#rapax

[danielanoitz]

Sensational Discovery, the Homo Rapax

For a long time, anthropologists thought that Homo Sapiens Sapiens was the most highly developed human species. This still applies. As an upright naked ape, humans have the largest brain among primates and can describe themselves accordingly. What makes the latest discovery seem so sensational, however, is the contradiction to all previous teachings, because all scientists agreed – which is rare…

[psykersomatic]

[sophireal]

big ol brickity bracken

[chicinsilk]

Elle Juin 1986

Paloma Morales wears a viscose top with a zipped collar (Opox Rapax), cotton gabardine pants, and a leather belt. By Kenzo. Antique bracelets in Ivory (Cerise).

Paloma Morales porte un haut en viscose, à col zippe (Opox Rapax), un Pantalon en gabardine de coton et ceinture en cuir. Par Kenzo. Bracelets anciens en Ivoire (Cerise).

Photo Pamela Hanson

[featherstonevintage]

Top coat: Marithe Francois Girbaud Kimono coat: Kenzo Sweater: Opox Rapax

Marie France, November 1984

Photographed by Christian Moser

[rk-x-yz]

It must be fed

[doorrobloxstuff]

Tell us more about Quarry!Seek!!!! I love The Harvesters from Vita Carnis and want to know more about the Harvester/Seek love child!!!

Stuff I can disclose:

Seek is located deep in a phosphate quarry sucking out the nutrients from the earth and the dead people they toss into it.

There’s slip and slides were the other entities send corpses or tied up living people into THE PIT (must always be all caps. Don’t ask why.) to help feed Seek and make it grow.

They were looted from a nearby abandoned store.

Sometimes the kids will slide on them and jump into the pit for fun. They’ll always land in Seek’s mass safely because it can tell friend from food.

That’s annoying.

Rush and Ambush and the rest of the polycule will do the same.

That’s..a tad less annoying.

There’s an elevator that goes directly into the pit. There’s no reason for them to jump into it at ALL.

Has those fun little fanged bits and tendrils and tendrils that liquify people alive harvester style.

Grows citrus or pomegranate-like fruit that’s apart of its body. There’s a large area near THE PIT called The Grove were these “black trees” reside and grow said fruit, which provide nutrition for other entities and attract prey.

Snare lives in here :)

VERY large, is only outmatched by God!Seek in size.

Might be a different color then regular Seek due to the phosphate. Maybe more greyish because Phosphate in it’s natural is white-??

Rafflesia throws used car batteries into there. /j..unless

[ancientcharm]

A recreated Centurion's Phalarae harness, 1st Century AD for Legio XXI Rapax. It would be attached to his Lorica Squamata it holds 10 discs for bravery and service. The two discs upper left (the god Jupiter) and far right (god Janus) are attached to two silver torcs, added bravery awards. They could be small or large, gold or silver, flat or heavily 3D to make them more impressive and visible. Between the two top discs is Herac(k)les battling the Nemean Lion and the middle disc is the Gorgon Medusa (common central motif on Roman high officer's Lorica Musculata for hundreds of years) Above Medusa are two mythical Roman Capricorns that are linked to Augustus, and bottom left is the Emperor Nero. The middle bottom is the Emperor Tiberius standing over his dead enemies. Above Nero, appropriately is a mighty Roman Aquila (eagle) spreading its wings - the very essence of Roma herself. This is one of the most perfect harnesses I have seen, not to over the top but it clearly warns all viewers who these men are.

Text by Dan's Roman History

Photo: Cezary Wyszynski

[starlitmeadows]

y'know what? i think i'll just post all of my Bracken art even though some of it is not so pretty

from oldest to newest!

ref translation below (i'm too lazy to edit the ref in english whoop sorry)

leaves rise to intimidate prey. lowered when at rest

extra joint

forehead eyebrow cheekbone parietal bone temporal bone fused upper and lower jaw + nasal bone skull sutures + Rapax-folium specimens don't have jaws so all the sutures of the skull are connected motionlessly

???vibrissae for reading oscillations and vibrations??? (<- got too silly)

[reredram]

The Rapax - also known as Monk - is ready! Now it's up to Survivor to find his lost sib

[deathofamistress]

scavenger / praepax

a term in which one's identity is, relates to, or can be described as a scavenger creature, and/or being both predator and prey.

this term is a counterpart to predator (link) and prey (link).

"prae-" from "praeda" meaning "prey" + "-pax" from "rapax" meaning "predator"

coined by @deathofamistress. requested by @coblledforest.

this is a mogai / liom / qai identity. anyone can use.

