Long strips of bright wildflowers are being planted through crop fields to boost the natural predators of pests and potentially cut pesticide spraying.
The strips were planted on 15 large arable farms in central and eastern England last autumn and will be monitored for five years, as part of a trial run by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).
Concern over the environmental damage caused by pesticides has grown rapidly in recent years. Using wildflower margins to support insects including hoverflies, parasitic wasps and ground beetles has been shown to slash pest numbers in crops and even increase yields.
To quote another farming post that crossed my dash earlier today – “It’s almost like nature knows what it’s doing.”
A team of artists and palaeontologists have put together what they say is the most accurate T. rex image ever, constructed layer by layer from the most up-to-date research we have on the creature.
which dinosaurs do you think might have been able to talk like parrots
Bob Bakker did a talk about vocalizations in sauropods at GSA a few years back talking about how they may have been able to control airflow through their whole neck to vocalize. He described them as having Saxaphones for heads so they can definitely do the back track on an all-dinosaur jazz band.
when you think of unicorns, what do you picture? a sunny forest glade full of snow-white pointy horses prancing around and farting glitter everywhere? well, that’s very Lisa Frank of you and all but YOU’RE WRONG. because (unlike dragons) unicorns actually do exist! but they don’t prance about in the forest harassing virgins.
no, they inhabit the icy waters of the far nothern seas, gorging on deep-sea squid and occasionally getting eaten by Polar Bears!
they may not be magical, but they’re rad as hell! it’s-
they PROBABLY don’t harass virgins, anyway. it’s not like there’s studies on that.
the Narwhal is a toothed whale that lives in the frozen wasteland of the arctic circle. their name is really really fun to say, especially if you draw it out. narwhaaal. try it! narwhaaaaal. fun! their name comes from the Old Norse “Whal”, meaning “Whale”, and “Nar”, meaning “Corpse”.
yup, the name literally means “corpse whale”. this is probably because early viking explorers thought that the Narwhal’s mottled grey back looked like a drowned sailor who’d been in the water for a while. gross! vikings were not even in the general vicinity of messing around.
unless we’re talking about the football team! har! SPORTS.
Narwhals max out at about 18 feet long and 3,500 lbs, putting them firmly in the category “smedium”. (we’re talking about whales here, remember.) they are closely related to the Beluga whale, which will get its own article at some point. but the most remarkable thing about Narwhals is their magnificent and dubiously magical tusk.
the tusk’s gentle spiral and soulful luster make it look exactly like the unicorn horns of legend (more on this later), but it’s actually… a really fucked-up tooth! (surprise!) that’s right, Narwhals have exactly two teeth in their weird beaky mouths, kind of where your canine teeth are in your own mouth. and in males and about 15% of females, one of these two teeth just goes completely fucking nuts and grows straight out of the Narwhal’s face.
and you thought hangnails were bad.
this tooth-turned-tusk is not exactly a compact accessory, either. this dental nightmare can be ten feet long, or over half again the length of the entire Narwhal! (imagine their toothpaste budget. yikes!) this tusk is light, flexible, and fairly sharp, though it’s too fragile for the Narwhal to use as a weapon. (humans sometimes make swords out of them, but these are really just for decoration. “hey, look at me! I have sword made out of whale face! fancy!”)
so what are these tusks actually used for, if they ain’t for stabbin’? well….
we don’t actually know for sure.
take note kids, there are still mysteries at large in the world.
scientists used to think that male Narwhals used these tusks to duel for females, but a) no one’s ever seen two Narwhals stabbing each other, b) the tusks are way too fragile for fighting anyway, and c) why would some female Narwhals have tusks, then? (unless WHALE LESBIANS). but recent studies have revealed that the tusk is just PACKED with nerve tissue, revealing a very surprising possible use for this overgrown tooth.
basically, scientists are now thinking that the Narwhal’s tusk may be an enormous antennae that can sense everything from pressure to water temperature and salinity. imagine if you knew every time the pack ice was about to freeze over because your tooth told you! it’s a pretty weird function, but it works just fine for the Narwhal.
if you ask real nice, they’ll give you the time and temperature.
this ability to sense when seawater is about to freeze would actually be very useful for the Narwhal, because they’re a bunch of ice-spiting daredevils even by arctic standards. Narwhals rely on pack ice to protect them from Killer Whales and Polar Bears, their main predators. And while scooting around under gigantic ice sheets is an effective way to keep predators off your defenseless fleshy tail, it can all go south pretty fast if your breathing holes freeze over unexpectedly.
but Narwhals are well-equipped for this icy lifestyle! aside from their wondrous tusks, they have a thick layer of blubber under their skin to keep them warm. a LOT of blubber. like, up to 40% of their entire body mass! they need the insulation, because they regularly dive nearly 5,000 feet into the frozen depths in search of the squid and deep-sea fish that they eat.
talk about a chilly lifestyle.
but let’s talk about unicorns for a bit! Europe has been obsessed with pointy magical horses since the Middle Ages, and they feature heavily in stories and art even today. of course, unicorns are a fake made-up animal and not real, but Middle-Ages Europeans didn’t know that. and it’s a factor that Norse traders, who damn well knew what a Narwhal was, took heavy advantage of.
