#mer rambles

Here it is! My 2025 Art Summary!!

"My bed was cold when I got in last night," he explains, voice muffled.”

Like I’m trying to imagine his inner thought process of coming home late and deciding to sleep in Eric’s bed and I think it would be so fun to read!

hi! i'm less confident with jack's perspective, so i don't know that i'll be doing something from his point of view. however, i can tell you here what his thoughts were:

it's really late when he's coming home from the library. he tried to convince eric to come with him, but he knows that eric doesn't focus well in the library, so he only tried a little.

the library was terribly unproductive feeling, and so he was frustrated before he ever left the building. he also almost got kicked out for audibly groaning. it is what it is.

he didn't even get into his bed when he came home. he stared at it for a solid ten seconds, sleepy and frustrated, before taking off his shoes in his own room and going to eric's.

eric woke up a little when jack was getting into bed with him (which eric doesn't remember at all) and lifted up the blanket when jack hesitated getting in. come on, jackie. and jack got into the bed because he wanted to and he was given permission and he just wanted to feel eric next to him.

Ok so first of all, this post is gonna focus mainly on cetaceans (aka the family of whales and dolphins and all that jazz) 

first of all, the textbook I’m reading says that the largest differences between living on land and living in water can be boiled into 6 points. Those being (1) not being able to breathe at all times, (2) increased rate of heat loss due to less/no fur, (3) relative weightlessness, (4) greater resistance to movement, (5) changed characteristics of sound propagation, (6) low light conditions in all but near surface water 

second of all, looking at skeletal structures of ancestors of whales and a progression as time goes on, we can notice some of the main changes. 

this is an image I found that shows what I’m talking about. some of the main changes is the elongation of the spine as the tail becomes more important in swimming. 

Also things like:

The slow reduction of hind legs. 

reduction of forearms 

fusion of head and spine reducing head movement 

larger rib cage

The nostrils slowly move up the head to eventually become the blow hole. 

The body becomes streamlined to reduce drag in water. 

Ability to hold breath for up to an hour in some species.

Thick layer of blubber

they can grow to such large sizes because they do not have to support their own body weight (relative weightlessness)

broad horizontal tail flukes powered by muscles to swim

dorsal fin to provide rotational stability (in some species of cetaceans)

Other things not visible, but also changed:

sophisticated sound processing systems  

and I haven’t gotten to the chapter in my textbook that talks about this is detail yet, but they have a vascular heat exchange system to further remove heat loss