Cheapsweets - CheapSweets

THE BADASS BUG BRACKET

ROUND 1, BRACKET 6

Dragon Mantis (stenophylla lobivertex) vs Giant Desert Centipede (scolopendra heros)

Dragon Mantis propaganda: it's called a dragon mantis and it sure lives up to its name!! look at that elegant scaly tail and those fearsome eyes

Giant Desert Centipede propaganda: I mean, look at it!!! Not only is it the biggest centipede in all of North America, but it can inject venom THOURGH. ITS. FEET. HOW IS THAT NOT COOL???

Bat-Eared Fox (Otocyon Megalotis)

places i should be allowed to poke around in because i am curious by nature

container ships in the middle of the ocean

the large hadron collider

any salt mine

museum storage rooms

svalbard seed vault

Reblogging as it looks like this entry was posted to late to be included in the roundup, and the fictional natural history in these entries is always interesting and well thought out. Also, the throat pouch/frigate bird influence is a really cool one (frigate birds are absolutely wild :)

The Wuggthea

I love making up weird birds for this game of bestiary telephone. (Design partially inspired by the very aptly-named Magnificent Frigatebird, which I only just found out about when looking for inspiration. Birds are already so weird.)

The Wuggthea

The Wuggthea, also called the Large-Throated Woodpecker or the Chatterbox Woodpecker, is a species of bird that migrates from eastern Europe in the summer to southern Asia and parts of Africa in the winter.

Female and male Wuggthea have vastly different appearances. Females are slightly smaller, and their feathers are a mottled pale grey across their entire bodies, and they have light grey beaks. Males, on the other hand, have solid grey or black feathers with white shoulders and underbelly. The undersides of their wings and tail are bright red, as is the tuft of feathers on the back of their head and a spot on their forehead, the tip of their black beak, and their featherless throat sac.

Wuggthea eat mainly invertebrates. Though they are often called woodpeckers, and do drill holes in trees, they are just as likely to search for their prey in the soil, or to seek out infested corpses and eat the insects that gather around them. Occasionally a Wuggthea will also eat small vertebrate animals, particularly frogs.

A Wuggthea is capable of making a wide variety of noises. Their most common vocalisations are "chattering" or "chuckling" sounds, which are used for communication. There is also a range of "shrieking" or "screaming" sounds, which are used as alarm calls, and a "cackling" noise which signals the discovery of a rotting log or corpse rich with invertebrates. Males can also use their throat pouches to amplify their "croaking" or "thumping" calls, which are used to vie for mates—those with more impressive calls and more prominent throat sacs are more likely to win partners.

Wuggthea can also make some imitations of sounds they hear, though they are not as clear as those of a raven or parrot. There were some attempts in the 12th century to domesticate Wuggthea, train them to mimic particular human speech sounds, and present them as exotic pets in parts of Europe where they were not native, but their capability for inflicting damage on wooden buildings and producing all manner of unappealing, loud noises when confined made these ventures short-lived.

Another one I’ve never heard of but need to check out now… 🐸

Have you played EXQUISITE BIOME ?

By Caro Asercion

Exquisite Biome is a game about the symbiosis of the natural world. Create an ecosystem, populate it with strange and wondrous animals, and see how they interact with one another.