Oh god, you weren't kidding. If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go stare into a laser for a few minutes to rest my eyes.
@Wiwaxia that makes a lot of sense. the only fluid dynamics i know are in air, where scaling really isn't an issue (at least for the stuff i've done), i.e. you can scale down an aircraft & shove it in a mini air tunnel with few problems so long as the proportional strength & speed are right. i'd definitely be interested in seeing the paper you mentioned at some point @Exohedron that is some bad graphic design, it reminds me of the website project i did in grade 8, but with much cooler content. unrelated: this is a thing i found yesterday, it's a model of the galaxy with some stellar data attached (at least for the stars in our local cluster which have been studied) (it's also really pretty) 100000 stars
i discovered something really neat http://hugefloods.com/ ICE AGE FLOODS OMNOMNOM you know how i said i love big erosive events? this is my jam!
earthquake lights! http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...lights-earthquake-prediction-geology-science/ they now have a theory with explanatory power -- in a nutshell, piezoelectric effects which are rare because the topology of the fault can easily block them from reaching the surface -- and yet another really cool phenomenon passes out of the hands of ufo woo believers and into the realm of science. this makes me so excited. geology is my JAM y'all.
SCIENCE!! I really like all kinds of science, but I am in a slump right now and its hard to get excited about all but the most exciting things. I LOVE LIZARDS. I love all reptiles BUT ESPECIALLY LIZARDS. ALSO SPHENODON, WHICH IS LIKE A LIZARD BUT IT ISN'T!! I could all caps about lizards and not-lizards and how much I love them all day. But, time for more sciency science. I mentioned in my intro thread that I'm going into evolutionary developmental biology, which is where you look at developmental processes in organisms and use those observations to make evolutionary inferences. My favorite favorite favorite paper, the one that set me on this path really, was about the development and evolutionary origin of snake fangs. There's a paywall there, sorry, but I am too full-steam-ahead about snake fangs to find if there's a free version right now. Spoiler: Talk of dead snakes for the sake of science, also potentially science that isn't current because I've been too out of it to stay current Summary with less jargon and more background: Venomous snakes come in multiple fang-types, separated by their position in the mouth into "front fang" and "rear fang" groups. Front fang snakes can be further separated by the type of fang. Hinged-fang snakes, such as rattlesnakes, have long fangs that can be folded so they can shut their mouths. (Alas, I have yet to find out about a sabre-toothed sneky.) Fixed-fang snakes, like cobras, have shorter fangs that don't move. The question is: how did snake fangs come to be in the first place? Did all these types arise separately, did one develop first and the others from that, what order did it happen in?? So many question, so little snakey. Except, no, plenty of snakey! Enough sneky that they were able to observe snake embryos at multiple stages of fang development. They found that early in fang development, across species with different fang types, all the fangs started to grow in the back of the mouth, and grew in very similar ways! As development continued, the fangs of the front fanged snakes moved, well, to the front of the mouth, while the fangs of the rear fanged species stayed in the rear. So, what does this mean? Well, the fact that they started to grow in the same place and that they grew very similarly is consistent with the idea that they did not evolve separately, but from an ancestral rear fanged snake. I don't recall if it makes any inferences about the differentiation of fixed fang and hinged fang snakes, though. I ought to look that up. XD I read that paper a few years ago, so fastforwards to a few months ago. I was thinking of potential grad school projects. I was thinking "wow I'd love if I could do something like that snake paper", and then I remembered that there was similar confusion about the origin of turtle shells. I thought, hey, I wonder if it would be viable to do an experiment looking at the development of turtle shells in order to figure out how they evolved! Turns out, it totally is, and lots of people are working on it. I greatly look forward to the day when I have enough of my brain power back to sort through this topic more thoroughly.
so cute... but would their fangs drag on the ground? Would they leave little grooves behind them if their heads were wider than their bodies? if they were long and mobile fangs, what if the snake shut its mouth but instead of folding normally, they stuck out and flipped up a bit? snakes with warthog tusk fangs.
I can't find anything about burrowing asps having fangs that are usually out, nor can I find any images with them out other than some repeats of that one. I wonder if that one's injured maybe? It looks a little... squashed. But speaking of burrowing, and also tying back into my love of lizards and things that look like lizards but aren't and things that don't look like lizards but are: amphisbaenians! Click-throughs in case anyone is easily bothered by... creepy worm looking things? Spoiler: A comparison of things that are and are not "lizards". It seems the taxons have been shifted since the last time I was aware, so amphisbaenians are being classed as lizards now. Good for them! Let's take a look at the Mexican mole lizard, Bipes biporus- what okay i GUESS that kind of looks like a lizard, if you crossed a lizard with a naked mole rat and some kind of weird grub. Let's try again. How about the Iberian worm lizard? Not blue worms, not milipedes but you can't see the legs, but lizards! This though? Definitely not a lizard! Here's the tuatara/sphenodon:
oh neat, i went and read up on sphenodons a little, and at first i was like BUT IGUANAAAAA but of course looks can be decieving what a cutie bit also: would you call that a... problematic taxon? *waggles eyebrows at @Wiwaxia behind my notebook*
I think they get their stubby wings first, then the third eye, then the wings fill out. Takes a LONG time before they can start breathing fire.
More things that are and are not lizards: Spoiler Yes Yes (phylogenetically speaking, snakes are a very specialized kind of lizard) No Very No @jacktrash *waggles eyebrows right back*
that's one of my favorite things that happens in science, mainly because the whole "it was aliens" "no it was [x still kinda ridiculous scientific explanation]" "but aliens" thing makes me laugh. @Wiwaxia what is the second last not-lizard? google image search is not my friend (also, the last one is a varanops, right?)
@inna Those are a couple of species of aetosaurs (the bones are Desmatosuchus and the diagram's Stagonolepis). Herbivorous, terrestrial armored croc-relatives from the Triassic. The last one is a Varanops, yeah.
one of my self-calming strategies when i'm feeling meltdowny is watching science and nature documentaries. http://video.pbs.org/video/2365464997/ here for your enjoyment is the most calming documentary i have found yet. if finding fibonacci numbers in flower petals makes your brain go 'ahhhh yes good' then i think you will like this one.
dang, that is a nice documentary. one of my classmates wrote a paper on the fibonacci sequence in nature, i'll have to see if i can get my hands on it. (mine was euler theorem & phasors). i'm pretty sure some kinds of fish scales follow a similar pattern, but i'm not 100% sure. speaking of documentaries, i always play them in the background when i'm working or sometimes when i'm drawing. my favorites are the ones narrated by david attenburough, especially blue planet (i am a gigantic fish nerd heh), and a bunch of series called wildest [x] (ex. wildest india, wildest indochina (my fave)). i'm gonna need to check out nova, though! p.s. aetosaurs are neat! no links because my phone refuses to copy them, sorry
