Ocellated Turkey

 Now that you've all eaten your traditional turkey, if you're in America at least, let me tell you about it's cousin. I recently found out about these guys because I was painting a little turkey statue and Google told me about them. Ocellated Turkeys. 

They're only found in a small part of Mexico, but I'm still a bit surprised that I didn't know about this bird that looks like a cross between a turkey and a peacock. Seriously. The picture below is from ABC birds, link at the bottom, and should show why I called them that and why I expected more people to know about this fabulous bird. Should I bring him up next year at Pride? Because he's colorful enough to fit their rainbow, almost. 

Now try to tell me that doesn't look like a pea-turkey. 

The term Ocellated, used to describe this turkey, refers to it having 'eye spots' on it's feathers. The orange and blue, supposedly, but I don't really see it unless the tail is spread, in which case...maybe. The orange part kinda kills it for me, but what do I know?  

According to some people, Ancient Mayans revered this colorful turkey and would trade for it's domesticated cousins to raise and eat, but these guys were seen as a badge of honor or something, to have them live around you or to be compared to them. I'm not sure about this entirely, but it sounds like one Mayan got the title of 'Great Turkey' inscribed on his tombstone, and it might be something like the way we sometimes call people the 'Big Dog'. I can think of worse critters to be compared to...

For the most part, they're just like the 'Wild' Turkey we all know and love to eat, but they're also rather different. They mostly share a diet, neither one migrates, and they have the same build, but they are very different for coloration, Ocellated Turkeys have a smaller range, and the well known 'Gobble' of Wild Turkeys is replaced by a drumming sound from their southern cousins. Just like any family tree, we've all got the weirdo who likes sparkly things and acts snooty, and we just have to deal with them. 

The Wild Turkeys might have it easier because they don't have to deal with said snooty cousin at the Holidays. 

Which, I hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving, and I look forward to figuring out what I want to do about Christmas, if I'm going to make it a theme for things at all. 

Seeya again soon, I hope. If not, blame the internet company that I'm giving serious considerations to trying a voodoo hex or wicca curse on. If I do, I'll let you know my research that led me to those choices and how it goes. 

Sources:

ABC Birds-- Ocellated Turkey

ADW-- Ocellated Turkey

Rainforest Alliance-- Ocellated Turkey

Reconnect with Nature-- Turkey's Wild Cousins

Data Zone- Ocellated Turkeys

Tortitude

 So, if I disappear entirely, it's probably because I'm in jail for doing something entirely justified to my internet provider. Or rather, lack of provider. Technically, they're not breaking any rules because I technically have access, but the fact that I couldn't load this site well enough to actually post anything means that I'm not going to say I actually had access. 

This is a short one, because I want to get it done before my internet disappears again, which could be any second now. 

Tortitude. It's the attitude that tortoiseshell cats have. Their 'diva' personalities. 

Torties are generally female, only males about 1 in 3,000, give or take, so there are some interesting beliefs about the males. I only got that from one site, the Ingrid King link below, so I'll just copy/paste it over here and you can investigate if you want. 

Tortoiseshell cats have a mythical folklore in many cultures, much of it centered around the rare male tortoiseshell. The Celts considered it a good omen if a male tortoiseshell stayed in their home.  English folklore has it that warts could be healed if rubbed by the tail of a male tortoiseshell’s tail during the month of May.  Japanese fishermen believed that male tortoiseshells protected their ships from storms and ghosts. A Khmer legend in South East Asia has it that the first tortoiseshell arose from the menstrual blood of a goddess born of a lotus flower.

Torties are thought to bring good luck in many cultures. They are sometimes referred to as the money cat.

Tortoiseshell cats were believed to have psychic abilities and see into the future. It is said that those who dream of a tortoiseshell cat will be lucky in love.

For those that aren't sure about it, Tortoiseshell patterning is a mix of black and brown, or some other color, with little to no white. They range from large patches to speckles mixed in, but both are awesome and adorable. 

What got me choosing this word for now is that I've actually broke down and finally created a social media page to post all my kitten pictures. Lots of pictures. Not all the pictures, because I'm up at around 15,000 of them, but the cute ones...or at least the ones I think are cute or fun. I'm on Bluesky, with the handle of CrazySkaKittens. I planned to link that also, but it's being mean to me right now. Hopefully I can add it later. 

