I think one of the funniest things I’ve accidentally taught my parrot is yelling “WHAT?” The best part is that if he says something weird and and someone else says “what???” he usually repeats what he just said. Like just now, I was cooking in the kitchen and he heard me boiling water so he asked “you wanna noodle?” but I couldn’t quite hear him so I yelled “WHAT” and he repeated “you wanna noodle?”

Mostly he just likes yelling it, though.

Less funny things I’ve accidentally taught my parrot:

……LESS funny??!??????

I’m reading that in a “oh god what have I done” kind of way.

@lisa-likes-wrasslin so essentially they taught the parrot to be the audience of any WWE show

I don’t have cable so he’s never watched wrestling but he DOES love Springer. Also horror movies. He giggles to himself while watching both, and loves shouting “ooooooh!” during tense moments.

early homo sapiens b like help i cant stop making bowls . help i cant stop domesticating plants and animals. help i cant stop developing language and architecture and religion

ok im obsessed w this tag

once in grade 6 I saw a 'pottery making club' in a ditch on the schoolyard- I assume at some point someone realized there was actually good quality clay in the ditch and when I walked up there were about a dozen 12 year olds sitting around the few girls who had brought their water bottles out to mix the clay, and a designated spot to put the finished bowls and tablets, and people going off and collecting sticks to make designs with and i really think that's the natural state of the human race

In elementary school I learned that you can make paint out of certain sedimentary rocks on the playground if you crushed them and mixed with water and at one point I had up to 25 kindergarten through third graders making cave paintings on the underside of the slides

The nature of man is such that every so often, someone recreates the neolithic era.

Yeah, every recess

Fic idea I was struck with the other day and keep thinking about: a Vulcan adopts a cat.

Still thinking about this, even though I’m not writing the fic!

This Vulcan, I’m calling her T’Pen, goes to a shelter and gets a cat, and the shelter employees are like, a bit weirded out? But obviously they’re going to give her a cat, I mean, she’s a Vulcan, she’s Super Responsible, she takes all the pamphlets and listens attentively to all the advice the shelter employees give her, even though it is obvious she researched a lot on her own.

Then T’Pen asks the shelter folks what she should name the cat and runs into That Thing Humans Do Where They Confound a Vulcan With Their Weird Ways

Shelter Employee 1: oh, you can name a cat anything! That’s what’s great! People names, common nouns, whole phrases.

Shelter Employee 2: yeah, nothing sounds weird on a cat. Everything from Chad to Cupboard is fair game.

SE 1: yeah, I mean, you can’t call a dog Chad, that would be weird

SE 2: I wouldn’t fuckin’ trust anyone who named their dog Chad

SE 1: oh word

T’Pen:….

T’Pen: ….fascinating.

Later, in the interest of furthering her anthropological study of Earth, T’Pen has a houseparty and she invites her coworkers, many of whom are human, but others which are aliens, and are fascinated by T’Pen’s cat

Vulcan Co-worker: T’Pen, what have you named this small Earth feline?

T’Pen: I have named him Marmalade.

Vucan co-worker: Is that not the name of a type of Terran fruit preserve? I do not understand the logic behind this choice.

T’Pen: the logic is self-evident to a human.

Human Co-worker: T’Pen, omg, you have a cat! What’s his name?

T’Pen: thank you for your inquiry. His name is Marmalade

Human Co-worker: oooh! yeah, that makes sense, because he’s orange and sweet! lmao, great name

Vulcan Co-worker: …

Vulcan Co-worker: ….fascinating

Human: So, how’s Marmalade?

T’Pen: He has the peculiar habit of walking on my workstation.

Human: Aggravating, isn’t it?

T’Pen: We Vulcans do not feel human emotions. However, I would prefer it if Marmalade stayed off my workstation, particularly when I am working.

Human: Get a box.

T’Pen: Murdering Marmalade seems an overreaction.

Human: No, you need a box with interior dimensions approximately the same as Marmalade’s body, and set it on the floor next to your workstation. Marmalade will sit in the box.

