The French Cajuns of Texas and Louisiana have their own Santa Claus: Papa Noël. Instead of a sleigh, Papa Noël rides a pirogue (dugout canoe) pulled by a team of 8 alligators. His wife/companion, 'La Christine' brings sweets after Papa Noël delivers presents to all the good children on the bayou.

Dad Joke of the Day: Some people think Santa Claus is German but in fact, he's North Polish. #DJotD

this is tremendously cool. like zooming out

These strange trees are called 'pewen' or 'piñonero' in their native Chile, but when they reached England as an ornamental, barrister Charles Austin commented: "It would puzzle a monkey to climb that" So now, in English, they're called "monkey-puzzles." They get weirder up close...

My nominee for "Least Sentimental Christmas Poem" goes to Hilaire Belloc's "Lines For A Christmas Card": "May all my enemies go to hell, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel."

Everything alive in the Devonian period tried too hard. “Ooo, look at me, I’m a weird elongated pentagon” Shut up!

Consumer PSA: A lot of stores will advertise an Xmas tree, but the package actually *contains* a Ymas tree. DON'T BE FOOLED.

We know that birds can sense magnetic fields for navigation. But how does that work? Do they have little magnets wired up to their brains? The most likely answer is 1000X times weirder than that, and involves quantum spin. Let's talk about 'cryptochromes' & magnetic sensing.🧪

Hey, it's my print debut for National Geographic! This fall, I got to accompany folks from the Fort Worth Zoo on an incredible adorable mission: releasing tiny Texas horned lizards to new lives in the Hill Country. (You will want to click on this one, trust me. The photos are adorable.)

Sorry for putting Rogan & Weiss on your TL, but there's a delicious irony in their ignorance & exploration of "toady." The original term was "TOAD-EATER": an *actual profession* in Georgian England. The "toady" would eat a 'poisonous' toad & then be 'cured' by a charlatan selling miracle cures.

Mary and Joseph praying over Jesus in the manger, or TWO T. REXES FIGHTING OVER A TABLE SAW? Once seen, cannot be unseen.

"Mele Kalikimaka" was written by R. Alex Anderson, a popular songwriter in the 'Hapa haole' fusion genre, in 1949. So it's a white guy, born in Honolulu, transliterating "Merry Christmas" into the Hawaiian alphabet. A controversial context 😬 but still a pretty song.

From "Friends of Big Bend" FB page, from West Texas photographer Tim McKenna. His caption: "We decorate for Christmas just a wee bit different here in the Big Bend of Texas." Someone correct me, but I think those are house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) on an aloe: a proper Texas Christmas tree.

The Christmas Tree Crayfish (Procambarus pygmaeus) is found in freshwater streams in the southeastern US, although they're only vividly colored like this after a molt and with the right diet & lighting. The common name was inspired by comparison to a decorated Christmas tree. (📷: Chris Lukhaup)

HO!

What could be more Christmas-y than a tube worm? Meet Spirobranchus giganteus, the Christmas Tree Worm. It burrows into corals in tropical waters, adding to the protection offered by its calcareous tube. The "Christmas trees" are mouth structures serving both feeding and respiration.

This is a 13,000-year-old mammoth tusk carving of two reindeer swimming, on display at the British Museum. It was produced in what is now France by people of the Upper Neolithic Magdalenian culture. It serves no known practical purpose & is the oldest artwork in any British museum collection.

Every year around Christmas, I watch this video on a loop, obsessively, and I want to explain why it's my favorite of the season. First some trivia: 1. This was one of Bing Crosby's last recordings. He died of a heart attack a few weeks later. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCpX...

Forget the "Happy Holidays" debate. Let's talk about why the British (& Australians/New Zealanders) say "Happy Christmas", while Americans exclusively say "Merry Christmas." HAPPY derives from Middle English 'hap' meaning "luck" (as preserved in "hapless"). Happy Birthday = "Lucky birthday!"

Reindeer / caribou can't fly, but they can swim! During their migrations, it's not uncommon for them to cross large expanses (~35 mi) of sea-ice & swim up to 1.5 miles (2.5 km) in frigid water to cross rivers, inlets and go from island to island. Let's talk about their special winter coats!

So reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) can't fly, but they are VERY MAGICAL. For example, their EYES CHANGE COLOR during the year & they're one of the few large mammals that can see UV. Golden brown in summer, deep blue in winter. Let's talk about the unique visual adaptations of Rudolph and company.

"Deer" derives from Old English 'deor', but the term was used generically for *any* animal. The same sense is maintained in modern German 'Tier' & Dutch 'dier' (= "animal") The specific Old English name for this hoofed quadruped was 'heorot' ("hart", as in German 'Hirsch' & Dutch 'hert').

The ancestor of modern house cats came from dry climates, so are poorly adapted for the life aquatic. Fur becomes wet, heavy & loses insulation. So the occasional outlier is remarkable: enter the Van cats, a feral group that live around Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey. They're swimmers.

