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Featuring: Creatures
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21d
Creatures
This Horny Pumpkin
•••
He has bewitched me. I was truly unprepared for the things this pumpkin would say. You can’t let yourself get distracted by the bad captions, you need to really listen to his beautiful song. The way it escalates... Unfortunately, QVC singing pumpkin has a secret pornographic song is my exact sense of humor. I sent it to all my closest friends being like I NEED YOU to watch this it’s IMPORTANT TO ME. They found the writer, his name is Peter McEvilley, and it is NOT AI. Which I knew, because robots simply aren't that freaky. Which is one of the reasons I'll never respect them.
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2
9w
Creatures
Northern short-tailed shrew
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Need to do a deep dive but I owe so many creature features that I’m just dropping this short-tailed shrew my dad has been hanging out with during his Zen retreat. Apparently it paralyzes its prey and keeps it alive…go off (chilling but I have cat, and cats are sadists, so I can’t talk). According to this article he sent me, they have super high metabolisms, which I remember being true about star-nosed moles, too…burrowing through the earth is probably hard work. My dad also informed me that I made friends with a shrew on a family vacation to Scotland when I was four. Every story about me as a child is about me being “friends” with an animal even if it’s trying to like eat me.
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29
2
10w
Creatures
This fly that lives in my apartment
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He is uncatchable. He loves to land extremely close to me or even on me and then fly away when I try to get him with my bug jar. He’s been here for like a week; I didn’t even know they lived that long. My cat is completely uninterested in hunting him. I can’t imagine this is the life he wants to be living, but I can’t explain the situation to him. I caught him once early on with the bug jar, but he somehow houdini’ed his way out. Now he’s too smart for me. I am choosing to love him bc I have no other choice.
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12
3
14w
Creatures
Monito del monte
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Recently learned about HIM with my roommate @Jessie when we were getting curious about marsupials (started with being like...what is going on with opossums??). Ancient marsupial (ANOTHER living fossil) in Chile and Argentina. I need to do an in-depth creature feature on him, but I am newly obsessed. Link is to Fundación Mar Adentro (and picture is from there too), I also found this video from Nat Geo (warning, it does include video of him pooping...)
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6
14w
Creatures
NEIL
•••
He's my friend.
68
9
16w
Creatures
Aminatou Sow
Attenborough at 100: A Nature Documentary Archive
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Kind of life-changing rec from @Aminatou Sow (and rerec from @molly). Will be figuring into my creature research. Also if anyone is waiting for my next one (lol not that I think anyone is) I am soooooo migraine rn but it's coming (tardigrades...)! But you should check out cicadas cause they're extremely cool.
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2
17w
Featuring: Creatures
Chambered Nautilus
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I have to begin by saying that when I was in middle school I made a powerpoint presentation called Marvelous Mollusks, and I would truly do anything to find it. Unfortunately, I have the full text of the book I wrote when I was 12-13 (bad), but not Marvelous Mollusks. It was in a time of my life where I was really into adding power point animations, where you could like make a mollusk wiggle across the screen, and I have a strong sense that I overdid it. ANYWAY, I remember liking this guy, so here we go! Are you kidding me with that face? (Photo is from California Academy of Sciences) Like horseshoe crabs, they are considered “living fossils,” because they’ve been around forever (California Academy of Sciences says ~500 million years, but I didn’t see that number anywhere else), and they haven’t done too much changing. They’re cephalopods, like octopuses and squids. Their bodies are really fascinating for a whole lot of reasons. They’re famous for their mother-of-pearl shells, which they grow over the course of their lives. From California Academy of Sciences: “The nautilus literally builds itself a home as it grows, adding new internal chambers in a spiral pattern while always occupying the outermost one.” They make me think of hermit crabs, but instead of finding new shells, they build them, moving steadily outward. Even more interesting to me: they move around using a “hyponome”(NOAA fisheries calls it a sort of “siphon tube”), which lets them move around water and gas in their chambers, affecting their buoyancy. A blog entry from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation says this is similar to how submarines work. They can also use the hyponome for a kind of “jet propulsion.” Here’s a video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium where you see one kinda floating around: They live around 20 years, and they don’t reach maturity until they’re 10 or 15 (late bloomer alert), which is part of what makes them “particularly vulnerable to overfishing,” according to NOAA (they’re classified as threatened). They have limited eyesight but use “chemosensors” on their tentacles to smell food. They have over 90 tentacles. Here’s another video from NOAA fisheries using underwater cameras. There’s a moment in the video where a fish tries to bite one, at which point I screamed, “Hey!” They’re also interacting with each other; I can’t tell if they’re fighting or having sex (none of my business). https://videos.fisheries.noaa.gov/detail/videos/shellfish-other-invertebrates/video/3814028058001/nautilus-surveys-with-remote-underwater-cameras?autoStart=true I know I’m talking a LOT, but there’s also a famous poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. that uses the nautilus’s outward expansion as a metaphor for the human soul. I found a 1938 journal article from American Literature by Nelson F. Adkins on JSTOR (why not) that points out that this use of an animal/ object in nature as a metaphor and tool for “moral instruction” reflects deist principles, which I thought was interesting, since we read The Age of Reason in my last class.
