this tumblr is awful

shanidar 1 is a neanderthal who, at a pretty young age, was hit in the head hard enough to blind him. this also led to that side of his brain shutting down and withering his right arm, and possibly crippling his entire right side. not only that but his skeleton also shows that at some point, he broke a bone in his foot and, in addition to the other factors, resulted in a noticeable limp. there are some sources which say he likely had degenerative diseases. (arthritis was really common in neanderthals) 

going off of widespread ideas of “”primitive”” (no longer the word used in anthropology/academia to describe early-modern humans) societies, shanidar probably died really young, deliberately abandoned or killed. i mean, he was severely crippled, blind, etc., he couldn’t contribute anything, he would have been a “”burden to society””, right? 

except he lived to be between 40 and 50 years old. (about ~80 in human years)

this means that his social group had to have taken care of him for a minimum of two or three decades without his ‘contributing’ anything significant to the group. this discovery (and Shanidar III’s) was huge because it basically proves that early humans had a concept of hospice. early modern humans cared for the sick and the elderly, greatly extending their lifespan, simply because they cared. 

She’s a Darklord now too

read the full comic!

When you see an animal with its eyes set to the front, like wolves, or humans, that’s usually a predator animal.

If you see an animal with its eyes set farther back, though—to the side—that animal is prey.

Now look at this dragon.

See those eyes?

They’re to the SIDE.

This raises an interesting—and terrifying—question.

What in the name of Lovecraft led evolution to consider DRAGONS…

This isn’t a mammalian thing. When people talk about ‘eyes on the front’ or ‘eyes on the side,’ they’re really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because it’s what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.

(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)

But it’s not like binocular vision is inherently “better” than monocular vision. It’s a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesn’t outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, it’s a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.

For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. I’d say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.

Which brings us back to OP’s point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?

A lot of the stories I’ve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. That’s a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you don’t need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.

Not only does the author need to know what’s happening on both layers of story, they need to actually write in clues for the reader to telegraph the lower, “true,” layer of the story so the reader is capable of figuring it out if they choose to read closely. Without that double work, an unreliable narrator cannot perform its literary function.

Draven

Lennix

Adalley

Illari

Oxsen

Maree

California Skye

Brodeigh

Rosalie Zion

Vaiana

Alba

Athena Valentina

Chrisilynn

Rainey

Enoria

Hogarth

Emileen RayLynn

Topanga Rain

October

Coven

Zeppelyn Lillith Moon

Tigerlily

Heavenly Grace

Zoie

Kaiser

Tjaden (pronounced “Jayden”)

Rubella

one woman has it narrowed down to Ziggy-Wolf, Ziggy-Bear, and Ziggy-Sparrow

Cena (pronounced “Sienna)

Rogue

I agree, and I think this supports the ousting of the female/male dynamic.

The only people who need to know about your genitals is your doctor (and your partners that you’re sexually involved with), this is done through conversation and discussion. There is no need to have the F/M distinguishers on paperwork, IDs and the like.

“how will doctors know???”

By doing their jobs and talking to you, by doing their jobs and running tests. It’d change nothing.

This concept that “you’re a woman but biologically male!” is so convoluted that its disgusting. “Female” denotes woman and “male” denotes a man. These two terms are so heavily gendered that there’s nothing truly “scientific” about it, and this split of gender and biological sex only is out to support a misgendering view of trans bodies.

There’s no reason a trans woman can’t put a F on her medical forms. It’s arbitrary information and doing anything else only serves to publicly “out” her to possible hostile environments and people.

A doctor that paid attention in school will know what a penis is, they will be able recognize a post genital surgery by looking at such; and if a doctor can’t distinguish that without some arbitrary letter on a paper, then they need to go back to school.

If we are evaluating you for something where (say) your chromosomal sex (XX, XY, XO, XXY, etc.) matters, we can ask that question *specifically.* Same goes for estrogen-progestin dominant vs testosterone-dominant, Mullerian vs Wolffian duct derivatives, Sertoli and Leydig cells vs ovarian tissue, gender, and so on. Saying “male” or “female” is a heuristic that may cover most people, but FAR from most configurations and is inadequately specific for issues where “biological sex” is relevant.

There is no reason to call your trans women patients male. Like, ever. It’s transphobic, and it’s bad medicine.

And further to the point (and the below holds true for various biological sex markers, eg hormonal profile, not just “sex behavior,” e.g., the range of normal clitoral sizes is greater than the difference in size between the average clitoris and average penis):

(Nelson, R. (2005). An introduction to behavioral endocrinology (3rd ed.). Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates.)