There is a pigeon in my bathroom and I'm late for work

Congrats on the free pigeon ❤️

But like, as explanations go "sorry there was a pigeon in my bathroom" is a good one that any boss will accept.

had the chance to help prepare some beaver yesterday

Oh, interesting. Both that I've never considered people eating beavers (lol), despite the fact I've like, eaten cuy, but also that method of like...it's almost like a precursor to spit roasting.

Did you know that peafowl are born with a full set of flight feathers? It only takes them 3-4 days to remove the sheaths and put a little length on them, and then they are capable of flight!

It's very obnoxious!

glad that came through in text

Congrats on the uncontainable flying problems.

But also, this is very neat. Like, I know a lot of tree-roosting gamebirds get flight feathers very early on to allow them to sleep safely off the ground asap, but I didn't realise peafowl did it that quickly. I think chickens don't start until they're like a month old, and they grow up way faster than peafowl.

Every time I mention my barley allergy, people nod sagely and say things like, "ah, the gluten", but no, I'm fine with gluten, I horf down unholy quantities of wheat every day. I'm literally eating an entire baguette while I'm typing this. I'm just very specifically allergic to barley.

Why were so few non-avian dinosaurs tiny though

Huh, interesting question. I'd hazard a guess at a combination of ancestral condition, ecological competition and taphonomic bias?

Ancestral members of a group tend to influence the size range of the resulting adaptive radiation. The earliest fossils seem to mostly be animals over a metre in length, making them "small" for non-avian dinosaurs but suggesting the group may have radiated out from a starting point around that size. Obviously with enough time anything is possible but it suggests that the smallness we often see in birds wasn't likely to occur in dinosaurs without significant selective pressures.

Ecologically, small mammals and their stem relatives were already about, being small and bitey. Just as mammals didn't really get big until after the big dinosaurs carked it, freeing up that megafauna niche, it's possible that any benefit to evolving smaller sizes ran right up against the fact the world was already full of small, toothy beasts that already have those resources locked down and also start being a threat once you're that size.

Taphonomic bias is the big one though. Small bones fossilise less well due to being more easily eaten and damaged, but also, the environment you die in has a big influence on whether you're likely to fossilise. It's possible there were clades of mini-dinos out there but they largely lived in habitats that weren't conducive to fossilisation. It's also likely one of the reasons evidence for dinosaur feathers is so scant: the idea conditions for fossil preservation are also the ideal conditions for a corpse losing all its hair or feathers very quickly before being buried.

Either way, the avian dinosaurs represent a lineage derived from a group of smaller dinosaurs, but more importantly underwent a very strong selection pressure for size reduction: flight. Being small is good for flight, for energetic reasons. Being able to fly also may have lent them a degree of protection from depredations that come along with being small. New selection pressure with acceptably small starting point and a huge adaptive radiation could go a long way to explaining why the avians achieved levels of tinyness never before seen in the Dinosauria.

Why were so few non-avian dinosaurs tiny though

Are big animals more likely to have their bones fossilised, because small, delicate bones decay faster?

I mean it's more along the lines of "big animals' bones are less likely to be smashed to unidentifiable Bone Paste" I think? And maybe "It's way easier to notice a 12cm dinosaur tooth than a dinosaur tooth the size of a tiny gravel?" But yeah, that's part of it.

Still. Compsognathus and Microraptor were still...big-ish if you compare them to contemporary birds. You would think we would have found at least one non-avian dinosaur that was like, bluejay sized, since creatures of that size class are so common nowadays.

Isn't oxygen amount still the reason? Like isn't that why there were Big Bugs in really ancient times?

Admittedly it's been like four years since I learned anything about prehistoric ecology so I could be totally off base.

That may apply to things like arthropods which tend to have much less complex gas exchange systems, which rely a lot more on passive diffusion which puts some limits on effective size. The more oxygen in the atmosphere, the greater the distance they can have between their tissues and the air.

But Archosaurs, much like mammals, have lungs and hearts and red blood cells stuffed with haemoglobin, their size isn't really limited by atmospheric oxygen concentrations. We tip the scales hard with active movement of large volumes of air and chemical machines that pull oxygen from the air and hold it till it's where it's needed. Blue whales are the largest animal ever known to have existed on earth, and they're here today.

Birds are far more efficient at getting oxygen out of the air than mammals are and yet, most are pretty small due to the limitations of flight. It's much more likely a result of the fact that all birds are descended from flying ancestors, which were relatively small by dinosaur standards.

old gods are waking

I need everyone to stop what they're doing and freak out with me.

THIS IS A PLANT GROWN FROM A 32,000 YEAR OLD SEED!!

Do you understand how unbelievably amazing this is?!

THEY FOUND THE SEED IN A FROZEN SQUIRREL

Ok it was in a frozen squirrel burrow, not a frozen squirrel but I'm still always here for ancient Silene.

