Autism Is When You Dissasociate Because Theres So Many People Talking At Once And You Can't Focus Because

Autism is when you dissasociate because theres so many people talking at once and you can't focus because for some god forsaken reason you can hear electricity and then somehow you a way to leave the situation to blast loud music through bulky headphones and colorcoding turtle facts.

Autism is also when you want to share your special interests with the people you love and they don't care about it and tell you to shut up and feeling upset about it and have a meltdown like an hour later and wanting some deep pressure therapy but you have no service dog and nobody to lay flat across your chest so you pile up a whole lot of pillows to try and help it but nothing works.

naur im posting it, i sat and contemplated for a solid hour

donnie had a nightmare and the only one available and awake and ABLE to calm him down is most often leo 

not sorry i dont make the rules

I’ve had a sucky week. I know you might not see this for a while but can I please have some weird animal facts when you get a chance to answer? :]

I’m sorry your week sucked, have some TURTLES.

Behold: one of nature’s best examples of min-maxing.

Armor plating isn't uncommon in vertebrates. Pangolins, ankylosaurus, armadillos, and placoderms all share similar stat allocation to name a few.

Some, like pangolins, just throw all the keratin they can into their skin and end up with tough scales. That's the same stuff fingernails and hair are made of, and also the stuff that makes our skin waterproof. Others, like ankylosaurs, also grow little bits of bone into their skin. A bunch do both. These are common, efficient, easy-to-evolve traits that occur multiple times in history.

Turtles said fuck all that.

I'm doing it my way.

(Well not ALL that, they do still have keratinized scaly skin on their limbs, but still)

They took their rib cage, sternum and spinal column- you know, things that normally go inside your body, and put 'em on the outside instead. Shoulder blades and hip bones grow inside the rib cage, too. Then, as if that wasn't enough, they covered the whole deal in keratin scales. Some turtles even have a hinge on their belly (plastron) that lets them close up completely. I promise, there's a turtle in there.

What could go wrong reverse-engineering an exoskeleton onto a vertebrate?

Turns out, a lot.

Take a nice deep breath in, and exhale it out. Can you feel your ribs move? Feel them expand and contract, working with your diaphragm muscles to pull large quantities of air into your body?

Show-off.

Yeah, when all your ribs are fused into one big dome it turns out you lose a lot of lung function. The good news? With your body fully enclosed and stabilized in bone, it's not like your abs and obliques are doing anything now. Might as well put them to work pumping your lungs. Except, not directly. Some muscles pull on the liver, which attaches to the right lung. Other muscles pull on the stomach, which pulls on the left lung. It’s pretty inefficient all around, so you may not get enough oxygen exchange to be a marathon runner, but as long as you don't have to worry about predators you know what they say about slow and steady.

However that's not always enough. What if, say, you did have to worry about predators a little. What if, hypothetically, you took a few points away from pure defense and gained a little more swim speed and mobility? You, like many semi-aquatic turtles, would need a backup source of oxygen. A breathing plan B.

In turtles, plan “B” stands for Butt. Some turtles (lots of freshwater semi-aquatic ones) can pump water in and out of their cloaca, which is sometimes enlarged and lined with specialized membranes that maximize surface area for gas exchange. Basically, improving any part of this fucked-up breathing apparatus is so difficult that it’s evolutionarily better to evolve proto-gills in the ass.

I was going to make a different joke here but these turtles are literally called “Northern Red-Bellied Cooters” and I really can’t top that

Turtles are cold-blooded, which of course means they don’t do shit in the winter. Turtles who are unfortunate enough to live in places that get winters bury themselves in the mud in a type of hibernation called ‘brumation’. You may wonder, how do they breathe THEN?

Easy, they don’t. They slow down their metabolism a crazy amount and spend the winter months doing anaerobic respiration. We can do this too, it’s why your muscles burn after working out. If your body doesn’t get oxygen, your cells can still burn fuel much less efficiently and produce a lot of lactic acid as a byproduct. Turtles can counteract the extreme acidity, buffering it and sequestering it with the bone in their shell. Literally, they leach calcium and magnesium out of their bones to prevent their acidic blood from killing them over the winter.

Just waking up from the winter, chock-full of acid and ready to snap.

The most infuriating thing, personally, is that all of this bullshit min-maxing works. Turtles are the longest-lived land vertebrates. The oldest recorded one lived to 187. There’s a little box turtle at my workplace that’s almost 90. This isn’t a glass cannon like a horse is, this janky tank build WORKS.

Here are my random headcanons for sleeping quarters and junk:

Lloyd gets his own room because of the age difference between him and the rest of the group and likes to vibe in there when he’s not training.

Nya and Pixal are tech gfs and share a decently sized room but while Pixal is organized with her work, you can’t say the same for Nya so most of the floor and surfaces are taken up by different projects.

And now for the main thing:

The boys all share the bunk room and the sheer amount of bullshit that comes out of that arrangement is astronomical.

Cole snores and your alarm clock, red alert, and/or PA system is no match for him.

Zane sleeps to recharge and tends to push how long he can go without it a bit too far and has to be carried to bed on a regular basis.

Kai on the other hand is very particular with his beauty sleep and will become even more of a drama queen than he already is if his 8 hours are interrupted.

Jay is somewhere between having a great sleep cycle and a non-existent one. He either goes to sleep and wakes up at reasonable a time or stays up all night and lives on a mass amount of caffeine.

His demeanor and personality don’t really change at all either way. You can either consider that a win or very concerning.

Zane makes everyone’s bed because no one else is going to do it.

After particularly difficult or grueling battles, they all tend to cram themselves onto a single bunk and even if the wood is creaking under the weight they’re all tired enough that they don’t care.

“i’m the biggest, i gotta keep em safe” “you’re only 17”

yea idk future leo meeting post movie raph and truly realizing how young he really is to have done so much and realizing how brave his own raph must’ve been

the projection raph on its own bc i like it

also tcest dni this is purely familial

You know who you are

hello beloveds ☺️