does anyone know if this bird is real and what it is
It is, it’s a red-crested turaco.
Turacos are FANTASTIC.
The reason they are such stunning colours is because they produce some really unusual pigments. For the greens, a pigment called turacoverdin (which is only found in a few groups of birds) and is the only true green pigment found in birds – other birds make the colour green from using feather structure to refract light a certain way. And the reds, from the pigment turacin, whereas most birds make reds from carotenoids (it used to be thought that ONLY turacos produced turacin, but it has recently been found in some other bird groups, such as rails).
They also often have crests, and long tails, and make fantastically loud noises, and tend to get really agitated when displaying or defending territory and jump up and down on branches angrily, and they can point their fourth toe either backwards or forwards.
Here are some more pictures of this fantastic bird family (I love turacos. if anyone wants to come and talk about turacos with me I will be VERY EXCITED):
who was the fool who was tasked with naming the galaxy and the only adjective they could think of was ‘mmmmmmmmmmmmilky…’
scientist: (gazing up at space) scientist: ……….. it sure is a milky boy
NO
YOU DONT UNDERSTAND
ASTRONOMERS ARE THE SHITTIEST EVER AT NAMING THINGS I KID YOU NOT.
When it came time to name the two theoretical particle types that might be dark matter THEY INTENTIONALLY CHOSE THE NAMES SO THAT THE ACRONYMS WOULD SPELL “WIMPS” AND “MACHOS” I SHIT YOU NOT
THEY ARE FUCKING TERRIBLE AT NAMING ANYTHING
I just listened to a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson himself LAST NIGHT and he went on about this more than once.
“I’m walking down the street and I’m like ‘ooh pretty rock…’ and some Geologist is like ‘actually, that’s anorthosite feldspar’ and I’m like ‘Nevermind, I don’t want it anymore.’ Any biologists in the audience? [some clapping] Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. The most important molecule in the human body, what did you name it? It has NINE SYLLABLES and it’s so long that even YOU GUYS abbreviate it as ‘DNA’!
But astrophysicists and astronomers? No, man, we call it like we see it. Star made of neutrons? NEUTRON STAR. Small white star? WHITE DWARF. You know that big red spot on Jupiter? Know what we called it? JUPITER’S RED SPOT.”
okay i’m glad you mentioned the biologist nonsense bc their naming methods are the bane of my existence
I see your astrophysicists-are-shit-at-names and raise you Marine-Biologists-Are-Fucking-Maniacs.
See this beautiful creature?
It’s a carnivorous deep-sea sponge that lives off of Easter Island and never sees the light of day, as it’s about 9000 feet down. Those delicate-looking orbs are covered in millions of tiny hooked spines, which latch onto anything unfortunate enough to bump into it, and hold it in place as it is digested alive by the sponge’s skin. Amazing, beautiful and profoundly creepy. They could have given it so many cool names. Could have drawn on mythology (I think Scylla would have been an appropriate reference), the region it was found in, the textured skin, PHAGOCYTOSIS, anything!
i saw “compared to terrestrial kangaroos” and very nearly lost my shit bc my mind didnt go to “trees” it went to “space”
Well, between the prehensile tails, grippy hands, great spatial reasoning, and a Baby Pocket ™ Tree Kangaroos would probably do pretty well in a zero-or-low gravity enviornment.
Plume de Lynx 