#giant snakehead

[troutpaws]

fish requests #1 :-D

[toadalled]

Giant Snakehead dragon. Twitter seemed to like so I figured I would post it here as well!

[fish-daily]

Have you already done a giant snakehead?

fish 173 - giant snakehead

[sputnickle]

giant snakehead ^_^

[spadefish]

More fish! More fish! Giant Snakehead, "Sunken Sturgeon", Clown Knifefish, Sea Hare, and "Kismet Fish"....

[tinykiwidesign]

Really pleased with how this one came out - I love the patterns on the snakehead's body. I also love its little snakey head c:

[0zzysaurus]

tryin to design a oc

[ij1]

[crevicedwelling]

last attention I’m willing to give this today:

“invasive species” is not exclusive of animals that you like and want to keep alive. I love giant centipedes, and keep them as wonderful pets, but Scolopendra subspinipes are eating lizards to extinction on Christmas Island and probably many others. if I could find a solution to the problem that involves killing centipedes to get rid of them there permanently, I would.

brown tree snakes, green iguanas, northern snakeheads, spotted lanternflies, domestic cats and pigs and horses—you can’t pick and choose who among invasives you want to allow to continue to destroy ecosystems they’re not native to. cats have eaten dozens of species to extinction and continue to devour billions of wild animals yearly, and receive help from humans to do so! I have no hatred for cats; they can’t know what they’re doing. this is a problem humans caused and it is a problem we can only fix ourselves.

[b1rdforce]

giant snakehead

[blueiskewl]

Earthquake Reveals Aztec Snakehead Beneath Mexico City

Researchers are conserving a rare snakehead from the Aztecs that still retains its painted colors from hundreds of years ago.

An earthquake last year revealed a big surprise beneath a law school in modern-day Mexico City: a giant, colorful snakehead from the Aztec Empire.

The snakehead dates back more than 500 years, to when the Aztecs controlled the area, which at the time was part of the flourishing capital of Tenochtitlan. The sculpture was discovered after a magnitude-7.6 earthquake struck Mexico City on Sept. 19, 2022; the seismic event caused damage and changes in the topography, revealing the snakehead beneath a building that was part of a law school at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a Spanish-language statement.

The Aztecs built temples and pyramids and worshipped a number of deities, including Quetzalcoatl, who was often depicted as a snake. However, it's unclear if this sculpture depicts him, the archaeologists said.

The sculpted snake is 5.9 feet (1.8 meters) long, 2.8 feet (0.85 m) wide and 3.3 feet (1 m) high, and it weighs about 1.3 tons (1.2 metric tons), the INAH said. Several colors — including red, blue, black and white — are preserved on the sculpture.

Color was preserved on about 80% of the sculpture's surface. To keep it preserved, an INAH team lifted the snakehead out of the ground with a crane and constructed a humidity chamber around the sculpture. This chamber allows the sculpture to lose humidity gradually, with its color being preserved, María Barajas Rocha, a conservationist with the INAH who worked extensively on the sculpture, said in the statement.

While other snakehead sculptures have been found at Tenochtitlan, this one is particularly important for its preserved colors, said Erika Robles Cortés, an archaeologist with the INAH.

"Thanks to the context in which this piece was discovered, but above all, thanks to the stupendous intervention of the restorers-conservators led by Maria Barajas, it has been possible to stabilize the colors for its preservation in almost all the sculpture, which is extremely important, because the colors have helped us to conceive pre-Hispanic art from another perspective," Robles Cortés told Live Science in an email.

The sculpture's "sheer size is impressive, as well as its artistry," but the survival of the colors is remarkable, said Frances Berdan, a professor emeritus of anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino who was not involved with the excavation. "The survival of black, white, red, yellow, and blue paints is particularly interesting — one gains a good image of the visual impact of such sculptures as they were arrayed about the city center," Berdan said in an email.

In addition to its preserved colors, the snakehead's size is notable, said Bertrand Lobjois, an associate professor of humanities at the University of Monterrey in Mexico who is not involved in the excavation. The "first time I saw this serpent head, I was dazzled by its dimensions," he said in an email.

Lobjois also praised the conservation work that allowed the colors to survive, noting that "the conservation process allows us to appreciate the naturalistic approach of figuration" the Aztec artists used.

This work is ongoing and will continue at the site into next year.

By Owen Jarus.

[spearxwind]

Hi! I found a very cool fish photo and wanted to share! It is freshwater so idk if u know what it is but I sure don’t 😂 so was wondering if u maybe knew plus it looks awesome regardless so here have feesh

Yee I'm not super familiar with freshwater fish but I'm pretty sure that's a giant snakehead! They're really cool and there's a lot of insanely cool pictures of them :3 (though most of them are as trophies since people fish them a lot)

Here's more pics of some rly pretty ones I have saved

(the last one Im pretty sure has the saturation cranked up insanely high, but its a really cool look nontheless)

[luxudus]

A Spectember art piece that took me most of the month to make. Showcasing a Batesian mimicry ring found in China some 7-10 million years in the future.

