#africa is a continent

[rimarimastudio]

Africa Blue.

“...there’s been a slew of American media conglomerates and personalities purporting to be doing the work of Africans, for Africans, in rehabilitating the continent’s image in the world. However, the influence these various figures seek to enact is impactful only in as much as it obscures the work done by generations of African cinema pioneers before them.”

By Tsogo Kupa in "Sembene’s Africa is everyone’s Afgrica” (Africa is a country (https://africasacountry.com/2022/12/sembenes-africa-is-everyones-africa)

Africa Blue Poster Print available here: RimaRimaStudio.etsy.com

[uninterruptedafricans]

The conflict in the Congo has been going on for Decade..

[dream-world-universe]

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Addis Ababa (New flower) is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa is a highly developed and important cultural, artistic, financial and administrative center of Ethiopia. It is widely known as one of Africa's major capitals. The founding history of Addis Ababa dates back to the late 19th century by Menelik II. Addis Ababa serves as the headquarters of major international organizations, such as the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Wikipedia

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Someone: I mean in Africa-

The three tiny bitter anthropologists in my brain in tired unison: Africa is a continent where are you actually talking about

[augmentedpolls]

What continent do you live on?

-North America

-South America

-Europe

-Asia

-Oceania

-Africa

-Other/I don’t live on a continent/results/bald

Thanks anon for submitting! If you want your own question answered, feel free to submit polls via my ask box

[blackpointgame]

aabon35

[without-ado]

more at AfricanArchives

[ladies-and-jennes]

Yassified Abe Lincoln. Babe Lincoln, if you will.

[craftingcreatures]

Alright, so I was thinking about Hammerheaded Bats (Hypsignathus monstrosa), as one does, and I just... have questions.

Obviously these things are absolutely ludicrous. The deranged-looking eyes, the goblin-esque ears, the lips that look like they got slammed in a car door a few too many times. And, of course, the gloriously fearsome schnozz. As far as creatures go this is one of the creaturey-est. 10/10. Brilliant design.

It gets better, as biology usually does. These bats are large, with a wingspan of almost a meter. Males and females display some rather extreme sexual dimorphism - the males are twice as heavy as the females, and it is only they which possess the extravagant nasal anatomy. That nose is an amplifying chamber, allowing the males to honk at their lady loves with a noise rather like a duck's quack played over a squeaky fence gate. Hammerheaded bats are the only bat species known to mate in a lekking system, in which the males all come together in one place to compete for the females' affections against each other. The males with the loudest, most obnoxious honks are the most desirable to the females.

Hammerheaded bats are one of a very few mammals known to have an XO sex determination system (For reference, humans have an XY system). This means that female bats, like humans, have two X chromosomes, but males do not have a Y-chromosome; instead, they have one X chromosome and that's it. This kind of chromosomal sex-determination is more often seen in insects like grasshoppers.

All of this is good. I love me some weird animals, and Hammerhead bats are no slouches when it comes to weirdness. But, fellas, we've only just scratched the surface when it comes to the weirdness of bat. And I do mean the surface, because the real weirdness is inside.

...

OK so there's a lot to unpack here.

First off, the larynx. It's obscenely large, three times larger in males than in females. It's half the length of the entire spinal column. It's so big that it smooshes all of the internal organs - you know, important things like the heart and lungs - all the way down into the lower abdomen. AND it's connected to air sacs in the throat that amplify the honks even further.

Like. I know why these bats are like this. I know why their honk-producing apparatus is so over-engineered and dominant that there's barely any room for anything else. Biology will do crazy things in pursuit of reproductive success. But like... they still have to live. These are bats. They're endothermic and they fly. Their oxygen consumption is through the roof. HOW do they get away with squishing their heart and lungs that much?! Is there some kind of pocket dimension where the rest of their lungs are stored?! Sir, how do you breathe?!

In conclusion, Hammerhead bats break my brain and I want to know everything about them. I love living on this planet - there's so much bonkers stuff to learn.

Info from https://caitlynfinton.com/2022/05/06/meet-the-hammer-headed-bat/

[rimarimastudio]

Map of the African continent in a camel-beige colour. 

Includes surrounding islands.

11 sea creatures and anemone are hidden in the blue-black waters of the Indian & Atlantic oceans...can you spot them?

Available here - RimaRimaStudio.etsy.com

[inquisitoradaar]

its not like the usamerican education system is some sort of unique level of bad either?? i don't remember learning about latin american or asian or african countries while i was in primary school (ages of 5-11) and i didn't just assume all of those people were living in huts. like at some point it's not the education system, it's genuinely just a personal issue.

[dream-world-universe]

Cape Angela, Tunisia: Cape Angela is a rocky headland in Bizerte, Tunisia. Its tip, Ras Ben Sakka, has been considered the northernmost point of the African continent since 2014, replacing Cape Blanc, also in Tunisia. It is located about 15 kilometers from Bizerte, the northernmost city in Africa and 22 kilometers from Ichkeul Lake. Wikipedia

[socraticcryptid]

I've seen variants of this poll for US states, European countries, and Canadian provinces, but it's feeling a bit one-sided to me, so based on this quiz:

*polls like these often make decisions about what counts as a country or not, what names to accept for a country, and also what counts as being in a particular continent or not. I have just chosen to use the same quiz site as others have used for the other quizzes.

**by African I simply mean 'from Africa'.

(I'm also going to make a similar poll for Asia, but that's all I have time for - let me know if anyone makes similar ones for other regions of the world!)

[bohemian-nights]

The many judgements made upon Nettles

Fire & Blood 🔥🐉