[alphynix]

Spectember/Spectober 2023 #09: Things With Wings

(Apologies for the abrupt absence – I'm okay, just having everything break down at once. This is fine.)

So— back to the speculative evolution request list!

@thebigdeepcheatsy requested a "cactus-dwelling/germinating evolution of introduced rosy-faced lovebirds":

While Agapornis cheatsyi is still quite physically similar to its introduced ancestors, this lovebird has developed a close symbiotic relationship with the cactus Carnegiea ornipolis, a descendant of the modern saguaro.

Naturally fasciated, this cactus grows a splaying fan-like crown which the lovebirds excavate their shallow nest burrows into. Feeding on the cactus' fruit in early summer, the lovebirds then disperse the seeds via their droppings – a process that significantly improves propagation chances, both due to the birds commonly foraging and defecating around suitable nurse plants and the passage through their gut speeding up germination.

———

Someone calling themself "LB" asked for some "flying afrotherians":

Elbeitandraka venenifer is a descendant of tree-climbing Malagasy tenrecs that developed gliding membranes – and its lineage is now just about achieving true powered flight.

About 25cm long (~10"), its proportionally short broad wings require it to fly very fast to generate enough lift for its weight. It mostly only actively flies when traveling between roosts and feeding sites (or when escaping from threats), alternating between gliding to save energy and flapping to recover altitude.

It's an opportunistic omnivore, crawling around in the tree canopy foraging for vegetation, fruits, fungi, invertebrates, and the occasional smaller vertebrate, using its flexible sengi-like nose to probe around in crevices.

Much like modern common tenrecs it's capable of hibernating for months at a time through periods of scarce food availability. It also accumulates alkaloid toxins in its body from its arthropod prey, advertising its unpalatability to predators with bold contrasting warning coloration on its wing membranes.

———

And here's a combination of a couple of anonymous requests for both "flying heterodontosaurs" and "dragons with hind leg wings, a la sharovipteryx":

Inversodraco rapax is a highly specialized Jurassic descendant of heterodontosaurids that took to climbing and gliding, developing delta-wing-like membranes on their hindlimbs convergently similar to those of the earlier sharovipterygids.

Around 75cm long (~2'6"), it has unusually flexible hip joints for a dinosaur, able to splay its legs out to the sides to deploy wings supported by an elongated outer toe on each foot. Its arms form small forewings for stability, and its long tail ends in a vane of stiffened feathers that aid in steering.

Unlike its herbivorous-to-omnivorous ancestors it's primarily a carnivore, swooping down onto small prey and grabbing it with its talon-like forelimbs.

[featherstonevintage]

Teddy coat: Odile Lançon Sweater: Opox Rapax Cashmere shawl: Hermès Sunglasses: Persol

Marie France, November 1984

Photographed by Christian Moser

[rk-x-yz]

The baby ~

[doorrobloxstuff]

I just want to

I want to be rafflesia in the morning

I want to be drowning in fluff

Every. Single. Morning. They have to climb out of fur mountain. Sometimes Rush beloved pulls it back in in. Sometimes Ambush will. This why, when Raff needs to do some nonbinarybossing it’ll sleep with Seek or literally anyone else. The fluffies are wonderous creatures and of course Raffles loves them so. But the fur ocean is no joke.

They wanna snuggle, Raffles wants to scheme and feed people to T H E P I T. Rush wants to snuggle, and Ambush..yes it schemes too.. but snuggle first.

Rafflesia actually HATES sleeping alone. The hotel is scary af even in the daytime….and it thinks about things…like all the murder and it’s past mistakes and the entire weight of its consciousness comes crashing down in the middle mf night when it’s trying to S L E E P. It doesn’t cry of course but it does stare off into space.

Still working on backstory stuff, but it probably lost a lil baby entity..to..well.. let’s just while the killing and mutilating and vita carnising of an entire 30+ mile population is never justified. There is reasoning behind it.

[a-book-of-creatures]

It’s been nagging at me for a while, so I’m going to try to put together my thoughts on the Quetzalcoatlus sequence in Prehistoric Planet 2. In the grand scheme of things it’s tiny, insignificant, and I loved Prehistoric Planet, but I’m not going to turn down the opportunity to talk at length about scavenging birds.

(Spoilers (?) for Prehistoric Planet 2 ahead. Go watch it!)

