there actually is one unique aspect of humans that’s INCREDIBLY dangerous to small animals, especially birds! can you guess what it is?
I’ll give you a hint: it’s on your head right now.
that’s right!FUR HAIR IS MURDER.
see, human hair isn’t just long, it’s INCREDIBLY strong- if your hair is long enough, go ahead and pluck a strand from your head right now, then gently pull it between your hands until it finally breaks.
how much strength did that take? do you think a lizard or a small bird could generate that kind of force?
(spoiler! no.)
(because he is just a little boy.)
so what happens is a small animal gets one of its extremities tangled up in a long strand of discarded human hair, and if it can’t reach the strand to bite it off or doesn’t even have teeth in the first place, it’s stuck!
(like this but way sadder)
and because human hair doesn’t decay in any kind of a reasonable timeframe, the animal will STAY tangled until something yanks on the end of the hair and pulls it tight, cutting off bloodflow to the affected limb. if this isn’t corrected by a helpful passer-by, the limb will die and fall off.
this is why there’s been an epidemic of toeless pigeons in urban centers in recent years- they get their feet tangled in hair and lose their toes!
I was going to try and say something funny here, but, well.
if you have long hair, keep track of your hairbrush and DEFINITELY don’t offer any of that stuff to birds for nest building material!
“humanity is inherently selfish and bad” bbbrrrghuhjfkg. humanity is seeing a stranger’s grocery bag break open on the sidewalk and harvesting fruits and veggies from the branch-like cracks of the asphalt for them, just because you can. humanity is helping a lost child find their mother on a crowded beach, looking for the ladybug-patterned parasol with their hummingbird-small hand in yours. it’s an elder’s fingers wrapped around your arm as you help them up the stairs because the elevator is broken, and feeling like you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing, like this is what you would’ve been doing had you been alive centuries or even millennia ago. there will always be a heavily pregnant woman who will smile at your when you give up your seat, a nice blind man in the fruit aisle who will ask you to please pick the riper plantain for him, a tired cashier whose face will light up when you compliment their tattoo sleeve. humanity is connection
when we try to befriend cats we mimic their meows and get down on the ground to their level and try to gently coax them to interact with us right
that horrifying entity mimicking human noises at us maybe just thinks we’re cool and wants to pet us?
had to draw it
a few people pointed out that they probably wouldn’t understand what they were saying and just mimicking whatever sounds they happen to hear so I wanted to add this
Actually forget every other post about “primal” feelings and actions, the most connected to my early hominid ancestors i have ever felt in my LIFE is when slowly following an increasingly panicked sheep. I believe that slowly following ungulates is the most primally human activity in existence
That moment when the sheep has run a few times and visibly realizes that you just keep slowly walking at it and are not going anywhere and you can see it thinking “oh fuck this isn’t how being chased is supposed to work” rockets me back in time several hundred thousand years
Hey quick question OP why are you bullying a sheep
the best thing in the entire goddamn world is the fact that human beings have hands perfectly capable of giving amazing scritches and there are hundreds of animals out there who just love being scritched
One of my all time favorite stories is Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin. She nails this idea. And, because N.K. Jemisin is a fucking force, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2020. It’s shockingly good, please go read it.
There’s an old school Ray Bradbury story where white people make all the blacks emigrate to Mars, and then a couple generations later, white folks come to Mars asking for help bc they fucked up Earth.
it’s called the martian chronicles!! it’s my favorite book ever, a really good read and has a lot of colonization and capitalism and racism commentary, all which still ring true even 60 years later. if you don’t want to read a whole book, it’s set up as little bits-sized vignettes that are all slightly connected but also fun on their own. also mars has wine rivers which is the single goofiest and awesomest sci fi worldbuilding ever
ifesbob 