here-there-were-dragons

[here-there-were-dragons]

[here-there-were-dragons]

i was watching a video about how regional cheeses are made around the world, and was shown a type of mozzarella called zizzona (the z/zz pronounced like the 'zz' in 'pizza', with a 'tz' sound), which, yes, means "mother's breast".

so rest easy tonight knowing they have titty cheese in italy.

[here-there-were-dragons]

man yells at fish

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took a depression nap and all i remember from my nap dreams is a nonsensical t-shirt design that left me feeling dazed and confused after i woke up.

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i love my little cousin to death because he’s at that little kid stage where he has absolutely no speech filter so i know EXACTLY what type of shit his conservative mom has been feeding him. kid pulled our other cousin aside and went “DID YOU KNOW ICARUS LOOKS LIKE A BOY BUT HES ACTUALLY A GIRL?” (he also has yet to master volume control) and it’s so fucking funny because his mom acts all polite and friendly to my face only for her son to instantly expose who she actually is. king shit. unintentional ally

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saw a pigeon scratching itself with its foot like a doggie at the bus stop today. delightful

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A nine tailed kitsune but all the tails are those floating inflatable men you see outside car dealerships

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[here-there-were-dragons]

Strange Bird

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oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”

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[here-there-were-dragons]

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

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Fae animation practice

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scp are something that can't really be consumed in larger than microdoses because if you read/watch/ect more than three of them at once the underlying formula becomes immediately and exhaustingly apparent.

every second one is "but it was HUuUUman dna!" and "the monster feeds on PEEEOPLE!" ok but why. why does your slender clone of the week only hunt humans. why does every single monster have to be secretly derived from human dna.

most of the time there's never even an actual reason for why it's human dna specifically or human parts specifically or humans prey specifically or whatnot, it's just thrown in there for extra cheap oooo spooky factor. i want to know why. why does your arbitrary fleshblob randomly have human dna for no apparent reason. why does your unkillable deathmonster only eat people. why does your mutating artifact #5698794867958 specifically turn things into people-shapes. if you don't have an explanation for this would you at least try to make the mechanics of it interesting? please, scp writers, try to think of some twist other than bargain-bin anthropocentrism, and if you can't then at least try to come up with a good or interesting reason for it. it gets old very quickly to have every last one have it just thrown in there.

half the best scps are the ones that don't even bother very much with the horror element at all, like the vending machine, or the eldritch-horses-as-described-by-a-universe-that-does-not-have-horses, because 2/3 of the scps that actually want to be horror can't resist tacking the good old soylent green twist on at the end and not even bothering to slightly imply why.

there's also an incredibly boring number of murder-entities that turn people into aggressive fleshmonsters. it gets old. if you see enough scps you eventually start being able to sort nearly all of them into a small number of formulaic categories that become very annoyingly apparent as glorified reskins fast. i propose we put all the unkillable murdermonsters in one room and let them duke it out, and whichever one wins gets crowned the King Penguin.

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why is this about to make me sob

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im sorry seals molt? my association with that word is insects so i am confused and intrigued

They do! I’d say most species of animals sloughs off “old” parts of their bodies at some point of their lives in some capacity. The word “molting” is used as a catch-all term for this process, although exactly what body part they shed and how they do it varies from animal to animal. Arthropods grow an entire new exoskeleton and shed the old one, but for most other animals, this process only involves shedding the outermost layer of their bodies, the pelage and/or their first layer of skin. Reptiles are quite famous for this because they sometimes manage to come out of their old skins and leave them almost fully intact as if they were kigurumi pajamas:

Mammals tend to mostly only shed fur or hair, growing thicker fur during colder months and losing it in favor of shorter fur during warmer months. How obvious this is depends on the climate, though. It’s quite perceptible in mammals that live in the arctic whose fur changes color depending on the season:

But even the difference between the summer coats and winter coats of domestic dogs can be palpable if you live in places with colder climates!

(I’m quite fascinated by this because I was born and raised in a tropical country and my dogs look the same all year round heh)

But back to the seals. Pinnipeds don’t really use their fur to keep warm like other mammals do, but they still have it, and they have to shed their old coats and grow new ones accordingly, which they do once a year!

In elephant seals, this process is so sudden and so extreme it’s called catastrophic molting. They don’t only lose their fur, but also a layer of dead skin all at once and this forces them to stay on land for a full month without swimming (and therefore, without hunting and eating) until the process is fully done. Because molting requires redirecting blood flow towards the skin instead of to their vital organs as usual, if they swam in the cold waters they’re usually accustomed to while molting, they’d freeze!

Bonus fun fact: despite having lost their fur during the evolution process, cetaceans like whales and dolphins also go through a molting process where they lose a layer of dead skin, which they scrape off by rubbing against rocks and rolling on sand banks.

It’s been recently discovered (as of 2020!) that the reason whales migrate annually from arctic waters to tropical waters is the exact same reason elephant seals spend a month on land: to molt! It’s much easier for a whale to keep warm while shedding its skin in warm waters than it is in cold waters.

[here-there-were-dragons]

Art of the Sun