kholstomer

[kholstomer]

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm cuddling my huskies as I type ❤️

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Ungulates of The Naturalist`s Library

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dostoyevsky kinda ate with “your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

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speaking of how to train your dragon and creature design, the shift from the really naturalistic art direction and character animation for the first movie's toothless- the face getting flatter, the eyes bigger and closer together, getting rid of the little realistic details like the dust collecting between the scales, the pink splotching where the scales end at the nostrils, the muted markings, the animation making a shift from largely realistic animal behavior to much more anthropomorphic- is such a huge downgrade to me, made worse because it's subtle in such a way that you will sound insane if you mention it

(huge L for the "the audience's capacity to find a creature cute and empathetic and expressive is directly proportional to how much it looks like a human baby" principle of character design because the first one is so so much cuter)

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This Japanese wolf skull was accidentally discovered during remodeling work on a house in Tokushima City, Shikoku in 2019.

The skull was stored in a labeled box on the house's kamidana (miniature altar) and was previously an object of worship. [x]

Japanese wolf specimens are extremely rare, with only a handful of specimens in museums worldwide, so this is a pretty amazing find.

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Southern greater kudu Tragelaphus strepsiceros strepsiceros

Observed by hirons, CC BY-NC

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reuploading again because either my ALT text or caption sent the previous post to the shadow realm

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Ethiopian wolves feed on the sweet nectar of a local flower, picking up pollen on their snouts as they do so – which may make them the first carnivores discovered to act as pollinators.

The Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) is the rarest wild canid species in the world and Africa’s most threatened carnivore. Endemic to the Ethiopian Highlands, fewer than 500 individuals survive.

Sandra Lai at the University of Oxford and her colleagues observed wild Ethiopian wolves lapping up the nectar of Ethiopian red hot poker (Kniphofia foliosa) flowers. Local people in the mountains have traditionally used the nectar as a sweetener for coffee and on flat bread.

The wolves are thought to be the first large carnivore species ever to be recorded regularly feeding on nectar.

“For large carnivores, such as wolves, nectar-feeding is very unusual, due to the lack of physical adaptations, such as a long tongue or specialised snout, and because most flowers are too fragile or produce too little nectar to be interesting for large animals,” says Lai.

The sturdy, nectar-rich flower heads of the poker plant make this behaviour possible, she says. “To my knowledge, no other large carnivorous predator exhibits nectar-feeding, though some omnivorous bears may opportunistically forage for nectar, albeit rarely and poorly documented.”

Some of the wolves were seen visiting as many as 30 blooms in a single trip. As they lick the nectar, the wolves’ muzzles get covered in pollen, which they could potentially be transferring from flower to flower as they feed.

“The behaviour is interesting because it shows nectar-feeding and pollination by non-flying mammals might be more widespread than currently recognised, and that the ecological significance of these lesser-known pollinators might be more important than we think,” says Lai. “It’s very exciting.”

Lai and her colleagues at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme now hope to dig deeper into the behaviour and its ramifications. “Trying to confirm actual pollination by the wolves would be ideal, but that would be quite challenging,” she says. “I’m also very interested in the social learning aspect of the behaviour. We’ve seen this year adults bringing their juveniles to the flower fields, which could indicate cultural transmission.”

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bad ending.

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cannot stop thinking about all the fandom foremothers (and fathers) who would have been so happy to see this. who never could have imagined the technology involved to create it 54 years after the show was cancelled. the ones who were around to watch generations but not to see this final moment, and how they would've smiled and cried and drawn their art and clutched onto each other in excitement just like we are <3

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765874 Unification - Short Film from The Roddenberry Archive, OTOY, William Shatner and the Nimoy estate, in commemoration of 30th anniversary of Generation being released.

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oh to be 93 and executive produce a short film where you get cgi'd to look like you did in your decades-old beloved scifi franchise role and then all that happens is you walk through a garden and meet your fictional lover on the astral plane on his death bed and you hold his hand one last time - which, as long established, is how people kiss in his culture - and the sun rises. and you call it "unification"

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Reborn

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King Laios

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𝗍𝗂𝗅𝖾𝗌 𝖻𝗒 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗍𝖾 𝗌𝖺𝗅𝗍

𝖨𝗀: 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗍𝖾_𝗌𝖺𝗅𝗍_

[kholstomer]

In the Moonlight & At the Blue Hour by Jens Steyer

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Hans Smidth, Illustration til St. St. Blicher: "Mowns". Helhesten og Mowns; f.n.: dans i bondestue, 1884-1885, Statens Museum for Kunst, open.smk.dk, public domain.

(Picture source for Illustration til St. St. Blicher: "Mowns". Helhesten og Mowns; f.n.: dans i bondestue)