Crawling, swimming, squeezing, jetting—the range of movement available to an octopus is impressive. Yet some species occasionally choose to stand up on two arms and “run” backwards. Chrissy Huffard, a Senior Researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, explains the pros and cons of this seemingly silly behavior and why an octopus might find looking foolish useful.
A Ring-Tailed Lemur from my recent trip to Madagascar. It cracks me up as it kind of looks a bit like a psycho lemur but I promise it was just mid vocalization and not possessed.
When ringtailed troops travel throughout their home range, they keep their tails raised in the air, like flags, to keep group members together. Constant vocalizations among members also keep the group together. Ringtailed lemurs are one of the most vocal primates. They have several different alarm calls to alert members of their group to potential danger.
Explanation for said thing: Recently, my childhood love of Soul Reaver was reignited, and I found myself listening to Ozar Midrashim, theme of the first game and arguably of the series as a whole. It was there on a Youtube upload that I saw that the song actually came from a group called Information Society, whose lead singer, Kurt Harland, composed the game’s music (this also popped off my face-first swan dive into being obsessed with InSoc, as anyone who’s been around my page in the last week can attest). So I checked out the album it came from, Don’t Be Afraid, and it turned out there was a little monologue at the beginning of the song that was cut from the game’s version.
One night at work, I wanted to draw something to pass the time, and a silly thought occurred to me: why not make a goofy pseudo-comic where that monologue is basically being spoken by Raziel?
Thus, the thing.
I’m honestly really glad I finished this. I was absolutely surprised by how much fun I had drawing it, so even if it’s not all that funny to anyone else, it still makes me happy.
