Be Cool

You know, as the concept of “zombifying fungi” becomes more and more popular, I notice it still referred to everywhere as like a “brain parasite.” So I guess a lot of people overlooked or forgot how in 2019 it was discovered that cordyceps and other similar fungal parasites leave the brain and nervous system completely untouched. They only control the muscles. They use chemical signals to make the muscles flex in real time where they want to go :)

It’s funny how many people are replying “but that’s worse!” like you didn’t know that’s exactly why I put a smiley

Resisting the urge to Um Actually this dragon novel because it has the dragon eggs be like three or four feet wide but there is simply a limit to how large hard-shelled terrestrial eggs can be. No matter how large the animal is, the embryo needs oxygen, and oxygen needs surface area. The larger an object is, the lower its surface area relative to volume, and the less oxygen the embryo can receive. We think of large animals as having porportionately large young because mammalian pregnancy has the unique benefit of allowing for the size of the young to scale with the adult because their oxygen is provided directly through the placenta, and almost all the megafauna remaining on Earth are mammals. But this is not the case for species which lay eggs! For fuck's sake even the sauropods hatched out of eggs barely larger than basketballs! Your hatchling dragon would be impressively enormous if it were the size of a house cat. Stop trying to make me believe that this (ROUND!) dragon egg somehow supplied enough oxygen to develop an infant the size of a large dog or even bigger. If it were possible the dinosaurs woulda been doing it!!!!

I love you /lh. Experts going off on their particular fascinating cool topics and adding unexpected context to things we take for granted is like my favorite thing this was delightful. Talk to me more about eggs and geometry and biology all you want :D

OK so now can we reverse it and maths out the minimum atmospheric oxygen pressure based on the described size of a dragon egg?

What does it say that my immediate response was to start imagining how an egg might be larger and yet have an adequate surface area to provide appropriate quantities of oxygen and my instant solution was PINE CONE DESIGN EGG

... Suddenly the common modern depiction of dragon eggs covered in scales makes sense, they're not dragon scales, they're additional surface area for diffusion

if it wasn’t for some kind of brain disease, we would all have forgotten this punchline. everyone say thank you some kind of brain disease

Saddest thing ever is reading an academic paper about a threatened or declining species where you can tell the author is really trying to come up with ways the animal could hypothetically be useful to humans in a desperate attempt to get someone to care. Nobody gives a shit about the animals that “don’t affect” us and it seriously breaks my heart

This is how I learn there's a moth whose tiny caterpillars live exclusively off the old shells of dead tortoises.

because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing

im kinda bored of this whole computers thing. i think tomorrow im gonna go outside and see if i find some kind of creature to look at

Deactivated.... Op did it boys

If I’m correct, this is from the article “list of common misconceptions” which happens to be one of my favorite Wikipedia articles

#mycorner #mymonstrousneeds

Minding your own business and some fucking scarab just rolls a big ball of shit over you

How do you go on with life after that?

I still think about this comic all the time.

you: suck my dick me, an intellectual: inhale my richard

here it is! the post that started a “me, an intellectual” hell frenzy, and is officially ⭐ the worst post of 2016 ⭐

Look everyone look