1. There are several ways to classify the large cats, one of the more useful ones is into the roaring cats (tigers, lions) and the purring cats (bobcats, lynxes). The puma (also known as the mountain lion) is the largest cat that purrs. I’ve heard it up close, it’s amazing. A cheetah’s purr sounds like an idling motorcycle engine.
2. Kangaroos cannot move their legs independently of each other, they have to move them in sync - when they’re on land. When they’re swimming, they can move them separately. Hopping is their most efficient way to move - a walking kangaroo is awkward as hell. They swing both legs forward using their tail as a third leg to prop up while their legs swing.
3. People often think that flamingoes’ knees bend the wrong way. They don’t - the joint you’re seeing in the middle of their leg isn’t their knee, it’s their ankle. Their knee is up by their body, and it bends the same way ours does.
4. Giraffes only sleep 1-2 hours a day.
5. Bald eagles’ vocalizations are not what you expect. When you see a flying bald eagle in the movies and hear that majestic caw sound? That isn’t an eagle, it’s been dubbed over with another bird, usually a red-tailed hawk. Bald eagles actually sound…not majestic. Kind of like if a kitten could be a bird.
6. Elephants are one of only a handful of animals that can pass the mirror test - in other words, they can recognize their own reflection (and not think it’s another animal, as dogs and cats usually do). They tested this by placing a chalk mark on an elephant’s forehead and then showing it a mirror. The elephant investigated the mark on its own forehead, indicating it knew that it was looking at itself. The only animals that pass this test are the higher primates, the higher cetaceans (orcas, dolphines), elephants, and weirdly, magpies.
7. One-fifth of all the known mammal species are bats.
8. A kangaroo mother can have three joeys simultaneously at different stages of development: an embryo in her womb (kangaroos can do what’s called embryonic diapause which means sort of putting the development on pause until she’s ready for it to develop further), a joey in her pouch attached to one nipple, and a joey out of the pouch on the ground who nurses from the other one. The amazing thing? Each of her nipples make different formulations of milk for each joey’s different nutritional needs.
9. Bonobos, our closest genetic relative (they are more closely related to us than they are to either chimps or gorillas) are almost entirely non-aggressive, matriarchal, and use sex to solve all their problems. They engage in both same and opposite sex interactions, non-penetrative sex (oral, rubbing, manual) and with any age. That’s an interesting area to work in, lemme tell you.
10. Tortoises have super loud sex. Like, really loud.
11. All grizzlies are brown bears, but not all brown bears are grizzlies (grizzlies are a sub-categorization of the brown bear).
12. Reindeer are the only deer species where both males and females grow antlers. The males shed theirs the beginning of December, the females shed theirs in the spring. So all of Santa’s reindeer are girls, heh. I love telling little kids that.
13. If a rhinoceros knocks off its horn, it grows back faster than you’d expect. One of ours, Rosie, has knocked hers off twice.
14. Gorillas get crushes on each other. And on the humans that take care of them. Male gorillas also masturbate. I don’t know if the females do, I’ve never seen it. Sometimes it’s like a soap opera up in there.
15. Langur monkeys are silvery-gray in color - their babies are bright orange. Like Cheeto orange, I do not exaggerate.
16. Polar bear fur is not white, it’s transparent, like fiber optics. Also, their skin is black.
This is all excellent and awesome and I am a happier, better person for this knowledge.
To expand on this, Jesus’s name is Anglicized in this way as well. We get Jesus from the Latin form of the Greek “Ἰησοῦς”(Iēsous), which is derived from the Herbrew “ישוע”(Yeshu’a, which meant “YHWH is Salvaion”, YHWH, or Yahweh being the name of God). When another form of that name, ” יְהוֹשֻׁעַ”(Yeoshu’a) was allowed to Anglicize through a different set of corruptions, it entered the English Language through Reformist Protestants as the name “Joshua”.
i know this sounds dumb, but y'all don’t understand the significance of erik killmonger going to the naval academy.
so i made a list:
40,000 people apply to the service academies every year, with about 15,000 of those applicants applying to the naval academy. the fact that he got in is insane enough.
you have to be recommended by member of congress. you read that right. in order to even apply for the united states naval academy, you have to have a letter of recommendation from a member of congress. so that means he got one.
the gpa you need to get in? don’t even think about it unless you have a 4.0+ these students have higher gpa’s, sat, and act scores than ivy league students. he had to have almost perfect grades.
you can’t go if you’re under the age of 17 and agent ross said he graduated from annapolis (the naval academy) at 19. so he must have gone in as a 17 year old and skipped a year (which you also aren’t allowed to do) and graduated at 19. that’s unheard of.
also, it’s almost impossible to go without a varsity letter, so he played sports in high school and played them well. and they don’t care is you have a four year varsity letter for rowing, you have to be good. i mean state championship winning teams. i mean aau national championship mvp. gatorade high school athlete of the year level good.
they usually make you serve your five years (if you go to any us military service academy, you have to serve in that branch for five years bc you don’t pay for anything) before going to navy seal camp, but agent ross said he went straight to the seals, meaning he did navy seal training (the hardest us military training course) at 19. so instead of service selecting another branch or a ship like all seniors do, he went to the seals.
it seems trivial, but as someone who tried to get into the naval academy, let me tell you that it was no small feat and the fact they brushed over it in the movie was a shame.
“i am a monument to all your sins” is such a fucking raw line for a villain it’s amazing that it came from halo, a modernish video game, and not some classical text or mythos
classic texts have nothing on the crazy people come up with in modern times tbh
“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.”
– Joshua Graham, Who Is A Fallout New Vegas NPC, Something Most People Throwing This Quote Around Don’t Realize
“If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have.”
– Shadow the Hedgehog in what is widely considered one of if not the single worst game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise
this is the source for this text and it haunts me on a regular basis
“Do you think God stays in heaven because he too, lives in fear of what he’s created?”
