“this baby came out of you but im not 100% sure its yours”
Funny thing – a woman who applied for welfare after her husband left her hadto supply DNA evidence he was actually the father. The results: he was definitely the father, but she wasn’t the mother. Her children were removed from her custody and she was sued for fraud, even though she insisted they were her children.
Turns out, she wasn’t a surrogate or a kidnapper (the two most obvious explanations) – she was a chimera. As an embryo, she fused at a very early stage with her twin, forming one individual. Her ovaries apparently developed from cells that had originally belonged to her vanished twin. Later on more tests showed that while the woman’s skin and hair DNA did not match her childrens, DNA taken from her cervix did.
WHAT THE FUCk
This went from stupid to really interesting in point 5 seconds.
There’s multiple cases of this very thing
Idk weird stuff man
Science doing random shit to fuck with your head
We don’t actually know how many human chimeras there are because most of the time you can’t tell.
However, some cases of intersex and even some trans individuals may be chimeras that result from the fusion of two embryos that have different genetic sex. This may also explain why some female athletes fail a sex test. (Other possibilities include genetic transcription that resulted in the loss of the SRY gene from the Y chromosome. The SRY gene is the actual switch that results in the development of a male phenotype).
Chimerism is also seen in animals.
This is Dunbar’s Gold. As you can see he looks like a brindle dog.
At one point he was bred to a mare called Sharp One, who also had the same brindle pattern, in the hope that they could breed more brindle horses – which are vanishingly rare.
Both horses are Quarter Horses, and the breeder sent in a gene sample from the foal for typing to allow him to be registered.
The test showed that the foal was related to neither his sire nor his dam.
They even did the test twice. Most cases of failed genetic testing are a sample mixup (either the hair or the semen used to produce the foal).
It turned out Dunbar’s Gold had had to be tested three times to get a good sample – and the third time was a blood test not the hair follicle test normally done. On top of that, when they looked at his gene type again they realized something rather important to a stallion was missing – he had no Y chromosome.
It was eventually established that both horses were chimeras and that in Dunbars Gold two different gene types existed in his skin and coat (one male, one female, just to prove that happens). Each gene line had a different set of color genes, but both matched properly to his parents. His foals, of course, all matched to the male gene line.
When they tested Sharp One’s other foal they discovered she was producing eggs from both of her gene lines. (Something which could also happen with a human chimera).
Conclusion: human evolution has always depended in part upon some unassuming father’s ability to literally backflip his child out of the jaws of death.
Is that a fucking bear??? I never really believed bears could run fast. Jesus Christmas.
Holy shit, its like terminator bear
Fun fact, a sprinting bear can run as fast as a galloping horse. Now if they replaced all the horses in the Kentucky Derby with bears, things would get a lot more interesting.
When I was a child I was afraid of the moon. I used to think that the sky was a giant raven and the moon changing phases was its slowly blinking eye, watching me.
Draw the giant space raven.
This one gave me a lot of inspiration.
SKY RAVEN!! HECK YEAH!! Favorite bird and an awesome concept? Heck yeah. Awesome art? Double heck yeah!! Thank you so much for sharing this with the rest of us! I love it so much!
@absoluteradman If this is not an idea for a short story, I don’t know what is
Corvids collect treasures. Shiny things, pretty things, precious things. And what could be more precious than life?
Life which learns.
Life which grows.
Life which builds.
Life needs to be coddled at first, of course. Giant space birds don’t just pop out of the vacuum, ready to take wing on the stellar winds and soar through the universe. Life needs time, and air, and a shield from solar radiation- life needs a planet. And a planet doesn’t produce a race of giant vacuum defying corvids in a millennium.
So the Raven settled in to wait. And wait a long time, it did. It didn’t mind. The Raven had always been a patient bird, a watchful bird. It stared down upon the planet, slowly blinking, always watching.
The Raven watched as the planet was settled by its ken. They moved from treetop to treetop, forest to forest, spanning all across the world. The Raven watched as the corvids learned cognizance, understanding, and communication. The Raven watched as the other animals settled into their usual roles.
But then The Raven saw something strange.
The direwolves and the direbears were not hunting their prey, the humans, as well as they should have been. And the humans were changing- they began to make their nests in places they normally wouldn’t. They began to construct farms, and villages, and towns, and cities! And the corvids, intelligent as they were, watched the humans develop and build and create- and settled into a role as scavengers!
The Raven was perplexed! The strangest chain of events unfolded as the humans began to dominate the world. They spread and spread, growing and growing, conquering and settling the world as if they were the corvids, and the corvids were left in the dust!
The Raven was confused, and concerned. Perhaps it should do something to right this scenario. Perhaps it should reach down and correct this mistake. But then, perhaps not? Mayhap the direwolves and direbears would rise up and strike down the humans after a while. Mayhap the corvids would rise up in the humans wake and take their place at the top of the food chain.
And yet, as The Raven watched, this seemed less and less likely. And then in the blink of an eye, the predators were gone. The direwolves were hunted to extinction, the direbears driven to the poles, and the lesser wolves domesticated! Domesticated by the humans, of all things!
The Raven felt outrage, disgust, and disappointment. With a sigh and a caw, it spread its wings to catch the wind and float away, in search of some new treasure, some new planet.
And then it saw.
The Raven blinked. It paused, midflight, to be certain. And there it was. A point, no smaller than a pin-prick, of light.
Real, genuine light. Not from the stars, but from the planet itself. From the humans.
They had discovered electricity.
The Raven watched, perplexed and amazed, as the planet spun. When a part of the planet drifted from the light to the dark, the lights would come on. And when that part faced the sun again, the lights would go back out.
The Raven folded its wings. It let the flow of gravity take it, spinning around the planet, always watching, slowly blinking. And as it spun, the world began to glow. The planet, when darkened, would shine. The humans made it shine.
The Raven let out a joyous cry! What greater treasure could there be than life which was shiny? And with contentment, The Raven still floats, watching us. And though we are not corvids, we are still precious.
Afghan women prepare backstage to perform Shakespeare in Kabul for the first time since 1979.
I wish I knew more about this production or could find any information on it (is it professional? Amateur?). But these costumes are gorgeous and clearly designed to localize the production of whatever play they’re putting on.
toki pona is so. good. I’m in love with toki pona, guys.
For those who don’t know, toki pona is an artlang with only 120 words. In order to express a concept which is not limited to these words, you have to think of clever ways to say it using existing words.
Not forest, but kasi mute (many trees)
Not music, but kalama musi (playful sound)
Not blood, but telo sijelo loje (red bodily liquid)
And so on. The same concept can be described differently in different contexts: when you mean “coffee”, you may say, for example, telo pimeja pona (good black liquid) or telo pi lape lili (liquid of little sleep) or even telo pimeja pi pilin iki (black liquid that tastes bad). You get the idea.
Also, it only has 14 letters and, aside from Latin writing and adaptations for many other wriiting systems, its own adorable pictographs:
Steel Phoenix Studios 