the next time you think you’re lonely, just remember you have about 25 billion white blood cells in your body protecting your sorry little ass with their life. you have 25 billion friends who would die for you. no need for tears.
thank you osmosis jones
My immune system tried to kill me though.
Jordan just remember you had twenty five billion enemies trying to kill you and you’ve survived them all
Take THAT you tiny goddamn sons of bitches.
i have 25 billion confused citizens fighting amongst themselves over whether or not to smash the state, and it makes me feel uncertain
jesse you’re such a punk rebel even your cells want to smash the system
this is actually a small sub branch of botany thats been growing and gaining some recognition in the past 5 years or so called plant cognition! we’ve been thinking about if plants can possibly be intelligent to any degree for centuries, but the main paper that started up this huge discussion in the modern era was one called Experience Teaches Plants to Learn Faster and Forget Slower in Environments Where It Matters by Monica Gagliano, a plant researcher in Australia who specializes in it. because the results indicated that plants were possible of learning and retaining information in a kind of memory in response to environmental changes, it received a lot of backlash and denial- generally in science, that kind of intelligent reaction to an organism’s environment is a good indicator of cognitive behavior in the organism. it got rejected by 10 different journals before being published in 2014.
the experiment worked like this. i’ve talked before about mimosa pudica, a tropical plant that curls its leaves back when touched (they go back to normal in a few minutes):
this is to help deter predators among other things. but in this experiment, Gagliano used it as an indicator of stimulus and to test cognitive function. It’s well known that pudica has a rudimentary nervous system that can even be temporarily inhibited using anesthetics (just like ours can!). she hooked up a ton of these plants in pots to identical rail systems that allowed them to be lightly dropped in an identical way, juuuuust heavy enough to trigger the stimulus so all the leaves drop down when they hit the bottom (a piece of foam so they wouldn’t actually hurt the plants). every time the plants would be dropped, they would close up.
but after the plants were dropped about 60 times each, they stopped responding to the drop.
they remembered that no harm was coming from this actionand decided that it was against their best interests to keep expending energy closing their leaves. they 200% learned to stop.
she decided to test it further. she put some of the plants in a shaker and let them receive a more jarring response; the plants closed up as usual. then, she put them back in the droppers and dropped them again. they didn’t close up. they had remembered that response. this dispels the obvious rebuttal to this experiment of the plants just being tired; they still closed up when stimulated differently.
they just chose not to close up when they hit a stimulus they remembered.
it turns out that not only could they remember to keep their leaves open when dropped on the apparatus, but they remembered after28 days when she kept testing it!! apparently by the end of the experiment, all the plants had decided to keep their leaves open when dropped!!!!
how do they do this?? we literally dont know. they have no central brain, only a basic nervous system. can other plants do this???
well, adding onto that, venus fly traps can count! like. they have three hairs inside their traps, and all three must be touched within 20 seconds for the trap to close. once closed, those three trigger hairs must continue to be stimulated by thrashing prey, or the trap will reopen.
so yeah like. basically ‘are they sentient’: apparently to an extent???? we dont know exactly why or how but they are??? maybe???? sort of????? at least some of them are?? but they dont have a brain so everyones like????????????????????? maybe its through a signaling network????????????????? but like how would that even work?????????
plant consciousness is still new enough to be dismissed as crazy by a lot of biologists but like. the evidence is there. we don’t know a whole lot and its clearly a radically different kind of intelligence than we know in animals, but it’s there and we 200% dont know how it works yet or even the full extent of how plants use this intelligence (for example: does a redwood have the same intelligence as a venus fly trap?? how does it learn things and use that knowledge???)
national geographic wrote an awesome article visualizing the experiment here if you want to read more!
This isn’t even touching on the fact that plants exchange nutrients with other plants through their root networks and engage in constant “bartering,” sometimes withholding resources until they get something extra. This is all performed with the aid of fungi, and the fungi in turn seem to weigh options and make decisions that will best benefit both themselves and their plant symbiotes. Sometimes two plants even get territorial and try to poison one another, and the fungal network steps in to put a stop to it.
If you have an abortion, the baby will come out of your vagina. The baby will be a lot smaller, so your cervix won’t need to stretch as far (although in surgical abortions they do dilate you). There will be blood and pain. There are physical and emotional risks.
