I love how both corvids and parrots are in general highly intelligent, but where corvids generally have strict hierarchies, solve disagreements in the pecking order by fighting, and have a strong dislike for anything new or foreign until they figure out how to make use of it, parrots are just here to party.
The New Caledonian crow, who knows how to specifically build a tool in order to build another tool, never engages in play. These motherfuckers are smarter than some people with the right to vote, and they are Extremely Serious Birds. They don’t have time to play, they got work to do and kids to raise.
And then there’s the kea, straight-up titled “clown of the mountains”, that has a specific vocalization for “playtime!”. Scientists decided to try what happens if they play the Play Call for two fully-grown adult keas that are together in an area and can clearly see there is no other, third kea to make the call, and they just go “great idea, disembodied voice! it’s TIME TO FUCKING PARTY!” and start wrestling.
Imagine working really hard in order to make it into a top university to study astrophysics, making it to your first Very Serious Class, sitting down full of serious determination, and the dude next to you is taking notes without using his hands, with a glitter pen he’s shoved up his nose. And his notes are good.
It’s your first day of Bird University and you already fucking hate this guy.
So there’s this gene in humans called PLXNC1 or “Plexin”, right? So Plexin is associated with increased neuron function and is generally thought to be correlated to human’s increased cognitive ability for the use of language, i.e., “language learning”. Super cool, right?
Humans aren’t the only animals with advanced language learning that have Plexin in their genome. We can actually find homologous plexin between humans and PARROTS!
Using genomic alignment search tools, we can actually break down the sequence of human Plexin and directly compare it to the Plexin found in parrots. (This was actually a project I ran for an upper division genomics class, and running the program literally takes like… ten minutes.) I wanted to see how similar the plexin gene was between humans and parrots, so I queued up the human sequence against all of the available records from parrot genomes and sorted by greatest percent identity (i.e., which bird species had the closest plexin to ours?)
THIS LITTLE ASSHOLE HAS A HOMOLOGOUS LANGUAGE LEARNING GENE WITH US!!!! A GENE THAT IS THOUGHT TO BE CORRELATED TO HIGHER LEVEL LEARNING AND INTELLIGENCE!!!!! AND THEY USE THEIR INTELLIGENCE TO WREAK HAVOC ON TOURISTS
Also these guys have been found to literally have predictive reasoning skills, which we consider REALLY FUCKING ADVANCED for a lot of animal species. They pass the Aesop’s fable test with flying colors. They’re so goddamn cool, I love them so much.
The kea really said: “I will use my superior intelligence to have a good fucking time” and that’s so powerful honestly
One time at the zoo, a kea chewed a hole in my pants because I ran out of treats to give him.
I feel like we have a nice spread from Lawful through to Chaotic Good when you take all three of the Sobecks together.
Beta, Lawful Good: I was raised with the notion that putting even one toe out of line was unforgivable, and while I’m unlearning that now, I find it less stressful and more pleasing to do my good deeds within an accepted framework, there’s just less for me to worry about :)
Lis, Neutral Good: Yeahhhhh, I would prefer to work above board, but if you try to stop me from doing the good I want to do, I am absolutely NOT above going vigilante on your ass. Blackmail is illegal? Then let’s not force me to resort to it, buddy, just sign the damn proposal.
Aloy, Chaotic Good, kicking down the door: I CAMEHERE TO HELP YOUR ASSES AND TELL YOU THAT ALL OF YOUR RULES AND TRADITIONS ARE BULLSHIT. AND I’M ALL OUT OF ASSES TO HELP.
Star Trek is so funny. All of starfleet is so aggressively Neutral Good. Every time they’re up against something they Always do the noble thing. Every one of these motherfuckers is so ready to jump on the grenade. It’s so cute I love them
Starfleet officers come out of the academy with 2 things: a passion for science bordering on sexual and an incomprehensible desire for self-sacrifice
I love how this is like, acknowledged in lore, too. Like, the reason Starfleet is so full of these bozos is because it’s a big non-profit where you get to Do Science and Be Noble. So only people who want to Do Science and Be Noble join up. The organization has a reputation for producing the most moralistic greater-good-loving yuppies in the galaxy. It’s a straight-up hero factory. You love to see it
I bet vulcan ships gossip about how starfleet officers can’t go a day without volunteering for a life-threatening mission before they start climbing the walls looking for enrichment
sending them on dangerous missions is actually a safety measure, otherwise they start tinkering with the warp drive, and you end up as salamanders
Or start tampering with subspace rifts and end becoming a galaxy-shattering vocal ensemble
It’s a post scarcity society! At least, for the core Federation planets.
So what happens when your healthy, happy citizens (numbered in the trillions) runs out of things to do? You can only learn so many obscure skills, study so much art & philosophy, consume so much media before boredom sets in.
Time to explore!
Send those obnoxious grown-ass “I’m bored, mom” kiddos off to Starfleet to see the galaxy!
And the really super-intense ones end up on starships.
