Imagine an alien sharing a cool human fact they just learned like ”hey guys did you know that the silvery markings on humans actually aren’t true stripes? They’re called stretch marks, they happen when the human is growing fast enough to actually outgrow their skin, which is apparently something that just fucking happens to almost all of them at some point of their life.”
and another one is like ”wait so you’re saying humans don’t have stripes.”
”actually they do, but the stripes are invisible. There’s genetic code that’d give them stripes but they’re just the same colour as the rest of the skin. So the visible stripes are not real stripes and the real stripes are invisible.”
”I swear if you tell me one more weird human thing today I’m beating your ass.”
The human in the room looks up and goes “Wait I have stripes?”
“what makes us human” oh I know this one! use of fire led to the development of cooking led to dietary changes that enabled brain growth. this, plus the light and warmth provided by fire, allowed early hominids to spend time socializing around the hearth, encouraging the development of language and furthering our abilities to communicate, eventually leading to the unprecedented cooperation needed to create and organize human societies.
so it’s a combination of food, language, friendliness and cooperation, all thanks to pyromaniacal tendencies and our massively enormous fat heads!
aaaaand the arson fandom has gotten ahold of this post, as the gods intended
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has trouble remembering developmental milestones. I put these together, but can’t take credit for any of the photography. Hope someone finds them helpful!
This is very useful to me i have absolutely no gauge for how old children are and what they can typically do at what ages
I’ve been on Tumblr too long I was definitely expecting this to turn into some existentialist meme
Every writer needs to see this because I’m really tired of otherwise competent novels in which a two year old is like “mother dearest I do believe I am quite frightened” or conversely they’re supposed to be five and going “me hungie!!!”
what a funny way of admitting that you’ve never seen a pair of boobs outside of porn
american attitudes about nudity are fucking wild, and the worst part is that because they’re american, they just assume that everyone everywhere thinks the same. i will never forget seeing people on a left-leaning, progressive site saying that families bathing together is creepy and gross and clearly a sign that something is wrong with the family, that they’d never seen their siblings or parents naked and would in fact rather die. meanwhile to this day i bathe and go to the sauna with my sister and mother and have been bathing and sauna’ing with various family members – and even strangers! – my whole life.
but yes, can confirm, seeing your grandma’s tits as a child does you good, and not just because it teaches you that “beauty is fake and temporary”, but because it broadens your ideas about what beauty even is in the first place. my sister and i used to spend our summers at our grandma’s house by the countryside and frequently bathed and went to sauna with her. we saw not just her breasts but also her flabby skin, her moles and liver spots, her body hair and varicose veins, and we didn’t see any of that as weird or ugly because they were a part of our grandma who we loved very much. and when we see those things in other people – ourselves included! – we think “well it wasn’t ugly on my grandma’s body, so why would it be ugly on anyone else’s body?”. it makes you much more understanding and “forgiving”, if you will, towards the completely normal bodies of strangers as well as your own body.
Gj deleting my reply before I could post tumblr mobile…
To redo it; I’m not Japanese myself but I think about this all the time. In the game Okami, the toddler character Momotaro has originally going to not have pants on. The reason is because… sometimes toddlers just run around naked. There is literally NOTHING sexual about it and if you think there is the problem is clearly with YOU.
This is also why in the first season of Sailor Moon, they couldn’t animate Usagi and Mamoru kissing directly on the mouth but they COULD have an episode with a naked baby. Because one is sexual and one is not.
And what a surprise; Japan also has a culture of communal bathing.
white people ruined the non sexual intimacy of nakedness methinks
i think that for a species that come into the world naked and have such an easy time understanding sex, its ironic that the world at large cant accept that intimacy cant occur outside of sexual desire. there is intimacy in a shared bath between a mother and her child. between brothers sharing a bed. between friends changing in the same room.
and i said white people bc i feel like literally everyone else figured that shit out already? like in public bath houses and women walking around with their breasts exposed. europe got a hold of chriatianity and decided to put a worldwide ban nakedness and put these restrictions on the human body, bastardizing the nature with which we come into the world. its dirty, its deviant, its dangerous to be exposed in the appropriate spaces or ones own home.
the way young people have to cover up in their homes before guests come, the way shorts and other summer clothes are only perceived as sexual in nature and not the most effective way of combating a million degree heat, the way people freak out when they see a bra strap like it wasnt them who made bitches wear bras in the first place
I see a lot of talk about how neurodivergence evolved and stayed in the gene pool because it was somehow ‘useful’ to our ancient ancestors. While I don’t necessarily disagree with this theory, I would like to propose an alternative. A theory that we already have physical evidence for. Humans just love each other and care for each other. Don’t you think that a species that cared for it’s people while they recovered from broken bones, or nursed their elderly well beyond their ‘usefulness’ would leave a member out because they didn’t make eye contact, or couldn’t stay focused on a particular task, or whatever other trait you associate with neurodivergence? I really don’t.
Sure, maybe it was useful to have someone around who didn’t mind making arrowheads all day, or who knew absolutely everything about all of the local flora and fauna, or who keyed in on every little distraction. At the end of the day, though, these people weren’t kept around because they were useful, they were cared for because they were loved.
Yes! I can confirm all of this! This is also why your instinct is to stick your finger in your mouth if you hurt it. Chemoreceptors in your skin pick up on your saliva and the temperature of your mouth, and the pain sensors get blocked somewhat. Same if you hurt your hand and instinctively shake it: that triggers the proprioceptors, which sense the movement of your limbs.
The one inaccuracy is that pressure beats all. You still feel the pain, it’s just dulled somewhat. You’re basically cluttering your brain with sensory information, and the pain is consequently not as big a focus.
(Source: me and my A&P and massage therapy training)
This is also the reason scratching relieves itchiness
*evolves to feel pain as a deterrent* ooch ow I don’t like that *evolves stupid methods to ignore pain*
Good news: if you’re currently laying around and not producing anything, you are a credit to your species.
I remember seeing in a video once (it was actually about medieval footwear and the change of gaits as footware evolved) the narrator said something along the lines of “humans have evolved this really great energy-saving mechanism: if we can be lazy, we are.”
ifesbob 