For example, theres this sea slug that I found out eats algae, which is normally exactly what you think is usual for an underwater marine animal, but guess what?
IT USES THE CHLOROPLASTS FROM THE ALGAE AND THEN GAINS THE ABILITY TO USE PHOTOSYNTHESIS AS A SLUG VIA ABSORBING PLANTS
This post is 2 years but old but only about 1% of all the species of animals and plants that ever lived have been found.
thats fuckin nuts
I remember reading that there are likely still hundreds of scientific research facilities, archives and testing sites in and around Russia and other former Soviet countries that were unfortunately and rapidly shut down or abandoned because of the capitalist coup in 1991.
Imagine all the possible unrealized or half-finished pieces of technology, data or breakthroughs that might be achieved, just sitting in abandoned buildings waiting to be found.
The largest organism is not the Blue Whale, but this thing called a mycelium somewhere in a mountain range in Oregon. It’s basically a web that connects mushrooms along with themselves and other organisms in the surrounding.
Mycelium can trade nutrients with trees/ plants and can “punish” them if they don’t find the trade beneficial enough (IIRC about the study) :O
I’ve been obsessed with mycelium for quite a while because I did not know fungus could be this interesting but holy shit it is.
The 1993 Super Mario Bros movie was a documentary.
I work with psychotic people and they sometimes claim they can hallucinate in ways that don’t make sense to us. Like, they can hear voices in their belly as if they have a functioning ear there. It’s really interesting to see.
I did damage to my mental with bad psychedelics and I was functionally schizophrenic for one month. I had all the symptoms. I had to slowly “train” myself to overcome them, it took years and I’m 99% back to normal.
But yeah. I saw out of my ears once. Like it was like my vision was sucked out of my ears from both sides and flared out like a trumpet. With a horrible stretching sensation of my mind.
There was another time where it felt like my mind was being assaulted by what I could only describe as “vibratory hell waves” (aka rushing tinnitus as opposed to ringing tinnitus).
Hearing things was scary. It was like…like a real sound, but I could tell something was off. A whisper in the curtains that sounded fundamentally wrong. A yelp that sounded like the sound was stretched out, flipped, shrunk back, and pitched up and down in lightning fast oscillation. But I like…FELT it to. In my bones.
Sorry if this is rough to read, I don’t know what work you do but I know that shit is taxing.
Researchers think the reason the voices sound weird is because the voices seem to come from a part of the brain that is not directly involved in forming language and speech. So most of the times the things the voices say is very short and without much grammar because complex language and grammar is formed in another part of the brain.
The best analogy I heard was when someone compared it to a library where the librarian brings books in request, with books being words. In a psychoses the librarian brings you books but nobody asked for them, but they come up regardless.
Wow, thanks for the info!
This goes perfectly with my experience. I would often hear just sounds or one or two words. If I had to guess I would guess it was some distorted hybrid of several memories as it didn’t sound “original” it sounded like what an AI that was fed my memories would guess would be something that someone I know would say etc. To build on that analogy I would add is it’s like the librarian is being told to make dinner and the chef is being told to bring you books.
Ugh, man this shit is icky to think about. The psychedelics definitely caused me to form neural connections that I wasn’t supposed to. I could feel my organs, my digestion, and my blood flow until I crimestopped it enough that the neurons withered but I know if I invested in the pathways it would light up again like it was yesterday. Many other similar things besides language or body awareness. I would also say that it definitely opened up perspectives that felt “forbidden” and, after slowly recovering from the initial shock and the cognitive dissonance, contributed to wisdom.
Not trying to ramble lol but damn this shit…
Again, thank you so much for the info, very interesting.
White-Throated Sparrows functionally have four sexes. They have tan-stripe male, white-stripe male, tan-stripe female, and white-stripe female. The white-striped sexes are promiscuous, defensive over their territory, and good singers, while tan-stripe sexes are loyal, quiet, and good parents. Broods with white-white or tan-tan parents tend to fail.
The mutation that causes white-stripe forms creates a portion of chromosome that can’t swap genetic material with unmutated genes, which keeps the forms from blending back together. The mutation is also passed on about 50% of the time. Because of that, the white-tan divide can function as a sex divide.
This is actually super weird because while fish, amphibians, and reptiles love to get weird with reproduction, birds and mammals are pretty vanilla about it. I find the fact that a rather derived bird (which are highly derived themselves!) found a way to get funky about sex super cool.
Can you tell I’m passionate about birds?
