madebymaryssa

[madebymaryssa]

Great eared nightjar

#birds #creative inspiration #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

i ADORE owls but one of my favorite species of owls is the eastern screech owl, mostly bc its a blob with lil fluff ears and obviously huge eyes

theyre SO cute!!!

#owls #birds #creative inspiration

[madebymaryssa]

SILENT NIGHT

you are a mouse.

and right now, you’re scuttling around the forest floor going about your mousey business. you have many adorable mouse children to feed, after all.

distantly, you hear a faint shriek like the sound of failing anti-lock breaks.

you pause for a moment, then resume your foraging. it was probably nothing! you are a mouse and lack creative prediction abilities. you are just thinking that maybe later you’ll engage in some traditional mouse activities and pee in a sleeping bag or two, when 

BAM

suddenly, you are now a mousey corpse being borne skyward at upwards of thirty miles per hour. you would probably marvel at this, if you weren’t just a mouse and now also dead. your sad little corpse will be swallowed whole and your children will be eaten by, I dunno, frogs or something. nature is a real bitch sometimes.

congrats, you’ve just made the brutal acquaintance of the Grim Reaper of the rodent world:

HOLY NIGHT, YIKES.

but enough dramatic bullshit! you aren’t a mouse anymore, you’re a person reading a very informative and interesting article about Barn Owls which was written by a very handsome and modest genius. ahem. anyway. compared to some of the birds I’ve featured in Weird Biology before, Barn Owls may seem pretty normal! at least on the surface. (spoiler alert: Barn Owls Are Not Normal. at all.)

Barn Owls are mediumish owls that look kind of like a toasty loaf of bread, if that loaf had a pair of pitch-black nightmare eyeballs revealing a door into eternal darkness. (IF YOU LOOK INTO A BARN OWL’S EYES, THE ABYSS DOES INDEED GAZE BACK.) they reach a little over a foot long, with a three-foot wingspan. and like all owls, Barn Owls are stupidly light, tipping the scales at a whole pound and a half at the absolute most. this might not seem that big, but if that pound and a half is strafing towards you at 60+ mph talons first, it puts a whole new perspective on the situation.

so where do Barn Owls live, anyway? well. a better question to ask would be, “where do Barn Owls NOT live, Jesus Christ.”

Antarctica. the answer is Antarctica.

Barn Owls are what we call a “cosmopolitan species”, meaning they live fucking everywhere. they can be found in farmlands, woodlands, and grasslands across EVERY MAJOR CONTINENT and MOST LARGE ISLANDS worldwide! (except Antarctica, for obvious reasons.) this, if you couldn’t tell, is completely fucking ridiculous. especially for a species of owl, which tend to be mediocre fliers and grouchy homebodies.

in fact, Barn Owls have the widest distribution of any non-seabird avian in the entire world! these stubby birds of prey may look like toasted mashmallows, but they’re tenacious fliers and extremely adaptable predators who can be active day or night and will eat anything up to and including a slice of cheese pizza. these fluffy bastards even turn up regularly in New Zealand, and god only knows how they even got over there. (there’s now a stable breeding population there, to the regret of the rats.)

maybe they just called an Uber.

but aside from their adaptable tenacity, Barn Owls are pretty standard as owls go. by which I mean they’re a shambling heap of bizarro traits barely even recognizable as a bird! where should we start? 

EYEBALLS. let’s start with eyeballs.

like all owls, Barn Owls have eyeballs that are modified for UNIMAGINABLE low-light vision. they don’t see color very well, but that’s a hell of a trade of for having basically a set of night-vision goggles for eyeballs! and to cap it all off, these lucky bastards see just fine in daylight, too.

but this amazing vision comes with a price.

it’s a really weird price, too. not like the standard “first-born child” bullshit or anything.

having excellent night and day vision is fairly rare in nature, and Barn Owls had to pull some biological strings to get it- their eyeballs are more of a modified tube than the traditional Orb. yes, that’s insane. and also yes, this means the Barn Owl can’t actually move its eyes to look around like you and I can. so what do they do instead? 

why, they’ve developed loose tendons and ligaments in their neck that allow them nearly 270 degrees of rotation, that’s what they did! a perfectly logical and sane response that give NO ONE the screaming meemies OR the heebie jeebies! for sure!

