Lol, have you not seen the OP or have ever looked at plant taxonomy before? There are many different groups where it is dubious if we can apply some sort of species concept.

And you talk about the species concept as if there was only just one?

Hm, it’s good I’d say. There isn’t everything on Tidal and so I have to have some albums on my phone or bandcamp (that is true for Spotify as well). And Tidal isn’t great at distinguishing artists with the same name. But I don’t listen to any popular music and I’m fine. Now that Tidal knows my taste it also gives me some great recommendations. I’ve actually started listening to the “my daily discovery” playlists nearly every day. It updates daily and quite often there is something new and interesting in there. I’ve got an IDM playlist of 539 tracks. And through Tidal I’ve discovered jazz, a ton of vintage african music, luk thung/mor lam, and other genres I hadn’t even known :)

Hm, I have the opposite feeling as well. In a heavily fragmented area without any primary forests left (Germany) I still find sooo many species that were invisible to me before I dared to look. I cannot imagine how it must have been before when humans hadn’t had such an impact on the ecosystem.

But then I also notice how all of these species exist despite our influence. How they try to keep on living in our cities. And that’s indeed very sad.

All of these were really cool to see!! Especially devious were those parasitic ants :O

Great text!!! Thanks :)

What isn’t iconic in nature though? Plants also have turned into similar looking herbs and shrubs over and over again. Or look at epiphytes! If there is an available niche it will get filled. And since plants all start with more or less the same basics, they fill it similarly. Evolution likes to repurpose stuff.

Wow, the Wikipedia article definitely is worth a read! This thing is over the top bad :O

(But, as someone pointed out, this clearly isn’t the species in the OP, which has divided leaves with three leaflets.)

You’re probably right, yeah…

It’s the Rod of Asclepius, not to be confused with the caduceus!

There are various theories why this symbol was invented. The one that makes most sense to me is that it depicts a (formerly widespread) parasitic nematode being removed by wrapping it around a stick to slowly draw it out of the body.

For a visual demonstration of the parasite and its removal: Bizarre Beasts - When is extinction the ‘right’ choice?

A friend of mine (from Palestine) taught me another trick with garlic: mince the garlic, then generously sprinkle it with coriander powder and mash it all together with a fork. Add to a dish (like a sauce or a stew) when it’s already mostly cooked, just at the end. It has a pretty intense flavor and is really yummy.

Can anyone explain this to me? I cannot find anything searching for contadont :/

I like this list of instructions on how to have a beach body best:

• have a body
• go to the beach

Well, plants really don’t have to deal with our binary bullshit. Most of them don’t have any sex because they have perfect flowers anyways, meaning their flowers have male and female gametes.

If Santa is the Queen, there needs to be some male drones impregnating him. It would make sense that the reindeer would fly to the freshly hatched Santas to mate with them. The sledge is only their form of wings then.

As a biologist, it is always surprising to me, how frequently people don’t realize that all plants in our environment have some sort of reproduction. Like, that grass also has flowers and all house plants would also flower (except for ferns) if they were growing under the right conditions. Plant blindness is real.

Just that this “robin” isn’t one, it actually is a thrush. A robin would be Erithacus. They are both in different families even (and also look pretty different).

I really dislike cultivars like this where they have been changed so much it doesn’t look like actual plants…

Zarathustra kann mich mal :P

You mean Pica pica?

Confusingly, there is the animal in the post that is commonly called pika (Ochotona daurica). What I had to think of first was Pica pica though (the Eurasian magpie)