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jambettina · 3 months

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🌊 lugias-sopping-anus

Can't stand how people will learn that humans are related to Pokemon and somehow come to the conclusion that different people are different types. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

🍑 pechaberrysoda

there are literally so many fighting type people what are you even talking about lmao

🌊 lugias-sopping-anus

Your genetic make up doesn't just magically change type because you took a karate class. Do you also think your Charizard is a Grass type now because it learnt Solar Beam?

✨ ace-trainer-luna

But aren't Psychic type people a thing? Some humans have telekinetic powers, I'm pretty sure there are a few gym leaders who have them. There are even rare cases of children born with psychic abilities.

🌸 cynthiasfuturewife

that's still just learning moves

🌌 mistyterrain

As an actual Psychic type, this post is really disheartening to see. The fact that people who still refuse to acknowledge the existence of psychics are so common is just shocking. We exist!

☣ deathtounova

no one's refusing to acknowledge the existence of shit, you just don't know how types work

🌌 mistyterrain

The sheer ignorance on display here, it's obvious you're just mad you're a normal type lol.

☣ deathtounova

how bout i karate chop your ass and we'll see how "not very effective" it is

🌌 mistyterrain

Typical physical attacker brutishness, resorting to violence as usual

🦧 return-to-mankey

didn't you claim you manifested the kyogre disaster in hoenn?

⚡ electrictypesfuckyeah

WHAT

🥀 cradilyzone

Actual professor here! Genetically, all humans are Normal types, though some of our relatively recent ancestors were Psychic. Part of what let us succeed as a species was reutilizing the brain power originally used for psionics to language and tool use. We do still have some vestigial psychic power that can be trained, though it's quite weak compared to most Pokémon. As for those born with psychic powers, this is considered nowadays to be like an egg move, passed down from parent to child. And no, obviously learning Fighting moves doesn't make you a Fighting type, there is no way for a human to change their type.

🌔 hexmaniac

my grandma became a ghost type

🔶️ bigjiggly

I-

🔞 mega-miltank

What about swimmers though, they're water type, right?

📀 HM-69

did you even read the post

🪴 n-did-nothing_wrong

Are we all just ignoring OP's url?

🌊 lugias-sopping-anus

Team Plasma apologist blog, opinion discarded.

🛗 mostlymukposts

This post single handedly evolved my Porygon-2

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jambettina · 3 months

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PARALOUSE (Bug/Water), SQUAKER (Water) & PARASCYLLA (Bug/Ghost) PARALOUSE (Parasite/Louse/Perilous) is a small bug type pokemon that lives among the corals, it awaits for a fish pokemon with a mout big enough to jump in, where it will eat and replace that pokemon's tongue. Once it has gained enough strenght by weakening its host it will evolve

PARASCYLLA (Parasite/Scylla) the "Mermaid" pokemon. It emerges from its host's mouth, the one it completely fills. At this point its host is competely taken over, becoming PARASCYLLA's new tail. To further keep its "tail" in place, it will stick its lower legs through the fish's gills, securing it in place.

SQUAKER (Squawk/Cracker) is a parrot fish pokemon that inhabits the same coral reef where PARALOUSE can be found, they love to feed on coral using their strong beaks to cut and swallow large chunks of it, which sadly makes it the perfect victim for PARALOUSE. How ever if SQUAKER manages to avoid becoming infected by PARALOUSE it can evolve into the dangerous PARROTEER (Parrot/Privateer)

PARROTEER (Water/Dark) is PARASCYLLA's natural predator, it preys upon PARASCYLLA with extreme prejudice, using its massive size and hard-as-rock head to knock them out, it then uses its bolt cutter-like beak to cut them in half by the waist, feeding only on the upper bug half and leaving the tails to sink to the bottom

PARALOUSE is based on the cymothoa exigua, a type of parasitic isopod that attached to fishes mouths replacing their tongues

PARASCYLLA is based on a twisted version of a mermaid with some inspiration is the Greek monster Scylla, a creature with the upper torso of a woman, but a lower body made out of heads and tails

SQUAKER is based on the Steephead parrotfish and its colors are based on the Scarlet Macaw

PARROTEER is based on the Humphead parrotfish and its colors are based on the Dracula Parrot, as well as being based on a Pirate

PARROTEER hunting and feeding only on PARASCYLLA is a reference to Pirates hunting mermaids as represented in some myths and popular media, like Peter Pan or Pirates of the Caribbean

At the moment, SQUAKER is the only suitable pokemon available in PARALOUSE's habitat for it to attach, but, if more pokemon were avaible it could attach to them as long as they met certain criteria: -Being a Fish (No mammals, reptiles of crustaceans) -Having a big enoug mouth Here are some examples of PARASCYLLA using other fish pokemons as its tail

The only exception to this rule being Gygantamax PARASCYLLA

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jambettina · 3 months

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abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

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jambettina · 3 months

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fuck it. be creative even if you never really *make* anything. write out plot synopses of stories and then move on. design OCs you'll never use. make mood boards and concept art and don't do anything with them. life's too short to forget everything that inspired you and creation doesn't have to be "complete" to be worth the time you put into it.

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jambettina · 3 months

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Go nuts y’all!

Source: Drawing 100 Years Of Disney Wonder

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jambettina · 3 months

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Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views

Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:

That is not what a happy gator looks like.

That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.

Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.

Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)

So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!

Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.

How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!

Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.

For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?

Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.

By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.

Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:

It is doing a threat display.

It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.

It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)

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It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.

There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.

In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.

It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)

Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator

So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.

Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)

Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.

As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.

Why Should I Listen To You?

Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?

Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!

But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.

Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:

Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets

The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt

Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk

Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet

Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang

Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)

Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson

Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul

Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.

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