…yeah okay, that’s actually pretty adorable.

but these two biological hat tricks pale in comparison to the Barn Owls’ true source of strength, the reason for their hunting prowess! which is… the ability to hear real good. REAL GOOD. Barn Owls have hearing keen enough to pick up a mouse fart in a windstorm, but they can also peg the GPS location of that poor embarrassed mouse down to within a couple inches! impressive, right? this is because their ears are sideways.

kind of, anyway. Barn Owl ears are two holes under the feathers at the edge of their attractive facial disc, and one of them is a few centimeters higher than the other. like maybe god stuck a pencil into one of them and just yanked it off kilter, or something. but there’s a method to this madness- having off-centered ears gives the Barn Owl a true reckoning of where a sound is happening in 3d space by tracking which ear receives a sound first. they’re basically a biological sonar receiver.

but I’ve saved the last for least! let’s get into the ability that really puts the cherry on this creeptacular Barn Owl cake. 

all is calm! all is bright!

Barn Owls are utterly and completely silent fliers. (when they aren’t making noises like a demon caught in a paper shredder, anyway.) one could flap three inches in front of your face in a dark room and you would never know. this is because every feather on their wings and body is edged in soft fringes that absorb sound, basically turning Barn Owls into flying private screenings of The Quiet Place.

and this absolute silence gives them a MASSIVE edge in hunting! Barn Owls hunt by flying just above the ground at absolutely insane speeds and just kind of picking up whatever smaller creature tickles their dinnertime fancies. usually this dinner is small rodents and rabbits, but Barn Owls can and will eat anything they can get the drop on up to and including SLEEPING HAWKS. smaller owl dinners like mice get swallowed whole (aaaaaaa), and their bones and fur are regurgitated later (AAAAAAAAA).

a normal bird!

so with everything they have going for them, how are Barn Owls doing on the global stage in these difficult times? pretty fucking great, actually! Barn Owls are decreasing in some areas but increasing rapidly in others, and overall they’re ranked as Least Concern. this is likely because Barn Owls really don’t have a problem coexisting with humans!

Barn Owls love to hang out in human structures (like barns! wild, right? WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED.) and eat a lot of species that humans consider to be pests, like rats and mice. it’s a win-win for both owls and humans, and it definitely helps that Barn Owls are routinely misidentified as cryptids (*coughcoughmothmancough*) or the tortured souls of the damned! (it’s because they scream at night and kind of look like the accursed shades of the dead, doomed to forever walk the earth in torment.) here’s hoping that this silent avian predator sticks around for a long, long time to come.

SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE.

–

thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series on my tumblr here, or check out the official archive at weirdbiology.com!

if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee and support Weird Biology!

and if you’d like to see exclusive Weird Biology content, check out my Patreon today!

–

IMAGE SOURCES

img1- Birds in Backyards img2- All About Birds img3- Birders Store img4- Mother Nature Network img5- Lisa L. Kee img6- Norfolk Wildlife Trust img7- Roy Rimmer img8- Steven Boyce

#owls #birds #long post #creative inspiration

[madebymaryssa]

what if there was a plague doctor that was so so so cute (and was also secretly a bird themself)

#birds #mask #skeletons #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

[Different models of wire cutters displayed together on a wooden table.

Image 1 is two photos next to each other, with a white bar separating them, and with the cutters pointing in towards the centre. There are three cutters on each side. The focus is on the blades, and so the handles are cropped out of the image a short way down.

Image 2 shows five cutters in full, set in a row. Each cutter has a white arrow digitally added to point to the safety control used to 'lock' the blades in a closed position. The three cutters in the middle are also seen in Image 1, but the cutters on either end of the line are not.

Image 3 is a screenshot of the post notes, showing two users in a row independently tagged it #darwin's finches.

