Ilze du Toit @IlzeduToit@qoto.org

I see that #photoMonday is a thing here at Mastodon, so here's a photo of a leopard taken in South Africa a few years ago. She was sitting on this termite mound while keeping an eye on a nearby suitor whose attention she seemed to have captured. #wildlife #leopard #africa

I enjoyed this far more than I probably should have.

#funny

@IlzeduToit @plants @NdeVere

The #flower of #Dorstenia is not a true flower, but a #pseudanthium (Greek for “false flower”) – clusters of bisexual flowers on disc-shaped receptacles that are variable in size and shape. The female flowers within the receptacles mature first. The male flowers are scattered among the female flowers, concentrated on the outer edge of the receptacle or separated by a flower-free zone at the outer edge.

source: https://hscactus.org/resources/plants-of-the-month/dorstenia-2019/

#succulents #botany #plants

#Dorstenia gigas from #Socotra or #Soqotra (#Yemen) at the Botanical Gardens #Copenhagen

#botany #plantscience #Dorstenia #succulents #botanicalGardens

@plants
@NdeVere

I love this galaxy: NGC628 from James Webb - its ammonite-like appearance reminds me that the light from distant stars is often from the ancient past, sometimes even millions of years old (Credit: Judy Schmidt/NASA/ESA/CSA) #Science #Astronomy #deeptime #fossils #nasa #stars #space #LongTerm

Good profile of Fauci.
He says that if people don’t believe him as an individual, it’s no big deal. "But when they mistrust the whole concept of science, that’s really scary." We are, he says, "living in an era of the normalization of untruths."
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/anthony-fauci-s-life-as-a-right-wing-target-the-evil-in-the-world-a-f5b09c65-4193-4b90-89fd-657caf63b32c