eternaljourneytmbr

Latest Posts by eternaljourneytmbr

Lets bother cuddle mama

murderfloof rolled a 1 on that check, lol bat's definitely caught red-han-... red-chested? red-faced? red all over, really.

exceptionally creepy. terrifying. (great work!) ... TUC had zero flier antagonists. closest to such could be Ajax, I guess? but, like, that dude got zero characterization other than 'nobody likes him' and being Solovet's bond.

so,, why not have a floof-flier be a malevolent bitch? albeit not to the same scale as the other malevolent bitch that affected damn near everyone in the North American Eastern Seaboard region of the Underland with their machinations, and 'just' limited to those that she might encounter by roaming around.

Hoary bat but underland. Maybe hiding a body beneath her. hoaries sometimes kill and eat smaller bats irl. jus surreptiously extretching her wing to conceal a bloody hand, foot, or limb. expression of who, me?~

dunno name. Who was the Greek bloke with the carnivorous horses? Sisyphus? Typhon? Could be selffulfilling prophecy, girl got a rotten name, shunned for rotten name, succumbed to inner demons or malign thoughts because everybody expected the worst from her so why not?

Possibly unrepentant manipulator. Exploits lack of knowledge or innocent assumptions. Missing people? Oh drat the gnawers got them.

You always ask me to draw such depressing bats 😢

Disturbing image under the cut, you were warned

Krita always de-saturates stuff when I export it (yes I've seen that srgb post going around, no the fix suggested didn't work), so I have to manually re-add the saturation after export. I hope I got the caught in the act feigned innocence expression right. To make the bats as expressive as they are in the books I have to give them binocular vision, larger eyes, and usually brows and eyelashes. It kinda makes them look 30% dog 70% bat. I hope the fur patterns and colors still make the species recognizable.

lets chill on this pine tree with mama

lets get fruit with mama

Hello, I'm the Easter Bunny! Er... what? Bunnies have wings, right? Since they lay eggs, right...?

Virginia Big-eared Bat (Corynorhinus townsendii virginianus)

Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Virginia, USA

Status: Endangered

...How in the fu-

how does that-

not a single bit of that viewpoint makes sense. like. the frick. how? how would one come to the conclusion that preserving habitat of species is unnecessary for preservation of that species?!?

I think this is it? H.R.1897 - ESA Amendments Act of 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1897/text

...Though there's another potentially-sketchy bill, one that says the ESA should only apply to species that are native to the United States. (And if a species has extant populations in / migrates to a different country, what then?)

H.R.102 - American Sovereignty and Species Protection Act of 2025 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/102/text.

...actually this one is rather short, so:

----------------------------

To amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to prevent a species that is not native to the United States from being listed as an endangered species or a threatened species, to prohibit certain types of financial assistance, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 3, 2025

Mr. Biggs of Arizona introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources

A BILL

To amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to prevent a species that is not native to the United States from being listed as an endangered species or a threatened species, to prohibit certain types of financial assistance, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “American Sovereignty and Species Protection Act of 2025”.

SEC. 2. Limitation on listing of nonnative species and provision of certain financial assistance.

(a) Limitation on listing of nonnative species.—Section 4(a) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1533(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following:

“(4) NONNATIVE SPECIES.—The Secretary may not determine that a species is an endangered species or a threatened species pursuant to this section if such species is not native to the United States.”.

(b) Limitation on provision of certain financial assistance.—Section 8(a) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1537(a)) is amended—

(1) by striking “As a demonstration of” and inserting the following:

“(1) IN GENERAL.—As a demonstration of”;

(2) by striking “(which includes, but is not limited to, the acquisition, by lease or otherwise, of lands, waters, or interests therein)”; and

(3) by adding at the end the following:

“(2) PROHIBITION ON PURCHASING LAND IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY.—No financial assistance provided under paragraph (1) may be used to acquire, by lease or otherwise, lands, waters, or other interests in a foreign country.”.

On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.

This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.

Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.

Bat hunting ..

Ah, nice! Thanks for the art / visual realization of this particular chiroptera!

>"I hope this is close to what you wanted"

It absolutely is! Thanks!

