I think of this line every time my dog dives into the snow

Excited to announce that my second manuscript, “Fossilised Melanosomes Reveal Colour Patterning in A Sauropod Dinosaur” has been published in @royalsociety.org !! Diplodocus scales are complex and diverse, and it turns out their color patterning was even more so. A 🧵🦕 1/26

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild: Blue-spotted salamander Maned wolf Ant-mimicking katydid Bullet ant Island scrub jay

My latest order from @portersqbooks.bsky.social along with a trio of biographies I picked up at the Boston Book Festival. In an era of book bans and AI slop, it sure feels nice to chat with authors and buy their books.

I liked the world better when doing my hobbies was something to pursue just for the joy of it, instead of it being a brief period of escapism from the horrors of reality. Portrait of a refugee Charcoal on gouache-primed paper, 2.5 hour sitting from life

#Zavacephale. A very pretty new pachycephalosaur from early Cretaceous Mongolia. 🥰

Gracklepalooza continues with no signs of slowing! This male Common Grackle was heading over to the tree nearer the creek. It always amazes me how birds fly among tree branches so easily! #Birds #photography #wildlife 🪶

I think I don’t have a choice by say this is my all time favorite Kingfisher photo I’ve had the chance of clicking The Queen of Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve fishing the moon 📷🌿🪶🌔

* Admitted, everyone always goes "canopy specialist?" whenever a forest species is rarely caught. - Laticoleus are really rare? Canopy specialists. - Only one Epirhyssa johanna ever caught? Could they be ⭐Canopy Specialists⭐? - Didn't see any elephants 🐘 today? Perhaps they're in the canopy?

Post your dream ride...

This is Costasiella kuroshimae, the sea sheep. It's not a nudibranch, it's a sacoglossan, another mollusc clade. The green color is a tip-off: sacoglossans are herbivorous where nudis are carnivores. Like nudibranchs they can eat things and then repurpose cells from them, in this case chloroplasts

I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management. medium.com/@steve.desch...

I’m more of a dog person than a cat person, but this pair of kittens that live in a bike shop in Vietnam stole my heart. #caturday

Leaf cutter ants are so abundant in the tropics that it doesn't seem rare to find queens. But it's still jarring to see an ant the size of a ping pong ball. For scale comparison, the ant on the left side (probably a species of Monomorium) is what you'd call a normal sized ant. #invertebrates

A weird looking treehopper from Costa Rica (Cladonota sp.) #invertebrates

Quote with your fanart.

One of the prettiest (and most skittish) jumping spiders I've had the joy of photographing Anasaitis canalis, Costa Rica #invertebrates

How did storks become mythical baby-deliverers? Every time I've seen one, they look like the kind of animal that would gleefully peck your eyeballs out.

Glup Shitto implies the existence of Glup Pisso

I still think about the time I delighted an English literature TA by successfully arguing Laertes from Hamlet was a great example of Robertson Davies' “Fifth Business” character trope because it was a novel approach to a character study assignment: triumphofthenow.com/2020/08/09/f...

Just like a car, you can use a bike to transport a boat. Unlike a car, you can strap the bike to the boat so you can float downstream as far as you want without having to backtrack.

We’ve looked at snails with one shell and slugs with no shells. Now let’s have a look at a snail with two shells, because Nature laughs at our puny attempts to pigeonhole. In today’s #AtoZ – J is for Julia (Juliidae) (1/9) Pic: © uwkwaj CC BY-NC

Common brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus), Madagascar

🚨 New Paper Alert! 🚨 🐜 How did ants evolve their highly specialized queens and workers? With @adriatica.bsky.social, we reveal a key evolutionary innovation: adult control over larval feeding unlocked extreme caste dimorphism and complex societies. 🧵👇 🔗 Read in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Quote post with a picture you took in a National Park. Rocky mountain elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) in Yellowstone National Park

One of the most beautiful spiders I've ever seen. Gasteracantha sp., Mozambique

my kingdom for an elected official who will stand up and defend the fact that the government employs people to test wastewater and send old people money and keep an eye on the bears in the park and make sue the people that scammed you