Abortion doesn’t make the baby disappear. It pulls the baby out of you in pieces.
Seriously, an abortion is essentially a forced miscarriage (which is why the medical term for miscarriage is “spontaneous abortion”). Your uterus will have to expel not just a fetus, but also the tissue and blood and other fluids that were keeping it alive. THEN you (your organs such as your uterus and cervix) still have to heal from it: the closer you are to the due date at the time of the abortion, the more like postpartum the healing will be. And it takes weeks for a woman to fully recover from birth, miscarriage, or abortion.
Anon clearly has no idea what an abortion is, how it’s performed, or what it can do to the human body: both to the unborn human and to the human mother.
Because all of that can also happen with a miscarriage, and they also tell you not to get pregnant again, because the high levels of HGH could cause cancer.
Which is what happens when you have a bunch of abortions. You can get cancer, such as cervical or breast cancer.
That’s how Eva Peron died, she had so many abortions because she 1) wanted to stay an actress and 2) wanted to be certain Juan got elected president, that she just had a bunch of abortions, then died, because she got cervical cancer.
So THAT’S the link between abortions and cancer! I had no idea! I thought it was a myth or something pro-choicers said we said to vilify the pro-life movement.
Nope, having ONE miscarriage (if you are already prone to it via family history) can make you get cancer, because cervical cancer (if I am not mistaken) is only because of high levels of HGH (human growth hormone) outside of pregnancy, and breast cancer is caused from either complete high risk in your genes OR high levels of HGH. Which is why if your your sisters, mom, aunts, or grandmother have had breast cancer you should be tested to see if you also have the same gene that gave them breast cancer, otherwise it was from over producing HGH after a pregnancy (either if it was terminated or the baby was born). Your HGH levels rise with most types of cancer, as it can make the growth metastize anywhere in your body, but generally it will be either in the breasts or cervix, as that’s where a lot of it is produced (HGH is in the breast milk for babies).
1. That’s not how abortion works. Most abortions are not D&E’s. The procedure takes five to ten minutes, you are given pain medication, and medical staff stay with you during your recovery:
Agreed, and this explanation of how abortion supposedly increases the risk of cancer is complete nonsense. HGH, Human Growth Hormone, more commonly referred to as Growth Hormone (GH) is produced in the pituitary gland of every living human being. Like that’s literally what makes you grow. If you have high levels of growth hormone you might have gigantism (if this happens in childhood) or acromegaly (if it happens in adulthood). But you wouldn’t have cancer. The only connection between HGH and cancer is that it seems to be associated with certain types of cancer later in life among patients who have been treated with HGH for growth deficiencies as children.
The only thing I can figure is that they somehow confused HGH with HCG, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, a hormone produced during pregnancy. And the only time HCG is associated with cancer is an extremely rare type called choriocarcinoma, which can happen after any pregnancy, regardless of outcome.
It’s always fascinating and horrifying to see the granular details of what Republicans believe. As an elite coastal Jew I never get a full look inside the world of bible colleges and home schooling. What a rich and vibrant culture.
Also fascinating to see what kind of weird-ass questions the pro-forced-birth crowd will make up to ask themselves “anonymously” so they can spread disinformation to girls and young women.
Another woman utterly failed by our society’s devaluation of women’s reproductive health.
We can’t wait around for male doctors to decide what we need to know.
This is why we need to take control and educate ourselves about our own bodies.
and here’s some comments i saw under the post. why is this a pattern?? why is this a recurring theme?? why is this information not common knowledge? what the fuck are doctors doing??
This is news to me so let’s share it so people will know!
Gross tmi: but i passed a pretty big clot after having my daughter. It was about the size of a baseball. It actually hurt worse because while 15 hours of labor opened my cervix, i passed the clot in 30 minutes. I knew it was a possibility because of my midwife and reading, but everyone Ive told after this (mostly other pregnant women) were shocked that this could happen.
In our culture, it’s much more common to do deep research about what family cars we want to buy than we do about childbirth when we ’re pregnant.
Tmi: I passed a huge clot after birth in the bathroom of my hospital room and called the nurse sobbing because I didn’t know it was normal. She treated me like an idiot, but NO ONE told me it was a possibility. And the pain associated with healing for the first couple of weeks after birth was worse than the labor imo. Again, I had no idea. They didn’t tell me a thing besides “sitz bath regularly and change your pads.” Before discharging me from the hospital.
