thefloofypoof

[thefloofypoof]

Help support PhyloPic!

Hey Tumblr,

I don’t usually share this kind of stuff on tumblr, but this is a project that I do feel is worthwhile. PhyloPic is a project to provide free-use silhouettes of organisms of all kinds, and it’s an excellent resource that I’ve used many times.

The project has already found a great deal of internet success; I can personally attest to seeing images from PhyloPic often in scientific papers. And it’s not just on a species-by-species basis - the project also arranges organisms by taxonomy. This means you can search practically any taxon and see its full illustrated evolutionary history, down to the first DNA - or add multiple taxa, and compare their evolutionary histories, seeing when they last diverged.

Play around with it for a while - it’s a great educational tool in addition to a great bank of images! But after playing around with it, you’ll notice that it’s pretty slow. This is a passion project of Mike Keesey, well-known Internet Dinosaur Person™, and it needs work to re-engineer it to make it faster and more functional. This update will also add new search functions, including sorting by license, an improved taxonomic search, and allowing users to “save” silhouettes for later use. 

PhyloPic is currently running an IndieGoGo campaign to try and raise money to make these improvements. There’s five days left in their campaign, and they’re over halfway to their goal! If just half of my followers gave a dollar, the project would be fully funded. I think it’s a worthwhile project, and it’s one that I’d like to see succeed.

Here’s a link to the IndieGoGo campaign!

#science! #evolution #biology #zoology #paleontology #taxonomy #Phylogeny #genetics

[thefloofypoof]

Just a bird doing magic things. Nothing out of the ordinary.

#art by others #bird #mage #dnd #illustration #illustration by others

[thefloofypoof]

Look! It’s my favorite bird!

#birdpants #art by others #bird #illustration by others #illustration #zoology #animals

[thefloofypoof]

Happy spring!! Enjoy a moomin&snufkin animatic I made in spring’s honor <| :’^)  I’m so excited for whenever the new 3D Moominvalley will be released in English. Yippee!!!

#My heart :'0 #moomin #snufkin #moomins #the moomins #art by others #animation

[thefloofypoof]

no, you don’t, Bilbo

#tolkien #comics by others

[thefloofypoof]

✨ LGBTieflings: Gay, lesbian, bi, pan, trans, non-binary, genderqueer, ace ✨ 

Hi, i’m Alex, i am queer, i am weak for tieflings. Check out my Redbubble if you want LGBTiefling t-shirts, stickers, and more!

#tiefling #art by others #lgbtq #pride flag

[thefloofypoof]

“Porygon Beta” - Porygon pre-evolution

Someone commented in tags they wanted to see a minecraft-esque porygon and I had this baby form on my mind for a while so here you go.

#perfection #porygon #pokémon #pokemon fanart #3d model #Art by others

[thefloofypoof]

halflings love their new giant children

#Happy things #hobbits #lotr #cute #cheer up #orcs #art by others

[thefloofypoof]

#cheer up #animals #google streetview?

[thefloofypoof]

Okay but explain to me how LOTR is not an offbeat and zany family road trip?

You’ve got Gandalf driving, and he’s kind of a crazy driver who speeds and cuts people off and gets lost but no one else can drive because he’s the only one who actually knows where they’re going. And then there’s Aragorn sitting shotgun, holding on for dear life to the handle above the door, occasionally turning around to scold people and hand out healthy snacks. Meanwhile there’s actual children Merry and Pippin, who are hyperactive, bored and hungry af, fighting to pass time and asking “are we there yet?” every ten minutes. Boromir is like their fondly amused older brother, who eggs them on bc he was 10/10 the same way when he was a kid but now he’s smug in the knowledge that he’s vaguely more mature. Frodo is the annoyed teenager who doesn’t want to be there whatsoever, and has their headphones on and pouts while staring out the window. Sam is the best friend who Frodo finagled into coming just to make the trip more bearable, who is 10/10 confused by the family dynamics and calls everyone “Mr.” or some other formal name. And then there’s Legolas and Gimli, who are like cousins whose parents forced them along because it’d be “good for them” and they literally hate each other and everyone else in the car but simultaneously feel they they are above all of it and prove that by specifically fighting with each other.

#happy things #lotr #hobbits #lotr road trip

[thefloofypoof]

I always wondered about the houses of snails. Do they... create them? Why that shape? Will they essentially die if they were separated from their house or can they like... grow a new one or steal a discarded one like a hermit crab? In that vein: does the house grow with them or do they have to shed it if it gets too small...? 🧐🤔

Great Questions!

iNaturalist links to the above snails for IDs:Top: [1] [2] [3] Middle: [4] [5] [6] Bottom [7] [8] [9]

Snails are in the class Gastropoda with slugs, and the only difference between the two are that slugs don’t have a shell. But, it’s hard to tell what to to call some species.

This is a Long-tailed Semi-slug from Malaysia (Copyright Arnold Wijker, photo from iNaturalist [link]). It has a shell, but it can’t fully retract into it, so it acts more like a slug. The shell is partially covered by flesh in this photo, but the semi-slug can completely cover the shell with its mantle.

