Beautiful Expressions!!!

flocking 4/18/25 — Tullimonstrum, Ornithosuchus, Xerces blue, Ninjemys

🌸 From One Mother’s Heart – Please Read 🌸

My name is Saja. I’m a wife, a mother, and a woman who once believed her story would be simple. I thought my days would be filled with watching my daughter grow — from her first smile to her first steps — surrounded by the small joys of everyday life.

But life had other plans.

War has returned to our home. Again. And once again, we find ourselves living under skies that never seem to rest.

There was a moment — a fragile, breathless moment — when the bombs paused and the world seemed to remember us. It gave us hope. We thought maybe, just maybe, we could start to rebuild. But now, we are back in the dark — hiding, holding on, praying.

I’m writing this not as someone seeking pity, but as a mother who has no other choice but to speak.

Imagine holding your baby in the middle of the night, not because she cried, but because the world outside roared too loud for either of you to sleep. Imagine whispering bedtime stories not to lull her into dreams, but to keep the fear from settling into her tiny bones.

This is my life.

This is my daughter’s life.

And even now — especially now — I believe in softness. I believe in kindness. Because when everything else is taken from you, hope becomes the most valuable thing you have.

Why I’m Reaching Out Our home has been damaged. Our lives changed. But through it all, my daughter wakes up every morning with a smile. She reaches for me with trust, with love, with faith that I will keep her safe.

That’s why I keep going.

I’ve launched a campaign to ask for help — not because it’s easy, but because silence is no longer an option. I am asking for support not just for me, but for my baby, and for the quiet strength of so many mothers like me who are fighting, every single day, to hold their families together.

How You Can Help: 🤍 Help us restore parts of our home so we can live with dignity 🤍 Support women and mothers in Gaza with access to care and resources 🤍 Keep the light of hope alive for a generation born in the shadows of war

💛 If you can, please support our journey here:

Chuffed

I Am Saja – A Mother Holding On Through the Return of War

My name is Saja. I am a wife, a mother to a precious 8-month-old girl, and I am writing this in a moment that I wish I didn’t have to live t

If you can’t give, please consider sharing. Your voice might be the reason someone else hears ours.

From My Heart to Yours Maybe our lives are worlds apart. Maybe you’ve never lived through war. But if you’ve ever held a child and wished the world could be better for them — then you understand more than you know.

I don’t want my daughter to grow up thinking the world turned away.

Please, if you’ve read this far — thank you. Thank you for seeing us. Thank you for caring. We are still here. Still hoping. Still holding on to every kind act like it’s a lifeline.

With love and endless gratitude

Guillermo Galetti, an Argentine Artist, Transforms Scrap Metal Into Unique Sculpture

Initiation Well Location: Sintra, Portugal

A pair of wells, called the Initiation Wells, spiral down deep within the earth, like inverted towers. The wells were never used to collect water. Instead, they were part of a mysterious initiation ritual within the Knights of Templar tradition.

SWAN 🦢 ✈️  (Strategic Wyvern Aerial Navigator)

"The “SWANS” are biomechanical lifeforms that after years of mimicry adapted to resemble combat jets. Their wolfram-like skin not only is resistant to the toxic and parasitic dangers of the ‘false ocean’ but is nigh impossible to penetrate. While not a real bird they present many similar features and behavior. It's not all too rare to spot them flying in flocks and engaging in courtship

Swans are known to jam signals and strike airborne carriers since they’re an extremely territorial and violent species. First it will race against the enemy (it should be noted their structure allows them to reach enough speed to break the sound barrier) as a sign that they dominate the air space before they plunge the foe into the ground. Competitiveness amongst the species in a similar fashion has been observed to uncertain ends. In spite of all the gathered studies their intelligence and physical feats are still under research but paired with their enormous size and aggressivity is more than a difficult task. 

They are rapacious hunters from the skies and encounters are advised against. There’s no current methods to defend against the Swans and in consequence it has obstructed facilities, aviation and transportation."

I promised you some lions! Let's talk about manes, males, and management.

This is Tandie, the current male lion at the Woodland Park Zoo.

Notice anything odd about him? He's got one of those hilarious awkward teenager manes. Except... this cat is nine years old.

I was, of course, immediately curious.

Manes serve a lot of purposes for male lions, including being an indicator of health and fitness - it's actually a sexually selected trait and a social signal. Mane texture / hair quality / length is dependent on nutrition and the body having energy to grow (and carry around!) that much hair! The color is also a signal: males with darker manes have been found to have higher testosterone levels.

