Not to critique evolution, but I would think orange and black stripes wouldn’t be as good for camouflage in a forest as, say, green and black would.
It turns out a lot of animals can’t see the difference between orange and green! Elephants, for instance, have dichromatic vision (two types of cones, rather than three like most humans.)
Check out this diagram from ResearchGate. It deals with the color vision of horses, who are also generally dichromatic. (I think, though I’m not sure, that zebras would have the same color vision as horses.) See how orange and green look to them?
Not to critique evolution but I think prey animals should be better at telling when their predator is dressed like a traffic cone.
It doesn’t matter what zebras see, because tigers are not native to Africa and do not naturally hunt zebra. Tigers are Asian and mostly hunt animals like deer, elk, and buffalo. These aren’t animals with great color vision. They don’t need to have it because they don’t eat fruit and so don’t need to know when the berry is ripe vs when it’s not. Good color vision is too expensive to have if you don’t need it. Deer put their vision stats in a wide field of vision that is sensitive to motion, low light capabilities, and possibly seeing UV light. They don’t have great color and lack a lot of acuity, but have a great sense of smell and good hearing. That’s way more useful if you’re prey. Deer see well in the blue end of the color spectrum and less well in the red. This makes sense because deer are most active in the dawn and dusk periods, when there is more blue in the light. Tigers are taking advantage of deer eyesight by being orange.
We see tigers are being obviously colored because tigers are fruit colored to our tree ape brains.
I don’t know what the best part of this is: implying that deer chose their attributes on a character sheet, or the fact that we get to see tiger colors because they look like a snack.
Not to mention, in general the forests tigers live in go through dry seasons, turning much of the brush pale gold, so orange is actually not a bad choice.
(photo by Art Wolfe)
But either way, the main point of tiger camouflage isn’t blending in via it’s coloration, it’s actually a combination of disruptive coloration and countershading. Disruptive coloration uses boldly contrasting colors to break up the shape of an animal’s outline, as shown in this image by Hugh Cott:
It’s much harder to resolve the movement of a tiger as “TIGER!!” compared to grass or branches swaying in the wind this way.
In addition, countershading is another camouflage strategy the tiger employs. It’s darker-colored on its back and lighter-colored on its belly. This is because when light falls on objects, it illuminates their top halves, while shadow falls on and darkens the lower half. Animals with the same top and bottom colors will therefore stand out from the background, because of the shadows cast on their legs and belly. Countershading helps to ‘flatten’ the silhouette of an animal by disguising these shadows. If that confuses you, check out this figure by Ian Alexander:
Both these strategies work whether the foliage is green or brown, because the tiger’s camouflage doesn’t need to be perfect- just confusing enough to let it get close.
i always forget that angus mcdonald, world’s greatest detective, has a mini crossbow in his sleeve on the rockport limited.
this tiny baby boy snuck a MINI CROSSBOW in the sleeve of his shirt and nobody’s going to question that?? in an area where weapons weren’t allowed?? and people still think angus mcdonald is lawful good???? i know he’s a very successful detective and he was going after a serial killer at the time, but he’s TEN and he has a concealed weapon??????????
like, listen, a crossbow is the closest thing d&d has to a gun. and angus, light of my life, is just keepin’ one right up his sleeve, never explained or acknowledged after rockport limited. sure, he needs to defend himself, but also? knives??? angus could have had a knife instead, maybe??? (wait, now that i say that, that might be WORSE)
i have so many questions. who sold a ten year old a crossbow? did he bribe somebody else to buy it for him? even worse, was it issued to him from the militia? did the militia look at this ten years old boy and go “boy howdy, let’s give this boy a crossbow!”
i’m not, like, angry about this or anything. i’m just very confused???????? what happened to angus, a very good and smart and perfect boy, that made him think that he needed a crossbow to do his job??
I honestly don’t understand why there aren’t more people who, when given the platform to discuss minimum wage, don’t simply distill it to the simplest of facts:
A forty hour work week is considered full time.
It’s considered as such because it takes up the amount of time we as a society have agreed should be considered the maximum work schedule required of an employee. (this, of course, does not always bear out practically, but just follow me here)
A person working the maximum amount of time required should earn enough for that labor to be able to survive. Phrased this way, I doubt even most conservatives could effectively argue against it, and out of the mouth of someone verbally deft enough to dance around the pathos-based jabs conservative pundits like to use to avoid actually debating, it could actually get opps thinking.
Therefore, if an employee is being paid less than [number of dollars needed for the post-tax total to pay for the basic necessities in a given area divided by forty] per hour, they are being ripped off and essentially having their labor, productivity, and profit generation value stolen by their employer.
Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.
Our goal as a society should be to protect each other, especially those that most need protection, not to subsidize failing businesses whose owners could quite well subsidize them on their own.
Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.
Found the creature- it’s called an Oblex and it appears in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes along with art of the kid’s player character! They’re apparently the result of Mindflayer experimentation on Oozes and they’re sick as fuck, you can read about them in <a href=“https://www.google.com/amp/comicbook.com/gaming/amp/2018/05/23/dungeons-and-dragons-make-a-wish-mordenkainens-tome-of-foes/”>this article! (X)</a>
![nonbinaryvexahlia:
“ underdarke:
“creepy as fuck, but also amazing [tweet]
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Found the creature- it’s called an Oblex and it appears in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes along with art of the kid’s player character! They’re apparently the result of...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b609dcab15977c1d904873080042ace5/tumblr_p9qajtKDlQ1wr9474o1_500.png)