Today, the USDA lost experts in Psylloidea, Thysanoptera, Cerambycidae, Hymenoptera, Pseudococcidae, and Malacology. This is a devastating loss of expertise, occuring without warning. Their union's official statement on the issue can be found here: aginspectors.org/2-14-2025-a-... #entomology 🧪

Bullet ant (Paraponera clavata) queen, photographed in Ecuador #invertebrates

A collection of handsome tortoise beetles (Cassidinae) 🐢🪲 1 Ischnocodia annulus "Ringed Tortoise Beetle", Belize, 2015 2 Aspidimorpha sp golden tortoise beetle, Mozambique, 2018 3 unknown metallic green tortoise beetle, Colombia, 2023 4 Deloyala guttata "Mottled Tortoise Beetle", Oklahoma, 2020

I can't express how much I've seen USAID in action. Acholiland, Uganda, 2007. Iraqi Kurdistan, 2014. South Sudan, 2016. Wherever I've gone where human beings suffered, there was USAID. I'm not saying it doesn't have organizational problems, but it saves lives. It's the best of us. I'm so angry.

usually when i’m learning old time songs i end up having to ‘eat around’ a lot of powerfully racist shit but sometimes they go the other way lol

A couple of oil portraits I’ve done lately, both 3 hour sessions from life. It took me a while to realize that skin colors can be anything in the rainbow, and sometimes you need to exaggerate the colors you perceive to get the painting to convey the vibrance of the living person.

If you see this post an archer.

Watching this female jaguar move around in her habitat was an absolute highlight from my trip to the Brazilian Pantanal. It's an open habitat with river access, so you can get some startlingly clear views of jaguars when they choose to be near the water. #mammals #wildlifephotography

I guess this is how I will be remembered.

The darkest dark meat I’ve seen is from hooded seals. Their muscles are so loaded with myoglobin for their insanely deep dives that their muscles are so red they’re almost black. Amazing animals but a challenge to dissect.

Goliath Beetle - watercolor, ink From my insect series. Prints:https://www.etsy.com/listing/933501341/gilded-order-goliath-beetle-print? #SciArt #invertebrate #entomology #tradtionalart #art

Utah's most special guy, the Coral Pink Sand Dunes tiger beetle, only occupies a 1800m x 300m area in the state park of the same name. This guy is NOT going places!

That’s my boy!

Finally! After a few years of trying to find the right spot & time things right. I've photographed adult California tiger salamanders (Ambystoma californiense) underwater as they return to vernal ponds to breed. I believe mine are the 1st UW images of wild CA tiger sals. 🦎🌎🐸

A scorpion fluorescing under UV light, Anza Borrego State Park, CA. #invertebrate

Woke up to this view of my dog this morning

Quick oil painting of a model named Eva from a session I hosted tonight. It amuses me that nobody gives a shit about AI in spaces where creativity really happens. Tech doesn't help me draw proportions or mix colors. There's no substitute for working with real materials and a live model.

This was an interesting commission for a client who had seen a Pileated Woodpecker on a tree in his yard, but did not get a photo. He wanted to celebrate that moment with a painting. I visited the tree so that I could paint its portrait, cracks, fungi, and all. #birds #birdart #sciart

One of my favorite kinds of ant, an Odontomachus sp. trapjaw ant from the Ecuadorean Amazon. I was enchanted by them walking along a log and occasionally passing through a cluster of tiny mushrooms. Spent over an hour to get this shot, and it got printed in this year's ESA calendar! #insects

Murray Hardyhead and Australian smelt models. I developed a technique to imply a greater sense of internality to small translucent fish. All now on display at Oxford Uni Museum of Natural History

I usually carry a Lego figure as a handy scale reference when I'm out photographing insects, and I often can't resist inserting it just for fun. Mating pair of ambush bugs on a goldenrod, the female is eating a bee (Indiana Dunes National Park). #insects

Post a picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline

Neotropic cormorant with a pleco fish, Brazilian Pantanal. #birds