spiders will pull their own legs clean off if they get damaged because most of them can regrow legs during molting, which explains why you often see spiders missing a leg but never any missing half a leg?
some remarkably distressing scientists proved this by getting a spider to pull off all of its legs and then feeding its limbless torso for months until it sprouted a full complement of legs again and then hopefully used them to get the fuck out of dodge
baby spiders don’t get lenses until their first molt and before that they just have baby eyes and while this ought not to be any weirder than the concept of baby teeth, welp,
there are so many spiders floating around thousands of metres up in the air that they’re described as “aerial plankton”
The Sky Is Full Of Spiders
there are spider-parasitising spiders but instead of laying eggs in organs or stealing blood or anything like that they just ride on top of bigger spiders and steal snacks when their mighty steed is eating
there are ant-mimicking spiders that use their disguises to raid ant nests and w/e but there are also ant mimics that just. hang out. they make fake ant colonies full of fake ants. sometimes the actual ants that they’re mimicking find their house and live with them. stealth 100
some mother spiders live in communal family nests, where multiple mothers can work together to bring down bigger prey while all their collected babies are cared for by the babysitters
some mother spiders feed their babies mouth to mouth like birds
some mother spiders carry their babies around and i was aware of this but not the fact that if you steal their eggsac they’ll freak out and search for it for hours and sometimes end up adopting anything that’s vaguely the right size, they will carry around empty snail shells for weeks and lovingly dote on them…
guys i am literally about to cry over spider moms
i borrowed the book op cites from the library (biology of spiders by rainer f. foelix) because of this post and my two favourite new spider facts are
-they don’t just have an exoskeleton – they also have a secret partial inside skeleton
and
-you know the guy who gave spiders drugs and took pictures of their fucked up webs? he ended up studying them because his buddy was studying garden spiders and they spin webs at 2-5 am and his buddy was like, Ugh, fuck this, i want to sleep in, do you have anything i can give these spiders to make them spin webs at not two in the morning -and this guy, A Pharmacologist, was like, hell yea, here are some amphetamines for your spiders -and all those did was make the spiders spin some exceptionally weird webs at 2-5am -and i guess his buddy gave up in disgust at these spiders who wouldn’t let him sleep but mr. spider amphetamines was like, you know what, this is cool, i’m gonna keep going with this
Circus Tree: Six individual sycamore trees were shaped, bent, and braided to form this.
Actually pretty easy. Trees don’t reject tissue from other trees in the same family. You bend the tree to another tree when it is a sapling, scrape off the bark on both trees where they touch, add some damp sphagnum moss around them to keep everything slightly moist and bind them together. Then wait a few years- The trees will have grown together.
You can use a similar technique to graft a lemon branch or a lime branch or even both- onto an orange tree and have one tree that has all three fruits.
Frankentrees.
As a biologist I can clearly state that plants are fucking weird and you should probably be slightly afraid of them.
On that note! At the university (UBC) located in town, the Agriculture students were told by their teacher that a tree flipped upside down would die. So they took an excavator and flipped the tree upside down. And it’s still growing. But the branches are now the roots, and the roots are now these super gnarly looking branches. Be afraid.
But Vi, how can you mention that and NOT post a picture? D:
I am both amazed and horrified of nature as we all should be
I love how trees are like “fuck it, I’ll deal” at literally everything. Forest fire? Cool, my seeds’ll finally grow. Upside down? Branches, suck, roots, leave. What’s this new branch? Eh, welcome to the tree buddy.
I need to be more like tree
I continue to fear and respect out arboreal overlords.
what kind of professor did these students have that they needed to prove him wrong so badly that they literally dug up a tree, flipped it and put it back in the ground?
Sounds like y’all’ve never heard about the Tree of 40 Fruits. Well, it’s exactly as it sounds. Sam Van Aken, an artist based in New York, decided to try his hand at grafting (e.g. the process by which you attach the branches of a different tree to a host tree).
As artists are inclined to do he decided to push some limits and over the course of a few years he grafted over 40 different fruit onto the host “
including almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum varieties.”
It has a fruiting period lasting from July to October and this is what it looks like when blossoming.
Shit’s tight yo.
Also we have a group called the Guerrilla Grafters. A group who started in San Fransisco with the goal of grafting fruiting branches onto non-fruiting trees of the same type.
Most cities have fruit trees that simply don’t produce fruit because having all these would be a mess and inadvertently providing unregulated food to people comes with a lot of legal risks I suppose. These grafters seem to think otherwise and have taken it upon themselves to try and bring fruit trees back to urban areas.
HOLY SHIT
THE LAST ONE
Also of note: Cities’ refusal to plant only non-fruit-bearing trees are only planting male trees: aka the pollen producers. So the guerrilla grafters are providing food AND cleaner air!
Me, a Hawaiian: “While Hawai’i had a queen we were at the forefront of innovation, technological advancement, and international alliances. All the way up until the “democratic” government of the US illegally arrested her in her own palace and threatened to kill her and massacre her people unless she signed her country over to them. I’d like to have a queen who cares more about her peoples lives than her power again. Also, fuck Trump.”