Hiyo! I apologize for any inconvenience/impertinence, but might I request/commission an illustration of a bat?

Underland!Euderma maculatum. Name: Pythia. Not her actual name. Just what she goes by, due to a rumor; some think she is able to hear into the future - or possible futures. Role/task within Regalia: grief counselor for fliers/humans/etc. who have lost their bonds/family members. or family members of their bonds. Or fliers who have been injured to the point of permanent mobility impairment (cannot fly anymore), individuals that might have dubious thoughts regarding their continued biological existence.

refs: https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Euderma_maculatum/ image refs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=40631

I have three ideas in mind for the illustration I wish to request, but I don't know which of the three to pick. One would be somber, her assisting another... The second would be humorous; possibly depicting Boots and Hazard (or other young-ins) climbing all over the polka-dotted flier, hanging off her ears, etc. Or the third... Pythia's fate. In the hallway leading to Regalia's nursery, with (at least) Dulcet and Cartesian behind her... the Euderma momentarily holding the line, giving what little time before the gnawers overwhelm her position.

I don't know which one to choose. So, leaving that up to you.

I am so sorry it took so long to get finished. I was so excited by someone asking me to draw their OC that I wanted to do more than just a quick sketch and really put my full effort into it. So here's Pythia giving some comfort to a grieving Regalian.

I tried my best to keep her faithful to the bat reference, but a certain degree of creative liberties had to be taken to make her clearly emote. The very iconic spots are only really visible on the back so I had to cheat a little bit around the sides. I hope this is close to what you wanted :')

And FWI yes, the text says "Bat or Owl" that does include Underland OCs... hopefully I won't take three months to get it done next time 😅

Bonuses after the cut:

Alternate color versions that I was iterating. Just getting the right background figured out took so much time and fiddling and I'm still not sure I got it quite right

And here's just a PNG of the characters if you want to put them in a better fitting background

Spectral Bat, photographed by Alexandre Grave, (source)

This. Especially in the wake of the flooding and loss of the Garden. (unless I'm getting the timeline jumbled...) An opportunity for the people of Regalia to contemplate their actions / presence and consideration of 'are we the aggressors here' is abruptly shoved aside / tossed into a figurative dustbin as the majority of their political leadership structure are literally butchered in their own territory. In what they considered safety, as much as there can be in the Underland.

And much later, out of the entirety of the council of Regalia, only Solovet and Vikus survived? Hm.

One of your hottest TUC takes.

Solavet intentionally staged the death of Luxa's parents.

iNaturalist

Photos of Hoary Bat (Lasiurus cinereus) · iNaturalist

they really are just so damn fluff.

for further information, the 'pipistrelles' mentioned in the cited paper are actually Perimyotis subflavus. Which are not pipistrelles, they're more related to myotis spp. than pipistrelles; their western cousin species - Parastrellus hesperus - are more related to pipistrelles though, thus the designation of 'parastrelle', but at the time that paper was written, such designations and reclassifications were not... apologies for the tangent.

an Underland-sized hoary could be a quite effective predator, indeed; especially if they're smart about who they hunt. (tbh I'd probably fall for that ruse. they're just so damn fluffy. An Aeorestine large enough to actually hug without risking harm to the bat - and that can hug back? aaaaaaaa wish fulfillment.)

"'Come inside my hammock,' said the flier to the flutterfly..." and a hypothetical otherwise situationally-unaware/-innocent overlander has no idea of the context... or, if underlander human, they'd be raised from a young age to believe that fliers mean no harm, that a bat will always be around to catch them... a predatory flier would be such a horrible inversion of that concept.

knowledge that lives rent free in my mind: some species of bats predate upon smaller bats. hoaries in particular have been known to attack pipistrelles even during periods of insect abundancies (Karl A. Shump, Ann U. Shump, Lasius cinereus, Mammalian Species, Issue 185, 23 November 1982).

hoaries are also extremely fluffy. possibly the fluffiest bat in north america.

so, the idea of a rogue flier with the appearance and physical traits of a lasiurus cinereus could be a very effective predator of unaware or too-trusting people in the underland. and any missing people could be blamed on other denizens of the underland. who would suspect a flier? especially one so fluffy?

lasiurus species, not just hoaries but all of the lasiurini, are also known to use their fluffy tails as blankets, curling up and sheltering their front, with only their heads and maybe a bit of their chest remaining exposed. a lasiurini flier could offer such as a hammock, especially to Overlanders not used to living underground, away from the warmth of the Sun. It just so happens that that might put an unlucky individual's head in biting range, and once that individual dozes off...

i bestow this cursed information upon you to do with as you wish.

