(okay so this explanation is gonna have a lot of pics so im gonna put it under a cut even though i super dont want to because this is so cool like im gonna die) EDIT: i’ve been told that the read more sucks so im removing it
yes, those are fangs. they don’t function like actual fangs- keep in mind that nepenthes pitchers are inert, and don’t close or move like sundews or venus fly traps do. in this case, the fangs profusely secrete nectar (other functional uses of them are debated, but include warding off monkeys that might try to drink from them and creating loose footing for insects):
this is pretty much the main appeal of bicals to growers and hobbyists, but scientifically, they’re an amazing case of mutualism! the pictures we’ve seen so far are what we call the lower pitchers of the plant. nepenthes have upper and lower pitchers that grow on those respective portions of the vine; these pitchers sometimes have physiological differences. what we’re gonna focus on here is the upper pitchers, which look like this:
its a built-in house for a very specific species of carpenter ants, Camponotus schmitzi, which live almost exclusively in wild bicals and are heavily dependent on them in their native habitat of Borneo.
both of these species are so specifically evolved to each other that its ridiculous. the ants:
-get to eat all the nectar they want because they’re specially evolved to be able to crawl all over it
-get to eat flies, mites, fungus, other ants, other insects, and anything else that might fall into the pitcher, or just attack them so they can’t escape.
-can walk on and be submerged in the fluid inside the pitcher without getting eaten alive by acid because they’re evolved to
-get a free house with every upper pitcher the plant makes. the plant doesnt have special lower pitchers for them because they sometimes get flooded when it rains (closer to the ground) and the plant doesnt want to hurt its ant friends
-basically sit right under the lip of the pitcher and wait to ambush things that fall in
-the ants have this behavior where they drag big prey they want up from the fluid up the pitcher to eat it under the pitcher lip. this is just how they eat. what do u expect like they’re not gonna eat right in the pitcher fluid like animals even if dragging food up two inches can take them up to twelve hours at a time depending on the size like were u raised in a barn?????????
the plant:
-gets free protection from mites and fungus and stuff
-doesnt need many digestive fluids of its own because the ants just eat whatever falls in and then poop it into the pitcher, which is way easier to digest
-gets its pitchers kept clean and the fluid free from clutter that might cause rot
-sometimes gets to eat dead ants that happen to fall into the pitcher
-research also tells us that the ants tend to prefer attacking large prey and stuff that tries harder to escape, increasing the amount the plant gets to eat.
in general, bicals can survive without the ants and do fine in captivity, but the ants cannot survive without the plants- they nest in their upper pitchers exclusively and get a ton, if not all, of their food from them. in general, this relationship is suuuuuper complex and is actually still being studied!
some more sweet plant and ant friend pics from this research paper on their friendship:
here’s a video showing the ants going about some of their daily business!
every time i see photos like these, i think about archeologist unearthing this stuff hundreds, or thousands of years in the future, and wonder what they would think finding our bizarre remnants.
The more I look at them the more I realize how…pretty? majestic some primates are. I think my brain just sort of defaults monkeys and apes as being “ugly” visually dull looking when many of them look freaky as hell in the best ways possible
People who ‘love nature’ but violently hate their native coyotes, spiders, snakes, and scavengers are fake.
Here’s the thing about the post. You don’t have to love or even like every animal. You can dislike things! Humane, intelligent pest control is fine and necessary. This isn’t the issue and never has been.
It’s violent, blind hatred and hypocrisy that’s the problem. People who gush over foxes and owls and hawks but want coyotes and snakes dead in the next breath. People who will rescue prey from predators because predation is mean. People who find it appropriate to leave sadistic comments on pictures of spiders or snakes someone is appreciating or owns. People who insist on labeling species as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. This is the sort of behavior that bothers me.
People who only appreciate nature when it’s aesthetically pleasing to them and want to destroy the parts they find ugly and unpleasant don’t truly understand or love it. They love an ideal that isn’t actually representative of reality.
Ok, but what good are wasps? I’m really curious.
Wasps are one of the single most important insect predators. They control not only other insects but also spiders, as well as acting as pollinators for certain plants (such as fig trees, which famously cannot fruit without a wasp inside them) there are hundreds of different types of wasp, the vast majority of them harmless to or fearful of humans.
I had no idea wasps were pollinators.
At least as much so as bees, and with many many flowers that evolved to *only* accept a wasp pollinator. This is also true of flies.
