flora_explora
@flora_explora@beehaw.org
- Comment on Getting weird 3 hours ago:
All those masturbating flowers are weirder xD
- Comment on Hmmmmm 11 hours ago:
Fascinating that the only aboveground part of the plant is its flower! Hard to imagine how it is parasitizing some vines underground and then all of a sudden produces this monster of a flower!
Although it is the largest flower, it isn’t the largest inflorescence haha
- Comment on damnit, again 11 hours ago:
If a crush of you is asking for nudes, maybe you should reconsider if the person is really that great. Asking for nudibranchs, on the other hand, would be an indicator of a much nicer person :)
- Comment on stinging nettle 18 hours ago:
Oh, I thought that it was qualitatively already a psychedelic sting. But yeah, quantity is key here xD
- Comment on stinging nettle 23 hours ago:
I don’t get it. If the sting of U. pelulifera already contains bufotenin, what genetic change would be needed for a psychedelic sting? Wikipedia says bufotenin is a psychedelic substance and a DMT analog.
Fun fact: while searching for this, I’ve found that apparently some people seem to have elevated levels of bufotenin in their pee. Could be another source…
- Comment on hotwheels sisyphus 1 day ago:
Hahaha lol, thanks for the laugh :)
- Comment on Chicken vs Egg 1 day ago:
If you actually wanted a phylogenetic tree to scale you would end up with a huuuge tree that has many more branches because it obviously is not as simple as birds vs crocodiles. There are all the dinosaurs in between for example, that weren’t birds but have their own branches. It has actually been a tough question where to draw the line between dinosaurs and birds (there is a whole article on wiki). And if you have any paraphyletic groups in your tree it gets even messier! If you are already displaying other groups at the subfamily level, you should then display all groups at this level.
All this is to say that the level of detail contained in a phylogenetic tree (or any graph for that matter) is highly dependent on the information you want to convey. Ideally you should draw it as detailed as necessary and as simplified as possible. In this case, we get all the information that is necessary but are not overwhelmed with facts that if you draw Squamata (lizards and snakes), you would also have to draw Rhynchocephalia (monotypic order) in.
- Comment on Chicken vs Egg 1 day ago:
Well, I actually completely agree with you and thought your initial comment to be quite interesting. I’ve never viewed this thought experiment as to be science vs religion.
My point in my previous comment was exactly that, all our lines and categories are arbitrary. They’re really useful to us, but in the end still arbitrary. I enjoy categorizing stuff and so I like taxonomy a lot. But I always have to keep in mind that the categories I choose are ultimately human made and can never represent the full spectrum of nature.
Pantone 032 feels to aggressive to me, can I have another color? :P
- Comment on Chicken vs Egg 1 day ago:
We are so zoomed in evolution at this point that the arbitrary distinction between what is a chicken and what not doesn’t make any sense anymore. Evolution does some jumps, but it is still hard to actually draw the line where a nearly-chicken has not been a chicken yet. Maybe someone could fill in my mental gap in here for me, but hasn’t Richard Dawkins given the example of some animal (possibly a rabbit?) that is traced back in evolution and since you cannot draw the line when it hasn’t been that animal it is rabbits all the way down?
- Comment on Hey kid 2 days ago:
My intuitive explanation would be that all things have different states in which they can be: solid, fluid/liquid and gaseous. It just depends on how cold or hot it is what state the material is in. Even oxygen can be fluid at sufficiently low temperatures and metals gaseous at really high temperatures. (This varies with pressure, but maybe this gets too complicated then.)
So when ice gets too warm (because it isn’t in the freezer anymore for example), it changes its state to a liquid. You can imagine all molecules to be in various interactions with each other. When it is cold for them, they snuggle together and form a solid clump. When it gets warmer they begin to dance and not be as close anymore. They sway together and form a fluid. But when they are really hot they are even further away from each other so now they are pretty lose, forming a gas.
- Comment on Cruciferae 5 days ago:
While I agree with the acronym, I have to disagree with the statement. I really dislike the look of most Brassicaceae. Especially Brassica oleracea :(
- Comment on Gotta love moms 6 days ago:
Related (pun intended): www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNQPQkV3nhw
- Comment on It is very therapeutic to garden, though. 6 days ago:
Not only that. But our agriculture is so centered around animals that we also have a huge surplus of manure (the animals’ feces, horn shavings, basically anything left of them) that we then use on all kinds of plant crops. It is so baked into the system that it will be a long way before we can really get a animal-free agriculture…
- Comment on It is very therapeutic to garden, though. 6 days ago:
This is certainly true for our modern agriculture today. But is this really true for any possible industrial agriculture? Couldn’t we also have a plant based industrial agriculture leaving domesticated animals out of the equation altogether? Sure, we are a far way off from that. But I think it would be achievable and that we should aim for it.
