Behold, birds who have lost the ability to can!
Just kidding, guys. These birds are just trolling the hell out of ants. I really, really wanted to show you this clip of a Galapagos finch or something harassing the shit out of formica ants and then being all “Yes, yes, bathe me in your fury! Your chemical defenses are now my own! Mwahahahaha!”, but the closest thing I could find is this video of David Attenborough pissing off some wood ants. It was basically like that, only instead of an Englishman with a stick, it was a bird stomping around with its wings spread just being an absolute asshole about everything.
This behavior is actually called anting, and there are two types of anting that birds can engage in. One is just anting, where birds will rub ants all over themselves to get that precious, precious formic acid all up in their feathers. They’ll also do it with mothballs, cigarette butts, and certain sorts of beetles and millipedes. The other one is passive anting, where a particularly lazy bird will find an anthill and just flop down on it with all their feathers spread and puffed and annoy the ants until they hop to and try to make them leave, at which point the bird rubs its wings together and goes “Yeeeeeess.”
They do this to get rid of external parasites, because external parasites are annoying. Ant-eating birds who do this are getting a two-for deal out of it, because they get the ants to empty their acid sacs in a beneficial location (the bird’s feathers) and then get to eat them without having to deal with the acid in their crops, so it’s basically like if your bug-spray or deoderant came in a bacon bottle.
Formica ants get the brunt of this, because they’re super-common and quite frequently spray the acid instead of trying to inject it, so the bird can get itself doused and then preen it into its feathers. Considering the spraying of acid is like the ant way of saying “Oh my god go away you dickhead I hate you we all hate you why are you still here jesus christ what is wrong with you,” we can be reasonably sure that they’re not super-thrilled by this bird behavior. Since the birds keep doing it, we can be reasonably sure that they don’t care about the ants’ feelings.
Art by Nekro
More ways I paint plants! This is how I paint to make my plants look less muddy. I use bolder colors to help me out. Again, this is how I like to go about it! 😀
cause as much as i love dragons purring and roaring i wish there was just more variety in how they would act
clacking their teeth together to show contentedness/happiness (budgies)
using tails as a defensive weapon in a whip like fashion (iguana)
twitching to express that they're not a threat to members of their species (hognose snake)
feeling calm when eyes are hooded/covered (birds of prey)
head bobbing as a threat display (anoles/bearded dragons)
flattening neck or sides to appear bigger (snakes/lizards)
mantling over food to protect it from hatchmates (birds of prey)
wiggling neck as a courting maneuver (budgies)
audibly grinding teeth as a warning (macaques)
maintained eye contact as a challenge (gorillas)
pounding wings against sides as a threat (gorillas)
slapping other dragons with their claws when their personal bubble is invaded (seals)
hoards used as a site to impress mates (birds of paradise)
snorting when undergoing heightened stress (horses)
making repeated loud noises with surroundings to establish territory (woodpeckers)
loud constant arguments with other dragons when roosting (bats)
building lairs that cause a domino effect of change in the land around them (beavers)
slapping their tails against the ground/water as a warning (beavers)
plucking or scraping off scales as a sign of stress (parrots)
raising spines/frills as a response to danger and carrying on with their usual business as they believe they're protected (lionfish)
and im not saying canine and feline behaviors are wrong or bad to give a dragon (people wouldn't write dragons with those behaviors if they weren't fun in the first place!) but i feel for creatures that are mythological giant winged lizards that you can do more and get experimental with it. often the more unfamiliar behavior the more dragons get that much more dragony
Seraph, fresco from the Ferapontov Monastery, 1495-1496.
At the library I picked up Venomous by Christie Wilcox, a nonfiction book about venom, on a whim and holy shit. I just finished it. I’ve never torn through a non-fiction book this fast. Absolutely fucking amazing i am just reeling from the pure wonder and fascination and the absurd amounts of cursed knowledge
kinda basic but a dragon shifter woman w scales and a tail and dragon eyes x vampire woman who fall in love, and nsfw if thats okay? the vampire is also queen of the vampire clan and the dragon is a cult escapee
also!! i forgot to add but the dragoness’s name is celant and the vampire queen’s name isviolet! thank you!!
Hope you actually remember sending this ask in!! Sorry it’s taken me so long to do. This was for the 10 free thank you stories in honour of the blog hitting 1000 followers. I’ve got two more left now, and you can find others here. Those requests are now closed.
Violet laystretched out under an endless canopy of stars above. Her eyes, the irises sosubtly different from humans’, picked out colours of the spectrum no one elsehad access to, and she savoured – craved– these rare nights alone on the plain.
As far as even hereyes could see, the grasses blew, wafting and shifting, hissing, whispering thesecrets of the land and bringing with them the scents of the night. A haremoved quietly with barely a rustle; a fox stalked it. An owl glided on silentwings, seeking mice, and far enough away to maintain his respectful distance,her most faithful servant and bodyguard stood watch over her.
She had learned tobe alone with Endon in a way that she could with no one else.
Everyone assumedthat she would one day wed Endon, but she had no interest in men. Theirrelationship was closer to brother and sister, though he was ever deferentialto his queen.
As she lay on herback, Endon’s horse stamped a hoof and snorted, and the warder patted themare’s black neck. “Easy, Orchid,” he murmured, his voice deep and quiet as thenight itself.
Violet knew shewould have to return to the castle, to her duties, to her empire of the night,but just a few moments longer was all she could hope for.
Endon’s headsnapped around, his attention fixed on something to the east, and his sword wasout of its scabbard in a heartbeat, and Violet sat up, fingers pressing intothe grass.
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apples trees in winter snow
idea: scene with two characters eagerly stripping each other clearly about to bone, but they keep getting interrupted by finding carefully concealed weapons in each other’s clothing, so they keep just unholstering, revealing and unstrapping increasingly ludicrous amounts of hidden guns and knives as the clothes come off, and it’s lowkey killing the mood a little
something you don't learn until you get really far into the making and tinkering life is that there's no such thing as "glue" really. there are so many kinds of substances that stick other substances together and they are all very different and if you just go look at the adhesives aisle in the hardware store the packaging never actually tells you anything useful. it's like "this is SUPER T-REX POWER GLUE" and the fine print says "good for use on wood metal and plastic". okay. but WHICH PLASTICS MY GOOD BITCH,
because SURPRISE, there's no such thing as "plastic" either. every kind of wood is basically the same on a chemical level, but the only thing every plastic has in common is "some of its molecules are long" and that is NOT a quality that determines how things stick together.
I just ordered some stuff I hope will permanently stick a circuit board to a steel sheet and withstand temperatures up to 150 degrees. by the way circuit boards are made of epoxy-bound woven glass cloth which is cool as hell but what the fuck do you glue that with? can any of the 12 kinds of adhesives I currently own do that? no of course not. if I want to stick two pieces of acrylic together so hard they become watertight to a depth of 3000 metres I have some shit that does that, but it does literally nothing else.
anyway. once you start learning how many kinds of sticking things together there are, the people at 3M start to seem like witches and I don't know if they're the kind we can trust with that level of arcane knowledge
23, Australian, this is where I'm dropping my writing inspo and pieces.
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