I was most definitely told about this in school. Fucking hell, 4-6 weeks of bleeding? My periods were/are bad enough, why the hell don’t we get told this?
I didn’t know it could last so long, wtf? Is the bleeding inevitable after birth?
Bleeding is inevitable after birth – your uterine wall is shedding a fuck ton of lining. It can last from three to six weeks (possible longer) and it tapers off.
More TMI – I passed a MASSIVE clot after my fourth birth. At this point I already knew this could happen – it’s normal. What I DIDN’T know, was that I had caused it.
My post birth contractions were so bad after the birth that it felt like full transition labor. And they don’t give you anything for the pain. So I used a hot water bottle, without the nurses knowing, and it caused me to bleed even more. I lost so much blood that by the first time they sat me up to go to the bathroom, I fainted. It took three more tries until I could sit up.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the next morning I passed a clot the SIZE OF ANOTHER PLACENTA I KID YOU NOT, and I know what is and is not normal. So I called for the nurse and through the door told her I had passed a huge clot, and her response was – “It’s not big. I know what big is.” She hadn’t even looked. So I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, no. It’s big, I’m telling you.”
So, sounding extremely put upon, she asked me to open the door. I did, and after a long pause she goes, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little big.”
YOU DON’T SAY.
The point I’m trying to get across is that this shit is so common – women not knowing this stuff is so expected, and it keeps getting reinforced. People don’t expect you to know anything, don’t teach you anything, and then make you feel like you’re totally ignorant and a burden for your lack of knowledge when THEY WON’T SHARE.
Fucking learn EVERYTHING you can when it comes to childbirth, girls. It is the single most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And if you missed something, that’s okay. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more in control of your situation you’ll be.
A few post partum tips:
DON’T use a hot water bottle – lol.
ONLY pads – NO tampons. Tampons can cause severe infection, not to mention, you probably don’t want to be shoving anything up there any time soon.
If you’ve had stitches, sitz baths DO help relieve the pain. Another great pain reliever? Dampen some pads and freeze them. Let one thaw slightly and use it on top of another pad. This will help with the pain as well as reduce swelling. Change the pad out as soon as it’s thawed completely. This REALLY helps on the first couple days after giving birth.
If you pass a clot, don’t sweat it. Even the one I passed, which was fucking massive, just required that we keep an eye out to make sure it didn’t happen again. If it does, talk to your doctor.
Take a pain killer half an hour before nursing. Because YES – your uterus is contracting after you give birth, to get back to its original size, and nursing causes much stronger contractions. Taking nursing-safe painkillers won’t prevent the pain, but it will reduce it.
Buy disposable underwear for the first few days after birth. They will get VERY dirty. Or use your ratty old pairs that you’re ready to get rid of. Double up on pads – line them all the way up your ass-crack. I am so serious. And wear dark pants.
Pee in the shower. You do NOT want to wipe down there right after birth because ow. Peeing in the shower lets you just rinse afterwards. Especially if you’ve had stitches, peeing in the shower, with the shower-head rinsing AS you go, keeps stinging to a minimum. And fuck everyone else – keep on peeing in the shower until you feel ready to move back to toilet paper. Middle of the night and need to pee? Get your pants off – get in the shower and just go.
This is just a few things, but PLEASE feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions about ANYTHING childbirth/pregnancy/nursing related. I have four incredible kids. I’ve done it all – c-section, vacuume birth, episiotimy, stitches, with an epidural, without an epidural. I’m here.
More tips: GET A PERI-BOTTLE. If you have a hospital birth, they’ll probably give you one. If not, you can pick up any kind of small squeeze-y bottle (or even an empty, CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN spray bottle if it comes to it). It’s like a little portable bidet. Use it after you go to the bathroom, then pat dry. This way you don’t have to climb into a shower every time if you don’t want.
IME bags of frozen peas in your underwear with proper covering (you don’t want to get frostbite) are the best sort of cold compress.
Those contractions during nursing? They are v v important. They shrink your uterus, helping your body get back to normal faster (and helping you pass blood quicker). They hurt. Keep drinking red raspberry leaf tea (which hopefully you drank during your third trimester). It should help not only with the contractions, but with your milk supply as well. Take a nursing-safe NSAID if you can.
