Pretty Ugly Things

A lovely furry bench in Manaton, Dartmoor

There are over 18,000 types of lichen in existence. My personal favourite is ‘village bench lichen’, which devotes its entire existence selflessly to gradually making communal public seating more furry and comfortable.

a round pottery piece with pig eyes and a snout

i think we all need to step back and realize that peak art was made when neolithic pot in the shape of a pig was fired

Now available here! 🦀 www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4...

Spotlighting The World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell Somewhat devastating news today from the CIA: One of CIA’s oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset. There's not even a hint as to why they …

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/t...

When Vampire Bats Become Close Friends, They Start ‘Talking’ Like Each Other New research shows that just like humans, vampire bats with deep social relationships use similar sounds as one another to communicate

🦇🖤🦇 New bat research!

#bats #lovebats #batconservation #nature #naturalhistory #ecology

www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-...

It's ostracod time!!!

One of the many wonderful illustrations to be found in an 1837 "caterpillar calendar", an entomological volume by the aptly named Christian Friedrich Vogel outlining which caterpillars appear each month. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/i... (from @BioDivLibrary & @SILibraries)

If you’ve never seen the Salton Sea Mud Volcanoes in person, I made a hi-res photosphere for you to check out at the link. I love the mud pahoehoe!
mrhollister.com/360/GSA2024/...

morpheus, holding out a red and blue pill: I got us some drugs. Neo: that's interesting because I take drugs. morpheus: and me. that's why I got two.

The Matrix (1999)
Dirs: Lana and Lilly Wachowski
#oneperfectshot 📽️

An image showing 3 differently colored isopod enamel pins arranged in a stack on my fingers. From top to bottom: dark brown and yellow, black and white, and orange and light orange.

A photo of a colorful teal and green peacock mantis shrimp enamel pin with red legs, orange stripes along the body, and dark blue markings. It is photographed against a dark purple amethyst crystal.

A photo of an enamel pin featuring 3 garden eels hanging out together. Two of the eels are a light green with black spots, while the larger eel behind them is orange with white stripes. They are photographed on a dark purple amethyst crystal.

new pins are now available in my shop! 🦐

🛒🐛 shop.fossilforager.art

Reshares appreciated! ❤️

A few people asked for scale on this fossil. It's about 2.5 cm or an inch long.

#FossilFriday

(It’s the Tucson gem & mineral show, new and funky stuff incoming!)

A pile of large flat cardboard boxes filled with minerals, with stacks of smaller boxes and plastic tubs behind.

Presto-chango I turned all my money into rocks!

A greater roadrunner standing in a path, keeping an eye on the photographer. Its shadow is spread across the pavement.

I can help with one of those

A small fossil jawbone on a rock matrix, the jawbone a minty green color. The identification tag indicates it is a turquoise pseudomorph fossil marmot jaw that is at least one hundred years old, from Potosi Mountain, Mineral County, Nevada, USA.

A lot of venues at the Tucson mineral show are already open and selling, including many of the dealers at Mineral City.

I thought this piece was an absolute stunner. From Well Arranged Molecules, building D

gray squirrel at base of tree, on snow

DC squirrels discover snow #sqrlpix

A Roman Mosaic. Trust us. This is a wolf. It may look like Batman after he's fallen asleep at a party and his "mates" have "decorated" him, but it's a wolf.

Morning!
#MosaicMonday

A close view of a succulent with small plump oval leaves, packed tight in a pot like a bowl of jellybeans. Older growth has a dusty pink-purple color, in a gradient to light green leaves at the ends of stems.

Forbidden jellybeans

Jerry no

GET YOUR FREE SCORPION TODAY

Tylospilus acutissimus, a Northern sharp stink bug on a pinkish stem. The bug is shield-shaped, with a dark spine poking out each shoulder. It is vibrant green with black, red, and white details.

Predatory stink bug alert 🚨

(alert is just to look at it because it’s fancy)

A dog who is in the process of being beamed up to a flying saucer piloted by aliens from a distant planet who are on a specialist top secret mission to boost that planet's population of small insolent mammals with fur that looks like crap wool.

Um. A donut? NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

Saturn’s south polar vortex in near-infrared false color. Processed using imagery taken by the Cassini spacecraft on October 12, 2006.

flic.kr/p/2h4L2U1

The Grand Canyon's Caves Are Full of Sloth Dung and Mummified Bats The limestone cliffs harbor hundreds of passages that offer glimpses into the distant past.

... and were more opportunistic in choosing their lairs.

In Arizona's Grand Canyon, for example, there's evidence (scat, bones) of smaller species of ground sloths seeking out naturally formed caves, which they shared with bats & other animals.

These sloths were /merely/ the size of Great Danes.

Deep-sea animals have two modes: absolutely unbothered or deeply committed to chaos.

Photo of a roundish, cream coloured lichen growing on quartz rock. The lichen is covered in bright orange discs - the apothecia. This lichen(centre of photo) is growing among other grey lichens also growing on the rock.

Lichen, Rhizoplaca chrysoleuca. NWT, Canada. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

Here is a video of a frozen creek that had begun to thaw, and the water was flowing beneath the thin ice on top. I took this because it was soothing and wonderfully bloopy and I wanted to listen to it for hours. You are all welcome to enjoy it, too. Let your brain settle here and rest for a moment.