It's perfect and I will cherish this forever. Cannibal fliers and human predating fliers go into the worldbuilding.

ah, this bat

this particular species has such a wide range of visual appearances it's nuts. from various shades of brown with mild frosting to extra value-brand hoary or red bat.

What do you mean you didn’t order more bats?

(This is the last of it, I promise)

Part 2 of flapflap friends, for anyone who might have wanted to see the little guy actually flap. Bats have very neat locomotion! (Also, for any nervous parties, I’m vaccinated against rabies and this little guy’s mouth did not come near my bare skin at any point. I took a glove off to shoot this video, which i wasn’t supposed to do, but there was very low risk here.)

A hungry silverhaired flapflap is fed by a very bad volunteer who didn’t wear a glove like she is supposed to. Don’t tell her boss.

Hoary bat, via

Mexican Free-tailed bat, via

Spinoffs: Space Station Innovations in Your Cart (and Heart!)

You might think NASA technology is just spaceships and telescopes, but did you know the camera in your cell phone is, too? It’s one of many NASA innovations now found everywhere on Earth.

The International Space Station has had crew living on it for 25 years straight. In that time, the space station has enabled a tremendous amount of research, helping NASA and scientists better understand long-term living in space – but it’s not just knowledge coming back down to Earth! Technologies developed for the space station and experiments conducted aboard the orbiting lab also benefit people on the planet below. Here are a few of these inventions, or spinoffs, you can find in your everyday life.

A Sunscreen That Blocks Radiation in Space – and on Your Face

After surviving for 18 months outside the International Space Station, an extremely hardy organism is now improving sunscreens and face cream products from a cosmetics company, which licensed use of the organism from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Build Muscle With or Without Gravity

Muscles atrophy quickly in space, so when astronauts began long stays on the International Space Station, they needed some specialized exercise equipment. A resistance mechanism made of a coiled metal spring formed the basis of the first way for astronauts to “lift weights” in space. Soon after, that same design became the heart of compact home gym equipment.

Fresh Greens Every Day of the Year

The need to grow fresh food in space pushed NASA to develop indoor agriculture techniques. Thanks to the agency’s research, private companies are building on NASA’s vertical farm structure, plant-growth “recipes,” and environmental-control data to create indoor farms, resulting in higher crop yields and better-quality produce while conserving water and energy and eliminating the need for pesticides.

Cultivating Hearts and Knees in Space

Gravity is a significant obstacle to bioprinting cells and growing human tissue on Earth because heavier components settle to the bottoms of petri dishes. In the absence of gravity, each cell layer stays in place, which is how it’s possible to grow heart and knee tissue on the space station. The same principle also allows mixing of complex pharmaceuticals on orbit.

Storing Oodles of Energy

NASA chose nickel-hydrogen batteries to power the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station because the technology is safe, reliable in extreme temperatures, and long-lived. NASA’s improvements brought down the cost of the technology, which is now used by large-scale utilities and renewable power plants that need to store energy generated by intermittent sources.

You can read about many more products sourced from the ISS on spinoff.nasa.gov.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

This turned into a longer post than I anticipated but whatever.

Something I've been seeing quite often in the comments under helicopter posts that make it to the broader internet spaces is discussions on autorotation. These discussions are mostly incomplete information at best and outright wrong at worst. A lot of people seem to be able to recall it as a fact about how helicopters can glide to a safe landing, but aren't aware of the actual process. So here's a guide on what an autorotation is, how its performed, and some of the nuances to it.

For the uninitiated, an autorotation is a maneuver that every helicopter is capable of performing which allows it to land safely in the event of a power failure. Even more simply put - its how a helicopter glides.

I've already made previous posts about helicopter controls and some principles of flight which I recommend checking out first if you're unfamiliar with those.

