Southern Right Whale Dolphin – Lissodelphis peronii
Right whale dolphins include Northern Right Whale dolphins, Lissodelphis borealis, and Southern Right Whale dolphins, Lissodelphis peronii (pictured), which are both small dolphins with the most slender bodies of all the cetaceans. These dolphins do not have dorsal fins or dorsal ridges which makes identifying them quite easy. They have small curved flippers, small tail flukes and short, well-defined beaks.
Like other dolphin species, these black and white dolphins are gregarious, found in schools of 200-2,000 that communicate using clicks and whistles, and are often found in V-shaped configurations.
Southern Right Whale dolphins are found only in cool temperate to subantarctic waters of the Southern Hemisphere.
let’s call this post A BIOLOGIST’S 1 AM ISSUES WITH THE BASILISK IN THE MOVIE VERSION OF THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (BY POPULAR REQUEST)
and let’s be clear most of the time i dabble in mammals and not herps so i’m expecting a herpetologist to whisk this post away when i’m done and get in on the real schooling
now let’s be clear there are some major differences between movie basilisk and book basilisk. by perusing my copy of chamber of secrets i can give you the major points of the description:
very large (“thick as an oak trunk,” with a mouth wide enough to swallow Harry, a 12 year old gryffindor child, whole)
“bright, poisonous green”
“bulbous yellow eyes”
“fangs long and thin as sabres”
fuck i love rowling’s descriptions OKAY
and you know what, it’s pretty ok. aside from the size (i’ll discuss this in just a minute) it really works. with the bright green coloration, I always imagined it looking like a green mamba or a boomslang, two types of highly venomous snakes. (yes, a boomslang IS a real thing that JKR did not make up as a polyjuice potion ingredient!)
Above: a gorgeous boomslang. Tell me that fucker wouldn’t look awesome huge and CGI.
I will never understand people who think taking a shower at night instead of the morning is gross they’re like “ew don’t you feel so dirty when you wake up in the morning??” like no?? all I did was sleep meanwhile you were marinating in your sweat and dirt all night your bedsheets must be disgusting
I don’t believe a position that is “anti-GMO” is a tenable one, because most insulin that is synthesised today is derived from a genetically modified organism, usually from E.Coli or yeast (S. cerevisiae). Being anti-GMO in principle would mean protesting medicine for diabetics.
I understand having objections to particular GM crops, say BT corn; I also understand having objections to the industry monopolies possessed by unscrupulous agribusiness firms like like Monsanto. Further, I think it is perfectly reasonable to have objections to unsustainable farming practices that deplete soil and eat up forests, or predatory business practices that take up tracts of indigenous land.
What I don’t understand is being against fruits and vegetables that have received the transgenic equivalent of a vaccination: like the Ringspot-resistant Papaya, or the Sharka-resistant Plum.
It’s the lack of clarity and specificity in this conversation that I find maddening: I think complex questions deserve complex answers, and those aren’t to be found in a consumer boycott, or a sign that reads “hell no GMO.” If you are protesting GM crops, but can’t tell me the names of five, then why are do you feel entitled to speak on behalf of people who work in agriculture and horticulture?
I’m seeing some confusion about this one in the reblogs, and it is for my money one of the most interesting things to know about birds, so:
The big guy in this picture is the cuckoo – a young cuckoo. The little one is the momma bird, who is feeding the baby, even though the baby is now like five times as big as she is. That’s because the cuckoo is a brood parasite.
Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. If the hosts notice the cuckoo egg, they will try to get rid of it – if they don’t, though, and the cuckoo chick hatches, they will raise it as their own, even though the first thing it does when it hatches is to murder all of their other children.
The question with this is always: why, at that point, do the host birds raise the cuckoo chick? It’s way too hungry, it’s way too aggressive, it hangs around way longer than a normal chick would, and it’s huge, for god’s sake. It’s obviously not theirs. There are a couple of theories. One is that the begging call a baby cuckoo makes sounds like an entire nest of normal chicks, and the parents are programmed to feed whatever makes that noise. I got some doubts about behavior models that are that deterministic, though. I like to think it’s some avian variation on the sunk cost fallacy – the parents put all these resources into making this nest and laying this clutch, and by god they’re going to get a baby out of it, even if it’s a giant monster baby.
There is absolutely zero science behind this but my impression has always been that the parasitized parents, upon raising a gargantuan monster child, are basically just thrilled to pieces, like, “fuck yeah my huge Gundam kid can beat up your honor student” and “gaze upon my feathered monster truck pride and joy and despair”.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 