If you go up one taxonomic level to phylum, slugs and snails are mollusks–same as clams (bivalves, two shells!) and cuttlefish (which is where cuttlebones come from, if you have pet birds, you are giving them cuttlefish bones chew up!). So you can trace the evolution of the shell in Mollusca from bivalves, to gastropods, to cephalopods (one internal shell, though the chambered nautilus still has an external shell!)

But back to your questions!

Do snails create their shells? 

Yes, absolutely! Do you create your skeleton? Do you create your skin? It’s the same situation for them.

Snails are born with their shells! I used to keep a planted aquarium, which meant I often had snails GALORE (they would ride in on my new plants, and reproduce like crazy). Snails are hermaphrodites, so you don’t have to worry about if you have males and females, as long as you have two (or even one–some species can self-fertilize!), you will have a million in a week. The eggs of the snails I had in my aquarium were held together with a clear jelly, and the developing snails in the eggs were white. In the lower photo below, you can see the babies in the eggs. The white parts are their shells–their skin was still transparent.

A much larger baby snail I found in my tank is in the above left, with my index finger for scale (still a tiny baby!). In the top right, I have included a very tiny baby snail from my back yard in Texas. This baby was so small his shell was still transparent!

Another question you asked kinda answered another one: 

Why that shape? Do the shells grow with them? 

This one gets really interesting! So, snails are born with their shells. But unlike arthropods, they don’t molt. They keep the same shell their entire life, for the same reason turtles do:

From Wikipedia [link]; Original by Al2, English captions and edits by Jeff Dahl 

All their organs are in there! Some snails will even let you see inside, like with this glass snail from France!

Photo by Julien Renoult, available on public domain via iNaturalist [link]

So what do they do when they need to grow? Let’s look a little closer.

Here is a common snail in Texas, called a Texas Liptooth Snail [iNat link]. This is a full-grown adult:

These are pretty small snails, so let’s look in the microscope:

Check out those ridges! Maybe you have noticed these ridges on other snails before, or maybe you haven’t. The ridges are much more pronounced on this snail because the shell is so small, but those ridges function similarly to a ring on a tree–it represents a period of growth. The shell is made up almost entirely of Calcium Carbonate, the same mineral that composes limestone and eggshells (you know, like in bird eggs?). That tiny smooth area in the center of the shell is the portion that formed while the snail was inside the egg, then as the snail ate, the nutrients from its food were used to grow extra rings at the opening of the shell, which became steadily bigger, which allowed the snail’s body to grow! Then it could eat even more food, put down bigger rings, and on and on.

So now you may be wondering, I’m talking about snail shells which are usually spiral shaped, which can be long and narrow, wide and flat, or any variation of the two. But I’m not even talking about that weird… pointy cone thing I included in my opening collage?

You mean… the limpet? 

Oh yes, the limpets. These ones are Tortoiseshell Limpets from New Zealand [link] You may have noticed them on saltwater beaches, stuck to the rocks, and you may have confused them for strange looking barnacles, or maybe you had no idea what they were and you just ignored them or forgot about them. Or maybe you had a different name for them. But, yes, they are gastropods. And yes, that makes them snails.

These grow almost exactly like trees: much more simply put, they are little cones, and as they grow, they make a ring at their base, which makes them a little bit larger. For some species, the availability of nutrients will result in different colors in their rings, so you can see their age very clearly!

So what happens if they lose their shell?

I think by now, you can probably guess. They can’t really “lose” their shell, because it’s part of their body, which you can see if you take a really close look at snails (or you just, harass the heck out of them like I do). 

Snails that hold onto their shells with their mantles! TOP: A tailed snail I saw in Malawi (Africa [iNat Link]) BOTTOM: One of my aquarium snails

Shy snail friends attempt to retreat to safety but can’t because their organs are in the wayLEFT: A large friend from Malawi [iNat link] RIGHT: A Wolfsnail friend from Texas [iNat link]

GRAVITY

If you can get a view of a snail from the right angle, you can see their body coming out of their shell.

LEFT: Globular drop [iNat link] RIGHT: Decollate snail [iNat Link], both from TexasGIANT friend on my arm from Malawi [iNat link]

Thanks for asking, I hope I satisfied your curiosity! 

March 16, 2019

#Snails #Snail #Zoology #Biology #Science!

[thefloofypoof]

fic where aziraphale is fully aware that he is deeply and irrevocably in love with crowley and not in the all-encompassing angel way, but since crowley is a demon, he’s clearly not capable of reciprocating. aziraphale resigns himself to being content with what he’s got despite not at all being in the business of denying himself what he wants.

he accidentally confesses this to crowley while they’re both absolutely swozzled and crowley sobers up so fast it breaks the sound barrier, rounding on aziraphale like “are you fucking kidding me with this shit you can literally sense love you absolute moron I’m a goddamn imax technicolor surround sound of being in love with you”

and aziraphale is just like “………but that’s just the background love static. earth has always felt this way around you.”

