Most places with a cryptid try to make it make a little sense.
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@futurebird what about exceptionally large versions tiny things. Roberta the water bear. She's barely macroscopic.
@Jaicup @futurebird I’ve always thought that it’s a missed opportunity that someone hadn’t bred macroscopic tardigrades. I’d take them over stupid “sea monkeys” any day.
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@Jaicup @futurebird really that makes them more elusive. a tiny elephant could be hiding anywhere
@cinebox @futurebird oh God you're all asleep in bed and the you awake to a tiny trunk exploring a foot!!!!!
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Ants can already ride other ants.
Ant size range is wild.
This is an "acron ant" (temnothorax) and a carpenter ant. These aren't even the largest and smallest ants, just two ants you can find in Eastern Europe who can meet like this in the wild.
Remarkable photo by Bakos Ádám
@futurebird @Jaicup That’s an amazing image.
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@jrdepriest @futurebird @wordshaper That’s a delightfully Lovecraftian description.
@michaelgemar @futurebird @wordshaper
I have it, ironically enough, in a compilation by S.T. Joshi of stories that probably inspired Lovecraft.
When Irvin S. Cobb’s “Fishhead” appeared in the Argosy on January 11, 1913, among those who expressed enthusiasm for the tale was twenty-two-year-old H. P. Lovecraft, in one of his earliest published letters: “It is the belief of the writer that very few short stories of equal merit have been published anywhere during recent years” (Argosy, February 8, 1913). Lovecraft cites the tale again in “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” calling it “banefully effective in its portrayal of unnatural affinities between a hybrid idiot and the strange fish of an isolated lake, which at the last avenge their biped kinsman’s murder” (S 53–54)—a description that immediately brings to mind similar unnatural affinities between the inhabitants of Innsmouth and the ichthyic denizens of the deep described in “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”
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% same fear from my uncle telling me stories about the catfish he'd catch noodlin'."You can catch some pretty big fish, but you need to be careful, because you get the wrong one and it will just gobble your arm... and keep going!"
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@michaelgemar @futurebird @wordshaper
I have it, ironically enough, in a compilation by S.T. Joshi of stories that probably inspired Lovecraft.
When Irvin S. Cobb’s “Fishhead” appeared in the Argosy on January 11, 1913, among those who expressed enthusiasm for the tale was twenty-two-year-old H. P. Lovecraft, in one of his earliest published letters: “It is the belief of the writer that very few short stories of equal merit have been published anywhere during recent years” (Argosy, February 8, 1913). Lovecraft cites the tale again in “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” calling it “banefully effective in its portrayal of unnatural affinities between a hybrid idiot and the strange fish of an isolated lake, which at the last avenge their biped kinsman’s murder” (S 53–54)—a description that immediately brings to mind similar unnatural affinities between the inhabitants of Innsmouth and the ichthyic denizens of the deep described in “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”
@jrdepriest @futurebird @wordshaper Thanks! No wonder it has a similarity to his work.
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"You can catch some pretty big fish, but you need to be careful, because you get the wrong one and it will just gobble your arm... and keep going!"
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Ants can already ride other ants.
Ant size range is wild.
This is an "acron ant" (temnothorax) and a carpenter ant. These aren't even the largest and smallest ants, just two ants you can find in Eastern Europe who can meet like this in the wild.
Remarkable photo by Bakos Ádám
@futurebird @scattapilla @Jaicup snack time
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% same fear from my uncle telling me stories about the catfish he'd catch noodlin'.
Wikipedia: "Catfisting" redirects here; not to be confused with catfishing.
uh... OK. Thank you, wikipedia.
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@futurebird @scattapilla @Jaicup snack time
@waitworry @scattapilla @Jaicup
Larger ants don't often attack smaller ants since they could get swarmed.
Ants that feed on other ants tend to do "nest raids" taking eggs and larvae which have many more calories than adult ants.
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@waitworry @scattapilla @Jaicup
Larger ants don't often attack smaller ants since they could get swarmed.
Ants that feed on other ants tend to do "nest raids" taking eggs and larvae which have many more calories than adult ants.
@futurebird @scattapilla @Jaicup yeah I guess the adults are mostly exoskeleton
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This would be more terrifying in a way. What does it mean if you can see a water bear with a simple magnifying glass? What else is larger and by how much?!?