If we lost either of those we would actually be EVEN MORE FUCKED than if we lost all bees, but bees are “cuter” and make honey so the media puts way more focus on them than is really fair.
you see shit like this and just realize like… no wonder the entire civilized world believed in magic and shit so strongly. im spiritual myself but if you didnt have the scientific framework, the concept of magic is equally explanatory… the earth shows us crazy shit each and every day
out of every universe there is i had to live in the one without magic and superpowers
yea but this one has dippin dots
sciencey things that are wild about this universe
– our life sustenance falls from the sky? and floats when cold??? making it this magical perfect substance????
– dude do you KNOW how rare multicellular life is like earth went on FOREVER with single celled guys and one day a mitochondria took residence in one and neither of them died and it got symbiotic. that shits RARE my guy, scientists think it only happened ONCE. EVER. the odds were huge and yet here we aren’t, it was such a great move the whole earth is covered in multicellular organisms now. we’re miracle babies, every last one of us
– also? u talking superpowers? are you aware of how superpowery you are?? your teeth and jaw are strong enough to crack your own jaw but your nerves are so sensitive it doesn’t get close. your brain works a million miles a minute to take in and store information and you don’t even realize, as it seems effortless. you have this thing called blindsight, where your brain sends the optical image to the alarm center of your brain before it sends it to the image processing center, which basically means if something’s hurtling towards you you can react Before you even know what you’re seeing. WILD. (its called blindsight bc it allows some blind people to “see” btw. but its EVERYONE its so crazy). also what the fuck is smell??? ya got this organ that takes in air, processes it, and you can basically differentiate the minute compounds of the molecules in the air and tell whats In It, often between like an atom’s difference. we heal ourselves when injured, we carefully balance thousands of motions and actions to keep ourselves balanced, aware, and alive, we can communicate to each other using facial positions (and LET’S not even talk about LANGUAGE) and we’re the culmination of thousands of tiny bacteria guys. AND we can make a new one in less than a year. AND we can properly feed it with a ridiculous recipe that scientists still don’t know all the ingredients. DUDE. we’re fucking WILD.
i got a bit carried away but the point is there’s tons of super stuff, including dipping dots, we just don’t notice it bc we’re used to it. could have made another point about the internet and how were living in the future bc HOLY JESUS but
People who took the news of feathered dinosaurs like this:
And those who took it like this:
I hate it when people say “science ruined dinosaurs” as though dinosaurs are just some pop culture monster invention and not real things that existed and that we are continuing to make new discoveries about
Amen
Listen I don’t care if you think feathers on a dinosaur look stupid if a 9 ton apex predator is coming at you at 25 mph, you’re not going to laugh at its feathers. YOU’RE GOING TO HAUL ASS
If you think feathered dinosaurs aren’t scary you’ve obviously never been chased by an angry swan.
It wouldn’t matter if Tyrannosaurus Rex was a floof borb like chickadees and looked completely round from all the feathers.
If it came at you with a mouth full of six-inch fangs, you would scream, quite possibly wet yourself, and run.
For those still doubtful, four words: emus won a war.
theres a bunch of different insects and all of them are valid
mosquito
wasp
I know this is supposed to be a funny shitpost and so are the tons of wasp, mosquito and cockroach comments on it, but….ALL of those are important to the ecosystem.
Despite sensationalist news stories claiming it was “scientifically determined” to not be the case (utter bullshit), mosquitoes are valuable both as a part of the nutrient cycle and as pollinators.
Cockroaches are sanitary scavengers that serve essential cycling roles in almost every terrestrial ecosystem from deserts to rainforests.
Wasps meanwhile are THE most essential regulators of other insect populations. They’re so effective at it that plants, especially most trees, use chemical signals specifically to communicate with wasps when they need themselves rid of caterpillars, aphids or other herbivores.
Some smart aleck might say “then we get rid of those and the wasps together, problem solved” but even plant-eating insects are necessary. Plants need regulating too. They need “pruning” even in the wild, and there are even many plants who will depend on pollination from the same moth or fly whose larvae devour its leaves. Every single thing is a balance.
It’s completely silly anyway to treat certain animals as bad, evil or unnecessary just because they’re harmful to humans. We’re harmful to pretty much everything. We can’t just dismiss every part of nature that isn’t coddling us.
See those feathers? The skeleton they found was so well-preserved that scientists were able to examine the pigment cells in the feathers and compare them to those of modern day birds.
And they were able to do this with such accuracy that they know the coloration of this dinosaur. In life it looked something like this.
It just baffles me that we know the color patterns of an animal that has been dead for 161 million years
They found a prehistoric chicken that wears adidas swear pants my god
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