Reposting cause I can and it’s still relevant
Its worth mentioning that Hawaii is also one of the few countries with a mythic, “Hero King” who they can actually prove existed. King Kamehameha the Great (yes like in Dragon Ball Z), was seven feet tall, the guardian of the war god Kukaʻ ilimoku, and took Hawaii from an archipelago of rival Kingdoms who hadn’t really gotten out of the Bronze Age, unified him under his dominion, and turned the Kingdom of Hawaii into a global trading empire who’s monarchs were greeted at the Court of Queen Victoria.
Guys I’m legit about to cry.
A post I made has over a thousand notes!! And most importantly it’s starting a conversation and spreading knowledge about what was done to my culture.
It is also so heartwarming to go in the notes and find people sharing more information and sources! And even more so to see that only two idiots decided to chime in with their misinformation.
Like, I am damn PROUD of y’all tumblr, we out here learning how to respect each other’s cultures and it’s dooooope!!!!
Filch has a doctorate in art conservation and has definitely read Hogwarts A History
Actaully speaking of PoA, can we fuckin talk about Filch and his art credentials?
The portrait of the fat lady gets slashed and Dumbledore hands her off to Filch to get restored?
AND FILCH DOES IT, AND DOES IT WELL?
The next time we see her there is NO mention of anything like, oh she’s back but you can kinda see where she was cut… NO. She comes back in PEAK CONDITION.
Restored by Filch, who *has no magic.*
He restored this however many hundreds of year old painting *by hand.*
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH SKILL MUST HAVE BEEN INVOLVED HERE?
This 100% changes the character of Filch. Like I’ve only ever seen him portrayed as this kind of head janitor kind of character, movies style, but like. Why? Why would Hogwarts need that if it’s full of house elves? According to Harry Oblivious Potter, probably cause Dumbledore felt bad and gave him a shitty job but one he could at least do and still be in the wizarding world.
WRONG. It’s cause that’s not his actual job.
Listen.
Dung bomb goes off in a classroom? Long night for the house elves.
Dung bomb goes off in a 300 year old suit of armor? Long six to eight weeks for Argus Filch.
Fanged frisbee tears up an irreplaceable tapestry?
Filch.
Peeves draws dicks on a portrait of the founders?
Filch.
All these damn kids in and out of here every day acting like dumbasses and blowing stuff up when it’s already bad enough they keep tracking dirt and *breathing* all over everything?
Filch.
Now how about, how does Filch know all the secret passages? A combination of things. Probably paintings told him about some. You spend weeks restoring a portrait of someone who helped build the place which lives and moves and speaks in their voice and you’re bound to at least talk a bit, if not learn a few things. But many he probably found on his own, either by wit or by study- he’s gotta be entrenched in tr history of this place. If Binns hadn’t come back as a ghost Filch could probably teach history of magic in his place.
He keeps the place in order such that generations next will still have it, and said generations next show him no god damn respect for that. He’s bitter for a lot of excellent reasons.
This post just made my morning.
@wizardlogic@poplitealqueen curse and bless you for this post because I – I never noticed that detail. I NEVER NOTICED THAT DETAIL BUT NOW THAT YOU POINTED IT OUT “
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH SKILL MUST HAVE BEEN INVOLVED HERE?
“
YES, OP. YES I DO, BECAUSE MY MOM LITERALLY RESTORES PAINTINGS FOR A LIVING! Oil paintings are one of her specialties and this kind of repair is absolutely possible but it takes YEARS of skill and a SUPER steady hand and a GOOD EYE to do holy shit my ENTIRE VIEW OF FILCH IS UPTURNED TOPSY TURVY DERVY UPSIDEFUCKINGDOWN NOW
From what I recall:
– Slashed, you say? okay, so, if it was a “clean” cut with nothing actually missing, he would likely carefully line it back up but you have to PATCH THE BACK – which takes care and skill and KNOWLEDGE of how to do it right. Also, longer slashes (as might happen with a knife, which I think was the case here) are obviously trickier to line up, requiring more dexterity
– You patch it (if you’re doing it properly) from behind, with another piece of canvas, because canvas is good and sturdy there’s a reason we paint on it but doesn’t that mean he has scraps of the stuff just?? lying around?? or at least somebody got him some asap
– I don’t know what adhesive is used for this if it’s a SMALL slash, but depending on the size, it might be easier to “line the canvas” which means LITERALLY adhering it the original, delicate canvas to a new one with HOT MELTED WAX, which has to be melted ~just so~ so that you’re not damaging the paint (I think it might be a special wax, too, idk, I might be seeing mom tomorrow and ask?? I’ll ask about whether this is also used for the smaller patches if I can remember)
– okay but here’s the tricky part. You’ve gotten it lined up. You’ve patched it. But in order to really and truly HIDE the former tear……..you need to likely do a tiny bit of INPAINTING
– fun fact: this is what it sounds like. You’re painting in the missing parts or messed up parts.
-This means Filch has to have a GOOD eye for color and pattern, and STEADY hand with a brush, because the tear is NOT noticeable.
