#treecher

[tomicscomics]

11/15/2024

This guy needs a tree-chers' union.

JOKE-OGRAPHY: 1. In this Bible story, Jesus tells His disciples that there will be signs before the Son of Man (i.e. the Messiah, Jesus) returns at the end of days. The sun and moon will darken, and the stars will fall from the sky. He compares these signs to a tree sprouting leaves, pointing to a fig tree as an example. Just like the fig tree's new leaves are a sign that summer is on its way, these heavenly disasters will be a sign that the Son of Man is on His way. 2. In this cartoon, Jesus starts talking about the Son of Man like in the original Bible story. He gets to the part where he points out the fig tree and says, "Take a lesson from this fig tree." However, instead of the tree remaining respectfully silent like in the original story, the tree in this cartoon turns and interrupts him. It thinks that by "learn a lesson from this fig tree," Jesus meant for the tree to start teaching instead of Him. The tree is incorrect, as most trees are -- a flaw of their kind, and one of the many reasons God stripped them of their voices pre-Genesis (I assume).

[saltydoesstuff]

How they interact with you (Feral AU Donnie and Mikey)

(All characters are portrayed as 18+ unless stated otherwise) ------------------

- Donnie is more distant and passive aggressive with you at first. His shell is exposed for the most part here, so he is on the defensive 24/7. He prefers watching you from a distance, never turning his back to you and keeping his sights on your movements any time you two encounter each other. When he finally eases up and declares you trustworthy, he relaxes around you. He doesn't watch you as closely but does like to follow you around. Humans and their technology fascinate him deeply, and now that he has a human to learn more about it you bet he's going to use it. He is probably the one that breaks into your house the most, tinkering and messing with your appliances while you're asleep or not home. You've come home plenty of times with your tv taken apart, the oven on fire and a very panicked soft shell retracted into his shell and hissing at your beeping smoke detector. His shenanigans are certainly the most expensive to deal with alongside with Mikey. Donnie will often come to you with parts he's found, or a book he wants you to read to him so he can understand the contents. It's hard to speak with the turtles at first, but Donnie seems to be a quick learner. He is the first to at least understand what you are saying to some degree and tries his best to mimic your words. Most times after you speak, he will stutter and mumble some words you had said back to you. "Tree. . . treecherous." "Treacherous." "Treecherous." "No-" Donnie will often have you in his lap while you read, so he can lay his head against you and try to read along with you. He will point at any pictures or long looking words for you to explain more to him. This is the most he will ever touch you at one time in the early stages of your relationship with the turtles.

- Mikey is the friendliest and inviting upon first meeting you. He is quick to befriend you, and is the most clingy. He will legit try to follow you home the first day, and if you don't let him he will be happily waiting for you in the same spot you left him the following days until you return. His gift giving habits are almost as frequent as Leo's, but instead with his art! Painted rocks are his main go to, he scatters them along your yard for you to find whenever you do yard work or want to simply relax outside without going into the woods that surround your home. Often times he will try to bring his art to you, and 'decorate' your house with whatever supplies he has stored up. Many times have you come home to your house looking like a kindergartener's finger painting project. He constantly has to be touching you; holding your hand, trapping you in his lap for a surprise cuddle session or leaning against you. He just loves how soft and warm you are against his scales! Him and his brothers will always find a way into your house during the colder months for that comforting warmth.

[tribbetherium]

The Early Temperocene: 145 million years post-establishment

Reaching Snout A Hand: Rhinocheirids of the Early Temperocene

The rhinocheirids are an unusual lineage of the walkabies that, after arising in the Therocene as an insular offshoot on the continent of Fissor, are highly remarkable for their dexterous trunks: a far cry from the stubby tapir-like snouts of other, more basal walkabies. Theirs are long and pliable and sport three lobes at the tips, formed from the nose and split upper lip of their ancient rodent forebearers-- an appendage that allowed them to access unusual ecological niches, procure food, and even, at one point, use tools: an advancement cruelly cut short before it could reach its full potential.

Gone now are the fisshors of the Glaciocene, and their brief glimmer of awareness in the splintsters. But still, the rhinocheirids are far from a dying clade: they are thriving, and diversifying, in the lush new landscapes the Temperocene has to offer them. Here, on the planet's western hemisphere, the rhinocheirids thrive, across Gestaltia, Austro-Easaterra, and the neighboring islands, such as the nearby Fissorian Archipelago.