“yeah,” says crowley, as if he is very patiently explaining that water is, in fact, wet. “yeah it has.”

#hhhhhhhhhhhh #short fic #Good omens fanfic #good omens #aziraphale #crowley #fanfic #fanfiction #writing #writing by others

[thefloofypoof]

Handmade Stuffed Toys by NaBakir

#cheer up #happy things #cute animals #plushies #cute #animals

[thefloofypoof]

“I’m asexual.”

#todd chavez #hooray #art by others #happy things

[thefloofypoof]

Windows 10 has been screwing with my workflow ever since I upgraded my pc.  Here are some fixes to some common problems.  Thought this might help other people like me who have been pulling their hair out in frustration.

#drawing tablet #digital art #drawing tablet tips

[thefloofypoof]

#Cute!!! #happy things #cheer up #reptile #cute animals #zoology #biology

[thefloofypoof]

seeing the emoji ratings makes me irrationally angry and i’m going to rectify this

listen i’m going to fucking make amends okay? emojis are Good. they are Fun. comparing them to their siblings is so fucking cruel. they’re just trying to live! leave them alone. here’s some ratings of my favorite emojis and i’m going to make more because fuck you and shut up they’re GOOD!!!!!!!!!!

Rat Emoji Ratings (Rat-ings)

soft, realistic shading! ears perked up, shiny & alert eyes, glossy fur, wonderful tail… she’s beautiful. she looks like a model. nice and plump. i love her. i’d love to take her home and name her Marina and the Diamonds! 10/10

funky and mischievous! a little wonky, but he’s only filled with love. he’s wearing mittens. i’m personally not a fan of google’s use of gradients, especially as it overcomplicates the image, but he’s shiny and happy all the same. good mouth, good whiskers. a widdle tail. 10/10

SHARP! BOLD! DEFINED! they’re Unabashed and Unashamed!!! they’re here and they’re unafraid! only 3 colors used, and the simplicity is effective! the image reads well, even from a mile away. They’re A Rat. They Are Here. 10/10

graspers POSED and READY! she’s reaching for something, i’m sure. a beautiful, off-white coat. while the nose and ears look a little off to me, the gradient work is much, much better than google’s. samsung knows how to treat a lady right. she’s got a purpose, she’s gonna go on a night on the town with her gf and she’s reaching? for the PERFUME! not that she needs it smh. i love her tail, as inaccurate as it is. fuzzy. 10/10

oh my goOHMY FFholy hs hoH M G IOD OHLY Fu Oh my GoOH he’s so Small. fufck. Fuck. he’s so goddamn small. LOOK. HE’S SO FUCKING SMALL OH MY GOD LOOK aoghh hh hh Look. Look at this little man. he’s so fucking small. look at his widdle face, his little man hands, his beautiful ears. 10/10. holy hsit. h

scruffy, rough, and tumble! this one gets into scraps! they are a big lump of ferocity and…………. Love. they look like the protagonist of a simplistic indie game. they are a valiant warrior, covered in fuzz. you can’t even see their fucking arms. they’re Lump. simple and easy to read. 10/10

She’s A Lesbian. Apple and Samsung had a baby together and she has the best traits of both. she’s literal perfection. a subtle but appealing sheen, a brimming intelligence, a pinprick awareness. she’s beautiful. the WLW baby of a lesbians. 10/10

CHOMKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lil man have Chonky Taile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fuck. his face is shaped like an almond and he’s an alert fella. fuzzie tail. comnkyhky tiale……………… god he’s so fucking rotund 10/10

their tail may be crooked but they’re a rat with a purpose! soft and gentle, and yet they have depth. Edges. they’re firm and they know what they want. they’re also fat as fuck. they’re so good. look at them. look at their eye… small but knowing. they’re so damn juicy, filled with love. 10/10

a helpful lady!!! she’s also got a chonky tail, and she’s long and content. low to the ground, she’s ready to skitter over to help!!! she’s got good, little beady eyes, and lil whiskers for twitching. i’d trust her with my life. 10/10

ch.b k oh mg fOF Y OH THEY ARE SO FUCK IGNGCH oh th

OH THEY ARE SO MOTHERFUCKING CHONKY

velvet fur……. fuzzy arms………. fat. fat, fat. very fat. subtle pillow shading but they are SO FUkcn kiy gn gng  CHnykunky. look they have chin fat they are so FAT look at their EARS their eyes are so SMALL oh my GOD THey arer So FAT 10/10

a little abstract, but filled with a lot of creative ideas! round, imaginative, and all-in-all very holdable. i can also see this one as being an indie game protagonist, or perhaps a cartoon character. he’s just an enjoyable fella! maybe he and the twitter rat would be friends!!!! 10/10

baby sister of twitter’s rat!!!!!! she’s soft, sweet, and innocent. but WATCH OUT!!!!! she probably likes to skitter around and take naps!!! she deserves to be held. she is so warm and so good and i love her. i love the lineless approach, and it works extremely well. 10/10

#happy things #save for later #rats #rodent #rat #emoji rating #cute #cute animals