#I think moon was a sort of turtle/snail???

[newts-and-sharks]

Yo I just had a dream where I was an under water temple explorer and I was inside one and I found two relics and somehow they opened up and the first one was a water dragon Sun and I was terrified but he was so sweet and then moon popped out and he was such a grumpy sleepy boy and they were treating me like they already knew me and eventually the temple was under attack I think and sun grew to be so big and slipped out and destroyed all the threats, he was pissed, and I think eventually there were baby sun and moons, but I’m not sure how that happened-

[floridensis]

A: When it comes to suspect wildlife photos, can you take me through some of the typical kinds of things you come across?

P: Sometimes, the fakery is not so much a Photoshop or photo editing as it is posing. A lot of popular wildlife photos are actually staged in a certain way. Usually, if it’s too good to be true—like the snails on the frog’s head or the frog on a turtle’s back—it may turn out to be staged. The guy who was taking that photo just keeps them as pets. There’s a praying mantis that keeps getting passed around as a National Geographic photo. Someone ran it through a photo forensics image analysis tool and found evidence that wires may have been involved. Even if there were no wires, the mantises were in a state of distress. In the case of Photoshop or photo manipulation, look out for light sources coming from different directions, things like fuzzy edges or too-sharp edges, or very obvious borders along the edges. Also look at the captions: Sometimes the captions are dead wrong, and it’s actually something else happening in the photo.

A: What harm, in your view, is done by a misleading or edited photo, especially regarding wildlife?

P: This isn’t related to wildlife, but I see accounts indiscriminately pushing content from alt-health sources, such as anti-vaccine propaganda. Very, very occasionally, once an account builds up a following and has reached some sort of influence, traffic wise, they pivot to political propaganda or some other kind of propaganda. In terms of wildlife, faked or edited viral photos might produce heightened expectations for what you can expect wildlife to do.

A: I know what you mean. It almost creates some kind of expectation that wildlife is performing for us. What kind of tools do you use in your work?

P: You can enter an image URL and do a reverse Google image search to turn up where the photo has appeared before. I use another reverse image search engine TinEye a lot. It maintains a pretty extensive archive of where images have appeared for over a decade. KarmaDecay is an image-matching site specifically for Reddit—it finds how many times an image has been reposted, how long ago it appeared, and how many comments it got.

A: What's your advice for average folks on the Internet who aren't investigating suspicious photos like yourself? When should they be skeptical of what they're seeing in a wildlife or nature photo on social media?

P: Generally, if it’s too good to be true, it might just be fake. But also, try to think about what the account posting the image is trying to accomplish. What kind of emotions is it trying to evoke from you? Is it doing so in a manipulative manner? How does this make you feel? And why does it make you feel that way? If the account itself doesn’t cite sources, if it doesn’t say where it found a photo or how it discovered this image—those are reasons to ask questions. If the bio doesn’t mention who is actually running an account, I’m suspicious right away. Do a phrase search for the caption, and see how many times has this photo been posted. Also, as I said before, things to look at borders and light sources and shadows going in different directions. Look for overly-large moons. Large moons are a very popular one.

[kariachi]

Hey guys, the time has come to do my analysis into the animals and plants of Cascareau, Overflow’s homeworld! I’ll be using the shorts provided by Cartoon Network and describing and poking at pretty much every nonsentient thing I see.

First thing to note- which isn’t a plant or animal yet but still interesting- is the relationship between Cascareau and it’s moons. Of which it has at least ten. It looks like there’s actual water transference between them, which is interesting. I wonder if that’s something the locals set up themselves or not... This could be their form of a space elevator.

The first animal from here we see is an apparently flying creature. Like a starfish covered in spikes (both top- and underside), four limbed, got a nasty ringed mouth on the bottom, a single long claw at the end of each limb. They’re orange, with a darker... it look like a sepal it really does, but one of those is on the topside, with another even darker patch in the center of it. Because of the style of these shorts we don’t get movement, but since some seem to have closed their limbs so they’re in some sort’ve pod-like shape, I’m going to say that’s their equivalent of flapping wings is opening and closing their limbs. How does it work? I have no idea, but it’s all I can think of. Also, they don’t appear to have eyes... Okay, thought, the ‘spikes’ aren’t spikes at all but instead sensory nodules. The podlike shape when their limbs are closed could well be maintained to allow for a fast decent into the depth away from aerial predators or bad weather. The claws, meanwhile, may be a sign that they feed off of more mobile creatures than our starfish, and they need a dig in. A very interesting replacement for birds.

Wait, no a few seconds latter seems to confirm the dropping portion at least. Nice.

Okay, locals live underwater to avoid gods awful weather up on land. This is what happens when you have water twisters connecting your planet to its moons, kids.

Cascans seem to cultivate barnacles as fashion statements, which is certainly a thing.

So, ‘serpent glass’. Which honestly just looks to be golden shells of various sorts. Which makes me wonder, especially since it’s clearly naturally occurring, where precisely it comes from. Like, those are very clear critter-made patterns and shapes. So, serpent glass is clearly made by, probably some sort’ve mollusk? There’s several shapes of shell so I’d say various species, which eventually leave their shells behind above water? Or maybe that’s the end of their lifecycle up there. Perhaps the grown ones climb up there to lay their eggs, or are driven by parasites looking to be eaten, and then once they’re dead the Cascans gather up the shells still stuck to these spires to be melted down and made into armor. The name ‘serpent glass’ can easily come from an association with the look of a snail half-out it’s shell to that of a serpent, which then became the name for all the varieties through common usage.

Okay, this next one is a segmented wormlike creature swimming in the background of the scene. It’s main body is blue, with green tendrils and possibly fins on the front segments, what appears from here to be tentacles for feeding, and green frills running down the center segments that may be for stability and steering through the water.

After which we get another segmented creature. This one is clearly just armored, unlike than the last. It’s fins and head are perfectly fleshy. We get an underside view here, but we can see that the creature is various shades of green, it has tightly packed tentacles in place of a tail, each of it’s four pairs of fins are clawed, much like the fliers from earlier (possibly related species?). The upperside looks like it might have spikes, but definitely feelers if the underside of the jaw is any indication. Despite everything it’s clearly an air-breather, given it seems to have nostrils, and it’s mouth is massive, wide, and has several sharp teeth that are a decent size.

I can’t get a good view, but the planet may have some dark kelps that grown in the upper-mid levels.

We have a turtle, people! And absolutely massive thing, I’d say, maybe 25-40 foot tall? And an asston longer than that. Blue, with what we have to assume is an armored jaw given it’s similar shade to the more creamy color of it’s nose horns and shell. Clearly plated, very spiky along the shell. Four-eyed, an air breather, and very much toothed. Interesting, it’s got absolutely massive teeth focused at the front of the jaw. Also, it’s flippers appear to be lobed, perhaps it’s still evolving into a properly fully aquatic creature? It also has, tubes? What appear to be artificial breathing tubes implanted behind the jaw and moving down the belly, though from what little we know that could actually be a sort’ve parasite. Either way it seems to be far enough back to not affect the use of the mouth. Strange....

Interesting, we get a final image of some Cascans in front of a city and what do we see in the middle distant? What appears to be massive sources of serpent glass, clearly unbothered. Is this a different creature that looks similar to the untrained eye? Or is it the same and exposure to air does something to make it more useful? Or maybe there’s just laws in place about leaving the ones still with critters attached be.