Quellamunga

OP is a Mauritanian student based in Beijing, and she joined the first Across Latitudes cultural exchange festival at China University of Geosciences. Cnetizens say she rocked both her traditional Mauritanian attire and Chinese hanfu. (cr 艾米 Amy)

And the Stellar's sea lion, which are WAY bigger and live in Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska

This super cute figurine is from aprox. 2900–2400 BC, and one of the handful known figurines from the British Neolithic.

The figurine got its name when it was rediscovered in 2016: “Buddo” is an Orcadian word, a term of endearment and isn’t gender-specific. In the Neolithic most human figurines represented the feminine, often believed to be the goddesses of fertility and/or beauty, so this figurine is quite unique as it doesn’t have gendered features!

There’s a hole on each side, so it’s most likely that it was suspended (inside the home or as some kind of body ornament).

Its purpose is widely argued, some beleive the figurine to be a child’s toy, but it easily could’ve been an ‘idol’ or ‘fetish’ (= meaning it had a ritualistic and religious role).

Source for my summary:

Extra shout out to the lady who watched me, oozing outrage and disapproval at the THOUGHTLESS tourists running ROUGHSHOD all over the ANCIENT SITE, but too British to do more than glower, somehow oblivious to the fact that we were actually nowhere near the site.

I wonder what she thought this place was used for, and I hope she never realised that we were *on the beach* and the archaeological wonder was behind her all along (and we put it all back flat after too)

Temminck’s Lark.

Those are actually not spiky feathers at all! They sure do look like it, though, and that's likely the point- if I were a raptor looking down upon a pincushion, I would think twice about grabbing it with my bare feet.

However, it's a ruse! Just a marking on a feather

There are various techniques depending on what part of the year you are doing this - the ones where they're sliding a bud into existing bark are more summer techniques, whereas when they're chocking things together that's an earlier year sort of thing. We didn't talk about the ones where they're rooting branches, because we were talking about grafting fruit trees, specifically apples, onto root stock.