poondragoon

[poondragoon]

This is a Sun Bittern

It’s wings are just Like That.

Cool bird

Hope you like it :)

[poondragoon]

#asmr?

Ah! So Many Rolypolies.

The sound of too many fat isopods in a plastic cup

[poondragoon]

I submit to you that the most iconic feature of any animal is either unlikely or impossible to fossilize.

If all we had of wolves were their bones we would never guess that they howl.

If all we had of elephants were fossils with no living related species, we might infer some kind of proboscis but we’d never come up with those ears.

If all we had of chickens were bones, we wouldn’t know about their combs and wattles, or that roosters crow.

We wouldn’t know that lions have manes, or that zebras have stripes, or that peacocks have trains, that howler monkeys yell, that cats purr, that deer shed the velvet from their antlers, that caterpillars become butterflies, that spiders make webs, that chickadees say their name, that Canada geese are assholes, that orangutans are ginger, that dolphins echolocate, or that squid even existed.

My point here is that we don’t know anything about dinosaurs. If we saw one we would not recognize it. As my evidence I submit the above, along with the fact that it took us two centuries to realize they’d been all around us the whole time.

[poondragoon]

[poondragoon]

DS9 | 5.01

[poondragoon]

Boy must've been hangry after all that. Imagine Roman history if he'd had a Snickers or something

So, I knew that Romulus killed Remus for insulting his future city, and then he built Rome.

I didn't know that this happened right after Romulus mounted an epic rescue of Remus after he was imprisoned by a king.

Just a little fickle, huh

[poondragoon]

People will see problems caused by top-down decisions and just assume bottom-up reasons for them.

the response i get whenever i talk about creature design is so weird. I'll be like "hey i kind of don't like it when a fantasy species in a cartoon has a beak and sharp teeth and horizontal pupils but the main character of the same species has flat teeth and a human face and round pupils, that's kind of lame" and people will be like "well actually that's because the animation budget doesn't cover those things! also no child would ever want to see a character with sharp teeth". are you stupid

[poondragoon]

That flea-squirrel could easily be a squonk, right?

Hideously deformed (affectionate)

"Disappears" and "dissolves" when threatened (hides under its tail, fleas spray everywhere)

All it needs is to be loud and cry. Maybe it's also deeply sonically unpleasant, too? Like it squeals like a crying baby at earsplitting volume when it's cornered?

Oh, and I feel like it should also be way bigger than it seems like it ought to be. Like, beaver-sized.

I am thinking once again about plausible speculative mammals that would weaponize their parasites, and in my mind, one of them would live in North America alongside skunks and porcupines, completing a long overdue trifecta of funny woodland critter with a deeply unpleasant defensive strategy. CLOCKWISE: 1) A very large rodent that has its own alarmingly large fleas, like the real life fleas of mountain beavers. Most of its body is hairless with thick, wrinkled skin that discourages flea activity, so they're left with no choice but to concentrate in its big, bushy tail. A high concentration of blood vessels in the tail keep the fleas fed, and a low concentration of nerves keep them from being too irritating. When this animal gets upset it curls the tail over itself, spreading its fur so wide that the fleas feel exposed. Parting the fur of a wild animal is incidentally a surefire way to get a bunch of fleas jumping ship to you and immediately biting you. Now look at this mountain beaver flea next to a more normal size flea and imagine the pain:

2) A big ground-dwelling cousin of the silky anteater. A combination of long, course, tightly interwoven hairs and a thick underlying layer of fluff are impenetrable to most pests, but a bald patch of thick leathery skin on its back is an ideal attachment point for its specialized ticks, kind of like right whale callosities and whale lice. The anteater can sweat a thick, suffocating grease from this area that forces ticks to let go and scatter in search of another attachment point (LIKE YOU!!!! Leave wildlife alone!!!). Maybe It has pouchlike hairless underarms to serve as refuges for even more ticks, or ticks in their juvenile stage? If they co-evolved closely enough, the ticks could have developed an instinct to migrate up to the back only with their final molt. Maybe they're even as neurotoxic (to other animals) as Australia's paralysis tick? Maybe the ticks are also brightly colored, so predators can tell at a glance to stay away. 3) A desman-like animal, but maybe it's a marsupial or even a monotreme? I feel this one would have an unconventional symbiote; like how beavers have the only fur-dwelling beetles, sloths have their own moths and hairless bats have their own skin-dwelling earwigs. None of those examples, however, are parasites! As far as we know, all three of those insects just chill on those animals and possibly clean them. So what if this one had fur dwelling blister beetles? Blister beetles are a huge diverse group of beetles whose defensive secretions can severely burn skin, and accidentally ingesting a blister beetle can be deadly to even large mammals like horses. This guy's matted wool would be thick enough near the skin to shield it from its own insects, keeping them in the matted outer fluff, where they would maybe feed on whatever sustains beaver beetles (we actually aren't 100% sure! We just know it isn't blood!). If you make this thingy angry, it curls up like a pangolin, and anything that keeps messing around with the big hairball is probably going to keep pissing off, damaging or accidentally eating the worst beetles to ever do anything of those things to.

