Behold, birds who have lost the ability to can!
Just kidding, guys. These birds are just trolling the hell out of ants. I really, really wanted to show you this clip of a Galapagos finch or something harassing the shit out of formica ants and then being all “Yes, yes, bathe me in your fury! Your chemical defenses are now my own! Mwahahahaha!”, but the closest thing I could find is this video of David Attenborough pissing off some wood ants. It was basically like that, only instead of an Englishman with a stick, it was a bird stomping around with its wings spread just being an absolute asshole about everything.
This behavior is actually called anting, and there are two types of anting that birds can engage in. One is just anting, where birds will rub ants all over themselves to get that precious, precious formic acid all up in their feathers. They’ll also do it with mothballs, cigarette butts, and certain sorts of beetles and millipedes. The other one is passive anting, where a particularly lazy bird will find an anthill and just flop down on it with all their feathers spread and puffed and annoy the ants until they hop to and try to make them leave, at which point the bird rubs its wings together and goes “Yeeeeeess.”
They do this to get rid of external parasites, because external parasites are annoying. Ant-eating birds who do this are getting a two-for deal out of it, because they get the ants to empty their acid sacs in a beneficial location (the bird’s feathers) and then get to eat them without having to deal with the acid in their crops, so it’s basically like if your bug-spray or deoderant came in a bacon bottle.
Formica ants get the brunt of this, because they’re super-common and quite frequently spray the acid instead of trying to inject it, so the bird can get itself doused and then preen it into its feathers. Considering the spraying of acid is like the ant way of saying “Oh my god go away you dickhead I hate you we all hate you why are you still here jesus christ what is wrong with you,” we can be reasonably sure that they’re not super-thrilled by this bird behavior. Since the birds keep doing it, we can be reasonably sure that they don’t care about the ants’ feelings.
Fossilized opal shellpatch on natural matrix. This marvelous profusion of prehistoric mussels comes from the ‘opal capital of the world’, the inhospitable and isolated Coober Pedy, in the southern Australian outback. Their shells have been geomorphically replaced over millions of years by precious opal. Because of opal’s microcrystalline structure, the smallest details of the fossil shells have been preserved.
Toriko fic: Midnight Asthetics
For Semianonymity, because I really liked the idea of Sunny rearranging the others to be more comfortable as mentioned in the headcanon post. And then you requested an askbox story thing but it’s kinda too big to fit in the askbox now. Sorry. m(__)m
Title: Midnight Asthetics
Pairing: Kings/Komatsu (OT5)
Rating: T/PG-13 ish?
Words: 517
Summary: Sunny appreciates balance in all things, including the unruly pile made by his sleeping lovers.
GUESS WHO GOT FIC???
This was the BEST surprise! And oh my God it is SUCH A GREAT FIC, thank you stariceling!!! You took an off-the-cuff headcanon and did such beautiful things with it, thank you so much! (Whoops this post is half review, half rec.) But I love how close and cuddly it is and how they’re all so COMFORTABLE with each other, and ahhhhh the description of Zebra was so perfect, “protective as he is greedy,” oh my God.
There is ZERO NEED to apologize for anything! I adore that it’s too long for ask-boxes, I adore the fic, thank you so much! You absolutely made my day.
(And you used my tag!)
ok so i tried to find out what breed of cattle this is and i havent been successful but i found these two
and their names are texas tornado and johnny football
the pics are from this website
edit: they are apparently called Double Bred Composite Charolais (fancy ass cows)
This might be relevant information for some of you. I know I saw these cows on my dash a minute ago.
(Also: that cow is named Johnny Football! MOM CHECK IT OUT THAT COW IS NAMED JOHNNY FOOTBALL.)
My grandmother has taken to watching bull-riding on tv. Last time I saw her, she was watching some championship or other, and dude after dude is getting tossed by bulls with names like White Lightning and Hamburger’s Revenge and Bushwacker and Smackdown.
And I’m like “Man, does anybody ever name these murder-machines like Flopsy or Muffin or something just to humiliate guys who get thrown immediately even more?”
Next bull up? ”Mick E Mouse.”
JUST TRY AND TELL ME YOU DON’T WANT TO LOVE THIS FACE
SHE JUST LOOKS SO SAD SHE JUST WANTS YOUR LOVE
DO NOT WORRY MY BEAUTIFUL POTOO I WILL SNUGGLE YOU
okay no i definitely love it
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS
Oh my god someone found a way to make a potoo look even more ridiculous.
Birds + baths = stahp
the saddest face
no you don’t understand how much semianonymity is my biology hero though
THE BLOG I ALWAYS WANTED
OH NO, BLUSHING!
I guess this a good time to inform my followers that I have started a new blog, Sympatry, where I am a pedantic asshole on the Internet, mostly about evolution.
I think it’s the best thing in the world, and I’ll tell you why. Slash kind of started with Kirk and Spock getting it on. To be part of a fan lineage that includes Star Trek — a show that was made by the interrelationships with the fans — is the most flattering and heartwarming thing. And if my heart is warmed by the most vile pornography of characters that we created, then I am a monster. But for some reason I find it charming.
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| — | Doc Hammer, creator of The Venture Bros (and god amongst show creators) |