PSA: 'quishing' is a scam that uses QR codes to redirect you to a scam site to obtain your financial info. Scammers will put QR stickers over legitimate ones, so even QR codes on reputable ads are dangerous. What's needed: a code BOTH humans & machines can read. So we invented it... in 1956.

The patch of longer hair between the ears on a cow is part of the 'forelock' from Old English 'forelocca'. Interestingly, the term "bangs" is a reference to a "bangtail" on a horse: a straight, short cut (often bound with ribbon) for the tail hair in vogue in the 1800's in show horses.

The lifespan of a reindeer is ~20 years. The first appearance of Rudolph was 1939. We can therefore conclude there have been >4 reindeer with bioluminescent snouts. Hypothesis: Santa has a reindeer genetics program based on cloning or gene editing.

When George Lucas' epic space opera was released into theaters, it was titled: "STAR WARS". It wouldn't be until 1981, for the theatrical re-release, that it became "Star Wars IV: A New Hope". This came AFTER "Empire Strikes Back" (1980), to make the order clear. Let's talk about retronyms!

It's day 19 of the invertebrate macro photo #ArtAdventCalendar. Here, have a tiger beetle 😘

Jumping Frog Radius xkcd.com/3181/

Happy Tamale Season to all my Texas peeps.🫔🎄 May the Tamale Lady visit you in the Wal-Mart parking lot with a cooler full of spicy goodness.

willow ptarmigan. Thank you for spreading the bird word, @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social

Back in the hood again

Right whales got the moniker not because they were good at trivia night. It was a way of saying "hunt this one right here" in whaler speak. They swam slowly, surfaced often, floated after death & had large fat deposits for oil. 80% of the global population were killed between 1835-1855.

You know who isn't stressed out right now? The 'snow monkeys' of Jigokudani Monkey Park in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. They're wild Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) who live in the nearby hills, but winter in/around natural hot springs (onsen) in the park.

I could write a 3,000-word essay on this photo and cover maybe half of what's going on in it.

The Iberian ribbed newt (Pleurodeles waltl) or 'gallipato' conceals a secret. Poisonous, switch-blade RIBS. Along their sides are orange bumps (tubercles) where their oversized pointy ribs can protrude if squeezed. As they extend, glands envenom the tips.

Oh to be a little Tardigrade walking across a microscopic slide. 🫧🐻🧪

Happy Hollidays to all the DNA Nerds out there.

“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known" - Bertrand Russell, 1976. Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

Some questions seem like they should have a simple answer. Example: When does winter begin in the Northern Hemisphere? But there are at least two answers: there's a METEOROLOGICAL winter & an ASTRONOMICAL winter. Let's talk about it.

The blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii) is native to the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The name 'booby' is from Spanish bobo, which means "clown" referring to their awkward movement on land. The "blue-footed" aspect is obvious: they concentrate carotenoid pigments... (📷: Gramar Racher)

I love when aquariums dress up divers as Santa for Christmas to bring toys to good little fishes (and delight kids). This sand tiger shark side-eye really captures the mood. He looks like he's thinking: "SANTA CLAUS? HERE?" From 'The Maritime Aquarium' in Norwalk, CT.

When the Aztecs looked at the moon, they saw a rabbit. It was placed there by Quetzalcoatl to honor a rabbit who offered his body as food. But not just any rabbit. This is a VOLCANO RABBIT (Romerolagus diazi), also called 'teporingo' or 'zacatuche', native to a small region around Mexico City.

Darwin was famously inspired by the finches of the Galapagos Islands, with diverse beaks shaped by natural selection. But what if he had never visited the Galapagos? What if he had visited the Hawaiian islands instead? Let's meet the Hawaiian honeycreepers! (📷: Loren Cassin Sackett)

This is a unifying theme in human health: Many chronic conditions arise from common roots but express in different ways. Mental health diagnoses are often linked: people with schizophrenia are much more likely to have bipolar disorder. There's a *spectrum* of psychopathology.

The black heron (Egretta ardesiaca) is native to eastern Africa. They feed on small animals in waterways by using a type of hunting called 'canopy feeding', tenting their wings like an umbrella that creates shade to attract small animals. (📷: Derek Keats, @derekkeats.bsky.social)

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is essential to metabolism & deficiencies produce a condition called beriberi. I want to tell the story of why the Japanese Army suffered from it until 1926, while the Japanese Navy did NOT after 1884. A cautionary tale about science denialism & the resulting policy choices.

Alan Solem, renowned snail expert & curator at the Field Museum was describing a new snail from the rural province of Ba in Fiji. It required a new genus, so he used 'Ba'. That was too tempting for him to resist, so allow me to introduce the Ba humbugi snail.

What does the "wrought" in "wrought iron" mean? Here's a clue: the first official Morse telegraph transmission in the US was a phrase from Numbers 23:23 "What hath God wrought". "Wrought" is the archaic past-tense of WORK, i.e. "worked"

'O'opu nopili - which reach a max length of ~7 in as adults - can scale 330 ft-tall waterfalls - over 550x their body length! That’d be equivalent to an average-sized human climbing over a mile vertically primarily using their mouth (while being sprayed with water) #25DaysofFishmas