I also want to say I didn't think of names, but if one or all of these existed I wouldn't want them to get names like "tickbacked antsloth" or anything like that. They'd deserve their own original words like squirrel or fox or bear. But I think it should sound as nasty as they are to mess with. Like a vlykus or a thobb or a snentch. Probably any of these could be a snentch maybe. Nobody tell me if that's already an urbandictionary word for something worse, let me have snentch.

[poondragoon]

Ye

You're telling me of all the birds in the world, potoos are one of the ones whose chicks actually look like themselves.

You mean THIS bird right here, and its relatives

have picture perfect Disney Movie babies like an AI algorithm thinks all the other birds have.

And meanwhile the world's most majestic awe-inspiring flying dinosaurs (or skynosaurs, sometimes flynosaurs in most respectable scientific literature) are right now as we speak hatching shit that looks like it got run over by a car and rained on (affectionate)

[poondragoon]

I've got a pretty foolproof plan, but it's wordy and kinda grisly, so...it's under the cut.

Mandatory tacticool pseudo-military name:

Operation Urban Grendel

This plan is predicated on a few assumptions derived from the chimp facts laid out in the OP:

The chimp can modulate its body temp to evade thermal imaging, and has excellent night vision. Therefore, it must also be capable of recognizing when thermal imagery is in use.

The chimp does not feel pain and possesses a remarkable healing factor. Therefore, its ability to recognize and react to injury will be impaired.

The chimp is intelligent enough to mimic human speech and mannerisms, and wants me dead. Therefore, it will be cunning enough to both recognize an overt attempt to trap and kill it, and subvert that attempt in order to try to kill me.

The chimp's activities are limited to the interior of the apartment building, and aside from its explicitly-mentioned homicidal tendencies it is a behaviorally normal male chimp.

The chimp prefers to kill with its hands, but is capable of using any weapon. Therefore, it will use any available weapon when it perceives that it cannot reach me with its hands.

The core of Operation Urban Grendel is the conversion of the apartment's lobby into a conspicuous killing floor in several layers. It will not be necessary, at any point, to identify specifically where in the complex the chimp dwells.

Every entrance to the lobby will be barricaded save for one, which will be monitored by thermal cameras. This will be the "intended" point of entry for the chimp. The barricaded entrances will remain unmonitored. The lobby itself will be largely dark. The only illumination will be floodlights trained on a platform in the center, connected to onsite generators by ground-run power lines.

Six of my twelve teammates will consist of three two-person kill squads, an additional three for killsquad reserves, leaving the final three as tac-com, admin, and a driver.

Killsquad members will be armed with .45 caliber harpoon rifles and clad in thermally insulated, identity-concealing full-cover body suits. The harpoons are tethered to a spool of 20GA braided steel cable anchored to the suit. Each suit has its own air supply, and spare suit/rifle pairs are staged in a makeshift armory attached to the lobby.

Individual shift changes occur at a random interval varying between 45-75 minutes. The shift changes will be silently broadcast to all team members via radio. One reserve member enters the armory through a secured entrance, gears up in concealment, and relieves an on-duty member.

The insulated suits are a must: the building's HVAC will be modified to chill the entire building to a wintry 1° Celsius.

In the center of the lobby, humanely tethered to a well-lit platform, is Bi-Bi, a female chimp on loan from a local zoo. In addition to her adorable little chimp sweater, mittens, boots, and beanie, Bi-Bi will be absolutely slathered with chimp sex pheromones and sitting directly under an HVAC intake.

I will be observing the affair from a steel shark cage atop a platform exactly opposite the entrance to the armory.

Sounds pretty sus and full of holes, right? Good.

We're going to assume that the chimp is going to be observing the entire setup process, looking for weaknesses and opportunities. It will absolutely know that we intend for it to come in through the unsecured entrance. So, when we "accidentally" leave a door leading to the "secure" armory entrance unlocked, it's gonna know.