Sorry for disappearing for a week, and I hope to see you soon but I can't guarantee that if I can't manage to load up this page again for days. I'll be back if I can though. 

Sources:

Purrs of Wisdom with Ingrid King-- Tortitude

Cats.Com-- Tortitude

Seattle Times-- Study; Tortie Cats' Attitude is real

Meowingtons-- Tortitude

Flamingo Babies

 I'll probably do a post about Flamingoes later, but I wanted to do this one for reasons that are absolutely unrelated to a video I saw recently on Youtube that I'm going to link repeatedly. 

What got me to the video in the first place is that Flamingoes don't have backwards knees, they have knees up against their body and ankles halfway down...and baby flamingoes are adorable, but especially when they're first learning to walk. There's also this one that is about them trying to learn to stand on one leg, which is hilarious also. I really like it that the larger baby just gave up and sat down a few times. 

This comes from the Birdfact link below. 

To continue the absolute adorableness of all things, these tiny adorables are often called chicks, but sometimes also flaminglets. That sounds both adorable and awkward, like them. They're often single children, with one large white egg that gets incubated for a bit less than a month, then the babies stay in the nest for a week as they get stronger, then they join the other flock babies because these birdies are social. More social than me at least. 

It'll probably surprise you, but Flamingo parents actually feed their babies 'milk' that is very similar to mammal mother's milk, and is very red because it's got the proteins the little gray babies need to turn pink. It does mean that the mama turns a bit paler for a while, but being a parent drains everyone for a while anyway. As a kitten-mama, I'm allowed to say that. It takes a while for the babies to change colors though, so no bright-pink babies. 

Another interesting thing is that everyone knows that Flamingoes have hooked beaks, but the babies have straight beaks. They start curving as they get older and less adorable, starting at about 11 weeks old. The picture below is also from the Fort Worth link below. 

I hope this provides you with some of your daily requirement for cute and that you will follow the youtube links to see the adorable baby flamingoes trying to walk or stand on one leg. They certainly made me smile. 

Hopefully I'll see you soon, though probably not with something quite this adorable again. 

Sources:

YOUTUBE-- Baby Flamingo Learning to Walk

YOUTUBE-- Baby Flamingo Trying to Stand on One Leg

A-Z Animals-- Baby Flamingo Facts

Seaworld-- All About Flamingo Babies

BirdFact-- Baby Flamingoes

Animal Corner-- The Adorable Side of Flamingoes

Fort Worth Zoo-- Baby Flamingoes Born

National Philanthropy Day And Citizen Science

 Hi. Life's been a bit annoying lately, so I'm sorry that I'm a bit scattered. I'm still trying to post at least every other day, but....well, life. 

Today is National Philanthropy Day, which I would normally ignore, but I thought it might be a good time to introduce Citizen Science, in case anyone doesn't know about it and has the time to be interested. 

In short, Citizen Science is what it's called when part of a research project gets done by the normal people of the world instead of relying only on what the scientists know. This can be anything from bird watchers tracking what birds are in an area or when they migrate around, how many of a certain insect are around, or helping go through a bunch of scanned papers/letters/historical data to put it into text like this. It's mostly busy-work that's easy to do but takes time, or human eyes instead of computer analysis. 

One particular example is that the National Archives are looking for people who can read cursive so that they can help translate old documents for easy references. (Here's a link to the article about it.)

NASA also has several programs that include volunteer options, if you want to look into them-- here. 

Otherwise, you can check out the Zooniverse for possible crowd-science options, or The Association For Advancing Participatory Sciences, which used to be called The Citizen Science Association.  

For proof that this does good stuff, there is an Academic (ish) journal that talks about the research done by the citizen science groups and what they have accomplished, called Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. 

So, you might not have a lot of money to offer, but anyone can help somehow, and this is one way you could if you want. Hopefully these lists have somewhere you can volunteer some time to help Science and do something really cool. Please let me know if you do.  

I'll see you again soon. 

Boscaresque

 Picturesque, scenically wooded. 

Depending on the source, it could mean a pretty picture with trees, or a pretty picture of trees. Two slightly different things, which the definitions of this really old word are iffy about. Since Phrontistery says that this word is used from 1734 to 1734, it's probably not something I'll ever be able to answer. 

I think these three are good examples of it though, and I hope you agree. I, personally, think I'm pretty blessed to be able to be around such awesome views. 