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31
5
17w
Featuring: Creatures
Humpback Whale
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You guys, I love whales so much. The noblest, most awe-inspiring creatures. That we have these giant-beyond-our-immediate-comprehension mammals just doing their own thing in the sea is mind-blowing to me. I think they should be running things. I have a real soft spot for humpbacks because those are the guys I’ve seen the most, and when I was a kid on a whale watch in Provincetown we had two swim under our boat. They’re also quite endangered (“fewer than 10 percent of their original population remaining,” according to the Marine Mammal Center). The scientific name is Megaptera, meaning “big-winged.” And they might not be blue whales, but they’re pretty huge! They grow up to 60 feet long. Their calves are 2,000 pounds when they’re born. Can you imagine…just swimming around, being that big and that gorgeous? And a lot of them have names! Here's a website where you can browse all sorts of marine mammal sightings. The Marine Mammal Center has this great breakdown of humpback whale behaviors. I particularly like flipper slapping and spyhopping. To be that big and also having fun with it? They also can feed collaboratively and use these “bubble nets,” which is so cool. I personally love whale watches so much, truly the greatest honor to see these guys in action. Though one of the threats to the species is “vessel-based harassment,” so it’s important to do responsibly, according to everything I just read. And of course, here’s a video from @molly’s pope David Attenborough. This music is kind of Titanic-style imo. And you can hear their calls a bit. The sheer beauty almost made me cry. My friend sent me a video of a humpback whale calf nursing, but I can’t share that because I found it too disgusting to watch past the first second (no offense to whales; I am just anti-milk).
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50
5
18w
Creatures
Ginny Branch
Horseshoe Crab Summer
$60
•••
It’s horseshoe crab summer baby!
3
18w
Fairytales, Folklore, And My...
Mothman
•••
Probably my favorite cryptid. He just wants to help! You guys I love folklore so so much. Shout out to @Daniel Menegaz for recommending cryptozoology. The linked article is from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage, but they also reference an NPR piece about the Chicago Mothman sightings of 2017, which I’m linking too…they really had fun with it. Also in my research refresh before posting I discovered that there’s a 2002 movie called The Mothman Prophecies starring Richard Gere. 2002: the same year he starred in the Oscar-winning-film Chicago. And Laura Linney’s in it too? What is going on?? I’ll get back to you after I watch. Anyway, I’m mostly just here to brag about my new t-shirt (found on depop, can’t recommend it bc I already bought it for myself)
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2
18w
Creatures
Star-nosed Moles
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Some of my absolute top guys. Fastest eating mammals? Can swim under ice and smell underwater? “Most sensitive touch organs in the animal kingdom”?? And they look like THAT??? (complimentary)
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31
7
18w
Creatures
Red-winged Blackbird
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When I was in residential treatment, I went for my first walk alone in a while (I had kind of started a walking trend, and I love walking with other people, but I was also desperate for some alone time), and I was on a boardwalk in a marshy area when I heard this very persistent birdcall. I looked around, and there were red-winged blackbirds everywhere, kind of hidden among the cattails. I wasn’t sure if they were newly arrived or if I’d been missing them when I was surrounded by people. They have this unmistakeable, irrepressible call, and that shock of bright color, and I could feel the world coming alive and spring popping up around me after I’d spent all winter walking through these same woods. I know a metaphor when I see/hear one. Harbingers of spring and new beginnings.
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46
9
18w
Creatures
Horseshoe Crab
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Ancient, durable, kinda scary. Life is a miracle. edit: official mascots of rec league, pending approval
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15
1
19w
Creatures
Gollum
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I guess I’m just very interested in the fact that I loved him so much as a kid. Like I was afraid of everything, found the David Bowie Labyrinth movie unwatchable, had nightmares about Spirited Away, but I took one look at Gollum and was like I’m obsessed with that guy. Is it universal? Does he tap into some sort of secret peak in the uncanny valley? Is it just Andy Serkis’s genius? I love his song about fish. Sometimes my cat reminds me of him.
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12
2
19w
Creatures
Leonard
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He’s my neighbor, and I love him. Every time I see him I get this brainwave that’s like “that’s my friend!”
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10
21w
Creatures
Pigeons
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Such noble, brave, adaptable guys. Today one flew directly over my head in such a way that its feet touched my hair. Which was gross but also an honor. The ones in New York can handle anything, and in that way they’re an inspiration.
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