Thinking that we intend to bait it onto the central platform with an "irresistible" sexual lure, then restrain it with harpoons to administer a killing blow, the chimp will instead wait for a shift change interval, enter the armory, don a suit, and attempt to shoot either Bi-Bi or myself before the real backup arrives.

This will be its fatal mistake: the suits in the armory are decoys.

When it pulls the trigger on its stolen harpoon gun, instead of launching a deadly barb, a solenoid valve will open in the chimp's decoy air tanks, flooding its suit with liquid nitrogen. Having already reduced its body temperature to 1° Celsius, the metal lining of the decoy suit's gloves and boots will assure that the chimp's hands and feet will flash-freeze into useless blocks of dead weight.

The killsquad members with functional harpoon guns will have a perfect opening to harpoon the chimp as it takes time to assess what just happened and drag it to a prepared chamber where several tons of LN2 will be waiting to freeze the little troglodyte solid. From there, it's just a matter of crushing the solidified chimp into bits and dumping the mush into a furnace.

You are tasked with killing a bloodless chimp.

Chimp Stats:

The chimp does not have blood. It cannot bleed to death.

The chimp does not respirate. It cannot asphyxiate.

The chimp does not need or desire food or water.

The chimp does not age.

The chimp is infinitely patient.

The chimp has chimp physiology. Which is to say it is roughly 5x faster, stronger, and more agile than a human.

The chimp does not feel pain.

While toxins may be effective, the chimp's physiology is an enigma.

The chimp resides somewhere in an abandoned apartment building.

The chimp nest will be extremely dark.

The chimp has superhuman senses, including excellent night vision.

The chimp can regulate it's body temperature. It will not appear on thermal cameras.

The chimp is of uncertain but cunning intelligence. It can mimic human speech and mannerisms.

The chimp can use any weapon, but the chimp will prefer to kill you with it's hands.

The chimp will heal extremely quickly.

The chimps rapid healing factor MAY be temporarily stunted through the application of anti-chimp salve, or UV radiation.

The chimp MAY be confused by particular geometric patterns.

The chimp is flammable, but it does not fear flame. Fire will not slow it.

The chimp cannot be reasoned with, bargained with, or meaningfully communicated with. The chimp only wants you dead.

Your Stats:

You must remain clandestine. You are not allowed to destroy the apartment building.

For this reason, explosives are prohibited.

You get help. You are allowed a team of up to twelve people for your anti-chimp task force.

What is your plan for killing the bloodless chimp?

[poondragoon]

i hate viruses so fucking much. literally getting attacked by a fucking shape. a concept. consumes no energy. responds to no stimuli. its only existence is to fuck with you. like fuck offf

[poondragoon]

[poondragoon]

You show up for your first day at Copyright-Free Magic School. As you're going through orientation, you're informed that all new students get a school-assigned familiar that they are responsible for housing and maintaining. The staff member assures you that your assigned familiar is appropriately chosen and reflects you in some way.

Spin this to find out yours. (Remember, you are responsible for maintaining this familiar in your dorm room.)

[poondragoon]

In a monumental discovery for paleontology and the first of its kind "Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia"

Abstract The frozen mummy of the large felid cub was found in the Upper Pleistocene permafrost on the Badyarikha River (Indigirka River basin) in the northeast of Yakutia, Russia. The study of the specimen appearance showed its significant differences from a modern lion cub of similar age (three weeks) in the unusual shape of the muzzle with a large mouth opening and small ears, the very massive neck region, the elongated forelimbs, and the dark coat color. Tomographic analysis of the mummy skull revealed the features characteristic of Machairodontinae and of the genus Homotherium. For the first time in the history of paleontology, the appearance of an extinct mammal that has no analogues in the modern fauna has been studied. For more read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-79546-1

[poondragoon]

imagine how much more fucked up the history of the world would be if eating someone's brains reliably conferred on you their memory and knowledge

[poondragoon]

Cerbirdrus

Cerberus...?

[poondragoon]

I don't know where it came from, but several years ago this idea popped into my head unbidden, and for some reason it tickles me. I don't know if it's funny, but I like it and I made it into a zine, I hope you enjoy it.

It lays out really nicely as 3-up spreads on A4 paper, so you can print, staple and fold it, then cut it into 3 zines. It made it really easy to print up 20 of them to trade at this art social thing I went to

micron, rotring and sharpie on printer paper, coloured and screentoned digitally, 2024