As a trans woman I can confirm that they indeed found an ancient forest inside a 630ft deep sinkhole in China
Happy pride month everyone always remember that the sinkhole has an ecosystem large enough to house not only insects but likely several species of small birds or mammals
[ID: A cropped tweet thread. User rudy betrayed @/rudy_betrayed writes: "what if your first name was holden and your last name was berries and you’d be like “i’m holden berries” and everyone would think you’re holding berries lmaoooo." Below that, cropped so it's only barely legible, is a reply by user Holden Cox @/HoldenCox. End ID]
thinking about that kakapo egg that got crushed but the conservation team patched it up and it survived
For those who don’t follow kakapo conservation, they are critically endangered parrots who only breed on years where the rimu tree they rely on meet a certain threshold of fruit production. One breeding season in 4 years can be typical, and about half of all eggs laid by kakapo are infertile (they still aren’t completely certain why, it could be a recent population bottleneck) so each fertile egg is worth its weight in gold.
This was one of only 5 fertile eggs laid on the Whenua Hou island population in the 2014 breeding season and it got crushed by its mother on accident. It was mended with glue and tape and incubated by the rangers until hatching.
At 150 days old kakapo chicks are officially added to the population total and given a unique name, until then they are given their mother’s name and a number for birth order laid in the clutch. This chick was known as Lisa-one before officially being given the name Ruapuke by local indigenous Ngai Tahu people.Here he is grown up:
It’s sad when a species is so rare we know them all individually but at the same time I love that you can point at this one bird and say oh that’s Ruapuke, his mom sat on him too hard