    The northern snakeheads have diversified into several families of amphibious fish that are all highly successful in the Chinese subtropics. Overall, they now possess primitive feet derived from their pectoral fin.     One such species is the Violet Deathhead (Rutrumaput pharmaphyrous). A species of semi-aquatic and semi-fossorial snakehead that uses its shovel head to dig up a wide variety of prey. What makes the Violet Deathhead stand out is its iconic purple, black, and orange patterning used to warn predators of its potent venom-tipped rays.     The Violet Deathhead's infamy would spread throughout China's ecosystem. Its colors became an iconic warning of certain death. Something so iconic it spawned a variety of mimic species, all possessing the same patterns to ward off predators.

    One of the first notable mimics isn't a snakehead or a fish altogether. But a sailfin lizard. Its ancestors rafted here from the Philippines during a particularly nasty southwest monsoon. They became so successful they spread across the entire continent.     This mimic species is known as the Shamfin Lizard (Zhonghydrosaurs purvexicauda). They are a species of arboreal herbivores with a slight tendency to feed on insects.     As their name implies, their tail takes on the same purple, black, and orange patterns used by the Violet Deathhead to present itself as such to trick predators. They even go as far as to develop fake eyespots on their back to match the model species' heads.

    With as much speciation also comes the weight of extinction. And it is no different in this ecosystem as well. During this period, many species of Cranes and herons had to migrate away from China or go extinct altogether. However, this opens a new niche for an unexpected group of birds to flourish.     The second mimic species is the prism-winged Stiltit (Hydorbaino porphypteros). They are a species of wading piscivores that descend from the white-browed tit warbler.     They retained their ancestors' coloration but now for a new purpose. It's now within their underwing and patterned in the likeness of the Violet Deathhead's sail.

    The third mimic species is the Mockfry Mawed Moth (Stekoprosteros mimeofry). They are species of flying pollinating moths that retain their proboscis into adulthood. They are surprisingly social and live in large flocks their whole lives. As their genus name suggests, their resting state has their forewings erected upward, unlike other moth species.     They possess similar colors and patterns to the Violet Deathhead but seem to mimic their species' young. The moths and fry are around the same size and live in large groups. Plus, Deathheads have their iconic coloring during their entire lives.

    The final mimic species mentioned isn't a vertebrate or even an animal. Instead, the Fool's Death (Coleus teleinephos) is a species of Eudicot flowering plant. The stem of the Fool's Death grows into an arc, with the upper stalk resting in the giant leaves of the plant's base.     The Fool's Death's signature green and purple leaves allow it to mimic the patterns of the Violet Deathhead. And since their ranges overlap the most of all the mimics. The Fool's Death is surprisingly the most effective at being a mimic as it gets avoided most of any of the mimicking species.

[selkra-souza]

Are there any concepts/traits that exist in nature which you want to incorporate into an alien, but haven't yet?

That’s the easy part to be honest. I've make creating critters for well over ten years so I got that experience. For BYG specifically, though, it takes restraint to not incorporate every cool new biology fact I learn into the worldbuilding, which is what I used to do in my teens (because the worldbuilding ends up messy). When you've established a set amount of alien designs and cultures, you need to limit the inspirations so there's some cohesion to them.

I can incorporate nature inspo into my aliens just fine, but sometimes it comes with difficulty! At some point a few years ago I really wanted to incorporate some grasshopper into the masaka. At first they looked way more grasshopper than they do now. I was not fully satisfied with it until I gave them their current pentapod design, which looks less grasshoppery, but more unique in my opinion, as well as being more flexible and fun to draw and pose.

Even just recently I found this post about a really pretty fish (apparently a giant snakehead), their striking colorful scales kind of remind me of zrai chromatophores. I'll likely reference them in the future when rendering zrai skin.

Being inspired by nature comes pretty easy to me since I've been doing it for so long, but things that I have a harder time incorporating into my aliens are things like cultue, technology, vehicles and ergonomics. Dang, language is really difficult for me, I'd love to form at least one "common" conlang for BYG, hoo boy. And don't even get me started on speculative governments. Ui. Definitely the hardest concept to incorporate into my aliens is speculative economies, because trying to imagine anything that isn't nor similar to capitalism is hella hard for me personally right now. I have much less experience with those concepts since it's only been a few years since I started with them compared to creature design.

What I've done so far has been really fun though, and I can't wait to work on them more :>

[kintatsujo]

Day uhhhh 27 of the fish-uary 2024 prompts as Zora

Invasive, which Invid immediately responded to with "do a snakehead"

kind of the obvious choice but also a very distinct fish

Giant butch fishwife about to kick your ass