#are they the same species?

[gethoce]

It's the funny joke day April 1st I can already see some epik pranks going on in the gsa [Also prob marx being marx but that's not important rn-]

The second generation warriors are having a blast writing a fake love letter to Sir Arthur on this special day ~

[dragoonwys]

Many times I feel like the sad fish you 'buy for a child because its low maintenance', stop doing that

[ikiprian]

Clone’s Best Friend

“Cute dog!” the girl says. “What breed is he?”

“Uh,” blinks Kon. "Are you asking what breed Superdog is?"

“Uh, duh?”

Well. She’ll have to forgive him his stunned expression, ‘cause he doesn’t usually run into other dog walkers on this path. This is, of course, because “path” is used in the loosest sense, the one that connotates direction and not tread ground, and the “walk” bit is entirely inapplicable, with all of them currently flying one thousand feet above sea level.

“Cujo’s a rescue,” she continues, swinging her feet in the sky, “so we don’t know for sure, but my sister thinks part husky, part shar pei. Half-and-half, like me!”

Cujo is also, apparently, half green and half glowing. He wiggles happily in a play-bow. It’s very cute, except for the way he’s the size of a small house.

Krypto’s tough, though. He barks and chases his new friend through cloud cover. Gamely, Cujo flees. They frolic in the chilly condensation, occasionally poking a head out before diving back in, like a fox in a snowdrift.

Neither of them see anything surprising about this. It’s all good fun. And, well. Krypto’s always been a good judge of character.

Kon turns back to the girl and gives her a megawatt smile.

“He’s Kryptonian. Like me. But he looks like a white lab!”

[prokopetz]

One of the more entertaining consequences of broadcast standards for children's media during the 1980s is that villains weren't allowed to express or directly imply the desire or intent to kill the protagonist, but they were allowed to openly state their intention to eat the protagonist – provided that at least one of the hero or the villain were non-human.

(i.e., human villain expressing the desire to eat a non-human protagonist: okay; unambiguously monstrous villain expressing the desire to eat a human protagonist: okay; human villain expressing the desire to eat a human protagonist: not okay.)

This often led to interesting characterisation choices, like Shredder's strange preoccupation with making the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into soup in the 1987 series – he's not allowed to threaten to kill them, but he can freely threaten to eat them!

[amphibianaday]

day 1421

[botanyshitposts]

ok this sounds insane but in 2018 i went to a few carnivorous plant talks at the botany conference in minnesota. i got caught up in conversation with one of the guys there who was a huge nepenthes guy who told me a story about another collector in the pacific northwest who'd been buying poached plants, like a huge amount, and eventually got staked out by the fish and wildlife service and arrested and had all his plants seized and went to prison for it. idk if i ever talked about this on this blog before-- i know i liveblogged a lot from that conference but cant remember what all i posted-- but ive avoided talking about it since then because i was never able to find like, news articles or anything covering it, but behold.... we now have proof it was real, and im like 80% sure this was this guy he was talking about. the raid happened in 2016 and they'd been staking them out since 2013. he had nearly 400 plants and had been sourcing many of them from poachers in indonesia and borneo.

remember folks: poaching happens with plants too! it's a huge problem not only in carnvirous plants (nepenthes especially, which this piece is dedicated to talking about) but also in native plant populations in the US, including native carnivorous plant populations (north and south carolina's venus fly traps, california's darlingtonia, and sarracenia from the east coast), native orchids (historically one of the most poached categories), desert plants/cacti/succulents, and slow-growing woody ornamentals (cycads, for example). never buy bare-root plants off ebay or facebook! your best bet is local nurseries (which usually purchase farm-raised plants that do well in a wide range of conditions, and as a result have a healthy population in the wild) or specialty greenhouses (more expensive, but at least in the case of carnivorous plants offer young plants bred from established adult plants in-house, raised in captivity).

[wanderingcritter]

Hell yeah im T4T 😎💪 (therian 4 therian)

[jellyfish-kitty1]

Happy 5 year anniversary rottmnt! Thank you for much joy over the years and let it continue forever!

Next

[marlynnofmany]

Arboreal Species

We had plenty of options for ways to keep occupied while waiting for the client to show up and collect his delivery. Several of the crew were playing card games with the captain, using a delivery crate as a table, and she was beating the pants off all of them. (Though none of these particular aliens wore pants. You know what I mean.) Some of the others waited inside the ship, declaring boredom with this particular patch of exotic wilderness.

The rest chatted with crew from the ship that had arrived after us, which was also delivering cargo for the same late-to-arrive local. They had plenty to complain about. They also had food to share, and a decent chance that it would be edible by those they shared it with.

While Alien Food Roulette was always exciting, I’d found a much better option.

