It’s a fine line to tread when you’re breeding your phoenix. A swan is good:
Elegant
Classic
Like Cleopatra, he burns upon the water
Equal parts beauty and danger
Full of Secrets
But take it a few genes to the left and you’ve got a GOOSE
A raptor if raptors were total idiots
Neither beauty nor grace
Full of Hate
Has so much poop for you
(Make no mistake, a swan will mess you up just as hard as a goose. But it is the difference between being slain with a katana and getting whacked with a bag of old potatoes.)
Oh my God someone actually drew a Good Version of my Dubious Penguin????? And THEN someone added a sweonix (swan phoenix)? Oh man, this is the stuff you miss when you’re in the middle of a reblog chain.
@english-history-trip that is some powerful art, and I respect the trip that it represents from the sublime to the absurd, for in this journey we find enlightenment.
@keire-ke your magnificent penguin art represents the other side of the journey, which takes us from the absurd to the powerful. In this journey we find truth.
Make no mistake, a swan will mess you up just as hard as a goose. But it is the difference between being slain with a katana and getting whacked with a bag of old potatoes.
My favorite thing about dromaeosaurids has to be how drastically different they were compared to how they are portrayed in the media. They probably have THE most drastic difference. An accurate T. rex or sauropod still reads as “dinosaur” to the general public, but to someone who is uneducated on dinosaurs, accurate dromaeosaurids read as “weird bird” (and while birds ARE dinosaurs, the average person doesn’t know that). The only real thing that connects the two is the famous sickle claw.
It may be Utahraptor week, but the best example of this is definitely Velociraptor due to its claim to fame in Jurassic Park (which isn’t even from the Jurassic, like many other dinosaurs in the books and films).
(also excuse my messy drawing, I just wanted to throw something together quickly)
So my friend’s kid has celiac and dyslexia and reading labels is difficult for them (also they’re like 7) so he’s teaching their pigeon, Grey Boy, to read the labels and identify ingredients with gluten. It’s going well, other than Nick thought it would be a good idea to make the behavior when the pigeon does find a bad ingredient to just fucking…wing slap the box. Just beat the shit out of it like, “no! BAD gluten! BAD!”
I see a lot of “they taught a pigeon to read?” comments and thought I’d explain a bit more.
So it’s not really like their friend’s pigeon now knows how to read. He’s not going to be terribly interested in a novel you hand him (unless he decides it looks like a good nest.) However pigeons are remarkably good at pattern recognition, especially visual patterns. They out-perform humans when it comes to things like identifying artwork/distinguishing between different artist’s works. So it is pretty easy for them to recognize a visual arrangement of ink, such as a printed word, and be taught to respond to that particular pattern. So when looking at an ingredient list the pigeon learns to pick out the specific pattern(s) he’s been taught to react to among the other patterns (words.)
So he sees “wheat” and doesn’t read it the way humans do (w-h-e-a-t spells wheat), but rather sees the arrangement of pigment that he has been trained to slap. So he slaps it.
He will have to be taught every single gluten containing ingredient for it to be super useful, but it is definitely possible, which is super cool! Plus it makes a little kid’s life easier, and enriches Gray Boy.
Skinner did experiments with pigeons that showed how a pigeon can learn to respond to a visual pattern cue, if your interested more in the science behind it.
