Today's Seal Is: Sippy Juice

Imagine yourself submerged in the prehistoric ocean. There are no fish, instead the only life forms consist of feather-like sessile organisms that sit on the seabed, filtering the current. The early organisms that evolved out of this, such as Jellyfish and Starfish, had radial anatomy. Their body structure entails a central axis from which you can split everything else. These bodies are simple, not designed for active mobility, lacking a ‘forwards’ or ‘backwards’. They didn’t even have eyes, instead interacting with and responding to the world via photoreceptive cells. What emerged from this were two developments: the evolution of complex eyes and the emergence of bilateral anatomy in early vertebrates and arthropods. In contrast to radial anatomy, bilateral anatomy entails an organism that can be split down the middle with rough symmetry. This is to say that they are built for direction. A body that is built for mobility entails significantly more complex behaviour behind its operation. Behaviour, in this sense, also becomes significantly more directed. These creatures now living in the ocean or on the sea-floor now begin to directly interact with one another. The mechanisms facilitating this interaction become pretty apparent in the fossil record; eyes, claws and antennae. The evolutionary consequences of this are the emergence of a complex nervous system alongside the presence of predation and, as Godfrey-Smith puts it “[From this point on] The mind evolved in response to other minds”. 

i really like the clicking winding robot mechanical sounds the dca makes if there was a video of just that sound i would replay it over and over and over

Me in my mind: Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be a fish? What it’s like to inhabit the aquatic world? Fish literally exist inside their element. Do you wonder how it feels to breathlessly suck in the water too thick for our lungs, enjoy the feeling, revel in the fresh cool water washing over your gills? Wander the world around you in perfect three dimensions, no longer restrained by gravity. Watch the sunlight ripple through the waves, dancing on the bottom. Even the darkness of night and winter is no longer frightening, as you can feel every movement of your fellow kin and the environment around you. Inches apart, never touching, yet you feel it all. How does it feel to fill your swim bladder with gas and rise from the deep dark muck motionlessly like a regal ghost ship from the fog? How does it feel to caress the weeds and reeds with your fins, jump briefly from the waves into a world so unlike your own, of thin atmosphere and dry air? And to think, we were fishes once, our ancestors. Look at how far we’ve come from home! We have different coating on top of our skin which harms the ray-fins’ mucus, our scales adapted into hairs long ago, we posture ourselves like seahorses with no tail, our hands are made for holding onto things. We’re so different now, and yet, so similar. Every time I look into the eye of a fish I see understanding: a fellow traveler of the Earth whose circumstances brought her and me together. Her eyes study my body and my surroundings. Does the fish look at me, through the same glass, and wonder about the other world like I do? Does she imagine what it’s like? What does she feel?

Me out loud to my family: damn can you believe fish are real

my honest to god reaction to hearing about the UnitedHealthcare CEO being murdered was to bust out laughing so hard I almost puked

I like invertebrates because they have no bones :]

(grabs you by the shoulders) you have to make room for new experiences in your life. you have to go through the unpleasant work of leaving your comfort zone, even if just for a few minutes at a time. because if you don't, your brain will trick you into stagnation. you will start to believe that the world can barely fit you in it. but that's not true. it's the opposite way around. you can fit the whole word inside of you. your task is only this: to welcome it with open arms

(src)

How to Paint Light by jonhuangart

Based on my headcanon that Chica's the only Glamrock who isn't freaked out by the Daycare Attendant (Click for better resolution)

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.