I’m talking about the part where a Tyrannosaurus is driven off from an Alamosaurus carcass (presumably carrion and not killed by the tyrannosaur). The tyrannosaur is expressly stated to be concerned about losing an eye to those Whopping Big Beaks. The pterosaurs aggressively fly over it a few times and honk angrily until the tyrannosaur walks away in Shameful Defeat, leaving the carcass to the pterosaurian pterrors.

And that confused me.

Before I go on, I want to point out that this is not a Who Would Win discussion, I’m not going to argue for or against one or another. Not going to discuss if Tyrannosaurus should really have won because of the massive weight advantage and lack of fragile bones/wings, or if the big landlubber had it coming and the numbers and aerial advantage was too much. I’m not arguing about Quetzalcoatlus being scary or not either (it’s scary as all hell).

No, the issue I had was with the beaks.

This is the Quetzalcoatlus as it appears in the show.

Impressive beak, isn’t it?

But it’s not the beak of a flesh tearer.

Let’s back up a bit. Birds that eat meat by tearing it into manageable chunks typically evolve sharp, hooked beaks to make up for the lack of teeth. Like this eagle for instance.

Majestic. They make the cutest sounds too. Look up golden eagle sounds, don’t believe the red-tailed hawk propaganda.

Raptor bills look intimidating, but they’re not there for killing. They’re cutlery. The talons do all the work, and then the beak tears up the meat into delicious gobbets of protein.

Even shrikes get in on the act. They don’t have killer feet, so they use their ripping bills to impale prey and tear at it.

Aw, look at it, it thinks it’s accipitrids.

The Quetzalcoatlus’ bill, though, doesn’t have that hook. It doesn’t look like the bill of a bird that dismembers its food. The closest thing I could think of to compare it with was stork bills. Specifically the marabou.

Ol’ pickaxe-for-a-face. This is the beak of an animal that stabs smaller prey and swallows them whole with minimum processing.

But a bill this long and pointed, turns out, is good for stabbing but not for tearing meat. Marabous are scavengers, but they won’t tear apart a carcass on their own. The “[b]ill [is] not well designed for dismembering carcasses, so [it] normally steals scraps from vultures or snatches up morsels that are dropped” (del Hoyo, Elliott, and Sargatal, 1992).

As you can see, vultures retained the hallmark accipitrid steak knife face, and are much better at Ripping and Tearing. This one (the lappet-faced vulture) generally goes first, being big and strong enough to Rip and Tear tough hide and get to the fleshy interior.

In fact, “[d]espite its huge bill, the [marabou] stork can rarely dominate a carcass and normally stands by the much more numerous vultures and nips in from time to time to snatch morsels which are dropped by others, though Tawny Eagles (Aquila rapax) in turn often steal food from the stork. The bill is not apparently very effective for cutting up meat and dismemberment is normally carried out quite simply by pulling” (del Hoyo, Elliott, and Sargatal, 1992). And if marabous have trouble with the average carcass, I wouldn’t imagine Quetzalcoatlus would fare much better with a titanosaur, which presumably has rather thick skin too.

One big happy family. That’s a much smaller carcass being shared (with the obligatory squabbling) by a whole bunch of dinosaurs. Neither vultures nor marabou are trying to monopolize it.

So... I don’t see why the big stork pterosaurs would chase away a perfectly good meat processor. I know everyone wants to see Big Prehistoric Animals Fighting With Lethal Intent, and everyone wants to see Tyrannosaurus Getting Knocked Down A Peg By The New Hotness, but I think it would have been a more interesting and believable scene - not to mention more in keeping with Prehistoric Planet’s attempt to be as scientifically believable as possible - if the pterosaurs acted like marabous the size of giraffes, both them and the tyrannosaur keeping a respectful distance of each other, and snapping up bits of meat left behind. And maybe the pterosaurs pulling the dinosaur’s tail for good measure, the way ravens bully eagles.

But it would make for a much less exciting scene. Who wants to watch a bunch of scavengers milling around a carcass and honking at each other as they jockey for the best morsels and settling their differences in ways that involve as little risk as possible? I mean, I do, but I don’t assume the average viewer does.

And that concludes my altogether far too long opinion on a single scene from a great series. Of course, I’m not a paleontologist and never will be, I’m only approaching this with what I know about birds, so please feel free to let me know if there’s any details of Quetzalcoatlus anatomy that do in fact suggest it could rip and tear!

References

del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; and Sargatal, J. eds. (1992) Handbook of the Birds of the World, Vol. 1. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.