Some of the most unusual of the rhinocheirids are the treebumms: small, arboreal omnivores that feed on fruit, insects and seeds, they in essence fill a niche similar to those of the lemunkies of Arcuterra and South Ecatoria, yet their appearances could not be more different. Their forelimbs are small and reduced to but a single claw, a holdover from the time their ancestral forelimbs began to dwindle as their trunk became more dexterous, and while they still are used for holding onto food while swinging from the trees, much of their locomotion is derived from their prehensile tails, grasping hind feet, and their powerful trunks, all of which possess incredible flexibility that make them the aces of the treetops. Their trunk, in particular, contains rings of cartilaginous support, giving it extra strength that allow them to even support their whole weight on a branch, though only for a few seconds at most as, due to this "limb" containing its nasal passages, causes some discomfort to suspend the creature's mass of up to four kilograms at the most.

Most, such as the slender noodlenose (Pithecorhinocheirus uninyx) are highly-active and sociable animals, swinging from tree to tree with their unusual array of appendages in search of food and shelter, and use their superior flexibility to evade predators and outspeed them in the trees. On the Fissorian Archipelago, however, with a relative absence of dangers and few native carnivores, the local treebumms have adopted an opposite way of life, seen in the black-bellied vertigoth (Tardirhinocheirus nigraventrus), a slow-moving herbivore that clambers ever so sluggishly in the canopy. With fruit so far between, much of its diet is of poor-nutrient leaves, and spends so much time hanging upside down that its countershading has entirely inverted, with a dark belly and a light back. Its only predators aerial ones, their primary mode of defense is camouflage, moving so slow that they can barely be seen in the irregular shadows of the canopy.

Throughout most of Gestaltia and Austro-Easaterra, however, the dominant rhinocheirids are ground-dwelling and far larger, weighing up to half a ton in the largest species, certainly far too heavy to climb any tree. The forest magnose (Novamagnorhinocheirus spp.) is found on both continents, with a Gestaltian species (N. vulgaris) and an Austro-Easaterran species (N. australis), both of which are large foragers, primarily herbivorous and browsers yet take some animal protein in the form of insects or carrion on occasion. However, it is only on Austro-Easaterra, in the absence of Gestaltia's towering altolopes, that one can find the respective high-browser, the blotched treecher (Neoaltorhinocheirus pardus), towering at a height of nine to ten feet with its long legs and long neck, a reach further extended by the reach of its slender trunk to pluck the leaves from the highest branches out of range of other herbivores on the continent. The treechers prefer open plains with sparse conifers, one of the predominant trees of Austro-Easaterra as a holdover from the Glaciocene, and grinding teeth and a powerful fermenting stomach, they can consume conifer branches, leaves and cones, as well as the broadleaf trees whenever they are available. These browsers are highly adaptable, being rather intelligent creatures, and learned behaviors such as shaking down especially tall trees to dislodge loose branches and cones are often mimicked by younger members of their herds.

And it is also here in Austro-Easaterra that one group of rhinocheirids would take an opposite direction in their evolutionary paths: they would become carnivores, though mostly only as mesopredators in an ecosystem dominated by the bearhounds, large zingos that, in more recent ages, have been slowly displaced by the blubbears of Peninsulaustra as the two continents collided in the Temperocene. Small forms would be primarily insectivorous and small-scale hunters of furbils, rattiles and other bite-sized prey. The most specialized of these, the myrmic quilltail (Echinorhinocheirus myrmecophagous), is the smallest of the graptors, a group of mostly heron-like hunters. Quilltails, however, feed mostly on insects under logs or stones or nesting in dead wood, which it accesses using its sharp singular claws and trunk, to uncover bugs that can in turn be scooped up by its long tongue. It is, however, not a complete myrmecophagous specialist, and on occasion will raid carrion and the kills of larger predators. Notable are the sharp spiny quills covering its tail that act as an extra line of defense, as being a small carnivore makes it many enemies, with larger carnivores viewing it as a competitor, especially when it boldly tries to rob them of a morsel before fleeing, their prickly tail deterring any pursuers.

