René-Antoine Houasse (French, c. 1645-1710, b. Paris, France) - Apollo Pursuing Daphne (detail), 1677, Paintings: Oil on Canvas
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo aka Giambattista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696-1770, b. Venice, Italy, d. Madrid, Spain) - Apollo and Daphne (detail), c. 1744, Paintings: Oil on Canvas
I know I’m almost 27 and this is lame but. I’m still scared of people who are “real adults” like I emailed two people who work at my institution that I’ve never interracted with before and they got back to me with PARAGRAPHS of response in less than an hour like. What is right with you guys?? Doesn’t it make you feel nauseous and sweaty??? If I don’t become like you am I doomed to failure?? Will I ever be someone who is Not Afraid of Emails or do i just have to fake it until i die??????
Dm me if you want a semi ugly friendship bracelet i learned how to make them last week and now i have 13 of them which is more than the number of friends i have
this thing. what the fuck is it. why is a tiny bord crawling with these comparitively huge parasite fly mite things. i tried to squash it three times and in the way of mite-lice things, it kept fuckin going. there were at least 6+ on her in various sizes.
note- i wouldnt normally recommend handling injured wild birds but i saw movement in her feathers and decided to investigate.
I’m so jealous of people who get to meet the ultra-weird hippoboscidae in person. In all my messing around with nature I’ve never seen a trace of one!
They probably aren’t bothering the bird that much really, as big as they seem in comparison to it.
They vary in their wing-ed-ness. Some have wings big enough to fly, others have stunted useless ones or none at all.
Some just fly once, but they never leave the first host they find and their wings tear off in the host’s fur or feathers!
They mostly feed on birds and bats, but there are also those that live on big, grazing mammals.
So many mean anecdotes on this post.
If they were tiny, tiny little bats I’m not sure people would just talk about all the ways they killed them and how horrific and disturbing they are, even the “scientific” blog I linked, which is really disappointing. I don’t feel like a proper biologist should find anything they study to be scary or ugly.
Parasites aren’t evil. Parasites are just animals that evolved to be really good at resource management by only taking what they need. Sometimes they can become dangerous or painful, but everybody’s favorite bears, dolphins, lions and hawks always are to their food. They rip the guts out of still-struggling meals and wolf down hunks of tissue. That’s a heckload creepier and grosser than a teeny-weeny vampire can ever be.
Hippoboscids are host-specific, so they won’t even bite anything but the one specific species of animal they live on; humans don’t have anything to fear from them.
this one is so pretty! They all are, but I’ve never seen these colors in any other photos.