 

I took all three of these, so I'm the source. And apparently I'm going to have to make a social-media page to share pictures of my cats and other cool things because...I just am going to have to. I'll let you know what I end up with. 

Either way though, you have a new word to use to sound fancy. I know it doesn't quite fit the given definitions, but you could use it to describe a garden, or park with trees, or possibly even twist it to describe someone with a green thumb. It could be fun. 

Seeya soon. 

Sources;

Wordfoolery-- Boscaresque

Grandiloquent Word of the Day-- Boscaresque

Mandy Eve Barnett-- Lost Words

Phrontistery-- Lost Words A-E (I love this website for some awesome lost words. They're my go-to when I want a weird word to tell you about.)

Featherkile's Rule

Whatever you did, that's what you planned. 

So...me taking random breaks is for my mental health or something, not because life gets hectic. I totally planned those. 

To apologize for the totally planned breaks, here's an adorable kitten;

Make that two, just because. 

If you want to know more about Featherkile's Rule, you can find it pretty easily. I think it'll be fun to bring up in life later. Either way, have fun and I'll see you again soon. 

Sea Sapphires

Ok, I was debating a lot of things, then I saw a picture of these guys and figured that, since I'm going to investigate for me anyway, might as well tell you about them. 

Sea Sapphires. 

This picture is from the link below, Just the Sea. I know they're not blue like sapphires in this picture, but please bear with me and think about how awesome that very tiny creature is. 

These guys are part of a group of tiny shrimp like animals that are collectively known as Sea Rice because they're very common and very much at the bottom of the food chain. They're only a few millimeters long, so don't expect to find them in the wild unless you're looking really closely. 

Scientists were really interested in these guys because, depending on the angle of the light that hits the tiny shrimp, their color changes. Their entire body is covered in tiny crystal plates that catch and reflect light. Different species have different shades of colors, so they aren't all bright blue, but they're still called Sea Sapphires. If the light comes in at anything other than the right angle though, they're entirely transparent, so predators can't find them. 

Basically, it's like a piece of glass, where you can look through it unless you find the perfect angle, then it lights up. Considering the water and the amount of things in there, plus how active things are, it would probably be pretty hard to spot the single flash of light before the water tosses them around enough to make them stop sparkling.

One of the really cool parts of that though is that the crystals these tiny creatures use to reflect light are made from one of the four parts of DNA, Guanine. I know that's something that some people are using that as a supplement or something, but still. That's part of DNA, that they repurposed to be flashy and cool.  

Less cool is that, like a lot of things in nature, it's only the guys that sparkle. The girls are mostly eye so that they can find those sparkling bits, and live as parasites on creatures known as Salps, who are also on my list of things to tell you about, I just haven't gotten there yet. For now, just consider them jellyfish. The guys swim in spirals so they flash a bit, and the girls are supposed to find them to get together. 

So...making the girls do all the work, again. Rude. 

This pic came from iNaturalist below, and is most of the reason I included that link, since there isn't a lot of information there. 

Most of the links cover pretty much the same thing about these guys though, so while there is probably a lot more information about these guys that I didn't find, I was mostly focused on the cool crystal plates and sparkliness. 

I hope you like these shiny dudes, and I'll see you again soon. 

Sources:

The Helm Lab Blog-- The Most Beautiful Animal you've never seen

Just The Sea-- The Magic of Sea Sapphires

Scientific American-- How Do Sea Sapphires turn Invisible

iNaturalist-- Sea Sapphires

Real Monstrosities-- Sea Sapphires

Side note- I just want to giggle for a moment that Scientific American seems to really know their people because they said that Sea Sapphires are able to hide as well as a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey. Obviously, all science geeks know Star Trek. I can't complain about that though, because I'm a pretty good Trekky. 

Japanese Butt Breathing

I've been going through and trying to sort out several thousand bookmarks of recipes, science articles that sound interesting, and pages I found researching any of a hundred things that interest me. As you can tell here, I'm not picky about what's interesting to me. The problem here is that I'm finding 800 very interesting things that I want to investigate and tell you about...but I'm only doing one a day. Hopefully they'll still get here someday. 

I brought this up earlier with some friends though, and I got a lot of laughs because people thought I read it wrong or something, and because...just how are you supposed to take this seriously? 

Picture is from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital link below. 

I guess that's why it won an Ig Nobel Prize last year though, because it makes you laugh, then you've got to think about it. 

