#[General IC tag]

[vintrage]

fire cannot kill a dragon BITCH

[pencilofawesomeness]

So, I've been reading a lot of Ghost King AUs recently and... my hand slipped.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

thinking about how mulder loves to get scully a gift, usually terribly heartfelt, even if disguised as something flippant:

the superbowl vhs tape he brings her when she wakes up from her coma in one breath (and her deadpan "i knew there was a reason to live")

tickets for a football game to watch together in irresistible

bringing her flowers to the hospital in memento mori (he lies, saying he stole them from a guy with broken legs to make her laugh)

the birthday keychain in tempus fugit (and when she finds a meaning to it, he claims "i just thought it was a pretty cool keychain")

that is a man who is always thinking about her.

[ask2ps]

Does 2p China like cute stuff too

CHINA: Of course!

CHINA: I'm home to the biggest and most adorable insects on the planet, after all!

(Get stick bugged, LOL.)

好可爱 (hǎo kě'ài) : SO CUTE

萌 (méng) : ADORABLE (often for children/small animals)

[just-another-colin-kinnie]

love these guys the juuls

ALSO THAT LAST POSE SKELETON DOODLE W ZANE AND CRYPTOR! IS FOR AN AU THINGGG IM WORKIN ON 😛

[mammoth-clangen]

(Hi, i need to rant to someone who knows more than me on the topic of the de-extinction of mammoths. Apologies to your inbox and you for the wall.)

in my opinion, for mammoths, it's also vital to remember how unfortunately inbred their last living population was. If humans hadn't killed them, they'd have all died of inbreeding. They were stuck on an island, the only extant population left, and honestly, probably on their way to if not already suffering from low food supplies, assuming they had few or no natural predators there. Plus, I'm pretty certain we have at least one specimen from there, and to my knowledge, we can't exactly test how inbred it is without other direct relatives... while yes, a few cases of inbreeding would be relatively harmless to a population, rampant inbreeding is bad for a reason.

I don't think any species should be revived - even if there was somehow a good reason to - unless we can clearly and consistently prevent unhealthy amounts of incest from occurring down the line. Something which, as you pointed out, likely can't be done with "dire wolves" or mammoths.

These scientists are playing with fire, and all they're going to do is make everything worse. The very definition of "so determined to see if you could, you forgot to stop to see if you should."

You make a very good point about the mammoths towards the end, they were indeed, very inbred. The cervical rib thing is interesting to me in particular because I have cervical ribs too, lolol

That being said...

The last surviving refuge population, the Wrangel Island Mammoths, were actually were doing surprisingly well before humans showed up! This is surprising, especially given what we know about animals such as Cheetah, with very reduced genetic diversity.

But it seems the Wrangel Island population, small as it was, had found a sort of 'genetic and environmental equilibrium' that lasted 200+ generations. They were living long-term as a whole population with inbreeding depression until their extinction ~4000 years ago, at the hands of humans. Major deleterious gene mutations were apparently "purged" rather than accumulating, though why, I'm not certain.

Really strange and interesting stuff!

However, the severe inbreeding in the last mammoths is still important in discussions of de extinction.

It shows what happens when, as we both mentioned, a species' numbers drop below the minimum survivable population. "Severely reduced heterozygosity" is the scientific term for "both copies of everyone's genes are the same." It leaves them vulnerable to disease, and much less able to adapt to changes as a population.

Refugia of extinct species like Wrangel Island are fascinating, but unless they can repopulate outside their refuge, they typically don't last. It's only a matter of time before something novel to the environment, such as predators or disease, wipes the rest of them out.

Quick clarification about inbred mammoth genomes in cloning

It's important to remember that the ice sheets have come and gone across the Northern Hemisphere for hundreds of thousands of years. Mammoths lived and died among them for much of that time. Thus, any intact genomes we find would likely be from different times in their range; not all from at the time of their extinction!

Here's a couple of examples of mammoth DNA sequenced from:

52,000 year old Woolly Mammoth skin.

Three Siberian mammoth specimens dating to the Early and Middle Pleistocene subepochs, two of which are more than one million years old!

So what I'm saying is, we actually could sequence a fair number of non-inbred mammoths. And we should! Learning about their genetics is fascinating, and tells the story of their lives throughout their existence as a species!

