Mostly Boys and Dogs

This is a pretty major letdown, ngl.

Rocky Mountain mule deer Odocoileus hemionus hemionus

Colour Painting Tips by slawekfedorczuk

Not a biologist, but the evolution of mammals is way more granular than you might expect. Humans are the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, which was a real party before the other ones went extinct. You're in for a fun time.

Domestic cats are believed to be domesticated not from tigers, but from the African wildcat:

Which evolved to be small just because it's sometimes more useful to be small.

And no, hamsters are not off-brand rats. They're part of the rodent order, which includes beavers, moles, capybaras, guinea pigs (yes, also wild) and lots of other fun things:

I got the idea from cowcatchers old locomotives used to have.

Anyways, yesterday I uploaded the model to Thingiverse, and just hours after uploading it, the Community Relationship Manager of the whole website left a comment suggesting I enter the model into a competition that's currently being held on the site.

So I did... and now it's in third place not even a day later. First place is $500, but the competition still has a month to go.

Then the Community Manager contacted me again, telling me they want to feature my model in an upcoming design promotion.

Just, what is happening? I mostly made this thing for myself in, like, an hour, and now it's suddenly super popular? This is all a little bit overwhelming 😵‍💫

Other models I worked on for weeks didn't get nearly as popular. I swear, it's impossible to predict what people will like.

Anyways, if you want to print the wheel guards yourself, you can get the model here or here.

I also made a quiet version you can stick furniture felt pads on.

The fluke is heavy! But it takes no time at all to get used to and I'm really happy with the fit. It also has quite a long zip which means it's relatively easy to get the monofin inside. My finfun elite tail has a smaller opening so shoving my monofin inside takes ages.

A picture of it on land so you can see the colours properly (I didn't swim that time, tide was too far out)

These are the types of questions that can help people get into history because you get to find out that not only did people do backflips in ancient times, but then I as a historian, get to tell you that there was a whole fun cultural tradition in the Minoan period colloquially referred to as Minoan bull leaping where people ran straight at bulls and did a flying front flip over them!

Which might then lead you to ask why did they stop? And I get to tell you that it didn't! Its still practiced in Spain! And in that moment I have given you at least a 3000 year span of history that you know people did flips in cool ways which might prompt you to want to know more about cool acrobatic traditions!