The fact that things can remain viable in permafrost for that long is both amazing and terrifying. Like, ok sure there's anthrax and possible some other horrible but unknown stuff in there, but there's also nematodes, including one that was thawed and got right back on with living after possibly over 40,000 years. That's a whole multicellular worm that spent forty thousand years deep frozen before waking up and just getting on with things. There were like 300 worms extracted, and most of them were unsurprisingly dead, but yeah, two woke up.

I've also heard about a friend of a friend who worked on carbon dating mosses exposed by glacial retreat for palaeo-climate stuff who had to work against the clock because the moment they thawed, the little bastards (his words) started photosynthesising again, completely fucking any C14 dating.

It's like this out there, what can we say? Unless you are 100% sure it's human you don't want to go investigate when it's dark, trust us.

I live in the confluence of the Mojave and Great Basin. We have a ton of rugged mountains with Cougars, Bears, Bobcats, Foxen and Coyote. Every single one of them makes a call that sounds like a human in distress.

It's not quite so human-like but red foxes, particularly vixens in heat, make an unsettling screaming noise that's been mistake for people before.

yeah facebook is terrible but sometimes you stumble across pure gold. there are dream animals i want to see in the wild and there will be posts like

ma'am that is the critically endangered regent honeyeater. There are less than 300 of them left in the wild

i swear the attitude some people have towards medication that is then somehow everyone else's fault

"i throw it out like terms and conditions" girl that is a whole drug you are putting in your body not a twitter account

This is also why the pharmacist has to check you out in the US if you are getting a new drug. That consult? That's your time to say 'is there anything i need to know about this? Any foods I should avoid?'

When I had my spinal surgery, I picked up a fungal infection on my skin in the hospital (it's more common than you fucking think). The medication I was given to finally get rid of it interacts with the same receptors in my liver that opioids do.

Since I talked to my pharmacist and said 'hey, should I be worried about any interactions' and also read the sheet, I knew that the first time I took that medication, I should do it when people were awake, just in case -- just in case -- someone needed to run for the Narcan because this medication can make people accidentally overdose on their perfectly normal maintenance dose of opioid painkillers that they've been taking for years.

I'm also allergic to a common antibiotic. There are multiple medications which -- despite not being that antibiotic -- you're not supposed to take if you're allergic to that antibiotic because you might react the same way, we're not really sure why.

You gotta read the freaking instructions, y'all. Please. Or at least talk to your pharmacist or your doctor (the pharmacist will know more about drugs, that's their whole-ass job).

Yes, people should read the paper that comes with the meds. But i think the doctor and the pharmacist should say the most important info/most dangerous interactions without being asked.

what "the most important info" or "the most dangerous interaction" might be is going to be different for every person. you do realise that right.

a doctor or pharmacist telling me about grapefruit is going to be a big "yeah and???" moment because i hate grapefruit. the info important to me is not important at all to someone else

Any time I've had a new medication I sit and read the information sheet because like, yeah! Of course I do! You need to because you need to know what side effects are normal and what are a sign you need to go to hospital right now. It's useful to know if a symptom is an expected or rate suffer effect or something else entirely. It's useful to know about potential interactions.

Like, is my mouth feeling tingly and numb because that's an uncommon but recorded side effect? Or am I allergic and suffering anaphylaxis? The sheet will say.

Like somecunttookmyurl the grapefruit interaction is irrelevant to me because I can't stand the stuff. But also lots of warnings are very specific to your medical history and situation. Barley extract would be irrelevant to most people, I'm allergic though. Lactose as a binding agent in pills is a non issue for me but obviously some people are lactose intolerant.

This is why there's a sheet of information. Pharmacists can run through some very basics but that's not the same as reading the info on the sheet.

Quality birds here. Bad quality. If I may suggest some additional lesser known terrible birds because I love this subject:

Magpie goose - it's a very basal member of the duck, swan and goose family and it has unwebbed feet that look Upsetting.

(source)

Wattled brush-turkey - a relative of the Australian brush-turkey, there's nothing wrong with this bird's head apart from everything. But it's meant to look like that. Fun fact, I couldn't choose a single worst photo of one of these, google it and see!

(source)

Horned guan - why? The proportions, the crest, the everything, just bad.

(source)

bonus upsetting horned guan photo

(source)

Northern shoveller - a duck found across northern Eurasia and America. Bad to look at because of the proportions. Genus name is Spatula though, which is fun.

(source)

Special mention to crested guineafowl and lesser flamingos for just looking fucking weird.

Oh, I guess going back and editing in links no longer works and it hides your reblog if you do that. I mean, probably good but also, sigh.

Quality birds here. Bad quality. If I may suggest some additional lesser known terrible birds because I love this subject:

Magpie goose - it's a very basal member of the duck, swan and goose family and it has unwebbed feet that look Upsetting.

(source)

Wattled brush-turkey - a relative of the Australian brush-turkey, there's nothing wrong with this bird's head apart from everything. But it's meant to look like that. Fun fact, I couldn't choose a single worst photo of one of these, google it and see!