However, in this ever-comoetitive environment forged from two isolated landmasses fused into one, one carnivorous rhinocheirid had slowly been muscling its way to the top: the lipgrips, characterized by their greatly reduced trunks, but powerful nasal lobes, which in junction with their prehensile lower lip acts almost like a powerful gripping "hand" that lets them deliver lethal bites to larger prey: the biggest extant species, the seven-foot-long throttling lipgrip (Manucephalovenator gnathodactylus), is well-equipped to tackle tetracorns, oingos, blubbats and even other rhinocheirids with its powerful grappling bite. Indeed, with the mutual decline of the bearhounds and the blubbears due to competition in the collision of the two landmasses, the lipgrip has risen to prominence as the new continent's apex predator, with blunt claws on its feet for traction in running down prey, hooked ones on its hands for securing its quarry in a deadly embrace, and sharp, cutting incisors for severing the spine with a bite at the back of the neck, or the vital arteries of the neck, for a quick or even instantaneous kill. Lipgrips are typically pair-bonded creatures that hunt cooperatively as mated pairs, occupying a territory together that the pair proclaim to potential rivals with a distinctive call-- a deep, reverberating grunt coupled with the almost comically raspberry-like flapping of their nasal lobes that seem almost unfittingly dissonant coming from such a fierce and intelligent hunter.

---------

[gradynumbers]

Was tagged by @joxem in this 2snack 2selfies thing so thanks 💙🖤💙 The hardest part was narrowing down my snacks of choice Anyway I tag anyone who wants to do it but mostly @wesleywrench @koala-mama91 @hootpoop12 @pangolinmandolin and @treecher if you all want to~

[levoneh]

i luv my grownup friends and mutuals and followers like the ones that are older and my age like i feel like it's like having siblings u guys r so great teaching me how to wash sweaters and cope w parents i love u so much

[tribbetherium]

The Early Temperocene: 145 million years post-establishment

Souther Space: The Merged Continent of Austro-Easaterra

Shifting tectonics, warming climes and rising seas have greatly altered the map of HP-02017 in the Temperocene Era: fusing some landmasses together and separating others, and creating barriers that allow organisms to evolve in isolation or bringing them together and causing separate ecosystems to collide, leading to niche partitioning for the adaptable-- and outcompetition to extinction for those not.

Peninsulaustra, a frozen continent on the south devoid of much life throughout the Glaciocene, had slowly warmed in the Early Temperocene: allowing for the first time in millions of years for plants to thrive on its surface. The opening of new niches of grassland and scrubland on the once-barren ice saw a massive adaptive radiation of the local dominant fauna: the blubbats. Descended from flying ratbats, the blubbats would colonize Peninsulaustra as semi-aquatic flightless swimmers, but as the climate warmed and the center of the continent became greener, they headed inland and became fully-terrestrial and occupy niches such as burrowing omnivores, scurrying insectivores, foraging herbivores and large apex predators in the form of their dominant carnivores, the blubbears.

But the formation of the merged continent of Austro-Easaterra would bring new creatures onto their land: the natives of South Easaterra. Isolated since the Glaciocene and spared the wrath of the harmsters, South Easaterra had since evolved its own unique flora and fauna. Oddly-shaped conifers, short and stocky, dot the landscape, relics of an age when cold taiga dominated much of the land, and strange beasts roam its steppes and forests: herds of colorful tetracorns adorned with elaborate horns, bounding oingos akin to an ancient kind mostly replaced now by their cursorial kin the walkabies, towering treechers with long trunks, necks and legs for browsing, and a truly unconventional apex carnivore: the carnivorous rhinocheirid known as the lipgrip, whose short trunk has instead made a multi-lobed flower-like trunk with a brightly-colored interior for signaling.

But aside from the bearhounds, giant zingos of South Easaterra which would be muscled out by the blubbears, few other species would be affected by the merging. The land blubbats filled generalist omnivore niches comparable to mustelids, suids, and larger rodents of the more traditional kind, the blubbears would become increasingly omnivorous to avoid competition with the predatory lipgrips, and sea-going blubbats would persist on coasts and shores, exploding in even greater abundance with a now-bigger continent to inhabit. As such, Peninsulaustra's species would coexist surprisingly well with those of South Easaterra, by becoming polar opposites: the creatures of South Easaterra being highly-specialized and those of Peninsulaustra being generalists, fitting neatly together and creating a more varied menagerie once more gradually changing to suit its new balance.

Soon Austro-Easaterra would be dominated by a wide range of biomes: mountains, deserts, forests and grasslands, with long coastal reaches along its southern half. A small offshore island, Isla Frigor, would be a remnant of Peninsulaustra before its collision, south enough as to still be covered heavily in ice, and thus would remain relics of a wintery past: white-furred southern blubbears and flocks of marine blubbats nesting on ice floes, a leftover from the days of the Glaciocene persisting while the rest of its world changes beyond recognition.

▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