“Hey, they tell me your species climbs things,” the stranger from the other ship had said, long snout curling into a smile. She looked like a mix of 3/4 baboon and 1/4 crocodile.

“They’re right!” I replied easily. There weren’t many climbing opportunities on our little courier ship, and I was curious where this was going.

The alien pointed at a huge tree on the edge of the landing pad, which boasted smooth orange bark with branches every couple feet. “I’m gonna go climb that. Care to join me?”

“Would I ever!” I said, already heading toward it. I called back over my shoulder, “If you guys need me, I’ll be up a tree!”

Captain Sunlight didn’t even look away from the game, just waving distractedly, her scaly face intent on whatever play Mur had just made. He was chuckling about it and rubbing his tentacles together in a way that was probably a bluff. As soon as I looked away, he made a noise that said the good captain had just wrecked his clever plan. Trrili hissed with laughter.

None of them cared that I was about to climb to a dangerous height. None thought this was out of character in the slightest, and all of them were missing out on an excellent climbing experience.

It was a great tree. The bark was smooth but not slippery, reminding me of a madrone tree from back home, just without the flaky outer layer. And it didn’t feel as cold. If anything, it was warm as we scampered skyward, almost as if the tree welcomed a good climb by people who’d appreciate it.

The alien stopped, picking a branch to sit on and leaning back against another. “Now that is a nice view.”

I had to agree. “It is!” I found my own convenient pair of branches, draping my arms over the top one and finding a nice footrest on a third. “Everybody down there doesn’t know what they’re missing.” The forest around the landing pad was bright with oranges and yellows, the kind of vivid colors that I associated with autumn, but which could have been year-round here. Rolling hills lined the horizon, with a river sparkling merrily in the distance. The only straight line was the road. It made a nice counterpoint to all the gentler natural shapes.

My new friend cupped a hand to her snout unnecessarily. “Hey, everybody down there! You should come see this view!”

To no one’s surprise, she got a chorus of “no thanks.”

I shook my head. “Such a shame. They’re missing out on all the knowledge that comes from above, too. Hey, Paint!” I yelled down to the crewmate who had just dropped a box of round things. “One rolled under the ramp, and two are over in the grass!” I pointed them out.

A distant “Thank you!” reached my ears.

The alien nodded. “Wisdom of the heights indeed. What else can we see, that those on the ground can’t?”

We spent a good few minutes pointing things out to each other and swapping stories. Apparently her people were called the Farsights, for exactly this reason.

“Oh, motion on the road!” she declared, squinting into the distance. “Looks like somebody’s in a rush to be a little less late.”

“Well that ship has launched,” I said, following her eyes. “Nice thought, though. Say, is that one car or two?”

The Farsight didn’t answer immediately, which made me worry a little. Then she said “Uh oh,” which made me worry a lot.

“Uh oh what?”

She stood up on the branch and bellowed, “INCOMING! Client’s being chased by hostile fauna!”

“Oh jeez.” Now I could see it too: something large and antlered galloping after the little surface skimmer. Both were headed straight toward our landing pad.

Chaos erupted down below as we slid off our perches and scrambled downward. The bark was still friendly-smooth.

“I think that creature eats these!” my friend said, bounding out toward the end of a branch to shake loose a bundle of round seedpod things. “I’ve seen them before!”

“Will that matter?” I asked, slowing. “It looks pretty mad!”

“Can’t hurt!”

I couldn’t argue that. There were more than a few seedpods waiting on my path down, all of which came loose with a little judicious bouncing of the branches. When I hit the ground, it was in a sea of baseball-shaped plant bits.

The rest of the crew was scrambling to move crates and dash into the ships for anything weaponlike. A handful of beefy individuals from the other crew lined up to stare the thing down as it approached, and my ship’s biggest and scariest hurried to join them. Trrili claimed a place in front with her black-and-red carapace gleaming in the sun, pincher arms spread wide. She left space for the skimmer to zip past, but only just.

I grabbed seedpods, making a basket with my shirt. “Will we need these? Is it going to stop?”

“Beats me!” said my new friend. She grabbed an armload and ran. “Let’s find out!”

I raced after. We joined the lineup just before the gigantic whatever-it-was skidded to a halt, rearing to paw the air and roar thunderously. The guy in the skimmer was trying to park behind our ship. The various scary aliens yelled back at the huge moose-rhino.

“How well can you throw?” asked my friend, not waiting for an answer. She dumped her armload and started chucking seedpods.

“Pretty well!” I didn’t bother dropping mine, just grabbing them one by one from my shirt basket and aiming for the head.

I didn’t count how many of those direct shots were me, but I’m going to say most of them. The pods burst into squishy fruit with a solid core, doing a great job of annoying the creature as well as coating it with presumably-tasty purple goo.