(source)

Horned guan - why? The proportions, the crest, the everything, just bad.

(source)

bonus upsetting horned guan photo

(source)

Northern shoveller - a duck found across northern Eurasia and America. Bad to look at because of the proportions. Genus name is Spatula though, which is fun.

(source)

Special mention to crested guineafowl and lesser flamingos for just looking fucking weird.

if you remove the places most people walk around at they don’t walk very much

This reminds me of that one study on exercise that didn’t count manual labor in the workplace as exercise

I can’t believe people don’t walk very much except for the places they spend a lot of time walking at

🛏 15 minutes

A length of time 81% of people won't sleep in a day - with the exception of sleeping in beds and the like.

Sleeping on furniture like beds and futons was not counted.

Hot 4am take but I feel like if we want to get people more interested in making their yards a more habitable space for wildlife like insects, we have to acknowledge that ‘Don’t want bugs in your house’ is still a 100% fair and valid point of view. ‘Loves nature’ and ‘doesn’t want roaches spiders and mosquitoes in the house’ aren’t opposites.

And with that in mind, when we propose to people that spraying pesticides around houses is Not A Good Idea, Actually, I feel like we need to give an alternative asides from ‘deal with it.’

I wish there were products commonly sold that actually WERE targeted to specific bugs instead of every bug killing spray being repackaged Kills Everything Juice That Is Dangerous To Your Kids And Pets

that being said, spiders are the best pest control, for real.

I would LOVE a bug spray that keeps the very specific tomato eater little bastards away from my romas and DOESN'T KILL BEES but unfortunately EVERY spray ever will apparently kill EVERY BUG even the good ones without fail and I hate it so much because if you say "But I don't WANT a bug spray that'll kill bees too." Everyone just shrugs like "just don't use bug spray then." AND THERE ARE NO ALTERNATIVES?? It's either bye bye bees, THE SAME GUYS THAT POLLINATE YOUR SHIT, or your entire fucking garden gets eaten by the bugs you don't want in your garden.

Farmer Family Friend's pest control solutions are all basically "promote beneficial critters like spiders, wasps etc."

He uses no-till beds with grass paths between them because it makes habitat for ground beetles. And cover crops.

According to him, even organic pesticides will still kill beneficial and harmful insects alike. They're a last resort.

He rotates planting marigolds in beds because they inhibit a lot of pests.

for mosquitoes you may want to try putting up bluebird boxes

The problem is it's extremely hard to make a highly specific pesticide. It's not impossible in some situations, but certainly not always possible to have something that kills X but not Y. Generally speaking, there's usually no way to make a chemical pesticide that say, kills caterpillars and/or aphids but not bees.

Fundamentally, the vast majority of compounds that are toxic to pest insects will be toxic to pollinators too, because they're just too metabolically similar. Hell, often enough the same species may be a pollinator as an adult and a pest as a larva (looking at you, Lepidoptera). Frankly, most insects are similar enough to humans at a chemical level that it's tricky to find effective pesticides that aren't extremely toxic to us as well. (this is why herbicides are generally much safer than insecticides: it's way easier to find metabolic pathways in plants to target that we do not share with them).

About the only way to target specific taxa is through biological means, rather than straight chemical. If you choose two random bugs in your garden, there's a fair chance there literally isn't a single readily synthesisable compound in existence that's effectively toxic to one but not the other. However, living organisms are often far more specific in what they'll target. Even then, most effective ones are going to be relatively broad in their approach and...there's always the risk of them jumping host if you keep throwing them around new environments.

That's why Bacillus thuringiensis strains are such a popular tool, as they cast a narrower net - different strains may only be able to produce proteins that bind to the gut lining of a few species groups for instance. There are also various places that sell parasitoids and micropredators that only use specific species for targeted control.

But as headspace-hotel has mentioned, the easiest way to do this at home is to provide habitats for naturally occurring predators and parasitoids of pest species.

but no yeah lets have the conversation:

"the CEO doesnt want to run that kind of website" Excuse, shouldnt have bought the 'go nuts show nuts whatever' website if thats the case. APPEAL DENIED

"we have to follow the TOS of the appstores we're hosted on" Excuse item one, no you dont, item two, you have since those days implimented infrastructure that would allow pornography and sex work on this platform Without violating TOS of any applicable app store. APPEAL DENIED

"we own the site we get to make the rules" Incorrect, this site has only ever made profit when the users willed it. we collectively own the site as a hive mind and no legal change in ownership will change that. APPEAL DENIED

"we have to keep this website safe for the children who use it" Argument based on fallacy banning pornography and sex workers does not prevent pornography and sex work from occuring on the site, it only forces aforementioned users to hide and avoid labling their content appropriately, which REDUCES the safety for children and sex workers alike instead of increasing it, this has been shown to the point that making this argument at all is tantamount to admiting fascist intent APPEAL DENIED

Reblog it. I want this to be on Tumblr radar by end of the week, i want my notes to be useless from the discourse, i want every single person on Tumblr to have seen this post at some point