flora_explora
@flora_explora@beehaw.org
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 23 hours ago:
Hm, in small animals my previous point of a 2D vs 3D space is also valid. Large land prey animals “only” have to look from side to side to spot predators. Small animals have to look in all 3 dimensions, like sharks
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 1 day ago:
Haha, I’m not a bird person and didn’t bother to look it up. Thanks for the correction!
- Comment on DISORDERED SUPERORDER 1 day ago:
Cuuuute!!!
- Comment on True and real. 1 day ago:
That’s basically correct, yes! The baby parts are the gametophytes and they then use their male and female parts to produce a new zygote, which will grow into a sporophyte. This sporophyte is what we know as a fern. It will produce and finally release many many spores, which are the “airdrop baby parts”.
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 1 day ago:
They also have to orient themselves in a truely 3D landscape, unlike terrestrial predators who hunt on basically a 2D plane. Birds of prey (with the exception of owls) also don’t have front-facing eyes, probably for similar reasons (and they’re stereoscopic vision also works a bit different I think with very different points of focus).
- Comment on Polypodolf! 2 days ago:
Wow! What is the lower plant? Are the upper two both Selaginella or only the right one?
- Comment on Gotta dissect them all!! 2 days ago:
If anyone else wonders:
- Talpa is an actual genus of moles: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talpa_(mammal)
- defossus is latin and according to Wiktionary it means “excavated, planted or hidden”: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/defossus (fossus coming from Latin fodiō meaning “to dig; to pierce; to goad”, en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fossus)
- Comment on ✨️carboniferous trees✨️ 4 days ago:
There are a lot of fossilized records. You can see various examples of whole trunks or roots here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigillaria?wprov=sfla1
- Comment on Mustaaaaaaaaaard 4 days ago:
Alliaria petiolata is a pretty common herb in Europe (at least here in Germany) and it is related to mustard, cabbage plants and rapeseed. Garlic plants are not related to it at all and are very different.
- Comment on Name your favourite prehistoric tree. 5 days ago:
To me the coolest ones are certainly any prehistoric Lycopodiopsida, like the Sigillaria shown here!
- Comment on Labcoat! 1 week ago:
Good point that there is a distinction between the quantity of cuteness (finding most of a population cute vs only a few individuals). Although part of it might be a cultural bias because cute dogs and hot people are given much more presentation in our society. Like watching a movie and nearly everyone is conventionally attractive. There are many dogs out there that aren’t cute at all, but they aren’t usually shown in posts/videos about cute dogs.
Regarding the evolutionary adaptation you were hinting at, I think the domestication syndrome makes it so that we see animals like dogs as partly infant-like. That is, bigger eyes, round features, etc. So maybe there is some trained response in us that reacts to those infant-like features? There is definitely some positive association because otherwise the domestication syndrome wouldn’t be such an universal thing.
I’m not even trying to suggest any judgement, if anything I’m just lamenting something that for my entire lifetime I have not been able to relate to or understand in my peers, which makes me feel somehow lacking, I guess.
I get that. Like I said, I feel somewhat similar towards human babies. Although since I’m an aunt and more in contact with infants/small children, I now understand it a bit better. I think you would probably find dogs much cuter once you get to develop a relationship with one. A friend of mine has been sitting a dog for some months now (only once a week) and his behavior towards dogs has completely shifted. Before he thought they were annoying or unimportant, now he always points out cute dogs in his environment. And I think building a connection is really the magic of it all. I grew up with a dog and she was really like my sister. I felt much sadder about her death than about my grandparents’ deaths, because I was closer to her than to them.
- Comment on Labcoat! 1 week ago:
So you don’t understand how it feels to find something cute? Or how people see other people as cute? Or as beautiful? Or as attractive? It’s just another human like everyone else, what’s the big deal? kind of?
(Not mad about you not relating to the love for dogs, just curious)
- Comment on Research shows research is the leading cause of research 2 weeks ago:
We’ve had research on research for decades. I don’t get the meme :|
- Comment on this gift stinks 2 weeks ago:
Indeed, their fruits stink a lot!