“So how’d you get your culture so noble and driven toward general improvement of society?”
“For generations, since the advent of warp travel, we’ve let our libertarians dirt farm on whatever otherwise worthless rock they find on the frontier.”
“It’s so bubbly and cloy and happy.” “JUST like the Federation.”
“Mom, there’s someone under the bed.” You bend down and see your son there instead and he whispers “Mom that’s not me up there!” You take a step back when someone tugs your shirt. You turn, your son is in the closet asking “who are they?” You suddenly hear him calling from downstairs “Mommy?”
You sigh, raising your voice so that all of your sons can hear you. “All right, everyone into the kitchen. Now.” Hearing a shuffle in the attic, you add, “Yes, Duncan, that includes you.”
You don’t see any movement as you go down the stairs, but you’re used to that. You know they’ll all be there by the time you walk through the kitchen door.
As usual, your children have all fitted themselves into the kitchen. The dimensions of the room are a little wobbly with so many of them present, but you’ve long ago learned to ignore how the laws of physics only occasionally apply to them. A host of little faces look up at you anxiously, and you smile gently.
“It’s okay, none of you are in trouble,” you reassure them. They relax - and how astonishing is it, that they trust you so much? You’re so proud of their progress.
One, however, still looks nervous. You beckon him forward, and he comes reluctantly, shoved by his identical older brothers.
“Are you new?” you ask carefully.
He nods, and you drop to one knee. “It’s okay, sweetie,” you tell him firmly. “I love all of my sons, even ones I haven’t met before. Ask your brothers, they’ll tell you.”
“’m here because I heard you were nice,” he says in a tiny voice.
You open your arms, offering a hug but waiting to let him decide whether he wants one. This child must have seen hugs before, because he flings himself into your arms and starts crying. That’s good. Some of your sons are traumatised from what they’ve seen, knowing more slaps than kisses.
Eventually, the sobs dry up, your other kids patiently waiting for your attention again. “Why do we look like this?” he asks, curious.
“Because this is what the first of you looked like - Wilson, where are you?”
A hand raises from the crowd and waves energetically.
“Wilson took on my son’s form to play Child or Double. Calling from downstairs when my son was in bed, getting tucked in when the child I bore was playing out in the garden. Once I figured it out, I hugged him and told him that as far as I was concerned, I now had twins. It took him some time before he believed me.”
Wilson shrugs unrepentantly.
“When my son died, Wilson stayed. It helped, having one of my sons with me while I grieved. Then another of you began to turn up, and I had twins again. Then more. Until now, when I have more of you than will technically fit in my kitchen.” You give your sons a look of motherly disapproval, but they only giggle. They know you don’t mind.
“It’s not like you need to feed us!” calls out one of your bolder sons. Eric, probably. Your newest, unnamed child looks up hesitantly, then steps out of your arms to join his brothers. Lucas might be a nice name, you think idly. You don’t have a Lucas yet.
“That does help,” you admit. You put steel into your next words. “However, there are Rules in this house, and one of them is no messing around at bedtime. I know that bedtime is a traditional time for the Child or Double game, but four of you is pushing it.”
You’d say more, but there’s a knock at your back door. You turn to answer it, knowing that your sons will have evaporated before your fingers grasp the handle, and brace against the cold night air as you pull the door open.
Two identical little girls stand there. One has a bruise on her cheek, and has clearly been crying recently. The other - the other is a Doubler, just like your sons. After this long, you can tell the difference.
“Please,” the Doubler says, and her voice trembles on the word. “Please. She needs somewhere to stay.”
Part of you is shocked, already looking ahead to the potential legal issues. The rest of you is all mother, and you whisk her into the nice warm kitchen and get her a glass of water.
Your son’s bed will be occupied by someone else tonight. You think he’d have been okay with that.
I think it’s funny how Nintendo introduced Sidon and had to deal with all of the gay subtext that came out of it and then conveniently had to give him a fiancé in TOTK, cause they couldn’t deal with literally everyone pairing him with Link
Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]
i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge
This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.
I legit only usually see things through shades of gay and I didn’t even see the bright flag because I GASPED as the pace, bareback, reignlessness of it all. I would never have done this on my 20 year old PONY.
wait gallop isn’t a fancy word for horse running??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I HAVE BEEN LIED TO MY WHOLE LIFE
Haha, technically gaits are, I believe, patterns, and not speeds. I am not an expert, just had some horses, so I can tell a trot, canter, gallop. But I can’t tell if this is outside the rhythm of a gallop because I can’t even clap in time to music.
There’s a lot going on in that little critter’s head right now.
1. Power move.
2. Why do people whisked away to magical worlds just automatically believe the first creature that tells them what side the person needs to help? Where’s my isekai where the MC slowly finds out they got in with like the deranged zealots and are part of the evil faction, and not the plucky rebels?
I think about this comic once per week. It’s funnier then anything I can conceive of. Mastery.
scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple
the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!