– he likely also has a good knowledge of the ingredients of oil paint and how to mix/thin/thicken them properly!! FILCH HAS ART TRAINING. LITERALLY. HE’S BEEN TRAINED IN THIS. HE HAS TO BE.
– SIDEBAR: We know (thanks to Colin Creevey’s babbling in Book 2) that Wizarding Photographs move because during the development process, you use some sort of potion to magic it. I would lay good money that there’s something similar that gets added to oil paints, possibly enchanted linseed oil or something, something that would be in the BASE of the paint, since it’s found in all the colors of the magical paintings. He knows how to mix this in, he’s gotta, otherwise this poor woman would have like, a glitch in her painting, right? That’s my headcanon there.
– OH OH I FORGOT!! you never ever EVER want to “match the dirt” on an antique painting you want to match the actual original colors as best you can, so HE HAS TO STRIP THE ORIGINAL VARNISH AND ANY DIRT ON OR UNDER IT BEFORE HE INPAINTS
– THIS IS AN EXTREMELY LONG, DELICATE PROCESS USING OFTEN-NASTY CHEMICAL SOLVENTS. You do it goddamn inch by inch!! with like, Q-tops and cotton balls!! Alternatively, you can use your own spit with Q-tips and Cotton Balls, because spit is the most gentle solvent of all (there’s your Gross Handy Art Restoration Fact of the Day), but either way, jesus, this is a LONG process, it’s EXTREMELY tedious and a lot of really REALLY careful work. Like. My mom, and any decent restorer, will tend to charge HUNDREDS for most restorations, or thousands of dollars for particularly large ones. She charges by one of several Difficulty levels, plus by the square inch because, yeah….that’s a lot of labor. how fucking. big is this painting again???
– then there’s the revarnishing step, because you gotta PROTECT the future painting. or rather, there’s TWO varnishing steps, IIRC because you don’t really want your retouch work to directly lay on the original if you can help it, apaprently? you want it to be removable if you fuck it up or need to redo the repair at any point, apparently?? or something like that. My mom, at least, always does a layer of varnish (tedious in its own right, brushed on carefully to avoid bubbles or streaks) lets it dry for I want to say a day or two it could be longer (I’ll try to remember to ask) and THEN only THEN does she do the inpainting. which you ALSO varnish over. and let dry.
so uh, this might be another case of Jo REALLY getting her timelines awful messy because there’s no fucking way that think took under a few days to fix?? I think we’re looking at over a week MINIMUM, if Filch was really going at it, and that is my not-quite-professional opinion, it might actually be longer
I’m not saying the only way we can reconcile this is by Filch using a time turner to take the painting back in time and start work on it before the fucking school year even starts, but I AM saying that’s one of the only plausible ways I can see that painting getting repaired WITHOUT MAGIC that quickly
but my god, that man must have a really good artistic eye. and like.
it just occurred to me. he’s a squib. he couldn’t get a proper magical education at someplace like Hogwarts, since he cant’ do Charms or Transfigurations or the like, so like?? did he?? go to like a muggle college or something?? did he go to literal art school?? how did that mesh with the magical components of the paintings and other art he might be working on??
DO WIZARDS HAVE AN ART SCHOOL???
ARE ALL WIZARD ARTISTS SELF-TAUGHT?? WAS LEONARDO A WIZARD?? WAS HE SQUIB??? IS THAT WHY HE INVENTED FLYING MACHINE CONCEPTS, BECAUSE HE COULDN”T USE A BROOM?????????
I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE BEEN OBSESSING OVER HOW THERE CANNOT POSSIBLY BE ONLY ONE AMERICAN WIZARDING SCHOOL WHEN I COULD HAVE QUESTIONED HOW THEY FUCK THEY HAVE MAGNIFICENT ENCHANTED ART AND TAPESTRIES WITHOUT HAVING WIZARD ART SCHOOLS
and
……….fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck now i want to fic this??? a little??
@vorpalgirl You made an already brilliant post even more brilliant.
Four unconventional Unicorns from tonight’s Creature Feature stream! Horse+Goat, Tapir+Narwhal, Rhino+Rhino Beetle and Dik Dik+Stag. It’s so much fun to push the boundaries of what could be considered a “Unicorn”!
space whales, dismissed by most as tall tales invented by superstitious old spacefarers who spent too long off-planet, a product of the tedium of space travel and inhaling too much recycled air, but still looked for by wide-eyed ensigns on their first expedition into deep space, and conspiracy theorists encouraged by recordings of strange and unidentified sounds, picked up by scientific research ships on their quest for further knowledge of the final frontier
star-people, said to conceal themselves amongst the gas-cloud nebulas, whose enchanting song has succeeded in turning sane men mad, abandoning protocol to steer their ships into deadly asteroid fields, or forsake civilisation in favor of the cold, unforgiving depths of uncharted space
space wyrms; great leviathans of the stars, growing to monstrous sizes in the zero-gravity atmosphere, devouring unsuspecting vessels that make the fatal mistake of crossing their path. some say they eat space whales.
DarkestElemental616 