- Comment on same, honestly 3 weeks ago:
Not only that, but probably a lot more animals are stressed out by them. They just reported on the bears because they studied their response. But we should generally come up with guidelines or rules when or if people are allowed to fly drones in nature.
- Comment on Critical Support 3 weeks ago:
Cute!!
- Comment on Edible Wood 3 weeks ago:
That’s an extremely fast-growing monocot though without the ability of secondary growth and therefore with a much lower lignin content.
- Comment on Edible Wood 3 weeks ago:
The next paragraph adds the explanation, why its wood is edible:
Although most wood is indigestible to humans due to the high lignin content, the yacaratiá tree is only around 10% cellulose while the rest is mostly water with very little lignin content. Unlike most plants, cells of this tree contain large spaces within their walls which store water.
It is in the Caricaceae (Papaya family) and apparently a pioneer species just like Papaya. No wonder it is mostly water and hardly any lignin!
- Comment on Treat 3 weeks ago:
So it’s making fun of the Lombards??
- Comment on Mom they're fighting again 5 weeks ago:
Yes and it is very important to constantly remind ourselves that all our abstractions and classifications are just that. Helpful tools for us to view and understand the world. People tend to forget that and over time see their categorization as essential and natural. For example, sex and gender are both socially constructed but people forget that and then create a whole set of rules around it to reinforce that categorization including social stigmatization and infant mutilation.
- Comment on Mom they're fighting again 5 weeks ago:
This isn’t generally true for eukaryotes either. In plants, hybridization is a huge thing and also polyploidy. So for some groups of plants we struggle to put them in neat boxes as well.
And zooming out to a larger view on taxonomy, plant taxonomy has seen some huge changes in the last decades with the various APG (angiosperm phylogeny group) publishings rearranging many if not most orders, families and genera of angiosperm plants.
- Comment on Mom they're fighting again 5 weeks ago:
Even for anything else, it actually is. Taxonomy is our construct that we came up with as a society to classify life. We cannot ever be “right” about it, it can just be more or less useful for us to understand life.
- Comment on Mom they're fighting again 5 weeks ago:
How is this the temperate zone?? You know how the internet works?
- Comment on Honestly Bizarre 5 weeks ago:
You mean, we apply plant language to them so they are also like plants? They are closer related to us though…
- Comment on It's true... 1 month ago:
Thanks for sharing, otherwise I wouldn’t even have thought of this. It’s so infuriating :(
- Comment on It's true... 1 month ago:
Severe obesity (body weight over 200 lbs.) or severe wasting
Wait what? I converted 200 lbs to kg and it should be equal 90 kg. This isn’t severely obese. I weigh much more and do stuff like bouldering.
Anyways, doesn’t even matter because it is important to also train on fat bodies. Because otherwise we face the same problems medicine has with ignoring female and black bodies. Most studies have just been on white, able-bodied male bodies. To actually treat all bodies with the best care, medical professionals should be trained on all types of bodies!
- Comment on i enjoy high fructose corn syrup too 1 month ago:
Wait what? Clovers are a species of Trifolium in the Fabaceae (legume family), but sorrel refers to the leaves of Rumex species in the Polygonaceae. What are you referring to?
- Comment on i enjoy high fructose corn syrup too 1 month ago:
Apiaceae are generally very hard to tell apart. Sure, the common hogweed is relatively easy to ID if you know the plant well enough. But there are sooo many species in this family that all have small white flowers and similar looking leaves…
- Comment on sadtrombone.wav 1 month ago:
Natural cave systems don’t have as many animals in them either, because there are just not enough nutrients around for larger populations to establish. (Exceptions are to this are caves where birds or bats nest in large colonies and there you can find huge populations of other animals feeding on the feces for example.)
I don’t think the spiders necessarily feed on pillbugs though. At least I haven’t observed that yet. I’d think spiders would either feed on other spiders or on any flying insects getting in the garage.
Oh and something new I’ve learned from Wikipedia about pillbugs:
They have also been observed eating wood supports in houses, making them a house pest.
Maybe check for that if there are so many in your garage?
- Comment on sadtrombone.wav 1 month ago:
Believe me, there are many other animals, you just don’t see them ;)