I Don't Know If I'll Ever Post Again. So Many Communities I Have Long Identified Are Now Antisemitic

The Early Therocene: 30 million years post-establishment

Tallest of All: The Girats

The great success of the boingos across the plains and grassland of the Early Therocene would spell bad news for the hamtelopes. While enjoying a brief success in the Middle Rodentocene, they would eventually be outcompeted by the boingos, with a more-efficient means of locomotion and more-specialized teeth for eating tough grasses. As such, the hamtelopes would be pressured into other niches as they were pushed out of the plains: many would become forest and jungle herbivores, others would remain as small hare-like grazers in the plains, and only on isolated environments do the hamtelopes get to dominate with the absence of competition.

But one family of hamtelopes stubbornly stuck to the plains, and despite the abundance of competing boingos grew to megafaunal sizes. However, they reached higher up, into the treetops where the boingos could not reach, and so were selected to grow taller still, and so this trend reaches its logical conclusion in the Early Therocene, with the tallest hamsters ever to walk the planet: the girats.

Towering high-browsers that feed on the sparse trees in the open plains, the girats reach tremendous heights of up to 16 feet, with their long legs and even longer necks. They evolved prehensile lips and long, flexible tongues to grasp and pluck branches and stems from trees, while their incisors served as pruning shears to clip off leaves to be swallowed. With virtually no competition for these high leaves the girats dominate and thrive, managing a coexistence with the other grazers that drove off most of their smaller relatives.

Girats are mostly solitary, though occasionally gather in groups to seek out mates during the breeding season. Male girats are easily distinguished from females by the presence of large, keratinous horns sported on their protruding cheekbones, which they use in headbutting contests with other males, swinging their heads at each other and trying to inflict bruising whacks onto their rivals with their blunt, hammer-like horns.

At least a dozen species of girat range all across Nodera and Easaterra, where they vary in color and the arrangement of their horns. The axehorn girat (Altocervimys securiceros) is the most common species in Nodera, while its relative the trihorn girat (Giraffacricetus triceros) lives further south in the savannah of Nodera. Meanwhile in the tropical forests of central Easaterra lives the splendid girat (Procerocricetus magnificens), one of several species in the genus Procerocricetus that adapted to denser jungles instead of the open plains. Unlike their cousin the axehorn girat, the trihorn and splendid species possess sharper horns, due to the need of extra defenses with the increased number of larger predators further south, and as such are less aggressive toward their own species than the axehorns: with more pointed weaponry, a headbutting contest between two rival males can easily result to death for them both, and such they rarely fight unless absolutely necessary.

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Soca Valley, Slovenia [OC] (3456x5184) by: peterino99

Player: "I'm upset that [NPCs who sprung an accidently fatal trap for thieves] are dead, but I'm more upset that [NPC, antagonistic] is trying to guilt us over it."

Player2, Resident Moral Compass: "Yeah!"

my quality of life has improved tenfold ever since i was introduced to breezewiki, a site that exists solely to remove the bloat from fandom.com wikis. no more ads, quizzes, random autoplaying videos, popups, recommended pages from other sites, or discord server member lists. just the wiki. these things are finally readable again

25 million years PE: The End of the Rodentocene

Dusk of One and Dawn of Another: The End of the Rodentocene Era

It is a chilly afternoon in northern Nodera. The main yellow sun, Alpha, is beginning to set, casting the temperate landscape with a bright yellow gleam, while above it hovers the red-orange pinprick of Beta, promising a few hours more of Beta-twilight before true night sets in. Above in the sky soar a number of ratbats, emerging at dusk to seize the swarms of airborne insects active in this hour of tangerine skies.

It has been 25 million years since life first came to HP-02017, and the wildlife certainly shows its adaptation. Once all just tiny, humble hamsters, they have expanded into such an unimaginable array of forms their seeding precursors would never have foreseen--wherever they were, so long a time later.