Its forefeet hit the ground with a teeth-rattling thud. It roared some more, but half-heartedly, like it was just trying to save face at this point.

My friend the Farsight had run out of seedpods, so I gave her some of mine. While our crewmates did their best threat displays, we pelted the dangerous beastie with fruit until it turned to lope in the other direction. I made sure to throw a few on the road near it, in case it felt like picking up a bite to eat on the way. It didn’t, but I did see a tongue lick out as it turned its back on us.

Belatedly, Kavlae and Eggskin skidded out of our ship with stun guns at the same time as a couple people from the other — was that a rocket launcher or a flare gun? — none of which turned out to be necessary.

“Take that and eat it!” crowed the Farsight.

“Yeah!” I agreed. “It’s probably delicious!”

“It probably is, actually,” she said as the congratulations started to pour in.

I picked up a seedpod I’d dropped and sniffed it. “Smells a bit like kumquat.”

Captain Sunlight, busy trying to coax the client out of his vehicle, yelled across the landing pad, “Don’t eat that until Eggskin runs it through the medscanner!”

“Aw, really?” I complained, perfectly in synch with my new friend.

“Yes really!” She shook her lizardy head. I couldn’t make out her muttering from here, but I could guess it was about omnivorous habits, self-preservation instincts, absurd treeclimbing species, or all of the above.

The Farsight said, “If these are safe, I’m taking some back with me.”

“Even if they’re not, the seeds would make good souvenirs,” I pointed out, pulling at the pod where it had separated. “Look how perfectly round they are.”

“Oh yeah, those are nice.”

Trrili stalked past with a haughty tilt to her antennae. “You two get along far too well.”

“Like two seeds in a pod!” the Farsight quipped.

That made me smile. “Hey, my people say that too!”

We had plenty to talk about while everybody else handled the actual delivery we were there for. Eventually Eggskin did check the thing with a medscanner. It tasted like sour kumquat. The seeds cleaned up nicely.

And most importantly, my new friend had family with a whole enclave at the next space station my ship was planning to visit. And they had a climbing structure three stories high. I couldn’t wait.

The rest of the crew thought that sounded pointless and dangerous, of course, but none of them had ancestors who danced through the tree branches, so clearly they have no taste.

~~~

The ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!

[ride-a-dromedary]

"Halsin shouldn't be that big or muscular or look middle aged because he's an elf and the lore sa-"

I actually think he should be bigger and look more middle aged, personally.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 252

“Sir, we’ve… There’s been an encounter with a Reaper class entity.” 

There were several classifications for ecto-entities. Several ways the Ghost Investigation Ward classified each. Several common ones that they could easily destroy, easily study. Others however… others were dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. 

There’d only been two other Reaper-class entities confirmed before- both contained but barely. RP-1, a large knight-like entity seemingly made from shadows, and RP-2, a child-like creature that could near perfectly mimic a human. 

And now, there was a third. A third entity that could- and judging from the reports coming in had- killed. Had done so several times even. Which meant it needed to be contained yesterday. 

“Send out the teams- I want this thing in Site X Now!” 

[tranquilitybasehotelcasino]

coworkers

[myxomycota]

springtail resting in the shadow of an immature slime mold fruit body

by Petter Lilleengen, Norway.

[paradimeart]

Would kup have gotten roped into having to watch one of the little orbbies? Like little rodimus? Or did he just get to sit back and laugh at ratchet and his rambunctious little guy.

ratchets on standby for training accidents (part of his agreement to be allowed to stay with omega) so he's met orbimus once or twice but has no idea what he's looking at. ratchet would rather explode than let anyone else alone with that thang

even before the war it wasn't really very common knowledge what protoforms actually looked like since they were so heavily guarded. and they still are. so no kup wouldn't babysit

[botanyshitposts]

thinking about when I TAed for the lichen class at our university and sometimes we’d find two really common lichen species (from the same genus) oozing together so they fused into one lichen with one half being green and the other half being blue or brown or something because they are Soups Of Creatures On A Branch In A Parking Lot and have no regard for what we think a correct organism should act like. may all our boxes be broken and all our rules be challenged etc etc I think

[markscherz]

Random question, have you ever seen bullfrogs fighting in the wild before?

It's honestly intriguing to see how far animals would go to mate.

These are Pyxicephalus adspersus, African bullfrogs, not to be confused with the American bullfrog, Lithobates catesbeianus. I have never been within their distribution range. But I have seen other species of frogs fighting, and it can be quite a sight to behold. Indeed, it is astonishing how far some animals go to mate. Personally, I think birds probably epitomise this among vertebrates, rather than frogs, because they are just so multimodal in their displays and behaviours.