doggytail-duck

[doggytail-duck]

Wait, which animals raise livestock?

Several species of ants will 'herd' aphids around (a type of plant lice)- even picking them up and putting them back with the group if they wander off. The ants will attack anything that approaches their aphid herds, defending them. The aphids produce a sugary excretion called honeydew, which the ants harvest and eat.

Some ants will even 'milk' the aphids, stroking the aphids with their antennae, to stimulate them to release honeydew. Some aphids have become 'domesticated' by the ants, and depend entirely on their caretaker ants to milk them.

When the host plant is depleted of resources and dies, the ants will pick up their herd of aphids and carry them to a new plant to feed on - a new 'pasture' if you will.

Some ants continue to care for aphids overwinter, when otherwise they'd die. The ants carry aphid eggs into their own nests, and will even go out of their way to destroy the eggs of aphid-predators, like ladybugs.

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Microhylids – or narrow-mouthed frogs - have an interesting symbiosis with Tarantulas.

While the spiders could very easily kill and eat the much-tinier frogs, and DO normally prey on small frogs, young spiders instead will use their mouthparts to pick up the microhylid frogs, bring them back to their burrow, and release them unharmed.

The frog benefits from hanging out in/around the burrow of the tarantula, because the tarantula can scare away or eat predators that normally prey on tiny frogs, like snakes, geckos, and mantids. The tarantula gets a babysitter.

Microhylid frogs specialize in eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the frogs protect the spider's eggs. The frogs can also lay their eggs in the burrow, and won't be eaten by the spider.

So it's less 'livestock' and more like a housepet - a dog or a cat. You stop coyotes/eagles from hurting your little dog/cat, and in return the dog/cat keeps rats away from your baby.

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Damselfish grow algae on rocks and corals. They defend these gardens ferociously, and will attack anything that comes too close - even humans. They spend much of their time weeding the gardens, removing unwanted algaes that might overtake their crop.

The species of algae that they cultivate is weak and and sensitive to growing conditions, and can easily be overgrazed by other herbivores. That particular algae tends to grow poorly in areas where damselfish aren't around to protect and farm it.

Damselfish will ALSO actively protect Mysidium integrum (little shrimp-like crustacians) in their reef farms, despite eating other similarly sized invertebrates. The mysids are filter feeders, who feed on zooplankton and free-floating algae, and their waste fertilizes the algae farms. Many types of zooplankton can feed on the algae crop, and the mysids prevent that.

While Mysids can be found around the world, the only place you'll find swarms of Musidium integrum is on the algae farms that Damselfish cultivate.

Damselfish treat the little mysids like some homesteaders treat ducks. Ducks eat snails and other insect pests on our crops, and their poop fertilizes the land. The ducks can be eaten, but aren't often, since they're more useful for their services than their meat.

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There are SEVERAL species of insect and animal which actively farm. They perform fungiculture and horticulture: deliberately growing and harvesting fungus and plants at a large-scale to feed their population.

Leaf-cutter ants and Termites both chew up plant material and then seed it with a specific type of fungus. The fungus grows, and the termites/ants harvest the mushroom as a food source.

Ambrosia beetles burrow into decaying trees, hollow out little farming rooms, and introduce a specific fungii (the ambrosia fungi), which both adults and larval beetles feed on.

Marsh Periwinkles (a type of snail) cultivates fungus on cordgrass. They wound the plant with their scraping tongue, then defecate into the wound so their preferred fungus will infect it and grow there. They let the fungus grow in the wound a bit, and come back later to eat.

[doggytail-duck]

deleting files makes me so scared what if i Needed That

[doggytail-duck]

[doggytail-duck]

E-kirjasto! Maanantaina!

#suomeksi

[doggytail-duck]

I can’t ever leave tumblr because I just love the tag function.. no other social media platform allows you to heckle yourself on your own post. you get to preemptively make metatextual commentary abt your OWN POST. how cool is that

#YEAH LITERALLY

[doggytail-duck]

This was shared as a "bad" joke but I was so charmed by it I've been thinking about it for days.

#comic

[doggytail-duck]

tähän tarvitaan 1 miljoona allekirjoitusta, jotta voidaan taata turvallinen ja helposti saatava aborttioikeus EU:ssa!

[doggytail-duck]

fuck it homebrew boop button. reblog this post to boop the person you reblogged from.

[doggytail-duck]

Reblogging would be a great help, but don’t feel pressured to

#two is at 33.5% #polls

[doggytail-duck]

The version of you right now is deserving of love. Not you two years ago when you had more of your shit together, or the five years later version where you’ll surely be thriving. The version of you right now. The one that might just be okay, or is really struggling, or is bored and unproductive. That version deserves love. Having trouble accepting this is fine, but actively denying it is not. Your value is intrinsic, and finding confidence in that is mandatory.

[doggytail-duck]

i love u postcards i love u letters i love u stamps i love u slow correspondence i love u messy handwriting i love u margin doodles i love u little stickers and pressed flowers in envelopes i love u “i have nothing to say but it’s to you i want to say this nothing”

[doggytail-duck]

edit: THIS POST BREACHED THE CONTAINMENT OF THE TARGET AUDIENCE, "28-YEAR-OLDS WHO SAW THEIR FIRST ANIMES IN PIECES ON YOUTUBE DURING THEIR TEENAGE YEARS." PEOPLE WHO WATCHED SAILOR MOON WHILE SIPPING APPLEY JUICE IN PRESCHOOL I'M SORRY I GUESS THIS ONE ISN'T FOR YOU

#ginga nagareboshi gin #i tried to watch wolf's rain in pieces on youtube but i didn't understand english well enough :( #polls

[doggytail-duck]

[doggytail-duck]

#talvi yllätti autoilijat (joka vuosi) saa mun äänen #koska takatalvi yllätti mut niin eeppisesti tänä vuonna #mut tykkään näist kaikista #suomeksi #polls

[doggytail-duck]

Awake the stars ‘cause they’re all around you

#httyd

[doggytail-duck]

Dam, didi dam ᵈᶦᵈᶦ ᵈᵃᵐ, didi dam ᵈᶦᵈᶦ ᵈᵃᵐ, didi dam-dam-dam-dam-dam

#suomeksi

[doggytail-duck]

incomplete list of fun stories about my dad:

at uni he and half a dozen of his friends stole a half-ton stone statue of a lion from another college, got it on a barge, and hoisted it up under London Bridge where it was found hanging the next morning

my mother and I once lost him at Trafalgar Square and he told us later he was just sitting on top of the plinth of Nelson's Column waiting for us. we never found out how a 55-year-old professor who barely ever went outside scaled a 6 metre bronze relief of the Battle of the Nile or why he thought we would look for him up there

he worked for the UN for a while and ended up in Prague on a research trip in the '60s. within three hours of landing he'd ditched his government handler and found his way to an underground anti-Soviet resistance speakeasy

he was raised Catholic. when the Vatican came out against the birth control pill he formally left the church but only after screaming "all you care about is controlling women" at his priest in public and sending the Pope a personal hate letter

when I emailed him to tell him I had started seeing a nonbinary person he wrote back with a six-paragraph rant about how much understanding of the wondrous variety of human experience had been denied to his generation

he got invited to an event at Buckingham Palace back in the '80s and responded with a letter addressed directly to the Duke of Edinburgh saying he might try and make it if he didn't have anything to do at work or anything he wanted to watch on TV that day

one time I was on a bus with him and he saw someone he thought was doing a cosplay but he was very wrong and basically went up to a stranger who was out having a perfectly normal time and complimented her on looking like a robot assassin

he started a formal debating society in his nursing home without any of the staff knowing about it

#stories #king!