bunjywunjy:

in the market for some weird animal facts? well, I’m happy to oblige. you look like a discerning customer with a real need for speed, so allow me to introduce you to one of Nature’s finest sports models! they’re lean, they’re mean, and they can go 0-60 in 3 seconds flat! and boy, that engine really purrs.

put the pedal to the metal, because it’s-

CHEETAH! he can really move! CHEETAH! with anxious attitude! CHEETAH! HE’S THE FASTEST THING ALIIIIIIIIVE

Cheetahs are large spotty cats built along the same lines as a Greyhound. (the dog, not the bus.) they’re found throughout sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of Asia, where they sprint around like maniacs and pose for tourists to their heart’s content. at least 75% of every Cheetah is limbs by volume, and they sport a pair of iconic black tear track markings that would make Gerard Way jealous.

you’ve probably seen them before on junk food packaging in your local grocery store, but their real claim to fame is that they’re the fastest land animal on the entire planet. vroom vroom!

the whole Dangerously Cheesy thing is just a side job. 

there’s a surprising amount of really dang fast animals on this planet, (most are mammals, but none of then are hedgehogs.) but the Cheetah has them all beat for sheer ground speed alone. other animals can run further or for longer, but none can match the Cheetah’s absolutely insane landspeed record of 61 to 70 miles per hour. (ish.)

that’s an absolutely absurd amount of speed for something that has paws instead of wheels or wings. in fact, that’s even faster than some creatures who DO have wings! (those creatures probably feel pretty bad right now, and they should.) to give some perspective: if you’re a Cheetah, it’s straight-up fucking illegal to sprint in almost all of Illinois. (good luck arresting a Cheetah though, they’re bitey!)

you have the right to OW you have the right to remain silent OW STOP BITING ME

while it’s a known fact that Cheetahs are THE fastest mammal currently in existence on our beautiful planet, exactly how fast they are is a subject of some debate and also some academic hair-pulling. (there’s a surprising amount of hair-pulling in academia, both figurative and literal.) this is because it’s actually pretty difficult to a) motivate any animal to sprint at full speed for your own personal amusement, and b) calculate exactly how fast said animal is moving once you’ve motivated it into sprint mode.

methods for clocking the speed of a sprinting Cheetah have included solutions as fancy-schmancy sciencetech as radio-tracking GPS collars, radar guns, and carefully measured artificial courses, and also solutions as straight-up mad max

bullshit as driving next to the sprinting Cheetah in a rusted-out truck and just having an intern watch the speedometer, or dragging bait behind a speeding car and having a different intern watch the speedometer. these methods give some very different results, as you might imagine.

there’s a surprising amount of straight-up mad max bullshit in science, because fancy-schmany sciencetech can only get you so far.

Cheetahs can only sustain this absolutely insane burst of speed for about thirty seconds, but that’s more than long enough for their purposes. Cheetahs mostly hunt antelope, who are slower but definitely no slackers in the speed department themselves. this often leads to suspenseful high-speed chases all over the dang place like an episode of Serengeti: Cheetah Vice Squad.

once a Cheetah has located its intended victim, it uses its incredible speed to turbo boost close enough to Blue Shell the hapless antelope’s legs right out from under it, sending it tumbling and causing a tragic antelope-pileup on the Serengeti and probably ending up on the antelope evening news. and then just to add insult to injury, the Cheetah bites its neck open and eats it.

I’ve said it before, but nature is so mean. SO MEAN.

Cheetahs are the only big cat to have this particular hunting style, and it’s because there’s no other cats quite like them. they’re not even technically “big cats”, but something so weird that they have an entire genus, Acinonyx, completely to themselves. and they’re so weird because mother nature minimaxed them for Speed and dumped every other stat to do it.