REST. I know this is especially hard for people who are already parents, for poor folk, for people with a ton of responsibilities in general. This is when you call in the cavalry, if you’re lucky enough to have support. FRIENDS AND FAM of birthing persons, leave the parent alone with their baby. Do a load of dishes. Pick up. Check to make sure the parent has their baby supplies handy (as in, within reach). Bring them food. The more they rest, the faster their body heals, and the shorter the bleeding period will be. If it tapers off and then ramps back up, YOU’RE DOING TOO MUCH. Slow down. This is the perfect time to learn that, as a parent, you can’t do it all. Always prioritise your kid. If there’s one time you’re allowed to just let shit go, it’s during your babymoon. (Google is telling me babymoon now means a trip you take with your partner before you have your baby. What. No. “Babymoon” means the first week after your birth. When the hell did that switch happen?) REST. REST. HOLD YOUR BABY. SLEEP. NURSE. EAT. This bonding time is imperative. You and your baby deserve this time.
….I know I keep reblogging this but people keep adding super important information.
I feel like no one tells women this stuff because if a woman was even a little on the fence about having a baby before this would kinda make them run for the damn hills.
…..you are correct, typing.
300% EXTRA SURE I’M NOT HAVING BABIES.
peri bottles, witch hazel or anti-pain anticeptic spray are your friends. Also passing large clots after birth is a WARNING SIGN. Bigger than a half dollar is a sign that you have not passed your entire placenta (this is most common in hospital vaginal births where the mother is not allowed to naturally birth the placenta and instead has it ripped out by the doctor) if there is any placenta left in your uterus you can get extremely ill. This happened to both myself and my mother in law
WOW I didn’t know any of this and I’m terrified of what more I’m unaware of about my own body 😦 Honestly when will we fucking abolish this taboo about the female body…
I had pretty great sex ed in school (lots of contraceptive information, and totally acknowledged that teenagers might have sex) and all of this is news to me.
And, as a 28-year-old person with a uterus, I’m extremely appalled I’m just learning this.
Long, but very important information, even for those who don’t plan to have children, because you will almost certainly know someone who will, and you might be able to to help them. Or at least increase your level of empathy for them.
even if you dont plan to have kids this info is really important to know. Uterus havers should know what their body does and why.
I KNOW I’VE POSTED THIS PHOTO BEFORE BUT, TBT, DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THE TIME A BAT FLEW INTO MY ROOM IN LIKE JANUARY
he came in all cold an sluggish and very little, took a little nappy-nap in my sweater’s pocket till he warmed up, and left
he’s my bro
Okay, please please do not touch bats, especially if they look unwell. The last comment person got very lucky because bats are the #1 carrier of rabies and they have the ability to aerosolize rabies, meaning you don’t necessarily have to be bitten.
When I was in undergrad studying animal science/pre-veterinary medicine, there was a guy in the nearest major city to my school who decided to pick up a sickly looking bat and put it in a box and bring it on public transit. Found out later the bat had rabies. The state+the CDC had to track down every single person who had been on that bus to give them rabies shots. Every. Single. One. It was a public health nightmare.
I know they’re adorable and if you live in a country that is rabies free (which is just the UK and Japan) then ignore this but otherwise PLEASE be careful handling wild bats or any wild animal! Rabies is just one of many zoonotic diseases (diseases that can pass from animals to people and vice versa) and unless you know what you’re doing and what precautions to take, you are putting yourself and others at risk by handling wild animals
^This is why, btw. In the era before germ theory, bats were these creepy scary things that defied miasma theory and where your cousin who touched one might have gone ballistic and then mysteriously died. That’s one of the reasons it got associated with vampire mythos, and why bats’ wings became so ubiquitous in anglo-christian depictions of fallen angels.
I love them so much because they’re about as sharp as a baseball and their anatomy is ridiculous to the point of them literally being classified as plankton for years because they just sort of get blown around by the ocean and look confused, but because they lay more eggs than ANY OTHER VERTEBRATE IN EXISTENCE, evolution can’t stop them
Why is no big predator coming and gnawing on them?
