Happy #Nudivember!

Punnett squares had no business being that fun

Fuck.....

M E S S Y

“Just a by the by: “private” messages sent to individual people during a Zoom meeting show up in the end-of-meeting transcript along with all other public messages. Tell your friends, save a life.“

Oh worm.

deep sea bioluminescent worm

Giant whale sharks have hundreds of tiny teeth-like structures around their eyes

https://sciencespies.com/nature/giant-whale-sharks-have-hundreds-of-tiny-teeth-like-structures-around-their-eyes/

Giant whale sharks have hundreds of tiny teeth-like structures around their eyes

Whale sharks, the majestic creatures that also happen to be the world’s largest fish, are far more gentle than the name suggests. They swim lazily around tropical waters, filter-feeding on plankton.

Now, biologists have discovered the enigmatic giants have a curious trick up their sleeve – teeth-like scales adorning their eyeballs. It appears to be the whale sharks’ version of eyelids, and one we haven’t seen in any other vertebrate.

“Eyeballs face a potential risk of damage from mechanical, chemical and biological hazards,” the researchers write in a new paper describing the find.

“This report elaborates on adaptations of the eyes of the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), including the discovery that they are covered with dermal denticles, which is a novel mechanism of eye protection in vertebrates.”

Dermal denticles, also known as placoid scales, are the tiny tough scales that cover sharks and rays. But although they are scales as we think of them, they’re also structurally very similar to teeth, and include an inner core of pulp, a middle layer of dentine or bony tissue, and a hard enamel-like coating on top.

We already knew that many sharks – including whale sharks – are covered with these denticles. However, finding them on the eyeballs of these fish is quite the surprise.

Eye denticles of the whale shark. (Tomita et al., PLOS One, 2020)

That’s partially because it’s long been assumed whale sharks don’t have to use their sense of sight much: their eyes are incredibly small compared to the rest of their body, and they don’t have a lot of midbrain, the part of the brain that processes vision.

“However, the highly protected features of the whale shark eye, in contrast to the traditional view, seems to suggest the importance of vision in this species,” the team argues in their study.

Researchers took a CT scanner to a preserved whale shark eyeball, as well as taking ultrasounds of two captive live whale sharks at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan.

3D rendering of the morphology of each eye denticle. (Tomita et al., PLOS One, 2020)

As well as discovering the eye denticles, the researchers also elaborated on the mechanisms whale sharks use to retract their eyes back into their head. Most of the time this can be for just a short period of time, however not always. Once, a particularly unfortunate shark ended up with its eyes retracted for 10 days after it was transferred to a new aquarium from Taiwan to Atlanta, Georgia.

“It is likely that whale sharks maintain their vision during eye retraction because the pupils of the whale sharks in this study were not completely covered with surrounding white tissues when their eyes had retracted, though their visual field would be much more restricted than when their eyes are positioned normally,” explain the researchers.

“In fact, the animal that kept its eyes retracted for approximately 10 days at the Georgia Aquarium appeared to have no problem navigating the exhibit space, until its eyes returned to their normal positions suddenly and, apparently, spontaneously.”

So, while whale sharks aren’t exactly a fearsome predator of the ocean, these two eye-protecting features are a fearsome competitor to… eyelids.

The research has been published in PLOS One.

#Nature

Cute? Yesssss

Witch Meme!

I was tagged by @illegalcerebral​ @zugzwangxo​ and @waitingfortheendtocome​!

- rules: go here and make yourself a witch! (You don’t have to draw, don’t worry!)

It’s so cute! 

I’m not gonna tag anyone, just do it if you want to it’s adorable. :D

I honestly forgot just how many series Lilo & Stitch were out here crossing over with.

American Dragon: Jake Long

The Proud Family

Kim Possible

Recess (SOME-FUCKING-HOW)

Sonic the Hedgehog

They were really out here with the clout.

A Reader’s Plea

It makes me sad to see authors stepping back from this community because of the unnecessary situations that keep popping up. There’s been a few over the last few weeks in the fandoms I enjoy. 

I’m a reader before I’m anything else. I’ve been here a long time under a reader account before I ever decided to write in this arena. I come here for the stories, wonderful free stories to escape into by wonderfully talented people. I share stories all the time that I read the night before. It’s one of my favorite parts of the day.

But the more authors disappear, the less stories and content we’re going to get. Period. And doesn’t that sound like the reverse of what we want considering we’ve got a global pandemic hanging over our heads? 

I don’t blame any of them for stepping back. I only hope it’s not permanent. And as an author, you can understand when one does it, others consider it. They’ll think maybe they’ve got a point. Maybe a break is a good idea.

Readers have been stepping back too.

So as a reader, I just wanted to throw this out there for anyone who reads this. Treat each other well. Treat each other with kindness. If you don’t like someone, you can still be respectful. I’ll be honest. Over the last 8 or 9 years I’ve been skulking around Tumblr reading fics, I found a lot of amazing authors and stories. I left comments. I shared. I knew how important that was. I didn’t always get my comments answered. I didn’t mind. It takes time to craft stories. Maybe the author doesn’t have that much time between writing, asks, DM’s, questions, and everything else in their lives.

I can also tell you that I ended up leaving a lot of blogs over the years because of controversies that dusted up. That’s in no way a criticism of anyone, any situation, or how they choose to handle it. Their blog, their business. Cool. But as readers, we get all that every day in real life and we’re here for the escape, the stories, the fantasy. The beautiful words from those authors we’re grateful for. I was grateful for the stories but when there was just as much controversy as story? It wasn’t even intentional sometimes. I just mostly lost interest.

Help me cheer on our content creators. Please? As a reader, I’m greedy and I don’t want anyone else taking off. Help me cheer on each other as readers. If enough of us make an effort to redirect the dialogue to being supportive of each other instead of instantly assuming and passing judgment, this would be an amazingly awesome place. We have a lot of good people. It wouldn’t be that hard to do.💕🙏💖

I’m off to look for those good stories for the night. I hope you find some too. Have a good night. Promise I’m off my soapbox for the next six months lol I don’t normally do this. But a couple of folks stepping back are people I love and it hit me hard tonight. That and I see a lot of writers asking for things. I figured the readers should be able to share some thoughts too.

Love you guys. 🙏