#fish birds

[passerine-parable]

A goofy fanart drawing with an absolutely loony prompt— If Gollum from Lord of the Rings did NOT fall in the volcano, and instead recovered and started an upscale hipster raw fish restaurant in downtown seattle, (they play rock instrumentals, food is overpriced, and there’s open mics at 10pm on Saturdays). His business is going great, and so he commissioned me to design him a mural.

Featuring gollum quotes, wizard seagull, fish birds, questionable ice cubes/flesh cubes and a bunch of other random crap.

This is what you get when you stick me in an entry level art class and don’t really specify what you want from me.

[untitledgoosegay]

as funny as it is to say, "there's no such thing as a fish" is not actually true

"science doesn't know what a fish is" is really not true

"fish" is not a monophyletic category. there is no common ancestor of everything that we call a "fish," and none of the things that we don't

"fish" is a paraphyletic category -- and a useful one! marine biologists use it! "fish" describes a general body plan and lifestyle. it is useful to be able to talk about coelacanths and tuna in a shared category, though coelacanths are more closely related to us than to tuna.

where this bugs me is the repetition of the idea that "scientists" are hidebound and uncreative, unable to comprehend anything that doesn't conform to a specific idea of categorization -- when this is fundamentally untrue! we know perfectly well what a "fish" is. the fact that it's a paraphyletic group is only confounding to pop science, as a funny factoid, not to anyone who actually understands what a paraphyletic group is.

[mushbeast]

oil painting of a common loon with chum salmon; falling in love with the combination of reds, greens & blues

[mintmc]

Just Skybling things...

[neunian]

Made myself a new bookmark :)

[monatoxin]

[bethanythebogwitch]

I heard it's Superb Owl Sunday so I have prepared some superb owls for you.

The barn owl is the most widespread species of owl, living on every continent except Antarctica. Their faces are shaped like a disk to help their hearing, giving them some of the best hearing of any owl. They mostly hunt by sound.

Snowy owls are the largest arctic predatory birds, They are born with black feathers and get whiter as they age. Females usually have more dark feathers than males.

Eastern screech owls have a few feather variants that make them look like completely different species.

The southern white-faced owl can increase its metabolic rate during winter to compensate for the cold and lack of food. They lay their eggs in nests built and abandoned by other birds.

The great grey owl is the largest owl by length, but a lot of that is feathers and they're actually very light for their size. Their hearing is good enough to hear rodents burrowing through snow and they can break through hard-packed snow to catch prey.

Blakiston's fish owl is the largest owl by mass and eats mostly fish. Despite the name, they may be more closely related to eagle owls than fish owls.

The elf owl is the smallest owl species, barely larger than a sparrow. They hunt bugs and play dead when caught. They like to live in holes in saguaro cacti.

Burrowing owls live in underground burrows. While they can dig, they mostly take over burrows from other animals. Farmers killing prairie dogs has severely reduced burrowing owl populations. They decorate their burrows with feces to attract bugs to eat.

The barking owl is called that because

Its nice to have a day to appreciate superb owls. Feel free to spread the love by reblogging with some more owl facts.

[todaysbird]

Flat Fuck Friday has commenced

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Man what the hell, saw someone on Instagram say “I mean sharks are definitely machines” on a video of that wonderful woman who removes hooks from sharks’ mouths 💀 “Whether or not sharks are sentient and experience joy, idk,” they say, on a video of a shark acting distant until she had a hook taken out of her throat, after which she became very cuddly and friendly with divers and would just lay in their laps. Not to mention these new sharks with hooks would just keep appearing to get their hooks removed! Some people do anything to assign fishes the title of “unfeeling machine”..

[nonasuch]

here is a concept: time travel cop, fish & wildlife division

most of their job is dealing with the kinds of assholes who think black market tiger cubs are a great idea right up until someone gets mauled, except these are even bigger assholes with black market Smilodon cubs that they are even less equipped to care for

this is the most straightforward and therefore relatively headache-free part of their job, because it’s the same “put that thing back where it came from or so help me” song and dance every time

it’s also significantly less depressing than the trophy hunters who don’t even want an alive extinct animal. those are extra annoying because you have to undo the time travel that let them kill that poor Megatherium or thylacine or anklyosaur or whatever, and it’s always so much extra paperwork.

and those people suck, definitely, and have fully earned a stint in Time Jail. no question. but they still do not create anywhere near as much work as the obsessive hobbyists with their exhaustively careful best practices and worryingly good track-covering. also, weirdly, it’s almost always birds with them?

like. the guys who will flagrantly abuse Time Law to bird-nap breeding pairs just long enough to raise one clutch of eggs apiece, and return them seamlessly to their spots on the timeline. who are so determined to keep their pet (ha) projects going that no one even realizes what they’re doing until they have an entire stable breeding population of passenger pigeons up and running. who are now the reason that reps from six different zoos are about to start throwing hands right in front of you over who gets dibs.

those guys cause the most paperwork. and half the time they’re snapped up by the same zoo or wildlife preserve that gets their colony of ivory-billed woodpeckers or Carolina parakeets or — once, very memorably — giant fucking South Island moa, and they never even spend a day in Time Jail.

[aveloka-draws]

It’s Pride month, Aveloka. You know what that means.

[mushbeast]

flying albatross w flying fish ✨

[plaiesancier]

Wheelhouse

[copepods]

messy trackpad study of my beautiful daughter(s)

[malawiwildlife]

An African fishing eagle taken at Domwe Island, Lake Malawi.