Does this mean we should clone/GMO mammoths using those sequenced genomes?

It's still a Hard No from me, for the other reasons mentioned here.

Additionally, whatever was happening on Wrangel Island, I doubt we would be able to replicate it well enough to stop inbreeding depression in resurrected mammoths.

Like the bucardo, I think any de extinct mammoths would unfortunately be crawling towards a second extinction.

---

Sorry to mildly rebuttal you there; I just think it's important not to spread misinformation, regardless if it supports your viewpoint c:

And thanks for giving me a chance to ramble about those funny island proboscideans!

In a world where endangered species are constantly at risk of genetic drift and inbreeding depression, the Wrangel Island mammoths are a bizarre case that I don't expect most people to know about XD

Image taken from the Wrangel Island paper.

[strogoff-era]

ouppy !

[atopvisenyashill]

In the mountains, all he could think of was reaching the Wall and finding the three-eyed crow, but now that they were here he was filled with fears.

[theultimateshadow]

"I'm making a public announcement. From now on I'm no longer going to survive on just coffee. I'm going to start eating proper foods like a regular being."

"Oh and everyone say happy birthday to Sonic, I'm sure he'd appreciate the love today."

[necrotic-nephilim]

in lieu of having posted any writing/headcanons/asks in the past few days because i have been *so* busy and unable to do anything fandom-related which is terrible and evil, i have a poll out of morbid curiosity and self-indulgence. i've been meaning to ramble here about how i feel about DC's lack fo Deaf representation and which Batfam members i would personally make Deaf, but i am mildly curious about the larger opinion and now i will subject you all to the question, i would love to hear thoughts/opinions/headcanons on any specific choices. (would love d/Deaf/HoH opinions esp but i'm mostly expecting this to reach the hearing crowd, so opinions from hearing ppl are ones i'm very curious about. if you've never given it thought before you are going to now or else /lh)

[autumn2art]

If you still do request for vex….

Could Vex be purring while being hugged by Zane

Or

Vex in his ice form having a crisis

Does the first one count as a crisis? ^^ I hope you're still interested in it.

Yes, I still do request for Clouse & Garmadon or Huntsman & Syntax & Vex.

and I added a headcanon to my version of Vex

[windwardstar]

Listen. Listen. If you're thinking I like bottom surgery option except x thing. Chances are you can either not do or actually do x thing. Especially if you've not actually done research into it. Look into your options before you decide x thing has to be true.

It might make healing harder or be more difficult to find a surgeon who is willing to do so, but most of the time x thing isn't actually a hard and fast element.

[arson-09]

Hey guys! Lets remember that coercion does not equal consent! Just like how Amarantha was trying to coerce Tamlin to join her, Rhysand was coerced into his ‘relationship’ with amarantha. Its important to acknowledge this when talking critically and analyzing this book.

[kittycatred]

pssssst... if you need help pranking anyone i offer my scheming services - @stick-figure-purple

i will definitely need those services for no reason in particular hehehehe (֊⎚⩊⎚)

[rexsarmscar]

HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY 💕💕💕💕💕

[st4rry4543]

Lego movie 2 au(WARNING LOTS OF YAPPING AHEAD):

This is mostly an au based around the systar system

Everything is pretty much the same

Expect the queen adopted Mayhem when she was really little

And Raised her to become a princess originally until mayhem got a bit older and told her mom she wanted to be a general or smth idk

Susan and the ice cream cone supervised the queen while raising MINI mayhem(baby or toddler nickname, hehe)

When batman and waterva got married, mayhem wasn't really happy/ sure about it(along with susan & ice cream cone)

Both had their own reasons why they weren't sure about the wedding

However, Susan's was a bit selfish

Lucy & the queen are more like sisters who don't get along a lot AT ALL-

In This au, the queen is also known as:

The mother of the systar system. Due to her treating all the aliens duplos ect like her very own children.

Susan & mayhem HATE Batman

mayhem's Reason is more like:

My mom is a strong independent queen blah blah blah.

Susan is just jealous, ig

Mayhem and Robin are siblings(YAYYY)

Mayhem is still learning how to warm up to humans

The queen is still very uncomfortable around apocalypseburgers (as she calls them)