 g)—the size of an AA battery. This dainty marsupial is a nectarivore, meaning that its diet consists primarily of plant nectar. It inhabits treetops in forests throughout parts of Australia, using its long prehensile tail like a fifth limb as it moves from branch to branch.

Photo: gilliank, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

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Happy Valentine’s Day- Show your friends that your feelings will NEVER go extinct with some cambrian critters.

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This is the knee joint of a mouse stained with toluidine blue, if anyone wanted to see that

Zoom in and you can see RBCs travelling from the marrow

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E is for...?

All of the E names in my Paleo Party! Are there any I'm missing?

Stickers || Phone Wallpapers Masterlist

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I’ve been too burnt out to go mushroom hunting recently but I do wanna share how pretty the sky looked the other night. The pics don’t do it justice, it was such a deep dark blue it made me feel very comforted

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jellies and thresher sharks :]

get it as a sticker sheet here!

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Trends on other social media sites:

Try this new dance challenge! Post your glow-up! Get Ready With Me!

Trends on Tumblr:

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tiktok stunt haha funny. please talk about the ice raids

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spiders get a lot of credit for making huge complex webs, but y'know who never gets enough credit for their work? the humble WEBSPINNER! an insect of the order Embioptera, they're one of the very few animals on our earth that produce SILK!

images of insects (no spiders!) and fun facts under the cut!

their closest well-known relatives are the phasmids, which might be apparent from their long body plan. Take a look at that cutie. See those big dumb front hands? those enlarged tarsomeres have their silk-producing glands, and to see one in action is really fun. they tap tap tap, move their hands over, tap tap tap, and string their silk along to make their webbing. they live in colonies are called Galleries, which are dark warrens of tunnels so narrow that their inhabitants often can't turn around in them, so they have extremely well-adaptive senses for walking backward and figuring out their environments through touch! this link here is a beautiful demonstration of their unique movement and weaving techniques:

"The Curious Webspinner Insect Knits a Cozy Home", by Deep Look, PBS Digital Studios https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_JP3RbJ8zk

that video also covers how sensitive their front legs are to going off at unexpected times. most insects use their forelegs to grab their antennae for cleaning, but because of their silk glands' aforementioned sensitivity, webspinners don't use their front legs to clean their antennae! they fold their antennae down under them, using their mouthparts and the ground to keep them in place for cleaning.

in the grooves of this stone wall they've webbed it up to make their beautiful moist, dark little homes.

They're also dedicated moms! Females live gregariously, in large colonies caring for their eggs. males wake up, reproduce, then die. one species, Rhagadochir virgo, wraps their eggs in a mix of silk and lichen to ensure their babies have a little meal when they wake up! isn't that swell?

Webspinners are strange and underappreciated hard workers. i adore them so much, and i hope this has made you adore them maybe a little bit more too!

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I went out of my comfort zone a bit and made this little ceramic dinosaur! It’s a sinosauropteryx, one of the few dinosaurs we actually know the color of! I just love their fluffy, red striped tails.

This little guy will be available this Friday, January 17th at 12pm Eastern!

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Finally caught one of the isopods on the dinosaur 🥹

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We got any fun little worm dudes around?

I am going to interpret that to mean WORMS (inverts), so here you are...

Disguised as deep-sea acorn worms, two species of Yoda have been found– not so long ago, on a seamount far, far from land.

Yoda purpurata, discovered in 2012 with the ECOMAR ROV on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, sports distinctly Yoda-like lobes on either side of its head (these are lips rather than ears).  In 2022, scientists using Schmidt Ocean Institute’s ROV SuBastian found its North Pacific cousin. Yoda demiankoopi bears little resemblance to the original Yoda, but is still a force to be reckoned with.  You try living off of tiny scraps of marine snow at the bottom of the ocean! Yoda purpurata: David Shale/Marinespecies.org Yoda demiankoopi © Schmit Ocean InstituteImages used under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License

via: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

A new species of giant Eunice (Eunicidae, Polychaeta, Annelida) from the east coast of Australia

Read the paper here: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/86448/

Green Spoon Worm

Check out this freaky Green Spoon Worm (Metabonellia haswelli, phylum Echiura), filmed in Port Phillip Bay, Australia, on 8 Feb 2018. It may look harmless, but this marine  worm can paralyze small animals using the neural poison in its skin.

via: Youtube.com

Say hello to Eulagisca gigantea, the golden worm from the Antarctic seas

from photographer Matthew Brown 

It’s an Antarctic scale worm, a type of polychaete (bristle worm).There are many different species, all around the world, ranging in size, colour, and living habits.  Some feed on detritus, others like this one, are predators. It’s laying on its back, those golden bristles are it’s feet, which it uses to walk along the soft sediments on the sea floor. Some species live in tunnels, those ones have greatly reduced spines. They’re a cool group of animals.  Most of NIWA (National institute of water and atmosphere research) deep sea specimens like this are collected by their long range research vessel the Tangaroa. They had a lot of cool stuff, giant amphipods, isopods and giant squid etc. They’re basically trying to figure out biodiversity hot spots on the sea floor around the world in order to inform the establishment of marine sanctuaries. They also provide advice to fisheries about fish populations.

via: So Bad So Good

Weird and Wonderful: Green bomber worms drop bioluminescent “bombs" 

Green bomber worms (Swima spp.) have specialized organs that explode with a burst of green bioluminescence. This impressive display is likely used to startle predators while the animal makes a speedy getaway. They live just above the seafloor and are vigorous swimmers, able to maneuver both backwards and forwards.⁠ ⁠ Each worm carries up to eight “bombs.” If they lose one, they can grow it back. The “bombs” may have been gills that evolutionarily transformed over time. Although these worms lack eyes, they have developed a novel bioluminescent defense mechanism. MBARI research has shown that approximately three quarters of the animals living in the dark ocean depths are capable of producing bioluminescence.⁠ ⁠

Learn more about these amazing deep-sea worms: 

https://www.mbari.org/new-species-of-deep-sea-worms-release-glowing-bombs/