Pinned
A hierarchy of alienness: Pictures of animals from least to most related to you.
Least-related animal: Sponges. You and sponges are both animals. That's basically all you've got in common.
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30.7K posts
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@parasociality
Twitter's friendliest anon. DMs always appreciated! Replies may not be swift.
overcomingparasociality@protonmail.com (NOT checked regularly, DMs preferred)
Council Bluffs, IA
Joined June 2021
- This is a black vulture allopreening (cleaning) a crested caracara. Black vultures sometimes preen caracaras, but caracaras have never been observed preening vultures; caracaras often bully vultures and steal carrion from them. The reason for the one-sided preening isvultures love to kiss their friends
- "I would sign up for a crusade for the Catholic Church!" "Would you wash a refugee's foot for the Catholic Church?"
My zeal for the Catholic Church is so strong that if Pope Leo XIV called a new crusade, Iโd be the first one signing up. - Replying to @parasocialityDoesn't appear to be intentional behavior by the caracaras and it's not super commonly observed. Just sometimes the caracara does "head-down" just right, the vulture goes into preen mode, and the caracara goes "kinda weird, but ok I guess you can clean me."
- Replying to @parasocialitythat caracaras sometimes bob their heads ("head-down" display) in a way that's similar to the motion black vultures make to invite preening. The black vultures instinctively respond, a bit like a mother bird blindly feeding a cuckoo chick because "in my nest = feed."
- Replying to @parasocialityOther photos of the same behavior (note that, again, it's a vulture preening a caracara, not the reverse).
- Replying to @parasocialityThis has been your tour of your extended family. From your most distant cousin, the sponge, to your closest living non-human relative, the chimpanzee.
- Replying to @parasocialityYou and jellyfish are both planulozoans: animals with serotonin, a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells in the brain.
- Replying to @parasocialityYou and starfish are both deuterostomes: "second mouth," animals characterized by their anus forming before their mouth during embryonic development. Kinda weird to think you're more closely related to a starfish than an octopus or a butterfly, isn't it?
- Replying to @parasocialityYou and sea squirts are both olfactores: "smellers." Again, isn't it weird that you're more related to THIS than to any animal shown above?
- Replying to @parasocialityYou and mollusks are both nephrozoans: animals with specialized excretory organs, like kidneys.
- Replying to @parasocialityYou and the platypus are both mammals: animals whose mothers feed their young milk.
- Replying to @parasocialityYou and chimpanzees are both members of the tribe Hominini: "the tribe of man." But chimpanzees and bonobos are both part of the genus Pan (named for the Greek god of nature and wilderness), while humans are part of the genus Homo ("man"). They are our closest living relatives.