Images 4 and 5 are the cutters from Image 1 next to illustrations interpreting their shapes and markings as bird faces. The blades form the beaks, and in most cases the screw where the base of the blades cross over forms the eye. The cutters' colouring and handle shapes are interpreted as the birds' plumage.

/end description]

they are like beautiful tropical birds to me

#reblog #scissors #birds #added text

[madebymaryssa]

Male Cerulean Warbler, Broad-tailed Hummingbird, and Lark Bunting, for Tonelli et al. 2023. Magnetic field disruptions lead migratory birds astray. Always a delight to contribute illustrations to papers like this one! Big thanks to Morgan Tingley for requesting these.

#birds #creative inspiration #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

yknow it's a real shame that romans didn't have access to australia specifically for augury reasons. i really wish i could have seen a roman augur have to deal with australian birds. like imagine trying to properly interpret an omen from a fuckin. cassowary

#birds #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

I always wondered why the Western Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac were both called zodiacs if one was associated w astronomy and the other w time in general. Like what defines a zodiac that the word is only used to describe these two things? Looking up the word “zodiac” in the dictionary didnt help bc it only talked about the western one.

Well, I decided to look up the etymology for zodiac and it turns out it comes from the Greek for “circle of little animals.” I love humans

#stars #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

Pomegranates are the most dramatic fruit ever.

Bitch you are a piece of fruit why does it look like I murdered you. Why do you leave my fingertips red and stained. Why do you run down my hands to my elbows when I tear you apart. Why must I rip your body into bloodied chunks to get what's inside of you. Why do you sound so lovely when I crack you open. Why must I eat you with a knife and my bare hands. Why is there so much of you and why is there never enough.

#pomegranate #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

oh you got a wine dark sea? well let me raise you . rosé fingered dawn

#creative inspiration #reblog

[madebymaryssa]

#unfortunately this might just be how expertise works in general #source: me trying to watch a period film with bad costuming

almost all wine is basically fine and the good wine isn't so much better that it's transformative, so unless you want to join the fandom or get a job in the field, becoming a wine person actually mostly just gets in the way of your ability to enjoy wines in a spirit of innocent joie de vivre, to an extent that it usually outweighs the benefits of a more refined taste

this is also how fonts work

#reblog

[madebymaryssa]

the thing nobody fucking warns you about is that once you know literally anything about sewing or how clothes are constructed it immediately becomes impossible to buy clothes because 90+% of newly produced clothes that you can actually look at in a physical store are just hot fucking garbage. like what is even the point of buying something made of thin polyester blend with a shit ton of exposed lazily serged seams on the inside and weirdly large armscyes? its completely unrepairable and also not worth repairing because it’s designed to be disposable and half its flaws are unfixable without essentially re-sewing the garment from scratch and the other half are a ticking time bomb where no structural element is expected to last past the first failure. no fucking wonder nobody bothers learning to sew buttons or darn in this day and age!! theres no damn point because the rest of the garment is totally fucked by the time it becomes needed! *i am gently escorted out of the department store, frothing at the mouth*

but you watch enough historical costuming videos and its just like. “+1 skill acquired: making your own clothes! good luck, you’ll definitely be using it from now on :)”

#reblog

[madebymaryssa]

here's what ur gonna do. ur gonna get a plain tshirt from anywhere. from ur closet or ur dad or the thrift store or whatever. then ur gonna go to the dollar store or whatever equivalent u have in ur country. ur gonna get fabric paint and a sponge. ur gonna go home and take a cereal box or a cover of a magazine or something similar. ur gonna draw a design on it [or words. or print out a picture and trace it onto the cardstock) and cut out a stencil. then ur gonna use the sponge to dab the paint onto the shirt using the stencil. ur gonna do that thinly in 2-3 coats until it's opaque but not too stiff. then ur gonna let it dry for 24 hours. ur gonna cover that shirt with a thin towel and press an iron against the design for 30 seconds. then ur gonna wash it & wear it. got it?

