Little-known fact: suckermouth fish can climb. Plecos are known to climb waterfalls by suckering their way up. Shockingly athletic for a fish that spends the rest of its time stuffed into gaps.
Ok, as a biology major, y’all need to chill. Snakes this big are incredibly docile. They have been bred this way. Furthermore, the person taking care of this animal could not properly take care of them if they did not feed them regularly and well. This child is in no more danger than if she was sitting next to a big dog.
Oh, and on snake yawning, the person above is wrong (SOURCE 1; SOURCE 2)
Please don’t demonize snakes people they’re amazing creatures and clearly this one means no harm
This is almost as bad as that shitty urban legend about the snake “measuring” its owner before eating them
Snakes are precious beans unlike the gross people above who demonize and spread false information about snakes.
Honestly snakes are better than tge average person 🤷♂️
Like you shouldn’t 100% trust a big animal around a child that small but I guarantee every single person shitting on this snake owner would trust a big dog in the same situation and NO MATTER HOW SWEET A DOG HAS ALWAYS BEEN a risk is always, always present. Definitely much more of a risk than a snake, which can go weeks or months between big meals without even feeling hungry again.
I wouldn’t leave the snake alone around the kid, just in case it squeezed too much without realizing, but it’s not that dangerous of a thing. I don’t think it could fit the kid’s head in its mouth anyway, let alone the shoulders.
Fun fact: there have been only a handful of instances of a constrictor snake killing a human, and one possibly-true story of one actually eating a human. Our shoulders don’t fit through their jaws, plus we’re too tall for them to easily grab by the head+neck like they prefer to catch prey.
Plus, most large constrictors are chill as heck. Unless you starve one or do something like poke it in the eye, it’s not going to bite you.
Fun fact: the guys at our college’s geology department prop out the doors with their samples. I totally understand why but as someone whose work with samples is necessarily super delicate and sterile it fucks me up so bad
lol idk if you watch nautilus live at all but watching them process bio & geo samples side by side evokes exactly this Thing (the descriptions are gold too… “here are the 30 steps we use to preserve bio samples, and as for rocks, well, we let them dry, bag them, & put them in the Rock Box)
Good to know there’s enough Biologist Salt™ to go around
Paleontologists occupy a weird and highly uncomfortable slice of this Venn Diagram
in my own experience with geology most precautions with samples are to preserve the life and safety of the geologist, most of the rocks are fine.
i am continually reminded of one of my colleagues, who wanted to collect a sample of gypsum on a field excursion but was too lazy to take off his backpack and get his rock hammer. so he said “eh, it’s soft enough” just fucking punched the rock until a piece fell off like it was fucking minecraft
But like, imagine an AU where for once not all the moms die and Beru actually survives:
Beru was at the market when the Stormtroopers came. She leaves when she has a bad feeling, and when she sees smoke rising from the farm, she starts running
she arrives just in time to see Luke staring at the skeleton that used to be her husband
(she doesn’t really… realize it, at first, what the skeleton in the charred ruins of her home means, but then she looks at Luke, at the utterly frozen look in his eyes, and something just… breaks inside of her)
Old Ben shows up soon after, and Beru tells him that he better have an idea to get them of the planet
Beru has never left Tatooine before, but if the Empire killed her Owen this openly, than Luke and her are next on the list, and she’s not going to stand for that
and anyway, Old Ben is a Jedi. That’s got to be good for something
the Falcon is dirty and dinged up, but it’s flying, so she’ll take it
she’s not sure what to make of this Han Solo guy, he seems a bit too much like the Hutt’s lackeys for her taste, but his partner seems trustworthy
Luke is so exited to see the galaxy, it hurts Beru a bit to watch it
especially the idea of helping a princess is very exciting to her boy, and Beru can’t help but remember his father, not her Owen, but that young and angry boy who loved that offworlder lady. Beru had often wondered whether Padme had been royalty, because she sure seemed rich enough to be
Old Ben teaches Luke some jedi things, and the thought of Anakin disappears as quickly as it came, because that is her boy, sweet and curious and endlessly fascinated with the universe
Alderaan is… gone, and for a moment, Beru can’t breathe, thinking about all those poor people, while the others are still trying to grasp what happened
then they’re on the Death Star, and she stays with those strange little droids, because someone with a blaster should, and because Luke is already scared enough
he doesn’t need to worry about losing her, too
over coms she follows those boys misadventures, and wonders when exactly Han Solo became someone she worried about
then everything happens incredibly fast, and the princess is safely with them but Old Ben is dead
(coward, Beru thinks rather unkindly, leaving just like that when things get difficult)
Trees, like animals, can also experience albinism, though it is extremely rare.
the reason it’s rare is because without chlorophyll, the plant can’t get energy, and dies shortly after sprouting unless it has some other source of food. so if you see a plant as big as the one in the picture that doesn’t have any green in its leaves, it’s getting its nutrition from the roots of a neighboring plant of the same species, feeding on the sugars created by the other plant’s photosynthesis.
albino plants are basically vampires.
thats metal af
That or the neighbouring plants are helping to keep it alive.