Their biggest defense is that they’re massive and have super tough skin, but they do get hunted by sharks or sea lions sometimes and they just sort of float there like ‘oh bother’ as it happens
Even funnier, because they eat nothing but jellyfish they’re really low in nutritional value anyway, so they basically survive by being not worth eating because they’re like a big floating rice cracker wrapped in leather.
Perfect example of “survival of the fittest” NOT meaning being some hyper aggressive, muscular manly asshole. This creature fell upon the complete opposite combination of traits and just rolled with it and evolution was like “well, it’s working, somehow".
reminder that this is what they look like when they hatch and they are smaller than a housefly
…..But they reach up to 800 pounds in barely over ONE YEAR.
One year omfg are you fucking serious I didn’t know that
it looks like someone dropped a lentil how does it gain that much weight eating jellyfish
As an ichthyologist (someone who studies fish, I’m about to get my masters degree and move on to my PhD), I feel I need to respond to these sort of posts about Molids. I don’t want to ruin anyones fun, but it’s become a pretty common joke to talk about how ridiculous Mola mola are and how “they’re a freak of evolution that somehow works cause they lay billions of eggs” when in reality, they are actually very complex fish that are just as valid as any other. I’ll link sources below.
They belong to the order Tetraodontiformes, which contains other fishes commonly described as weird like pufferfish, triggerfish, and boxfish. When you look at the Mola mola in a phylogenetic context, its actually not that strange as its very similar to its relatives. The name “Tetraodontiformes” means four-teeth, and so like the puffers and triggers, molas have 4 fused crushing teeth, hence the small funny mouth. This group is also known for their peculiar swimming methods. Almost all the members of this order use their dorsal and anal fins for propulsion (balisthiforme locomotion) rather than their caudal fin. In the Molas case, its caudal fin has been reduced to a rudder essentially, properly called a clavus. Look up videos of this guys relatives swimming and it wont be so strange it lacks a proper caudal fin, especially look at triggerfish.
To address the jokes about them just floating around and eating only jellyfish, this may actually only be half true. Very little is known about their feeding habits, but they appear to be more likely omnivores. They feed on any floating gelatinous zooplankton, but have have also been found with squid, fish, crab, and eelgrass in their stomachs and have been found to take squid baited hooks, though we don’t know if this is because of the squid or light lures. Also remember another large animal does the same thing – leatherback sea turtles are gelantinous zooplanktivores too, and equally massive.
As for their swimming, these fish are actually powerful swimmers with many records of them breaching and jumping high into the air. See the video to see one taking off. They are also travelers, making regular forays into the ocean deep and out-swimming currents as they migrate. We only know them from when they swim up from the deep to get rid of parasites and warm themselves, which is when I’d be pretty lazy too. There is a great deal we don’t know about these fishes, but they are far from simple giant heads, they represent an interesting evolutionary turn in nature with a unique morphology that natural selection helped create.
Lastly, I’d like to address the concept that these are large, unintelligent creatures. This is partially based on my opinion and personal experience diving, but Tetraodontiforme fishes are some of the most curious and intelligent fishes I know of. Aquarists around the world have recognized this as well, especially in triggerfishes. The same is likely true for Molas, these are some of the most evolutionarily derived fishes in the world that exhibit complex behaviors like recognizing that they can bask and seagulls will pick off their parasites.
TLDR: These are complex fishes that we still barely understand, but they are actually powerful swimmers who can migrate, regularly make deep sea dives, exhibit complex behavior and may actually be omnivores. Please stop portraying them as freaks of nature because these images can negatively affect conservation efforts for animals. Being seen as useless is just as dangerous for conservation as is being thought of as dangerous. These guys are regular bycatch by fishing boats and may already be in danger.
Sources: If you can’t open the pdfs, message me and I’ll send you a copy.
TY FOR THE INFO AAAA I’m not at all a fish expert and I appreciate you taking the time, I had no idea they could actually breach the surface that’s amazing holy shit. Imagine not knowing what a sunfish is and seeing that??
It’s amazing how little we know about species like this that are so big or commonplace for some people? It’s similar for amphibians, which are what I know more about rofl. We have salamanders in Georgia that are totally undocumented, some of them we’ve had documented for years and we just have no idea how long they live or what they eat etc because it hasn’t been studied.