Under normal flight the engine(s) drive the rotors at a constant flight rpm and all control is made by pitching (changing the angle) The blades to make more or less lift. Essentially the same process as sticking your hand out the window of a moving car and making rise or fall in the wind. However the rotors are experiencing a lot of drag (wind resistance) which requires the engine to produce a lot of power to overcome and maintain rpm.

When an engine failure occurs there is no more power driving the rotors and the high drag will cause the rotor rpm to start to decay rapidly. If nothing is done about that then the rpm will fall so low that the rotors will stall or worse and the helicopter will fall out of the air like a rock. Thankfully we have the option to autorotate instead of that outcome.

The first thing that happens to initiate an autorotation is to fully lower the collective. This will flatten out the blade pitch and minimize the drag on the main rotor, slowing the rpm decay. As the collective is lowered the cyclic will need to come aft slightly to prevent the nose from dropping. Also the right pedal will have been pushed in as the power failure initially occured to prevent yawing.

Now the helicopter is in a steep descent and the autorotation has begun. The airflow through the main rotor has reversed from normal flight. Instead of being drawn from above and expelled downward there is a diagonally upward flow of air through the main rotor.

Now the rotor rpm will begin to rise again thanks to the special design of the rotor blades. A rotor blade has an airfoil shape which is sort of like an elongated teardrop with the wider end on the leading edge. This shape minimizes drag and maximizes lift. But the blade is also slightly twisted. It has a positive pitch at the root where the blade attaches to the rotor hub which gradually transitions to a negative pitch at the tip.

Because of this twist and the difference in relative speed along the blade length (tip travels relatively faster than the root) the blades will develop three distinct regions. These are the driven, driving, and stall regions

The driven and stall regions at the blade tip and root are still producing drag but the middle driving region is actually producing lift, in an upward and slightly forward direction. This forward lift is the thrust that causes the rotor rpm to increase during an autorotation.

So now you are in a descent and recovering rpm back to the normal flight range. If you leave the collective fully lowered the rpm will now start to increase past the normal range and begin to overspeed. If the overspeed becomes too great the blades will be damaged and one could eject. Not ideal.

You have to manage the rpm manually to prevent it from becoming too low or too high. You also do this with the collective. Remember, to start the auto you should lower the collective fully to minimize rpm loss initially and then to start recovering it. As the rpm reaches the normal range the collective should be raised again just a bit to "catch" the rpm. Now you can manually adjust rpm with a tiny amount of collective movement. Rpms a little too fast? Raise it a bit. A little too slow? Lower it a bit. What this is doing is changing the size of the driven and driving regions of the blade, thanks to the twist. Lowering the collective grows the driving region and shrinks the driven region, and vice versa for raising it.

Now the helicopter is safely gliding and can be steered to a landing spot. There's not much to do until you're approaching the ground. The next maneuver will be the level and flare. The height at which you initiate the level and flare depends on the helicopter. Generally a larger helicopter will have more momentum and need to start the maneuver sooner.

Starting with the level off. You will be gliding with a high rate of descent and forward speed in an autorotation. The purpose of the level off is to drastically reduce the rate of descent. By using some aft cyclic input you will pull the nose up and put the helicopter in a level flight attitude. This causes the upwards lift of the rotor disc to act as a sort of parachute and arrest the descent.

Now with the descent rate minimal you apply more aft cyclic to pitch the nose up further and neutralize the forward speed. This is the flare and its the last opportunity to build rotor rpm in an autorotation.

Now you are just over the ground with little to no forward speed and the helicopter will start to settle and sink. Apply forward cyclic to level the helicopter parallel with the ground and use the pedals to keep the nose pointed straight ahead. Then you have whatever rpm is built up to cushion the landing. Smoothly raise the collective fully as the helicopter sinks to touchdown and the landing can be shockingly smooth.

What an autorotation really comes down to is energy. You often start at a high-ish altitude with some forward speed and this becomes the potential and kinetic energy you trade to power the rotors instead of the engine. The energy is an absolute requirement though. If you dont have enough of a combination of speed and/or altitude then an autorotation can be impossible. There are phases of flight and certain missions where you have to accept the risk of a power failure and rely on the crash-worthiness of the airframe.