There has been research saying plants can share resources with one another, such as carbon and nitrogen, when one is deficient, so this plant likely has an abundance of mycorrhizal fungi on its root system that isn’t so much parasitizing from its neighbours as it is borrowing.
It’s not a vampire. It’s a disabled plant being supported by a community of healthy individuals who have more than enough nutrients to share.
The real vampire plant is actually Indian Pipe, which lacks chlorophyll and sucks out nutrients from photosynthetic trees, meaning they can grow in dark places without much trouble. They look badass as well.
this is the coolest thing, because every plant is connected to every other plant by underground fungi! scientists now hypothesize that fungi actually evolved long before plants, so plant root systems evolved with fungi that were already in the soil. fungi aren’t just useful for the survival of plants, they are essential for the survival of most vascular plants! (vascular plants = those with root structures)
networks of fungi under the ground can cover miles and miles, and each fungus sends out very long branches, called hyphae. these hyphae can surround the root tips of a plant (these are called ectomycorrhizae, because ecto = outside, myco = fungus, rrhizae = root), which looks something like this:
(picture source) alternatively, plant roots can be colonized by endomycorrhizae (endo = inside), which are WILD, because they essentially just bust through the plant cell walls and, like, chill directly inside of the root cells? like HI here we are we’re moving in now! that looks like this, on a cellular level:
(picture source) despite the occasional door-busting, this is a good, codependent relationship for both parties, because plants provide the fungi with sugars and energy, while fungal networks can grow even farther than plant root networks, so they transport essential nutrients to the plants as well as helping the roots to gather enough water. fungi are also the world’s greatest decomposers, and break down rotting organic material in the soil to increase the amount of carbon surrounding the root networks!
fungi are uniquely disposed to transport materials and to communicate over long distances because they have a supercool cellular structure! so fungal hyphae are only sort of composed of individual cells, but they’re cells with serious boundary issues. most species of fungi have septate hyphae (septum means boundary or partition), where individual cells have dividers between them, but these dividers have, like, GIGANTIC ass holes in them. the concept is kinda like this:
(picture source) these pores are so ENORMOUS that they can fit entire organelles through them! so one cell can just pass its entire nucleus or mitochondria through a pore to its neighbor, which is WILD! you can literally see these septa when you look at fungi under a microscope, like look at this beautiful bullshit!
(picture source) something like 90% of vascular land plants are colonized by mycorrhizae, so when you are standing outside, know that literally every plant around you, every blade of grass beneath you, is connected to every other plant by a vast network of fungal friends, roommates, and helpers! sometimes a SINGLE fungus will be connecting all of these plants to one another! ALL THE PLANTS ARE HOLDING HANDS.
there are these incredibly intimate, cooperative relationships going on beneath your feet that allow plants to help each other and communicate with one another (or compete with one another), and there is NO WAY that we would have enormous trees like we do without fungi to help them expand their reach and weather different soil conditions! the plants are talking to one another, y’all, and we’re the only ones who can’t hear them.
We all know what erectile dysfunction is but literally no one is ever taught what vaginismus is and it can cause people to feel extremely lost, broken, and cause people to take their own lives.
Raise. Awareness.
For the uninformed, vaginismus is when the vagina painfully tightens and spasms when faced with pressure, usually from anything trying to insert into the vagina. It’s the reason I can’t wear tampons, and why many people can’t have vaginal sex without severe pain.
There’s not a lot of treatments, and there isn’t a single one that is for vaginismus exclusively – they’re all medications or treatments to treat symptoms, but not the causes. In fact, for a long time doctors waved off vaginismus as a purely psychological disorder in cis women.
Seriously, this is so unaddressed and uncared for in medical circles. Please spread awareness, even if all it’s for is to let those who have it but don’t have a name for it finally be able to understand what’s happening to their bodies.
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