T’Pen: Why do you believe that this will work for Marmalade?

Human: We don’t know. It’s just something cats do. If he fits, he sits.

T’Pen: … Fascinating.

Vulcan Commander: T’Pen, you are posting videos of your cat. Explain.

T’pen: My colleagues are amused and entertained by Marmalade’s interactions with his environment. I am amused and entertained by their reactions as reflected in the comments.

Vulcan Commander (reading): “U haz done me a startle”?

T’Pen: Some of them like to verbalize what they believe are Marmalade’s thought processes. He is a cat, so they imagine that he does not grasp human spelling and grammar.

Vulcan Commander: … Fascinating. As you were. (signs off)

T’Pen (returning to her meal): Now I can haz lunch.

I need more people to write more bits of this.

Marmalade: Meow. *nudges food bowl and looks expectantly*

T’Pen: You have just eaten. Logic dictates that you should not yet be hungry.

Marmalade: Meeooowww!

T’Pen: I must remember that cats do not adhere to the dictates of logic, and adjust accordingly. However, I will not give you more food right now as that would be unhealthful.

Marmalade: *sad cat eyes*

T’Pen: You attempt to appeal to my emotional side, however you will find that your attempts will be fruitless.

T’Pen:…I am speaking to an animal who cannot understand linguistic communication. The cat’s illogical nature seems to be having a deleterious affect on my own. Fascinating.

Same, @renee-mariposa !

1938

the amount of love emanating from that simple “our michael” is enough to heal all the wounds in my heart

Moves as smoothly as an ocean liner.

I couldn’t tell what it was at first, but that wasn’t what I was expecting

i thought it was an otter, then i thought it was a shark, and let me say i was wrong both times

There’s literally no way to guess. There’s no way at all to guess

i showed this to my mom, my aunt, my grandma, and the minute the quarantine ends this is going to become my go to dinner party conversation starter

Sea serpent

Moose are pretty good swimmers and they swim enough for Orca Whales to pose a significant threat.

My favorite moose fact is the cryptid herd in New Zealand. We know they’re out there, but nobody has seen one in over half a century.

In New Zealand.

Hi I’m sorry. I usually don’t insist that people elaborate on their comments but-

What the everloving fuck are you talking about???

In 1910, a herd of 6 females and 4 males was released in Fiordland. The last confirmed sighting was in 1952, and it was considered marginal territory for them, so it was presumed they had died out.

Until some moose hair was found in 2002.

This lead to extensive searches and installation of automatic cameras - none of which have caught an actual moose, though bedding and rub sites have been found.

The current theory as I understand it is that they’re living off of rich seaweed beds in the area.

Reblogging for the cryptid moose

NZ moose sighting in early 2020, everything you could want from a cryptid sighting

hello! hello! hello! hello!

Im gonna hold an egg in my mouth for 2 hours to challenge myself.

OGAHAGSIGf

here is my quick artists rendition.. it was a primal moment

hi i just wanted to share ops tags from each of these because theyre really Something

buddy that is beyond monkey brain, you went all the way back to reptile brain. These are real Dimetrodon hours.

This is the funniest fucking post on this site.

⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ

you have encountered a group of trilobites! reblog to help them on their journey

>>}}}}}}):•:)—<

An Opabinia forages alongside!

»﴿﴿﴿﴿﴿﴿Ѻʭ

Can an Anomalocaris perhaps come along? (It promises to play nice and not eat anyone else in the group.)