Despite that, I've done a lot of engine failure procedures in small planes and helicopters and 9 times out of 10 I would rather experience a real one in a helicopter.

Juvenile White-striped freetailed bat, via

Deffo look at the source on this one, the circumstances of the rescue are wild. They have over 200 of these little guys!!!

...they're the size of an average adult human's thumb. their entire body is thumb sized. ...

aaaaaaaaaaa I would be petrified. worried that even breathing too hard could injure the bat.

Eastern Small-footed bat, via

those feet arent the only thing that's small that's for sure <3

Chewing like this | source 🦇

The fucking posts i see from people all like "why is the federal government funding research about snail sex this is stupid" piss me the fuck off. There's lots of reasons, Harold.

1. Understand how snails reproduce so we can learn more about the world around us and maybe learn more about ourselves or how things work.

2. You literally never know what could spark the next great scientific advancement. Snail sex hormones could be a miracle cure for cancer but you won't fucking know that unless you study the snail sex.

3. Hate to break it to ya pal but snails are still worth researching even if you think they're "useless animals." They feed larger animals, they eat plants and shit, they exist and quite frankly that's marvelous. Just because they are useless TO YOU does not mean they aren't worthy of attention.

Like genuinely quit focusing on going "ew!! Icky useless animal having icky sex!!" or whatever, you sound like the people who demonized Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, for wanting to study how plants reproduce.

Cat activation sound

Formosan Golden Tube-Nosed Bat, photographed by Heng-Chia Chang, (source)

I’ve always in wondered what it must look like when the fliers try to traverse areas that they can’t fly in, like the tunnels in the Dead Land or the halls of the palace, and. Um.

I hope it looks like this.

I’m speechless i saw a carboard box in the bathroom and I was like. “Ok why the fuck is that here? What did the cats do?” The truth was worse and more scary than I could image.

It wasn’t an empty carboard box. It was a heavy chewey box my roommate orders. Pickles somehow lugged that to the bathroom and CHEWED THEOGUH THE CARBOARD AND THEN CHEWED THROUGH THE FOOD BAG to get to the cat food inside.

I don’t think I’m safe here

Wingtober Day 14: “Fierce”

Chapin’s free-tailed bat is very fiercely fashion-forward. Males in particular have bright white extendable ‘mohawks’ that they presumably use to signal to potential mates. (Nobody has observed this, but since females have far more modest hairstyles, it’s a good guess.)

Not only do these crests extend out bright white, they also waft strong scents from a special gland located on the back of the bat’s head. They probably also sing complex songs, as other male free-tailed bats do. If these bats have lekking behavior (like the hammerhead bat does, for example) I think a gang of displaying males would be quite a multi-sensory experience to behold…

(Don’t make fun of how I gave up on drawing the tree bark please.)

been experimenting with animation for a class project- it’s a video about giving drones sonar based on bat echolocation

Thumbless Bat Skull (Furipterus horrens)

Since there weren’t many good reference photos of the thumbless bat available (a tragedy!!), I took a shot at its bizarre-looking skull. Evolution has done to many bats what man has cruelly wrought on domestic dogs- though the difference is that it actually works for the bats.

The thumbless bat, as you might imagine from looking at this skull, has a very squished-in face, with fur and skin obscuring the extreme bend above the eyes. This might aid it in echolocation by turning its head into a radar dish, similar to an owl’s. There are definitely a lot of bats that seem to have converged on the flattened-face design. But that isn’t an Official Scientist’s Opinion, just mine.

I should mention that despite their common name, thumbless bats actually DO have thumbs, just reduced ones with tiny, functionless claws. This brings up the question of how they crawl, since most bats use their thumbs like pitons while moving around on their roosts. The answer may be that they just don’t crawl that much- a creature thoroughly adapted to life in the air.

Another fun fact about thumbless bats: their nipples are located on their abdomen, rather than under their armpits like most bats. This means the babies have to orient themselves head-up on their mothers (who are hanging upside-down, of course) to nurse. But how do they do this without functional thumbs to hold on with? I have so many questions that the internet cannot answer.

Finally, please enjoy this thumbless bat art by famed naturalist Ernst Haeckel, circa 1904: