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Carla / 23 (26/08) / they/them / England / unironically might be a will graham kinnie I'm so sorry / addicted to Hannibal, Game Grumps, Markiplier and Dan and Phil / TØP, FOB, MCR, mitski trash / i draw sometimes??? / i dont know what else to write :/
what’s the most demented thing you guys got in trouble for in school mine was when an english boy in my class made fun of my name and called my mum a (derogatory word for irish travellers) so i told him my ira uncle was in town and was coming to blow him up after school
When the author describes a character’s appearance way too late and you have to quickly redesign the image you already have for them in your head:
This is why if you want people to know your character has long raven-black hair with red streaks and eyes like limpid tears, you need to make sure you say so in your first paragraph. Christ. Imagine someone thinking your character’s a prep.
Holy shit I’m dying.
That. That literally explains the opening paragraph of My Immortal I was making a joke but this person came out here with receipts holy hell
you guys know you can get USB connectable CD, dvd, and blu-ray players right. and you can buy external hard drives with crazy amounts of space for an amount of money that would make the average person from 2009’s head explode bc of how cheap it is. and if you do this and get ripping software such as handbrake for CDs and DVDs and makeMKV for blurays you can both own a physical copy of whatever media you want and make it accessible to yourself no matter where you are. do you guys know this
I actually hypothesize that big bird is a late surviving direct descendant of Deinocheirus
would you be willing to expand on this hypothesis
same general body structure, has hands instead of full wings, has a slight hump, similar beaks
clearly Deinocheirus’ descendants evolved to have more upright postures, a shorter tail, and forward facing eyes over the past 66 million years
This implies Big Bird slowly evolved into a carnivore.
look, it’s been a while since I saw Follow that Bird, because it makes me cry every damn time, but I’m pretty sure Big Bird eats grains
that said, this means Big Bird is an herbivore that convergently evolved carnivore-like traits, which should be significantly more alarming to all of us
Ok, I want to know why it should be more alarming. Am I missing something?
Are you trying to imply that this is batsean mimicry of a big bird looking actually carnivorous species, or is this stretch?
I’m not a scientist, just an enthusiast.
So herbivores are more alarming than carnivores in general because carnivores get full. Herbivores are always on alert for predators and either have one of two responses: run (these can trample us) or fight (these will destroy us). This is why herbivores are usually much more dangerous than carnivores - for one quick example, more people are killed by the herbivorous hippopotamus each year than by sharks (yes, all species thereof)
so, an herbivore convergently evolving carnivorous traits means its an herbivore designed to take out potential dangers with the swiftness and lethality of a predator
that is extremely alarming
consider the cassowary. now imagine it more exact and capable. now imagine it the size of big bird.
we should all be glad he is a friendly presence on sesame street and not the unholy terror he should be
To add more to Big Bird’s biology, it should be noted that his species is either very diverse in morphology, or his clade contains many species that live in various countries’ Sesame Streets. Some of them, like Bibo from Germany, look pretty much the same as American Big Bird, but others are quite different. In the Netherlands we have Pino, who could easily be the same species but has a more pronounced crest, orange beak, and blue feathers everywhere except the area around the eyes. On the rare occasions he has actually met Big Bird, he called him Cousin Jan.
Brazillian Sesame Street is inhabited by Garibaldo, who judging by beak and leg morphology is likely a different species. Between the sleeker legs and the very sharp beak, I think a stork-like lifestyle is likely for his ancestral population.
Then there’s Abelardo from Mexico, who seems to come from a population that convergently evolved several parrot-like traits. An interesting detail about this is that, unlike most other vertebrates, parrots don’t absorb their pigments through their diet, but make their own pigments called psittacofulvins. Given that his relatives are quite colourful themselves and can probably obtain plenty of carotenoids from their diet, I don’t think that is likely to be the case in Abelardo.
Caponata from Spain looks very different from all her family members, even the more divergent ones. This could be since she is the only female member of the clade I have managed to find so far. However, the very different feet make me think she might hail from a very derived species instead. I can’t even imagine what sort of evolutionary pressures could lead to a bird evolving such strange feet.
Other Sesame Street birds are a little harder to find information about, with mostly older sightings. There seem to have been sightings of one named Toccata in Quebec. His shaggier white feather coat covering more of his legs and being thicker around his neck does suggest adaptations of the harsh winters up north.
Portuguese Poupas has different colouration and seems to have some sort of feather puff going on around the ankles as well. The feathers around the head are notably swept backward as well. I think this is a somewhat derived population of the American species. Minik Kuş from Turkey may hail from this population too, or perhaps from some intermediate or interbred population, as they seem to be more morphologically similar to the more typical Big Birds.
someone needs to throw together a phylogeny and I recognize that, as a bird researcher, who has done too many phylogenies of birds, I am the prime candidate, but I have too much to do for SVP…
I love how different forms of art are all obsessed with each other. A book tries to capture the feeling of music, a painting tries to depict a scene in a book, a song tries to paint a picture. And it’s always insufficient. No single form of art can encapsulate another form of art and capture the essence of it – but it tries, and its attempts are impossibly compelling. All the forms of art are in love with each other and spend so much time trying to express what makes the other kinds of art so lovely.