Narwhal tusks sold as ‘unicorn horns’ were worth more than their weight in gold to European Royalty. seriously. in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I was given a carved and bejeweled Narwhal tusk ‘unicorn horn’ that was worth as much asan entire fucking castle at the time. Norse traders made out like bandits for CENTURIES, thanks to the Narwhal. I bet they laughed all the way to the bank.
not that Middle-Ages European Royalty didn’t deserve it.
but Narwhals aren’t doing so well these days, and it’s because they’re incredibly vulnerable to climate change. the sea ice is freezing over later and later every year, leaving Narwhal populations who depend on this ice cover vulnerable to predators and starvation.
there are still over 100,000 Narwhals in the northern seas, but these real-life sea unicorns need protection from climate change to continue to thrive. hopefully, humans can act soon enough to keep the arctic frozen and the Narwhal swimming free. because a world without Narwhals is not a world that I want to live in.
they’re better than unicorns because they’re real.
–
thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series on my tumblr here, or check out the official archive at weirdbiology.com!
if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee and support Weird Biology!
and if you’d like to see exclusive Weird Biology content, check out my Patreon today!
–
IMAGE SOURCES
img1- National Geographic img2- imgdealix img3- National Geographic Kids img4- Yandex.com img5- World Wildlife Fund img6- travelandliesure.com img7- Warped Speed img8- eclecticeccentricity
Is this what you guys think it means when GMO comes up in conversation?
Do you know what else is a GMO?
Dogs. Literally ALL dogs have had their genetics modified to make them more docile, loyal, trusting, energetic, obedient ect.
Ears of corn used to be the size of your thumb. Through selective ‘breeding’ we chose the strains of corn that were the biggest, fastest growing, most resilient ect. Ect.
THAT is a GMO. I don’t know where the idea that genetic modification meant they’re injecting your food stuffs with chemicals to change its DNA. That’s not how it works.
However, they ARE spraying your veggies with pesticides and that is something you should be worried about.
Companies like Monsanto are evil. But not because they are breeding crops to feed more people. But because they’re monopolizing the farming market, sueing farmers who share a geographic area and have some of the same strains of crops in their fields because of unavoidable cross pollination and lying about their business practices.
This is Normal Borlaug. In 1942 he received his Ph. D in plant pathology and genetics. In Mexico, he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease resistant varieties of wheat. A genetically modified food. He introduced these to Mexico, Pakistan and India, resulting in double the wheat yields in a 5 year span. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for saving one billion lives from starvation, and contributing to world peace through increasing the world food supply.
Genetically modified food is great.
This, a thousand fucking times this. Privilege is spouting and spreading pseudo-science bullshit you saw on your Facebook feed or on Twitter because unlike people in drought and famine prone areas of the world, you have the option to do just that. Those other parts of the world that don’t have the benefit of a food surplus and can’t pick and choose what they eat depend on GMOs to not die of starvation or watch their children waste away.
I despise Monsanto as much as the next person and if they ever go out of business, I’ll be the first to dance a jig, but condemning GMOs just because one megacorp is a pile of shitbags is beyond idiotic. If scientists can create new strains of seeds that can withstand disease, pests, all while yielding more foodstuff, then we should be throwing our support behind them.
Also, “They are feeding us chemicals!” is a fundamentally ridiculous statement.
Why?
As a chemist, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret:
Everything is chemicals.
GMO scaremongering is second only to vaccine scaremongering
I always laugh when people say “there are chemicals in my food!” because buddy…. you are chemicals. People are literally made of organic compounds, which are… chemical compounds with carbon in ‘em. YOU ARE THE CHEMICALS
Chemicals in my me?
Everything is chemicals
I blew my mother’s mind with this once. She’s a chemtrail, total tin-hatter, and couldn’t believe that I eat Miracle Whip, because “it’s nothing but chemicals.”
So I got on my phone and started reading off a scary list. It had lots of words followed by “acid”, and a bunch of stuff I had to read very slowly to be able to pronounce.
It was an apple. I was reading the chemical composition of an apple, and it goddamn nearly gave her a heart attack from panic.
these are called sprites! they’re an upper-atmospheric phenomena that occurs during thunderstorms, where large lightning strikes can discharge some of their energy upwards instead of down.
Buzz from the Honey Nut Cheerios box is a trans guy
look
He’s got a stinger, and only the worker bees have those. And what are all of the worker bees? Female.
Males do not have stingers. But it’s clear Buzz is portrayed as a boy. My conclusion? A happy trans dude living life and eating cereal.
Thank u for your time
this is an excellent observation but I’d like to add: bees don’t fall into the same gender binary as we have in western culture. There isn’t just male/female.
as you’ve shown here, there’s workers, drones, and a queen. the queen is obviously the female, the drones are males, but … worker bees are a little different. since science is a broad, highly flawed, and extremely cisnormative field, researchers looked at worker bees and basically went “well, there’s boys and there’s girls, and these bees can’t impregnate the queen, so They Must Be Girls!”
In reality, they are technically neither. Since they’re bees, they don’t care what we think and it doesn’t bother them, but in human terms, worker bees are technically nonbinary.
or, rather, non-bee-nary 🙂
so to summarize with what everyone else has added, Barry B Benson, every bee in the Bee Movie, Buzz the Cheerios bee, and just about every bee in pop culture that is a worker bee is nonbinary.
Emma's Blog 