tripod fish are as weird as the imaginary organisms in Scavengers Reign

video by the Schmidt Ocean Institute CC BY-NC-SA

Earless Monitor Lizard (Lanthanotus borneensis), family Lanthanotidae, endemic to Borneo

ENDANGERED.

Semi-aquatic.

Closely related to true monitor lizards in the family Varanidae.

The only member of its family.

They do have inner ears, and are capable of hearing, despite the lack of ear openings and tympanae.

photographs by Reptiles4all and Chien C. Lee

Michael Reedy

Art de Michael Reedy.

speechless. the pose. the expression. this should be a painting.

more on this:

Funny what a little bit of Holocaust denialism will get you trending with.

isopods :)

Gynecological Gymnastics from Outer Space (1895) | The Public Domain Review

A set of rather uncanny diagrams from Die Heilgymnastik in der Gynaekologie: und die mechanische Behandlung von Erkrankungen des Uterus und seiner Adnexe nach Thure Brandt (1895), translated from German as “The physiotherapy in gynecology and the mechanical treatment of diseases of the uterus and its appendages by Thure Brandt”. As the title implies the gynecological exercises are based on those invented by the Swedish obstetrician and gynecologist, Thure Brandt (1819-1895). Brandt began treating women in 1861, combining massage, stretching, and general exercise as a form of treating gynecological conditions. After his methods were examined in Jena by German gynecologists in 1886, they became widely used in Europe.

The images in this particular text are eye-catching today less for the gynecological technique they depict but more the bizarre similarity between the rakishly thin figures employed in demonstrating the exercises (no doubt an attempt to de-sexualise the images) and the figure of the so-called “Grey Alien” – thin body, huge head, large eyes – which wouldn’t hit popular consciousness for another 65 years

In the early 1900s, a man couldn’t afford proper dentures, so he made his own using melted down toothbrush handles and the teeth of a dead coyote. After years of wearing them, in 1946 a local dentist was so impressed with this ingenuity that he offered to make the man a professional set in exchange for the coyote dentures. The teeth are now in the collection of the Eastern California Museum, in Independence, CA.

It’s an old tradition that during a leap year women could propose to men. This was usually depicted as old or ugly women trapping men, but some art focused more on the role reversal and could be quite cute.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the last one because it plays on the idea of “undesirable” people, a tall masculine woman and a shy effeminate man, finding each other but instead of mocking them depicts it as sweet that she could finally ask him because he was too shy and insecure to ask her.

Morphological differences between thorns, spines, and prickles

<sound on> to hear these amazing Sand Hill Cranes overwintering near Willcox, Arizona

driving across Nebraska last summer

🎶=Low Hum