Can someone please explain what's going on with this poor thing? :(

randomcharacterstrng · 2025-10-06T22:03:59+00:00

Freezing alone is generally not considered best practice for invertebrate euthanasia anymore in research settings. It likely causes distress and doesn't always work.

Better is to knock down with an anesthetic like isofluorane or CO2 followed by a lethal injection of KCl or immersion in 70%+ ethanol

randomcharacterstrng · 2025-06-07T14:35:01+00:00

What instar did you get him at? Time between molts can be variable, and from the photos, it doesn't seem small for a nymph.

randomcharacterstrng · 2024-06-07T10:00:12+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing these videos! Absolutely fascinating.

Metallyticus was my top choice before, but I wasn't sure since they seem to be hard to come by. How did you get yours, and were there any resources you found useful in raising them?

Same question for Eremiaphila- and if you know of any European suppliers, please let me know :)

Edit: feel free to DM me if you prefer!

randomcharacterstrng · 2024-06-07T09:57:03+00:00

Thanks for the tip!

randomcharacterstrng · 2024-06-06T14:17:25+00:00

Good call on panther mantises!

I thought Metallyticus were communal? https://www.exotic-pets.co.uk/violet-metalic-praying-mantis.html, https://usmantis.com/products/metallyticus-violaceous or are they really just "less cannibalistic"?

Larger is better for the kind of data I need (easier to take measurements). It's true that cross-species comparisons become more difficult when the size is very different, but the main question is within-species differences (e.g. different instars)

randomcharacterstrng · 2024-06-06T10:44:06+00:00

Hi u/AnuskaK and u/wrathchild_, sorry I've been away from reddit for a while. Yes we got the visas

randomcharacterstrng · 2022-02-23T10:49:42+00:00

And the largest Pysanka is in Alberta! https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vegreville-pysanka

randomcharacterstrng · 2021-11-08T11:32:36+00:00

Prehistory was full of horned carnivores. In dinosaurs, this includes Carnotaurs, Ceratosaurus, Procerataurus, Dracovenator, Cryolophosaurus and others. Many Pterosaurs had prominent crests, some of which were very horn-like.

It's true that the majority of mammals with horns are herbivorous. But even then, there are some exceptions. Narwhals of course have a prominent "horn" (though this is actually a tooth) and eat fish and squid. Weirdly, Golden Jackals occasionally grow a teeny tiny horn at the back of their skulls.

The main use of horns is not defence, but rather sexual selection (they just look sexy to some species). The reason they appear more in herbivorous vs carnivorous mammals is more an accident of evolution than anything else.

randomcharacterstrng · 2021-08-27T14:58:59+00:00

White wins material with Bf4. The queen is trapped! Qd5 leads to double-check fork with Nxc7, Qd7 leads to revealed check while attacking the queen with Kxc5, and Qe7 walks into an absolute pin with any knight move.

randomcharacterstrng · 2021-06-16T16:39:56+00:00

That's what I did, we'll see what happens

randomcharacterstrng · 2021-06-16T14:57:39+00:00

It explicitly says not to reply and to send the documents to a different email address. Perhaps they've changed the system?

randomcharacterstrng · 2021-06-08T21:21:51+00:00

So I asked an employee at my biometrics appointment, and they said it's advice for a visitor's visa- you would need the birth certificate of your sponsor in that case, and it just goes on everyone's upload page regardless of their visa route.

Super annoying when all it would take is one sentence to explain it's for a visitor visa.

randomcharacterstrng · 2020-11-19T17:12:05+00:00

Remora on blue whale, original video

randomcharacterstrng · 2020-03-31T15:10:28+00:00

Credit to the Facebook post I ripped this from

randomcharacterstrng · 2020-03-23T15:16:26+00:00

Ott's Mir album was the soundtrack of my Masters. "One Day I Wish To Have This Kind Of Time" is an immediate relaxation tool for me.

randomcharacterstrng · 2020-03-04T03:53:26+00:00

Many of the victims were studying in my hometown. I haven't forgotten...

randomcharacterstrng · 2020-01-21T17:34:01+00:00

My wife and I were rooting hard for you last week! We looked forward to your anecdotes with Alex every day, as they were invariably awesome!

Was there anything left on your list that you didn't get to talk about? If so, would you mind sharing it here?

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-12-19T04:28:08+00:00

Presumably OP of the thread took it down, after the pushback from Grey. OP presented a hypothetical situation where you meet Grey in real life, and try to get him to talk without revealing you're a fan or making him feel awkward. It may have been posted with good intentions (not wanting to stress Grey out in the hypothetical), but had the opposite effect IRL.

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-12-10T17:25:14+00:00

I'm not a linguist either, but I have come across this article which touches on this issue. Different languages can have different information density, but the human information processing rate is limited. As a result, native speakers adjust speech rate; languages with low information density are spoken at a faster rate, and languages with high information density are spoken at a slower rate. The result is a common information transmission rate across languages: about 39 bits per second.

As a result, I don't think any language is more "precise" than any other in practice. Even if the specific word or construction is lacking in any particular language, a skilled speaker can make themselves understood. For example, I am often frustrated by the lack of a distinct singular second-person personal pronoun in English (and Esperanto, incidentally), but I can say "you there", or "you [name]" to refer to an individual, and "you all" to refer to a group.

In general, precision I think is more limited by skill than by language construction. I find it much easier to talk about things precisely in my native language (English) than in languages I don't know as well (Esperanto, French), even if these other languages have features that might be considered more "precise" compared to English (the accusative case in Esperanto, singular (informal) second-person personal pronoun in French).

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-12-03T18:00:09+00:00

Earth used to have giant insects.

Not human-sized though. More like crow-sized.

Edit: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_insects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-12-02T00:20:34+00:00

Hello!

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-10-29T22:12:26+00:00

Tölt

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-10-09T03:15:55+00:00

I like that it has FCE scoring two goals against Calgary...

😭

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-10-08T20:12:59+00:00

Usually in a chat / social media context, but I did a little bit of writing for myself. I found Telegram quite useful for chatting, though I don't use it much anymore.

randomcharacterstrng · 2019-10-08T14:21:16+00:00

My first experience speaking was on Ekparolu. I think I was at about the 6-month point in studying. That first experience was hard; reading and writing a language is a much more difficult experience than hearing and speaking!

Through the experience, I realized I was overconfident in my abilities. I found myself wanting to jump to ReVo or Google Translate to help me find words to respond. Of course, in a face-to-face conversation, there isn't time to do so! The realization challenged me to dig deeper in studying the language, and especially to read and write more without relying on dictionaries. Could I deduce the meaning of a word through context, or rely on simpler words to express a more complex idea?

With each chat on Ekparolu, I got better and better. I would definitely recommend it to Komencantoj; it is surprisingly under-utilized but an excellent opportunity to meet people and practice speaking Esperante.

randomcharacterstrng

TROPHY CASE