•Į{Į{Į{Į{Į{Į{Į{Į{Į

A hallucigenia is there because yeah

(((_)))

@@@

A Wiwaxia joins them

*throws a handful of grapes into my red wine slushy and slurps it like bubble tea*

A modern day Dionysus

oh Dionysus WOULD absolutely

john “the mountain goats” darnielle’s 2021 new year’s eve twitter thread, for those who missed it

[ID: A twitter thread by ‘The Mountain Goats’ (verified) @mountai… Thread reads (with line breaks denoting separate tweets):

so I was washing potatoes last night when I got excited

it was just one of those moments, you know. I was getting dinner together and I looked at the ingredients coming together on the counter

and I thought to myself, and said aloud, “Hell yes, I have three potatoes”

living with me means having to develop a robust tolerance for hearing a guy occasionally cry out aloud: saying, for example, “Hell yes, I have three potatoes”

but over and above my everyday state of excitement about the ten trillion small things that ease the path a little — colors, shades, sounds, flavors, sensations, moods, fleeting thoughts, moments of transcendence when you’re very lucky —

I had one of those moments of gratitude to have food. and not just the food but a counter to prep it on and a stove for cooking

but it wasn’t just the food and the kitchen and the comforts of home, either

it was me standing at the stove in a house where I’m safe. got here on my own two feet. had a lot of help. plenty of points where I wouldn’t have bet on the outcome. now I have three potatoes, you know?

here’s the thing

some of you reading this are in houses where you’re not safe all the time, and I know it

some of you are day-to-day with any of a thousand different troubles and on any given day you feel like you might buckle

maybe you’ve felt like that a lot of times over the past couple years. A lot of people have. some people have felt that way who’d had some preparation, and some people have found themselves navigating scary, unfamiliar straits

but if you’re reading this right now you managed to make it work. maybe it doesn’t feel like it worked all that well, maybe you feel like you’re coasting across the goal line with no fuel at all left in the tank,

but here you are

here you are.

having found some way to nourish yourself through it.

look at the calendar, look at the clock. you sustained yourself through this. maybe you got sick, maybe it was real bad. maybe some things got better and maybe they got worse. but give yourself the gift of a long look in the mirror

look at the person hard, uncertain times, in days of sickness everywhere, will see another year

that’s the person who will do it again, and to that person, over and over, I say, loud enough for the neighbors to hear,

Hell yes, hell yes, hell yes, hell yes, hell yes

from all of us here at Mountain Goats Central Command a thank you for seeing us through 2021. it was so good to see you in the flesh again. stay safe. trust yourselves. we will see one another through to safer times

this year’s New Year’s Eve thread is dedicated to that one guy who’s mad about people wishing one another happy new year: may he never know why people actually do it

and may the rest of us, collectively, defiantly, never forget it /thread.

End ID]

your bed is probably as happy to see you as you are to see it. ‘here comes the warmth slab’ it thinks

wrong it thinks “god hope this dipshit doesnt spill beans all over me again who tf eats beans in bed”

stop reblogging this new year new me i havent spilled beans in bed ONCE this year

uh oh

It gets funnier the earlier in the year you reblog it

(Hey so this is a ooc for two reasons one I wanna thank every who have taken part in the adopt event and yes until all of the adopts have been taken the event will continue to be open and the second reason I ive recently bought a clinging/magnemite on a Pokemon adopts amino from the user Circus_Freak_Danny and I was wondering if I could use it as a Pokemon alex with acquire or should I make a Pokemon ask blog with it?(image of the little lad included)

Boosting on my main account for the few Pokemon ask blogs that follow my main account

i wish i knew some trans guys with my deadname so i could dm them this picture

good lord. stay safe out there folks

I submit to you that the most iconic feature of any animal is either unlikely or impossible to fossilize.

If all we had of wolves were their bones we would never guess that they howl.

If all we had of elephants were fossils with no living related species, we might infer some kind of proboscis but we'd never come up with those ears.

If all we had of chickens were bones, we wouldn't know about their combs and wattles, or that roosters crow.

We wouldn't know that lions have manes, or that zebras have stripes, or that peacocks have trains, that howler monkeys yell, that cats purr, that deer shed the velvet from their antlers, that caterpillars become butterflies, that spiders make webs, that chickadees say their name, that Canada geese are assholes, that orangutans are ginger, that dolphins echolocate, or that squid even existed.

My point here is that we don't know anything about dinosaurs. If we saw one we would not recognize it. As my evidence I submit the above, along with the fact that it took us two centuries to realize they'd been all around us the whole time.

