I know European Starlings are not everybody’s favourite in America (for good reason, and I know it is not the bird’s fault), but can we for a moment sit down and admire their most beautiful plumage?
an interesting take on this from matt braly, creator of amphibia
Imagine being a business that has managed to get THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS IT IS POSSIBLE TO HAVE, and you’ve managed to make it so this is a bad thing.
You did it. That’s late stage capitalism in one sentence.
“What was promised as infinite growth proved to be finite” feels like a very concise summary of every business person ever everywhere.
I just don’t get it. How can our society act so goddamned normal about seahorses. How can anybody so casually accept that that’s a fish???
This is one of nature’s most anatomically perverse of all beasts. A FISH, like a carp or a bass or a beta is a fish, but it bent its body straight up only to bend its head permanently back down. It stretched its skull into a pipe. It tapered its tail like a lizard, specifically like a chameleon. It can also move its eyes independently by the way, you know, like a chameleon. Fun fact, it can change color to express its mood, like you know whatever does that. It doesn’t properly swim anymore. It buzzes its few remaining fins like an insect’s wings to float itself around at a snail’s pace. It lives its whole life clinging to coral branches or seaweed, which means it decided to become a “tree dweller” in an environment where gravity didn’t even matter anyway. The males get pregnant. They make noises at each other by rubbing some of their neck bones together. Every day, EVERY DAY a mated pair does a little dance and a little neck bone song so they remember which two seahorses they were. They’re a beautiful precious obscenity. Nothing so adorable ever made such a strong case against a logical creator.
They have as little skin and meat as they could get away with. Their skeleton is almost all they are.
This thing is one of the most successful hunters on the planet. Because their mouth is fused shut, except for the tip, they can create a powerful suction force in front of that one little opening in order to draw in prey.
Lions have a 20-30% success rate on their hunts, depending on daytime and if they’re in a group. Great white sharks, anywhere from 40% to 80%, depending on the size and skill of the individual. Dragonflies, which are one of the most successful terrestrial hunters, can hit about 80-85%. Seahorses? 90% success rate, sometimes more. Only a fraction of their prey escapes that powerful vacuum. They’re incredibly precise.
If you touch them, they feel hard, because of the skeleton underneath their skin. Their tails are being studied to make coiling bridges, because of how strong that interlocked structure is. Different species range in size from over a foot long, to barely an inch.
Behold: not just a fish, but a wildly successful predator!
horsey
don’t forget their majestic cousins the sea dragons! these are the leafy and weedy sea dragons
and the newest seahorse family member, discovered in 2015, the ruby sea dragon ❤️
Yeah that’s when someone tried to straighten the seahorse back out and it still didn’t look right. The more they bent and mushed it in their hands to look like a fish again the worse they fucked it up until finally they just left it and walked off and hoped nobody would ask who did this
(I love them so much)
Oh, so it’s actually the ruby sea dragon on a string! Got it.
i doubt that someone hasn’t already brought them up in another reblog but anyways. don’t forget about pipefish! relatives of seahorses which are literally as physically close to a worm on a string as any real animal could get, imo
female raptors (eagles, hawks, falcons, etc) are larger than male raptors in pretty much all species. this happens even in groups not closely related to each other (ex: hawks and falcons), so its beneficial enough in their niche that its evolved independently a few times, though its unsure exactly what that benefit is atm (bc unlike males being larger in a lot of mammals, female raptors dont make a habit of fighting each other or using size to attract mates as far as we know). ex: heres a male and female Cooper’s Hawk
somewhat mentioned above but falcons are more closely related to parrots than they are to hawks
Gray Catbirds and American Robins have been witnessed raising young in the same nest at the same time. In one instance (reported by Mulvihill and Murray), they were recorded caring for the young of both species in the nest, and when the Catbird young fledged, the adult Catbirds continued to provide food for the not-yet-fledged Robins. heres a pic of the nest from the report
the worlds oldest known bird as of 2024 is a wild Laysan Albatross named Wisdom who’s 72-73 years old (at minimum, we dont actually know her birth date, just that she was at least 5 years old when she was banded in the 50s) and still raising chicks. here’s her with one of her chicks
also Albatrosses have wingspans of up to 3.5m/11.5ft and have been recorded flying 49,700 miles without touching land (they do land in the water to eat tho)
this is from personal experience but if you walk around in a north american grassland for long enough, you Will get jumpscared by a Mourning Dove bc they make their nests on the ground in the grass and like to hang out on the ground in the grass and they also like to wait until youre right overtop of them to freak out and fly away from you
Bald Eagles don’t get their fully white heads and tails until theyre about 5 years old
A lot of birds have been observed incorporating cigarette butts into their nests, and a study in Mexico on House Finches found that this actually results in drastic decreases in parasites affecting young compared to nests without them
Cedar Waxwings (and Waxwings in general) just look so smooth. they look like someone airbrushed them. look at this shit
in Jacanas, females lay eggs in multiple males’ nests, and then the males raise the young by themself. Also they carry their babies under their wings like this
Horned Guan. Theyre endangered and live in a small area of central america. both the males and females have the little horn fez, the males just have taller ones
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