So, this actually comes from Nature. There are a few animals and insects, such as a few (Australian, EEK) turtles that have this ability to draw air in through carefully placed gills, meaning they don't have to worry about chewing fast or something to get in more air.  There's also an eel-like fish that uses it's gills to breath straight air if the water it's in is too low in oxygen. This can't cover the entire air-requirement of a species, but it can help a lot. That's why this actually came up as a treatment for people who have issues with their lungs. 

Since they can't just blow air straight in, they created an oxygen-rich fluid (this is actually old tech) and inserted it...somewhere most people are a bit sensitive about things being inserted. This was, of course, first tested with some very surprised and concerned pigs, who showed good response to it so it was tried with humans. It helps some, but it's still being studied. 

Takanori Takebe got an Ig Nobel prize for this, which does come with a bit of a cash prize that I assume got put into this. Or possibly framed for giggles. It's something like 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, or about 40 cents. 

I look forward to when this becomes a more common practice and they have to figure out how to repackage this to make it more acceptable to the medical community and it's patients. I also look forward to the whole new round of hilarious idiocy people will do with this. 

There are articles below if you want to look into it more, or if you don't believe me for some reason (I wouldn't blame you). 

Seeya soon. 

Sources:

Cincinnati Children's Research Hospital-- Ig Nobel Prize Awarded for Butt Breathing Study

Med Page Today-- Butt Breathing Study

New York Post-- Butt Breathing Might Help People with Lung Diseases

Men's health-- Butt Breathing

India Today-- Yes, Butt Breathing is Real

University of Nebraska Medicine-- Clinicians Test Butt Breathing
IFL Science-- Ig Nobel Winning Butt Breathing Technique Tested

Sea Angels

Ok, when I reach 200 posts, I'm going to start a Patreon so that I can afford to subscribe to things like Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Live Science, and read as much as I want. I know it'll take me a forever to actually get the money to do so, but still. And now that I've told you, I'm going to forget it and go back to finding the free articles for everyone to read and find out about the ridiculous things I'm telling you about. I say ridiculous because if I'm going to tell you about Germany's Baby Derby, I can't call this a serious information blog, even if I'm being serious that I love these things and want you to know about them. 

In this particular post, I'm going to tell you about Sea Angels.

This particular picture comes from the Monterey Bay Aquarium link below, and demonstrates very well how they got this name. 

These guys are actually sea snails, though they don't have shells like their cousins, the sea butterflies, do. Please don't go googling them just yet, they're on my list to tell you about later and I really want to pull out a bunch of cool pictures then too. If you can't wait, please promise to be amazed later, because they're cool. 

One of the really cool and more-than-vaguely-terrifying things about them is that they're predators, and when they come across their food (which is actually, mostly, the aforementioned sea butterflies, meanies), they reach out with tentacles from their face, grab the thing, and use two hooklike arms to pull the thing out of it's shell and directly into the Angel's stomach. This can take somewhere between 2 and 45 minutes, apparently. 

Again, from Monterey Bay, but this one is terrifying somehow. Thankfully, these guys are only a few inches long, so not likely to attempt to eat me like I'm still strangely afraid they will. Why is this guy scarier than sharks? 

In other news, despite snails being really slow on land, these guys can actually swim pretty well. They use their wings to direct themselves and are pretty maneuverable. 

This one is from the Ocean link below. These guys are so pretty. Their transparent bodies help protect them from predators, of which they have many, but we can still see a few things of their organs, which makes them look very cool. The other thing that protects them is that they actually produce a chemical that makes them not-tasty, which gives them the distinction of being the first known mollusk to actually produce their own chemical deterrent instead of getting it from their food. 

Just thinking, but I probably should have done this post last month. Here's an innocent looking creature that has a hidden dark side of predatory tentacles, and I just missed turning it into a Halloween monster. Darn. I guess I'll have to start saving up for next Halloween though, because I'm going to need a list of fun things to tell you about next time, that no one else covers in detail too. 

Anyway, this was nice and I'm definitely not going to be having nightmares about these adorable little murder machines, and I'll see you again soon. 

Sources:

Monterey Bay Aquarium-- Sea Angel

Ocean, Smithsonian-- Angels of the Sea

Ocean Conservancy-- Sea Angels

University of Texas Marine Institute-- Sea Angels

Discover Wildlife-- Sea Angels

Nat Geo-- The Mating Dance of the Sea Angels