@futurebird can the water bear see you through the same magnifying glass??!??!!!???!!?!????
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@futurebird @scattapilla @Jaicup yeah I guess the adults are mostly exoskeleton
@waitworry @scattapilla @Jaicup
Ants really lean into the whole "I'm hardly worth eating, made mostly of parts to sting and bite and you'll get beat up by my sisters if you do" strat a lot.
It's why there are so many creatures that mimic ants. Most things leave ants alone. (with notable exceptions, but even anteaters are going for the larvae not the adults.)
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Wikipedia: "Catfisting" redirects here; not to be confused with catfishing.
uh... OK. Thank you, wikipedia.
I would never, in one million lifetimes, utter the phrase "catfisting". That's just... it's... No. It's a "no" from me.
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@kate @waitworry @scattapilla @Jaicup
I don't know if we can know if these ants of different species do. Though I think they might since ants treat adjacent colonies different from lone individual insects.
But what about ants with a vast size difference who are from the same species? They don't just recognize each other but will share food, cooperate to do various tasks.
Alex Wild has a great photo showing the size difference in leafcutter ants. These are sisters.
Farming Ants: Leafcutters and Fungus Growers - Alex Wild
Hundreds of ant species live as farmers in the warmer regions of North and South America. These insects- a single evolutionary radiation comprising the subtribe Attina- cultivate an edible fungus fed with bits of vegetative debris, or in the case of the leafcutter ants, with live vegetation.
(www.alexanderwild.com)
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I'm a huge fan of any cryptid that is simply a very large fish. Especially if it has a name.
There is the giant sturgeon that sucks down swimmers at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers.
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There is the giant sturgeon that sucks down swimmers at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers.
Having gills, but not quite fish shaped, is the Humboldt Tree Squid. This squid lives in trees in and around Arcata, CA. It can shoot out a cloud of psychotropic gas that will absolutely have you seeing stuff and get lost in the woods. It is fully iridescent, but generally isn't noticed because nobody in the woods remembers to look up.
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Most places with a cryptid try to make it make a little sense. "Well, you see there are these primates from the last Ice Age and ... " or " ... this lake is very old and catfish never stop growing so you can't rule out that one is the size of bus..."
But not NJ. "There is a devil in the woods. It's gonna get you."
"so... how did it get there? what's the deal?"
"... it's the devil."
@futurebird
There’s an Oregon coast cryptid with no origin story that I know of.
Bandage Man prefers the kind of rainy nights when the darkness seems impenetrable, and you’re alone with nothing but raindrops, pavement, and the huge empty void of the Pacific waiting at the bottom of the cliff on one side of the road.
(Have I spent too much time driving in exactly those conditions? Yes, oh yes.)
He doesn’t do anything- he just appears in the back seat of your car…
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@futurebird
There’s an Oregon coast cryptid with no origin story that I know of.
Bandage Man prefers the kind of rainy nights when the darkness seems impenetrable, and you’re alone with nothing but raindrops, pavement, and the huge empty void of the Pacific waiting at the bottom of the cliff on one side of the road.
(Have I spent too much time driving in exactly those conditions? Yes, oh yes.)
He doesn’t do anything- he just appears in the back seat of your car…
*/@futurebird
…or, preferably, the empty bed of your pickup truck and sits there, wrapped from head to toe in bandages like a mummy in a 20th century horror movie. Presumably these are from all the collisions he’s endured on what is, on a clear dry day, a fairly dangerous road. Some drivers (always a friend of someone’s cousin or something) are supposed to have found a small piece of bandage, sodden with rain & other fluids unfathomable, in the bed of their truck…
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@futurebird
…or, preferably, the empty bed of your pickup truck and sits there, wrapped from head to toe in bandages like a mummy in a 20th century horror movie. Presumably these are from all the collisions he’s endured on what is, on a clear dry day, a fairly dangerous road. Some drivers (always a friend of someone’s cousin or something) are supposed to have found a small piece of bandage, sodden with rain & other fluids unfathomable, in the bed of their truck…
*/@futurebird
…after sensing Bandage Man riding with them.
He’s not a exciting cryptid: he doesn’t do anything (but sometimes shed), and he doesn’t have an origin story or a truly proper name.
But I can attest that, when you’re alone with nothing but absolute darkness beyond road conditions that are trying to kill you, it’s hell to get him back out after you’ve once let him into your thoughts.
🪦