Cheetahs are long, lanky, flexible, and very lightly built. this gives them the power to accelerate like a Ferrari on bath salts, but it also makes them really bad at basically anything else large cats are usually known for. Cheetahs also can’t roar, and instead they make noises usually associated with your garden-variety tabby cat. they chirp, meow, hiss, mew, and even purr! (I don’t know about you, but I’ll take a purr over a roar any day.)

literally everything about this cat is intended to fling it forward at the highest rate of giddyup possible, and I can respect that.

but this hyperspecialized body plan comes with a price: Cheetahs are relatively weak and incredibly fragile. in fact, they’re completely outmatched by just about every other predator in Africa! they get bullied, bodied, and have their kills stolen and cubs infanticided on a pretty regular basis. this is very sad and awful, and it’s why every Cheetah in existence is an anxious mess.

no seriously, Cheetahs are notoriously anxious animals, even in captivity! this is rough for the Cheetah and can be a huge problem for animals in zoos and breeding programs. but luckily there’s a solution to soothe these unlucky anxious kitties- support dogs!

enough talk about infanticide, time for PUPPIES!

some zoos have begun raising puppies and Cheetah kittens together, giving the Cheetahs a sibling with a more laissez faire outlook on life to look up to. and the weirdest part is- it’s working! Cheetahs in breeding programs that are given dog siblings are even beginning to have the cubs they were too nervous to have before, and it’s all thanks to the positive life outlook of man’s best friend!

and that’s important, because Cheetahs are currently listed as Vulnerable. their population and range is shrinking, and these captive breeding programs are vital to keeping their numbers healthy. international efforts are underway to protect the Cheetahs and their habitat, and there’s hope that these fragile nervous speedsters will continue to blitz their way into the future.

with dog, all things are possible.

–

thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series on my tumblr here, or check out the official archive at weirdbiology.com!

if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee and support Weird Biology!

and if you’d like to see exclusive Weird Biology content, check out my Patreon today!

–

IMAGE SOURCES

img1- Parade img2- Ranger Rick img3- The Daily Mail/Caters News Agency img4- Sciencing img5- National Geographic img6- National Zoo img7- BoredPanda img8- Attractions Magazine

theconcealedweapon:

“Autistic people are too sensitive.”

Meanwhile, here’s a list of things that offend allistic people.

• not making eye contact
• wanting to be left alone
• not wanting to take part in a conversation
• using the wrong tone
• showing the wrong amount of excitement
• pointing instead of using words
• not wanting to be touched
• not wanting to eat certain foods
• wearing earplugs around other people
• stimming in a way that does not affect anyone else
• not following traditions
• questioning their authority

tehriz:

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

talesofthestarshipregeneration:

dsudis:

thelingerieaddict:

lesbiai:

elizabitchtaylor:

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

this was one of the first lessons I had in psych too and we were never told about this either nor was it in any of the reading materials

I never knew this.

I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most people’s windows were closed) tried to help in some way.

One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.

Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.

And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldn’t be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescue–so he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didn’t know whether the attacker was gone.

Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.

The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he “didn’t want to get involved” because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Ann’s. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.

So, no. I don’t think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to help.

See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)

A Call for Help (The New Yorker)

(Also, going by the content of the murderer’s confession, it was indeed a random attack.)

how on EARTH was this “scientifically” studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!

How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go!  That’s how it gets taught as this supposed “scientific study.”  Someone got fucking lazy.

Spread the real deal, kids.

A book about this, “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!

jason-todd-appreciation-squad:

junethetransbean:

at this point I think all of Tumblr’s staff needs to just be collectively fired and this site should scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up because holy shit

users: “ban the porn bots”

staff: *breaks the search function*

users: “Ban. The. Porn. Bots.”

staff: *tags suddenly stop working*

users: “Please just ban the fucking bots.”

staff: *fucks up recommendations entirely*

*app ends up being taken off the store for not banning the bots*

users: “all we ask is that you ban the bots. how fucking hard is this?”

staff, in all it’s benevolent wisdom: *starts randomly just deleting NSFW blogs left and right*

I don’t have the slightest idea how to code but at this point I’m 95% *I* could do better.

@staff , get your fucking shit together

Ban. The. Bots. Not. Actual. Users.

I have over ten years of coding experience between various platforms and every single moment on this site inflicts physical pain on my IT brain

salt-of-the-ao3:

sakaras-happyplace:

salt-of-the-ao3:

Seriously, authors gushing about my comment on their fic, gets me almost as excited as someone gushing about a fic that I wrote myself. I mean. I made someone happy?? with my words?? HOW COOL IS THAT

Dude. Me. It makes my day when I make theirs.

“It makes my day when I make theirs.”

yes this exactly EXACTLY!!