Showing posts with label accurate scientific depictions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accurate scientific depictions. Show all posts

7.02.2012

accurate depictions of animals: anglerfish edition


Yeah, so, the anglerfish. Nature's nightmare, lurking way way down in the ocean, dangling its tricksy little night light out there as bait. Ooh, so bright and shiny. But then, not so much. And let's not even get into how they make baby anglerfish. I mean, what the hell nature. What. The. Hell.

The next one will be much cuter, I promise. Something fuzzy, not scaly.

6.28.2012

accurate depictions of animals: manatee edition


Manatees are very soothing animals. They're big and squishy and they spend their days floating around eating seaweed and giving each other slow head bobs of recognition as they pass. They would give great hugs, and you could totally hug one whenever you wanted because they're a) herbivores, b) pacifists, and c) really slow. They are basically the animal equivalent of a meditation tape, without all the hippie woo-woo associations or the staggering boredom.

Bonus fact about manatees: members of the Manatee Fan Club are called Fanatees. Benefits include a shiny lapel pin and a quarterly newsletter in which manatees teach you how to relaaaax, man, because everything is going to be just fine.

6.05.2012

accurate depictions of animals: great white edition

Here are some facts about sharks:

1) Sharks have no internal organs, just more teeth.

2) Since Shark Week took off, all sharks are SUPER rich.

3) Spring Break is like shark Christmas.

4) Sharks are personally offended by water shoes because they are stupid. If you go into the ocean wearing water shoes, you are pretty much asking to have your feet ripped off.

5) Since sharks have no necks, they can't look back. As such they have no regrets, never think of the past, and if you grab onto their tails you can pretty much ride hitch a ride to wherever without them noticing.

6) The sharks vs seals rivalry started when some smartass seals decided to play ring toss with a passing shark fin, which as you may imagine is deeply insulting. Especially since the seals were REALLY bad at it and if there's one thing that sharks, as 100% perfect badass underwater killing machines, cannot tolerate, it's mediocrity.

7) In their dreams, sharks are fighter pilots.

5.29.2012

accurate depictions of animals: giraffe edition


Several people requested the giraffe as the next animal to get Accurately Depicted, so here he is! Ask and you shall (probably) receive, Internet.

5.25.2012

accurate depictions of animals: narwhal edition


One of my favorite Internet People - Katie from Don't Eat Off the Sidewalk (whose cute website graphics I maaay have had a hand in), fellow Buffyphile and creator of the tempeh buffalo wings that haunt my dreams - requested the narwhal as the next in the Accurate Depictions of Animals series. WISH GRANTED.

Now let me drop some science on you. A long time ago, unicorns roamed the Earth. It was no big deal, you'd be in the park and just see them running around like squirrels or rabbits. Sometimes one would get into your trash and you'd have to pull punctured soda cans off its horn, which was kind of a pain, but that's the price you pay for living with magic. ANYWAY. Once day some unicorns were at the beach, trying to get a base tan for summer - fun fact: unicorns tan rainbow - and they brought snacks. Unicorns were super fond of Bugles, for reasons I don't think I need to spell out. So they were laying out, eating Bugles, and basically just having such an awesome time that they didn't notice a huge wave heading for shore.

When it hit, there were unicorns and Bugles everywhere, like if someone put a bunch of unicorns and a bunch of Bugles in a snow globe and shook that baby up. When the wave was done slapping people around, the unicorns found themselves strewn across the beach, soaking wet with sand in uncomfortable places (if you know what I mean) and worst of all, totally Bugle-less.They looked out into the water and saw their precious snack horns floating on the waves, bobbing up and down, helpless and uncrunched. Having already had a pretty bad time of it, however, they decided against a rescue effort and got out of there. They could always get more Bugles at VII-XI anyway.

But the Bugles couldn't go home. The Bugles could never go home. They were cast out to sea, abandoned. But Bugles are survivors, so while a few were snapped  up by fish and seagulls, most of them did what Bugles do best: like incredibly perverse barnacles with no sense of boundaries, they Bugled their way up into some passing whales and got down to business. The business of Bugling. Somewhere between 3 days and a year later, a pod of narwhals was born. Since they were way better than all the other whales at snacking, stabbing, and stabbing things and stealing their snacks, they established dominance pretty quickly instead of dying off like the cone-headed freaks who put the Bugles in the ocean to begin with - and so began the reign of the clearly mis-named Unicorn of the Sea. I guess maybe Bugles are not great parents?

< / SCIENCE >

Next up: giraffes! Or maybe a shark? Or maybe whatever you suggest? MAYBE THAT. You too could get a completely factual story made up just for you! Or not, it depends if I'm feeling lazy.

5.24.2012

accurate depictions of animals: baby hippo edition


Yesterday one of my Twitter friends (hi @BluePlasticJess!) was having a bad day and started posting pictures of baby hippos in an attempt to cheer herself up. I have seen baby hippos before, but for some reason it never really dawned on me that they are JESUS CHRIST SO ADORABLE. Which they are. They basically look like little balls of squishable clay with ears. I want to put them in my mouth. Just, the whole thing. But since I can't (which leads me to question the wisdom of my life choices so far), I just drew one instead. If I were in charge of Doing Science, baby hippos would be classified as one of the following:

Blorpus Stubbularus
Rotundus Blorpulus
Squishablus Rotundus

And they would spend most of their time either nudging things with their little rubbery noses or rehearsing a ballet set to Dance of the Hours.

(These are all solid reasons why I am NOT in charge of Doing Science.)

(Also, I am not sure why I always want hippos to be purple. I wanted to blame it on Fantasia - one of our nation's finest examples of Hippos in Cinema - but when I went back to check it appears they were not purple at all. You're off the hook, Fantasia. THIS TIME.)

ANYWAY. I think I would like to do more of these, they are fun little warm-ups. So if anyone wants to see an Accurate Scientific Depiction of something, let me know. I will do no research whatsoever and probably make it the wrong color. SCIENCE!

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