#t shirt design #painting #reblog #tutorial

[madebymaryssa]

There’ve been a few responses to/reblogs with tags on my post about DIY clothing embellishments that basically boil down to ‘I’d love to do this but I’m scared it’ll turn out bad/I’m not a good enough artist’. And I get it, I really do! I also want my art things to turn out nicely. But also…making it badly is sort of the point of punk DIY. 

Listen. We live in a world that would dearly love to charge you a subscription fee for breathing. The bastards are doing everything they possibly can to figure out how to turn art - stories, visual art, music, textile/fibre art, sculpture, crafts and creations of every kind - into a neat, discrete, packageable commodity, a product they can chop up into little pieces and stick behind a paywall so they can charge you for every drop of it you want to have in your life. 

The whole sneering idea that ‘everybody wants to be some kind of creator now’ and anything less than absolute mastery right out the gate is somehow shameful and embarrassing is a tool those bastards are using. It’s a way to reinforce the idea that only a set group of people can create and control art, and everybody else has to buy it. 

But art isn’t a product. Art is a fundamental human impulse. Nobody is entitled to a specific piece of art (which is where this message gets skewed into pitting people who love art against the artists who make it, while the bastards screw us all and run away with the money). But making art belongs to everybody. We make up songs and dances and stories, and paint things, and make clothes, and embellish them, and carve flowers into our furniture and our lintels and our doorframes, and make windows out of tiny pieces of coloured glass, and decorate our homes and our bodies and our lives with things we make and make up, simply for the love of beauty and of the act of creation. Grave goods from tens of thousands of years ago show that ancient hominids gave their dead wreaths of ceramic flowers, tattooed their bodies, beaded their shoes. Making things for the sake of beauty and enjoyment is one of the most ancient and human things we can do. 

The idea that we can’t, that we have to buy shit instead, because art is a product and you have to have the bestest prettiest most perfect product, is the enemy of joy. It’s the death of culture. And it means that, instead of whatever it is that you cherish and enjoy and value, you get whatever inoffensive (and to whom is it inoffensive?) bland meaningless samey-samey crap that the bastards want you to be allowed to have. What are you missing and what are you missing out on, if you don’t make or modify or decorate anything for yourself, if you don’t think you can because the product at the end won’t be polished or perfect or marketable enough? What do you lose? What do we lose? 

It is a desperately vital and necessary thing for you to make shit. For you to know that you can make shit, that you don’t have to just lie back and take whatever pablum the bastards want to force-feed you (and charge you through the nose for). That the bastards need you more than you need them. 

Become ungovernable. Be your own weirdly-endearing punk little freak. Paint on a t-shirt. Sing off-key in the shower or at karaoke night or at open mic night. Make up a story where you get to meet your favourite fictional character and you guys hug or fuck or punch each other in the face. Make art. Do it badly. Do it frequently. Do it enthusiastically. Do it for love and joy and creativity and fun and the spiteful joy of thumbing your nose at some smug motherfucker with a Swiss bank account who wants to track your heartbeat and location for the rest of your life in order to automatically pump AI-generated beats matched to your mood into your earbuds for a small monthly subscription fee of $24.99/month. It is literally the only way we are ever going to have even a chance to save art and our own lives from the bastards. 

So. Paint that t-shirt. 

(Also support artists where you can, and buy your music from Bandcamp.)

#reblog #making art is instinctive human behaviour

[madebymaryssa]

The Grandcamp exploded on April 16th, 1947.

watching a video about this cargo ship that blew up in texas in the 40’s and it’s like . i know that with a lot of incidents especially older ones like this the reason that the safety standards were so shitty was because they literally did not know that these kinds of disasters COULD happen (and in many cases these disasters are what MADE the safety standards better) but sometimes you just learn about this shit and you think. how could all these people be so stupid

#in honor of the 77th anniversary of the Grandcamp explosion #reblog #added text #conversational tags

[madebymaryssa]

Oggi e sempre ✊

#reblog

[madebymaryssa]

lets hear it for transgenderism and faggotry. can I get a round of applause for transgenderism and faggotry

#reblog