The nymphal stages of members of this assassin bug genus (referred to generally as “Masked Hunters”) exude a sticky substance that covers their entire body, including the antennae and legs, to which their environment (dirt, frass, plant fragments, etc) adheres to, effectively rendering them invisible. This affords them protection against predation, and allows them to function as ambush predators themselves.
In the top image, the nymph was a resident of a termite and borer infested tree stump, so carries a livery of sawdust and wood fragments. The bottom image shows another individual with a soil- and leaf litter-based coating. With the final moult into adulthood and the addition of wings for mobility, the assassin loses its cryptic capabilities and assumes a more conventional appearance.
Bug ferrets (or just ferrets) are from an iceball planet where most lifeforms live underground in the tropical band of the otherwise glacial planet. After millions of years of subterranean life, the tropics are now riddled with vast networks of biologically formed tunnels, caves, and seas. Ferrets rose from a strain of endothermic and highly social omnivores. They have both an endoskeleton (mostly for muscle support) and an exoskeleton covered by a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, skin, and dense, highly sensitive hairs and whiskers. Ferrets wear minimal clothing, if any, because it irritates their delicate hairs. Their central nervous system goes down the length of their body, and they are wicked fast at picking up sensory signals and reacting to them.
Ferrets also have an incredible propensity for language, and pick up other ferret languages and alien languages with ease. Generally, all ferret cultures have at least one vocal language, one visual sign language, and one tactile sign language. Tactile sign is unique to ferrets, and is spoken by touching the arms, chin, and chest of the conversational partner. Humans have described it as “like the most intense and complicated game of pattycake you could imagine.”
Ferrets are hermaphroditic and usually live in family units of 15-45 individuals. A given family will usually all be in single profession, operating almost like an individual– for instance, in public offices, a family will be nominated rather than an individual ferret. Having ferret ambassadors over on other planets is a nightmare, because you can’t just invite one ferret, or two, or eight, you have to have the entire family of 30 or so ambassadors (and their kids, and their picnic baskets and etc). It’s for good reason, as ferrets are so socially co-dependent that leaving one alone with no company will severely stress them. Spending over a day alone without social contact is enough to put them into a state of shock.
They are a spacefaring race, and have been for the longest of any of the races. The first aliens the ferret race met were the avians, then later the humans and centaurs.
They are from an oceanic planet, where endothermic, feathered flyers are one of the most successful land-based lifeforms. Since land is limited to a scattering of small islands, the feathered flyers can travel the distances between dry land more easily than flightless or exothermic creatures.
The evolutionary ancestors of the sapient genus of avians are tree climbing critters with grasping hands on both their fore and back limbs. In the sapients, the hindlimbs are specialized to a point where they are used almost entirely for grasping, tool manipulation, and launching into flight. The dramatic speciation of the sapient avians was caused by hundreds of thousands of years of separation by ocean, and fostered by a lack of traumatic events like Earth’s ice age or K-Pg asteroid impact to wipe any of them out. Besides the five major species, there are many subspecies that can successfully breed with one or more of the major species.
The avians are a technologically advanced genus. After the industrial revolution, aggressive colonization by the skimmer species, and the globalization of information, the avian genus achieved interstellar flight. The first aliens they made contact with were the ferrets, then later humans (after the ferrets found us.)
Note: Despite the fact I drew all of them naked, avians have very strict decency standards (well, the skimmers do, but they have forced their cultural standards upon the others) and they wear quite a lot of clothing; usually covering as much as they can without restricting flight. They are like little space Victorians.
i took a pic of me watching the pickle rick episode to piss people off but like somehow i managed to take the pic so that the frame on the tv was…. a different frame to the reflection on the desk?
cursed image
this is the most fucked up scenario that accurately depicts that movement of photons through space and time
Einstein would be so upset that you proved his theory in one moment, cause in his day it took fuckin months to setup an eclipse pic to prove relativity n you did it by accident, in ur living room. congrats.
this is actually called the rolling shutter effect!! the camera captures images in a rolling fashion, from the top to the bottom. so objects that are moving fast like a car, or a airplane propeller, or frames on a tv being reflected will always look distorted. the closer to the top of the image you get, the further back in time it represents, just by a few split seconds. all this means is that the frame reflected on the table was probably the one right after the one on the tv, and it changed before the camera’s rolling shutter had time to get to it.
here’s some more pictures with the rolling shutter; remember that the top of the image just represents a fraction of a second earlier in the action
rolling shutters also move side to side in some cameras, leading to more spooky imagery
I’ve always found the best rolling shutter images to be lightning.
Because sometimes what you need most is to marvel at the sight of an enormous python coiling and uncoiling its long, muscular body to clime up a coconut tree in Thailand. It’s snek parkour:
A very unique entry in the realm of the roses. The appropriately named wingthorn rose, is grown not for its flowers, but for its showy thorns. The thorns start off bright red on new growth and are actually quite pliable at this stage, it’s when the canes age further that they become brittle and hard. At first glance the flowers appear unremarkable but they actually have only four petals when roses usually bear a minimum of five… Yes, that’s a big deal!
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 