- Comment on It is very therapeutic to garden, though. 6 days ago:
I would be cautious of statements like these. Because this way it is easy to get lost in your own idealization of community gardening. I mean, I agree that we should do more community gardening and that it would probably benefit most people.
But how do you know that industrial farming won’t ever be as nutritious/delicious as homegrown? How would you fall back on your own garden in case of a nuclear catastrophe? Wouldn’t your soil just be as contaminated? What are your arguments against GMO crops apart from all the obvious economic reasons? Wouldn’t be some genetic mutations be really good actually? I mean the food we eat is already heavily bred and mutated, even most homegrown stuff. Try eating a wild carrot or wild apple. Also, the article you shared regarding the antidepressant properties of soil makes some same mistakes. It is overly idealistic. The actual underlying study is much less ambitious and I’m not sure you can really claim that "working with soil has natural antidepressant properties ".
I love cooking and don’t really like eating out. But if a canteen/cafeteria is run well, it can sure cook much larger quantities of food that are just as delicious and nutritious. It just scales better. I would argue the same is true for agriculture. (Although we definitely would need to change agriculture by a lot!)
- Comment on Imagine denying other living and breathing lifeforms agency to thrive amd change lol lol lol 2 weeks ago:
You may like Bruno Latour and his rather philosophical book Politics of Nature. I read it in a philosophy seminar and it seemed fascinating how the author tries to completely overthrow the view we have on “nature” and give it agency.
- Comment on blast me off, fam 2 weeks ago:
My first thought was gram times second times meter per kilogram xD
- Comment on Morish Morals 2 weeks ago:
Wow, the plot in the fifth elephant makes so much more sense now. I didn’t know that the scone of stone was a real thing!! :O
- Comment on Morish Morals 2 weeks ago:
I love this sooo much! Wish I could see this in person :O
- Comment on the struggle 2 weeks ago:
Well, maybe context is important. I’m from Germany and pseudoscience is really common here. There is even some homeopathy that is paid by public insurance nowadays. And there are many esoteric and pseudoscientific movements that have a lot of financial power. That is, the biggest drug store chains in Germany are esoteric lead and there are kindergarden/schools as well as various companies that are anthroposophic. They also formed these huge protests against covid regulations and many people fell prey to the esoteric mindset at this time. So it is actually not that uncommon in Germany for people to truly believe in pseudoscience unfortunately…
- Comment on Carl? 2 weeks ago:
Nature is everything
- Comment on the struggle 2 weeks ago:
I agree, but I think it is important to clearly communicate what is and what isn’t scientific consensus and what is only pseudoscience. Because there will always be people who think that stuff like Myers Briggs tests or homeopathy are really reliable/effective. They might be a good placebo but there are also people dying because some quacks tell them that they shouldn’t take their cancer medication and homeopathy instead. Myers Briggs and astrology are obviously not that dangerous as they aren’t medical treatments. But I fear the atmosphere in society shifting towards pseudoscience and distrusting in actual scientific approaches.
- Comment on HOT SINGLE DINOS IN YOUR AREA 2 weeks ago:
Oof, they sound like a really awful group :(
- Comment on The miracle of childbirth 2 weeks ago:
As context to your context:
The genitalia of the female closely resembles that of the male; the clitoris is shaped and positioned like a penis, a pseudo-penis, and is capable of erection. The female also possesses no external vagina (vaginal opening), as the labia are fused to form a pseudo-scrotum. The pseudo-penis is traversed to its tip by a central urogenital canal, through which the female urinates, copulates and gives birth. (Source)
scientists state that female spotted hyenas are the **only ** non-intersex female mammals devoid of an external vaginal opening, and whose sexual anatomy is distinct from usual intersex cases (source)
Because hardly any other animal would give birth through a clitoris. That was the weird part for me because I knew about the peniform clitorises but not the missing external vaginas.
- Comment on Antybooties 2 weeks ago:
Yup, I got angry at that line, too. This person has obviously no idea about science…
- Comment on Antybooties 2 weeks ago:
Unfortunately most if not all of animal science involves torturing animals :'(
- Comment on arthropods 2 weeks ago:
I crocheted a giant millipede that is about 1.8 m long and while doing this I also found that there lived actual millipedes that large long ago. Now I cuddle with my giant millipede and imagine that she was one of those giants! :)
- Comment on banana slugs 4 weeks ago:
I thought that was pretty frequent in slugs, isn’t it?
- Comment on Biology 4 weeks ago:
I mean, there are many biologists that spend a lot of time in the field. I know many who spend several months up to years in research stations for example. But hardly any of them try to find new species but rather try to understand the already described ones and their interactions better.
- Comment on bug weddings 4 weeks ago:
Haha, I first read it as you talking about a parasol and it didn’t make any sense :)