In one research report, wild males were much more likely to avoid a lion decoy when it had a longer or darker mane - but the girls really loved a dark mane. It's thought this is because a long, dark mane is an indicator of mate quality. Males with longer, darker manes have higher testosterone and were pretty healthy: meaning they had more energy for fighting, had a better chance of recovering if they got injured, and generally had a higher rate of offspring survival. Manes matter!

So, back to Tandie. He was actually born at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2014 alongside two brothers, to dad Xerxes and mother Adia.

This was Xerxes (rip).

Obviously, a very large, dark, lush mane on Xerxes here. So where did these blond muttonchops come from on his son?

I asked the zoo docents and got an answer that didn't make a lot of sense. They told me that after the three cubs grew into adolescents, they were moved to the Oakland Zoo together. But living together suppressed his testosterone, and he never grew a mane.

Hmmmm.

Here's a photo from 2016, when the brothers debuted at Oakland. They're a year and a half old in this photo.

(Photo Credit: Oakland Zoo)

And here's from an announcement for their third birthday.

(Photo credit: Oakland Zoo)

Okay, so these dudes obviously all were growing manes as of 2017. I think Tandie is the one on the left in the first photo, and laying down in the middle on the second. What happened?

I was just in the Bay Area for a zoo road trip, of course I went to Oakland and tracked down a docent to ask some questions.

It turns out that shortly after the brothers turned three, they started acting like adult male lions: they started scuffling regularly. It's a normal social thing for male lions to live in groups, called coalitions, but according to my lion experts there's generally a baseline level of some social jostling within them. It wasn't quite clear from what the docent said if they couldn't manage the boys together, or if they just wanted to avoid the scratches and small wounds that result from normal lion behavior. Regardless, they put all three of the boys on testosterone blockers in order to be able to keep them together as a social group.

Now, I don't know a lot about the use of hormone alteration as a form of captive animal management, except in the case of birth control. I don't think it's something that's unethical - there was just a webinar on it that I saw go by - but I don't think it's commonly done with big cats. Lions have kind of complicated reproductive cycles, and for instance, we've been learning that female lions can take much longer to come into estrus again than expected after coming off hormonal birth control.

In males, testosterone blockers (or being neutered) means they lose their manes. This is why a lot of rescues will do a vasectomy on their males instead of a neuter - it allows them to keep their mane and the social signals that accompany it.

Tandie returned home to Woodland Park Zoo after Xerxes passed in early 2022, and the docent told me all of the lions had been off their blockers "for while." I'd guess those things happened around the same time, since bringing the trio down to a duo at Oakland would reduce some of the social tensions.

Hormones are such interesting things, though. One of Tandie's brothers has a full mane again, and the other is still totally mane-less.

As for Tandie, his mane is growing back in, and it looks like he might rival his dad for length and coloration.

He started here, in February:

Yesterday:

What a difference four months (and maybe proximity to a girl) makes!

These little dudes are not only chillin' but also warming themselves in heated cubbies to help them beat a fungal infection!!

Photo from the article in Science.

Research abstract: Nature

what if it GETS her though 😥

Their shapes and colours are so creative!

Styraphant ethnicity BIG POST! Basically just going over the main 'flavors' that all styraphants kind of fall into. More detail below the cut!

They can all interbreed and are the same species, but have a lot more genetic variation than human populations on Earth! There are about 6 main 'morphs', but that being said individuals with varied lineages may be a little hard to pin down. When in doubt the shape of ones crest is where most will look when trying to assume! Because that IS where most of the variation resides. Big list inbound.

Star. These are the dudes I've been drawin so far. They tend to inhabit around the center of their planets largest continent, in the more tropical zones. So like to live in wooded areas and lush vegetation.

Flame. These guys are named for the upswept tines on their crest. They are the most Northernly, enjoying mostly temperate climates and migrating as the seasons change to avoid chillier weather.

Fan. These guys are FUN. With large webbed tines on the crests of both males and females. They are darker due to their hot, arid home, so typically built to avoid sunburn.

Scallop. These guys are named because the edges of their crested are, in fact, scalloped. They range from temperate to tropical climates, tending to stick to places on the soggier side.

Disk. These guys have completely smooth crests! They are also the smallest variety, mostly due to their more seaborne nature. They have the widest range of climates and tend to move around the most by a wide margin.

Spade. These have a spade shaped face, obviously, with two large tines pointing directly upward. They are found in the colder, Southern continent, the only variety not found on the mainland. Their thickset frame helps them put up with the cold year round.

This is the gist! They cover a wide variety of crest and body type in these groups as they are pretty different!

Most differences come from the different regions each population has settled in as I'm also thinking that they are an older species. So they've had time to become more sculpted by their environments. They get along pretty well though, like I'm thinking it's odd to not associate with each other!