five things: bird recordings, xie lian's hat, vaccine history, dino art, paleo podcasts

[sophia_sol]

one

I love how in the Merlin recordings of bird noises you can listen to, some are quite recent but some are decades old. The file for the song of the sora is from 1960! When I play it to learn what a sora sounds like, I'm listening to a bird from a different world... but its song is still relevant to me today


two:

xie lian's bamboo hat is a ship of theseus situation, right? there's no way it could survive intact for so many centuries, without any spiritual power to maintain it, so xie lian repairs it whenever necessary, and over time every single bit of bamboo is replaced (multiple times), bit by bit. but it's still the same hat!


three:

damn, early vaccine people were hardcore:

On May 19, 1924, Spencer put a large dose of mashed wood ticks, from lot 2351B, and some weak carbolic acid into his arm by injection. This vaccine worked, and for some years after it was used by people in that region to convert the illness from one with high fatality rate (albeit low incidence) to one that could be either prevented entirely (for many of them) or modified to a non-deadly form

(was I furiously googling tick-borne illnesses after finding a tick attached to me? MAYBE. ughghhhh I hate ticks)


four:

LOOK AT THIS DINOSAUR ART I COMMISSIONED. I'm gonna tattoo it on my body!

https://www.tumblr.com/sophia-sol/749827050436755456/artists-tags-commissionsart-by


five:

I enjoy that I've now been listening to enough paleontology podcasts that I can hear someone say "another case of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny" and just, like, nod along

translation: it's not unusual for the baby version of an animal to have traits that are shared with a more basal part of its lineage, which it loses as it grows up, just as its species lost that trait from its ancestors over time

in this particular case the animal being discussed is a beaked toothless archosaur, which comes from a toothed lineage, and the baby of this archosaur has teeth and then loses them and develops a beak as it grows up into an adult. very cool!

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

The dinosaur art, yay!

[sophia_sol]

I love it so much!

[pauraque]

1. I've noticed this too and think about it all the time! As Sayers put it, "How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks."

4. I can't wait to see the final tattoo!

[sophia_sol]

1. the massive continuity of ducks!! <3 so true

4. ME TOO

[jesse_the_k]

Ugh, three, ugh. I hope you are tick- and fancy-free shortly.

Four is wow-howdy so beautiful!

In re five: my father wanted me to be prepared for college life, which is why I had to act out "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" as a Charades prompt when I was in fifth grade.

fuck him I went to 2-year tech school

[sophia_sol]

thank you!!!

and omg that would be a hard charade prompt at ANY age, much less in grade five! but then I was never good at charades lol

[sholio]

On bird songs, I thought you might like this little bit of info that Orion found out about chickadees recently, which is that our local birds have a different dialect of "dee dee" than most of the ones recorded online. They do not do the "fee bee" two-note song; instead it's either three or four notes. I didn't realize chickadees even had a two-note song, since I've mainly just heard the local one! (On this page, the Washington recording is the song we hear.)

[sophia_sol]

wow, I knew birds could have dialects but I didn't realize they could get that different! I just listened to the recording you indicated, and I would never have guessed that for a chickadee if I heard that song outside!

[sholio]

They happened to be doing it right now, so I went out and recorded it! You can hear the three-note "dee dee dee" as well as more usual chickadee noises. (It's kind of faint, might need to turn up the sound a bit.)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rIZhZt22NmU

[sophia_sol]

omg thank you!! that's so fun, and so foreign to me. I would probably assume it's a weird white-throated sparrow if I heard that!

[conuly]

Baleen whales also develop teeth, in utero, but they dissolve before birth iirc.

[sophia_sol]

incredible, I love that. develop teeth, get rid of them instantly; use energy to develop a completely useless body part!

[seekingferret]

I love the art!

I am reminded of the time my father independently reinvented Ontogeny recapitulates phylogenety: https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/247863.html

[sophia_sol]

thanks!!

that's a very funny story. It's a compelling theory is the thing!

[chestnut_pod]

The dino art is so cool! That is a very worthy first part of the whole tattoo project!

I also love that about Merlin recordings. I like listening to them, also, and realizing that the birds in my area sound just a bit different (or sometimes very different) and thinking about Bird Accents and how wonderfully diverse the whole world is.

[sophia_sol]

thank you so much!!!

and yeah listening to the Merlin recordings and thinking about the diversity of the world is always an activity that hits.

[china_shop]

Ahhhh, the dinosaur art is amazing! Ahhhhh! :D :D :D

in this particular case the animal being discussed is a beaked toothless archosaur, which comes from a toothed lineage, and the baby of this archosaur has teeth and then loses them and develops a beak as it grows up into an adult. very cool!

Oh, wow! Bodies are so weird. :D

[sophia_sol]

thank you!!!! :D ♥

[minutia_r]

I follow the artist on tumblr (I actually commissioned them a while back for fanart of a parrot character in a game I was playing) so when I saw the post with your tattoo I was like OH HEY because I instantly recognized the subject from the post you made talking about wanting to commission it.

Anyway yeah it's really cool!

[sophia_sol]

omg that's so cool that you recognized the art right away from the artist! their art is so good, and working with them on the commission was very smooth as well!

[blotthis]

that art KICKS ASS congrats!!!

[sophia_sol]

THANK U!!!! <3

[lokifan]

That is INCREDIBLY COOL dinosaur art and it's going to work so well as a tattoo! Where are you getting it done?

Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny is like... the only part of a paleontology podcast I'd understand, weirdly xD

[sophia_sol]

thank you so much!! I'm really excited about the tattoo. The plan is to get it on my inner forearm, walking towards my wrist!