XKCD

So that people don’t need to go through the notes:

- We have fossils of spider webs

- Paleontologists have reconstructed the larynx (voice box) of extinct animals and we have a pretty good idea what vocalizations they were capable of

- Fossilized pigments have been found in a variety of taxa

- Soft tissues fossilize more often than you think; we have skin impressions for like 90% of Tyrannosaurus rex’s full body (shoulder blades and neck are the only bits missing)

If pop culture is your only window into extinct animals, then you do not remotely understand how much we know.

We know the entire lifecycle of a tyrannosaurus. We know from the sheer amount of remains we have, from every stange.

We know exactly how other dinosaurs look, down to colors and patterns, because bones are not the only information that is preserved.

The Sinosauropteryx is one such dinosaur. Because pigmentation molecules were preserved in the feather impressions, we know it's colors, and it's tail rings (which one would argue would be it's "iconic feature."

(Art credit Julio Lacerda)

Microraptor is another! We know from feather impressions that it had four wings. We know from pigmentation that it was an iredecent black, like a raven.

(Art credit Vitor Silva)

This is not limited to dinosaurs, or feathers. We've found pigmentation in scales and skin. We've completely reconstructed two extinct penguins, colors and all. We've figured out the colors of some non-avian and non-feathered dinosaurs. We can identify evidence of feathers existing on animals without feather impressions.

We have feathered dinosaurs preserved in amber.

We can defer likely behavioral patterns through adaptations we see in bones, and from the environments they were found in. We can see how certain movements evolved through musculature attachments (yes, how muscles attached is often preserved). We know avian flight likely evolved by "accident" by the way early raptorforms moved their arms to strike at their prey.

We also understand behavior in extant animals and can easily speculate likely behaviors in extinct animals. (A predator running for it's life is not going to exhibit hunting behaviors)

We learn and understand way more from "rocks" than paleontologists are given credit for. And if you watch a movie like Jurassic World, which has no interest in portraying anything with any sort of accuracy, and your take away is "We can't possibly know anything about these animals," then you don't understand science.

As for shrinkwrapped reconstructions, we understand how muscles attach, and how fat works. Artists who lean into shrinkwrapping are are not generally concerned with scientific accuracy, or biology. They're only concerned with Awesombro.

If true paleoartists tried to reconstruct a hippo, while they naturally would not get every bit correct, it would certainly look like a real animal, and not that alien monster that tumblr is so fond of using as "proof" that paleontologists don't know anything (an art piece that itself was extreme and satirical, and a condemnation of the particular subset of paleoartists I mentioned earlier)

Every time paleoblr tries to show you how extinct animals actually looked, all we get is a chorus of "thanks i hate it" and "stop ruining dinosaurs!"

We’re pretty good at crediting artists - I wonder if it’s time we start crediting scientists, because while science is of course a collaborative global effort, the colours-of-dinosaurs stuff really does have Just A Guy with his shoulder behind the wheel.

Jakob Vinther, University of Bristol. Alarmingly quotable fellow - look him up on Google News to be startled. He’s only thirty-something so you can’t really call fossil colours his life’s work, but, you know, he’s spent a lot of time on it and done a lot of research. It wasn’t just SCIENTISTS THE MONOLITH emerging from a cloud to give artists something new to draw, something “we” can “know,” before disintegrating back into a faceless cloud. A lot of it - not all of it, but a lot - was because Just A Dude Spent His Twenties On This, and it would be nice to occasionally go “hey dude thanks for working hard on that, giving folks stuff to draw.”

here's ur reminder that axolotl is NOT pronounced like "ak-suh-laa-tl" (or lot-ul), it is in fact a nahuatl word (that most commonly translates to "water dog" actually, very cute!) and is pronounced "ah-SHOW-lowtch" !!!!

i think abt this every time i see a post abt axolotls coz i just know there r so many ppl mispronouncing it and the thought bothers me. if ppl, esp white ppl, reblogged this to spread the word to those who may not be aware, i'd be very grateful. thank u!!