In the grasses of the Noderan landscape the sounds of a scuffle can be heard: two rival male masked luchaboars are jousting for territory, squealing loudly as they lock tusks and try to throw their opponent into the ground. Their species, and their territorial jousting, has gone virtually unchanged since the Late Rodentocene, 5 million years ago, but by this time great changes have occurred around them. Once they were the greatest of all Nodera's creatures, but now that age has passed.

The luchaboars butt heads with loud squeals, trying to scare the rival off their turf. But suddenly, both cease their combat and perk their ears in attention, as a faint rumbling sound, slowly approaching, interrupts their petty dispute.

Something is coming.

Something big.

A herd of mison come plodding their way, the ground rumbling with their footsteps while clouds of vapor condense in the cold air with each mighty breath. Like the bumbaas, the mison are descendants of the cavybaras as well-- but their size is on a whole different level.

Weighing almost two thousand pounds when fully grown and measuring six feet high at the shoulder, these lumbering giants have increased in mass from their cavybara ancestors almost twentyfold, and are now thousands of times much more massive than the miniscule hamster that was released onto this planet all too long ago. The vacancy of niches allowed the miniscule hamster to spread out into bigger forms: some of which are now very big indeed.

The herd emerges onto the plains, migrating to new grazing land, and soon dozens, and then hundreds, come tromping their way through the grassland: and faced with such a massive herd, the two brawling luchaboars wisely drop their conflict and promptly flee, while the mison continue on, indifferent to the smaller creatures scurrying beneath them.

As the chilly climate of the Rodentocene's end caused sea levels to drop, the mison, which originated from Westerna, crossed the exposed land bridges down to Ecatoria and across to Nodera, and now they have become established there too, roaming the plains in large herds as they migrate in search of food.

But the mison are not alone. Soon the herd is flanked by several large bounding figures: a group of bipedal, hopping boingos. Large plains grazers descended from the jerryboas, specifically the greater skipperroo, these 190-pound, six-foot-tall leapers dominate the grasslands throughout nearly every continent save for Borealia and Peninsulaustra. Their efficient bounding gaits and grazing dentition have allowed the boingos to conquer the plains, crowding out most of the hamtelopes and keeping their grazing species as small hare-like grazers in the plains...or at least, most of them.

Towering above them all is an immense figure that, with its slender neck, long legs bearing hoofed toes, and a lack of a tail, is unmistakably a giant hamtelope: the girat. While most plains-dwelling hamtelopes avoided competition with the jerryboas and their descendants the boingos by remaining small and feeding on soft, low-ground vegetation, other hamtelopes instead avoided competitive pressure by taking the opposite route, becoming high browsers that feed on tall vegetation beyond the boingos' reach: culminating in the girats, which when full-grown can stand up to 16 feet high-- the tallest hamsters to walk the planet.

Suddenly, the once massive cavybaras and bumbaas are tremendously dwarfed by the great new creatures that have emerged to fill the niches of large megafauna prevalent on Earth, but absent here. The arrival of these massive, mighty behemoths heralds the end of the Rodentocene, and the dawning of a new era: the Therocene-- the age of beasts.

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@frislander

Fresh Waffles and there is a season wildelifecomic.com

can y'all send some asks that are like “thoughts on ______”

Context: they were in a bar that can give you any liquid in the world

My friend: I take a bottle, not looking at the label and drink it.

Me: okay, roll a d100 for the drink

*rolls a 10*

Me, with the evilest smile: that’s f*cking vinegar, mate.

SMH we Israelis blazed the trail for trans people in Eurovision and now people talking about the queer history of Eurovision either erase Dana International or refuse to mention what country she represented. It is clear that the international LGBT movement does not care for LGBT Israelis. The goy queer population of Europe came out to protest Israel at Eurovision for the temerity of *existing* but did not march in solidarity when LGBT Israelis protested against homophobia and transphobia in our government last year. I do not want to hear a single word about the importance of intersectionality or solidarity again from people who believe Jews and Israelis are exempt form either of them.

dana international 💕 israeli queer royalty 🇮🇱👸🏻

the first trans contestant and winner of eurovision !!!! 🇮🇱