i was just talking about this after being wrecked by the discovery that the little elf-goblin fellows my parents/family used to tell me warnings and stories about as a little kid are regionally specific, and that you can trace people's geographic origins by what word they use for "little spirit-fellows who live in your house". no matter what you call them (domovoi, kobolde, brownies, so on); for purposes of this post henceforth "little guys"
i think one of the things that i find frustrating about like, idk, modern animist revivalist movements is that very few of them ime spend a lot of time romanticising and spiritualizing human habitation. obviously, we as a culture need to think more about protecting and defending nature/the earth/so on, but like.
if you don't have room in your heart for making up a little guy who lives in the water heater, or who squats under your stove and makes it run 15 degrees off the programmed temperature, and thinking of him with the same kind of respect/affection as you do for the spirits (or whatever) of the wildlife you interact with like.
genuinely: what are you even doing. you are removing a source of richness and fun and whimsy from your life! like, pip @creekfiend made up the concept of "little guys who live in an airport (and are the reason it's so shitty to be in an airport)" and i already like airports like 30% more just knowing it's the little airport inconvenience guys doing that.
more importantly, like. genuinely: interrogate what parts of the world seem ~rich with spiritual meaning~ to you. what parts of the world are "wild"? what does that make the rest of the world - a chore? a burden? who has to carry that burden?
we're never going to like, "return to nature", because that's nothing and the concept of untouched nature is also nothing; we're always going to have some sort of human habitation and interaction and cultivation with nature. if you can't extend grace and whimsy and genuine and sincere meaning to human habitation, including its inconveniences and annoyances, you are making your own lived experience duller!
notably, most of these kinds of little-guy-spirits historically exist in the parts of human habitation that are partially abandoned, partially removed: haylofts, inside the walls, under the house, in the bathhouse, behind the furnace... i've been thinking a lot about urban wildlife lately, and the animals who make space for themselves in and around human habitation. the "natural" and the "wild" persist inside and around the edges of the "tame" and always, always have. if you have a crawlspace, there's a little spirit who lives there and he's the reason the dryer always eats your socks.
LIVE WHIMSICALLY.
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can you draw nino but little guy?
SIR YES SIR
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(✿◡‿◡)
reblog for to get a little flower inside of your brain hmm
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Proteles cristata
Throughout history, there have been two types of hyenas: bone-crushing hyenas, and dog-like ones. Spotted, striped, and brown hyenas are the bone-crushing type. Of the dog-like hyenas, the aardwolf is the only species left.
Aardwolf means "Earthwolf" in Afrikaans, a language spoken in Southern Africa. Their use of burrows is what earned them the "earth" part of their name. Although wolf is also in its name and it looks very dog-like, aardwolves are not canines. They are the smallest of four hyena species, weighing around 20 pounds (9.07 kg).
Unlike the other hyena species that eat carrion, aardwolves eat insects. If they really need to they can also eat eggs, small mammals, and vegetation, but insects are preferred. Their main insect prey is termites, and they can eat up to 300,000 of them in one night using their long tongues. Their tongues are very sticky as well, with large papillae (those little tongue bumps) and sticky saliva.
Since they behave differently and are much smaller than other hyena species, scientists used to think aardwolves were not part of the hyena family. With their striped coats, researchers thought they might have even been mimicking the striped hyena.
Aardwolves are found in arid plains of eastern and southern Africa, where they live in burrows dug by aardvarks, springhares, or porcupines. Some dig their own burrows, but taking over an abandoned one is much easier. They sleep in these burrows during the day, coming out at night to hunt for insects and to hang out with friends or whatever.
I rate the Aardwolf 15/10. Little cuties :,)
Photo Credits:
(1) Catherine Withers-Clarke (2) Hennie van Heerden (3) H. van den Berg (4) Scott Roberts (5) Klaus Rudloff
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The first Li’lmon poster!
You fine folk of Tumblr have been fortunate enough to have seen all of these designs before, it’ll be a surprise for those on instagram.
Anyway, let me know which ones are you favorites! I’m excited to make/post a poster of their second forms!
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can you draw a little guy adrien to little guy nino?
They’re a package deal!
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@littleguysdaily
decided to try my own hand at a little guys chart for ol' Minilla.
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