That being said I hope it’s clear that me saying they’re ridiculous fish is in the same way I make fun of frogs; They’re adapted very well for their environment and things like ‘freakish’ or ‘useless’ are entirely baseless judgements because it’s based entirely on our perception of what’s average/useful and not the reality. Their adaptations are very beneficial because they’ve carved out a niche in their environments that no other fish have and that’s pretty amazing. They’re extremely cool fish!
Frogs are also amazingly well adapted, sensitive, and very important, and when I’m pointing and laughing at mola molas for looking perpetually surprised or desert rain frogs for looking like ping pong balls that grew legs I hope it’s obvious that it’s because I find them endearing and love them and not because my making fun of them is serious.
how could anyone not love these mysterious sideways children
(If you have time, is it known how they grow so quickly?? I’ve been thinking about it all day, they must know something to eat that gives them the nutrients needed to grow so quickly but I can’t imagine what. Also have you gotten to see them in the wild? I always wondered if they acknowledged humans like whales or dolphins do, or if they sort of ignore us)
(This sign used to be outside a health food store on my way home from classes)
(I mean it won’t do that to humans, but that’s always my first reflex, too)
OBEY
The reblogs on this post are absolutely priceless.
Hall of fame:
And finally:
I don’t understand…
Cordyceps is a genus of fungi that parasitizes insects or other arthropods. One of them (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis) does that by having sorta mindcontrol powers.
Infected ants are driven to leave their nests or foraging tasks, climb up a thing until ideal fungus-growth-conditions are met, chomp down with their mandibles on the thing (usually the underside of a leaf) and then stay there while the fungus bursts fruiting bodies forward from their bodies, killing them.
It’s been nicknamed ‘zombie fungus’ because of that.
this post has fucked me up more than any other on this site
Okay but no, do you understand what happens to a caterpillar once it’s in its cocoon? It completely turns into goo. That’s right, GOO. The damn thing dissolves and the reforms into the butterfly. Even crazier, the wings of the butterfly are already inside the caterpillar, ready to go, just waiting to float around in some goo and then be a beautiful butterfly. The craziest part?!? A study was done where some caterpillars were exposed to a certain smell and then given an electric shock so eventually the caterpillar associated the smell with the shock. Well after those little hairy noodles came out of the their cocoons as butterflies, they exposed them to the smell again and the butterflies reacted super negatively, as if they were being shocked. A.K.A. not only is there wings floating around in that goo cocoon, there is also a brain, the same, unaltered brain as the caterpillar. The butterfly can recall its days as a caterpillar even after basically being turned into soup. And then it all somehow gets its shit together to be a stupid majestic little beast, and I can’t even remember where I put my damn phone.
Cellulite is a female secondary sex characteristic and should be celebrated as a rite of womanhood, not despised or eradicated.
it’s really a secondary sex characteristic?!
It is. It has to do with the way our bodies network fat. Female bodies create sort of a mesh network to support fat (female bodies are MUCH more hardy in times of stress) and it can present as delightfully lumpy. More than 90% of women have visible cellulite, but all women store fat in this manner.
why did no one tell me this?!
You know why
Spread this. I only just started to see mine and I started to freak out a bit. More people should/need to know about this
Here’s an illustration of the aforementioned difference in fat storage.
Men’s lattice pattern collagen threads holds subcutaneous fat in a way that, when the skin expands because of the fat storage, it expands evenly. Women’s “pockets” expand unevenly when we accumulate fat, creating that orange peel effect. Our storage pattern means we can healthily store more fat than men. Like a woman with 25% body fat is average, a man with 25% body fat is chubby. Because of that, like OP said, women are hardier in times of stress or famine. It’s also one of the reasons why our bodies can survive pregnancy, which is a massive energy demand on our system.
And there’s absolutely NO “treatment” for cellulite that will work. They are all bullshit designed to separate you from your hard-earned cash. It’s a secondary sex characteristic, it’s perfectly normal and it’s not going away no matter what you do. Like I’m very lean myself and I work out 5~6 times a week, and I still have cellulite. Someone giving a woman shit for having cellulite is akin to giving her shit for having skin. It’s just a mixture of misogyny and corporate greed.
Love your lumpy skin, ladies. It means you are a badass surviving machine shaped by millenia of evolution.
I did not know this, and I pride myself on knowing shit like this.