TERFKILLER 9000

their (live!) young gestate for. wait for it. eight to eighteen (??) YEARS. can have up to 10 at a time. good grief.

longest lifespan of any vertebrate, up to five hundred years

toxic flesh

has giant eyes but is usually blind because of a weird little crustacean that's evolved to live on and eat their eyes. this doesn't seem to bother them much.

lives in deep cold water and has the lowest swim speed and tail-beat frequency for its size across all fish species. just generally lives life in extreme slow motion

largest genome of any shark

eats everything including moose and polar bears

you have this mysterious fish that  no one really cared about, because everyone assumed they’d gone extinct with the dinosaurs. an interesting footnote, but one of many, many fossil species. 

and later the coelacanth gets some fame as a so-called “missing link” species, a theory which is now outdated (and not accurate for coelacanths) but was really influential at the time. because they have some weird biological quirks – bones in fins! – people were like “oh, they must be a missing link.” so the coelacanth was launched into some fame with the theory of evolution. it got brought up a lot. drawn in old textbooks as proof.

and then a fisherman finds a weird fish off the coast of south africa and calls a local fish expert who had let it be known she was interested in weird finds, and he brings her the (unfortunately badly rotted) corpse and she’s like “well, this is sure weird,” and sends off the bones to other experts, who start to quietly freak out, and rush to south africa, and rewards are offered for another one, any other one, and a few years later one is caught and frozen before rotting.

and it’s this incredible discovery, this extinct creature come to life (the prehistoric coelacanth lived in swamps and marshes in south america; these now are deep ocean fish in and around the indian ocean, but it’s still recognizably the same species)!

but it’s also blue.

not like, muddy blue, or tumblr-default-background blue.

The American Dream (Enhanced Edition).

Oh, guys, we just need a little to get to the middle of our goal We are close to 15,000 We need less than €820 Come on, guys! We just need 2% To reach 50% of the target.

I cry every day from the weight of this heartbreak. I stand beside my husband with nothing but prayer, watching his pain and feeling my heart shatter because I cannot do more to save him. I try to stay strong for my little girl, but there are moments when I weaken as I imagine her life without her father. All I want is a chance to save Ahmed, a chance for him to remain a father to our daughter and a husband to me, and for us to see a better day after all this pain.

The doctor told me that Ahmed’s condition is critical, that the cancer is spreading rapidly through his body, and that his only hope for treatment is to get him out of Gaza as soon as possible to receive urgent medical care. Since that moment, I have been living in constant fear, terrified that I may lose my husband at any moment.

Getting Ahmed out of Gaza for treatment is extremely costly, and we need to raise more than $25,000 to cover the urgent medical expenses and give him the chance he desperately needs. Every moment matters, and we are racing against time to save his life.

Our little daughter cries every day, calling for her father. She does not understand what cancer means, but she feels his pain and clings to him with all her strength. All she wants is for her father to stay by her side, and for this war and this illness not to take him away from her.

As for me, I am suffering from severe malnutrition because of the famine and the war. My body has become weak, but I keep holding myself together in front of my daughter so she does not feel the full extent of the pain we carry inside.

I say this from the depths of my heart: I will never forget everyone who read my words, saw my family’s suffering, and chose to turn away without even sharing our story. A simple share may help our voice reach someone who can save Ahmed’s life.

You are our only hope. Every donation, no matter how small, and every share could be the reason our story reaches someone able to help us.

Please, do not leave us alone. Ahmed’s life is in your hands. Help us reach our goal as quickly as possible and save Ahmed before it is too late. Give our little daughter the chance to keep her father by her side.

Click here to donate.⬇️

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We don’t have any of the large predators we used to (black bears, mountain lions, or gray wolves) but still retain large deer populations. If nothing is removing animals, they’ll quickly overload the carrying capacity of the environment and have massive losses to starvation and disease that can also pass on to livestock. Human hunters replace the large predators that our landscape can no longer support.

It’s kinder to euthanize an un-releasable hawk rather than try to find it a permanent home with humans. Wildlife rehabs have extremely limited space and resources and are usually run entirely on donated money and volunteer time. Only a few are large and stable enough to care for permanent residents long-term, and those spots are few and far between.

An invasive species poses a danger to threatened native wildlife. I will admit- Australian possums are adorable. But not in New Zealand, where they’re an invasive species that eats the eggs of ground-dwelling birds that previously had no such predators. The landowners I worked with replanting native bush, all native Maori, had no qualms about setting the dogs on them.

Jaheira, the High-Harper 🌸