Jason Jong
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plesiomorphy.bsky.social
Jason Jong
@plesiomorphy.bsky.social
📍Somerville, MA, Ward 7
bikes and bugs and snakes and salamanders and also a rescue pibble
Wildlife photography | traditional art | environmental field audio
https://soundcloud.com/jasonjong
My latest order from @portersqbooks.bsky.social along with a trio of biographies I picked up at the Boston Book Festival. In an era of book bans and AI slop, it sure feels nice to chat with authors and buy their books.
November 4, 2025 at 4:39 PM
I liked the world better when doing my hobbies was something to pursue just for the joy of it, instead of it being a brief period of escapism from the horrors of reality.

Portrait of a refugee
Charcoal on gouache-primed paper, 2.5 hour sitting from life
September 19, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Jason Jong
#Zavacephale. A very pretty new pachycephalosaur from early Cretaceous Mongolia. 🥰
September 18, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Jason Jong
Gracklepalooza continues with no signs of slowing!
This male Common Grackle was heading over to the tree nearer the creek. It always amazes me how birds fly among tree branches so easily!
#Birds #photography #wildlife
🪶
September 17, 2025 at 1:54 AM
Reposted by Jason Jong
I think I don’t have a choice by say this is my all time favorite Kingfisher photo I’ve had the chance of clicking

The Queen of Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve fishing the moon

📷🌿🪶🌔
September 2, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Reposted by Jason Jong
* Admitted, everyone always goes "canopy specialist?" whenever a forest species is rarely caught.

- Laticoleus are really rare? Canopy specialists.

- Only one Epirhyssa johanna ever caught? Could they be ⭐Canopy Specialists⭐?

- Didn't see any elephants 🐘 today? Perhaps they're in the canopy?
September 1, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Post your dream ride...
August 23, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Reposted by Jason Jong
This is Costasiella kuroshimae, the sea sheep.

It's not a nudibranch, it's a sacoglossan, another mollusc clade. The green color is a tip-off: sacoglossans are herbivorous where nudis are carnivores.

Like nudibranchs they can eat things and then repurpose cells from them, in this case chloroplasts
August 11, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Jason Jong
I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management.

medium.com/@steve.desch...
This is not the quality of pseudoscience infotainment to which I have grown accustomed
Teasing the public with fraudulent or self-deluded promises of aliens used to mean something. It took work. It meant slapping together…
medium.com
August 8, 2025 at 6:24 PM
I’m more of a dog person than a cat person, but this pair of kittens that live in a bike shop in Vietnam stole my heart.

#caturday
July 5, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Leaf cutter ants are so abundant in the tropics that it doesn't seem rare to find queens. But it's still jarring to see an ant the size of a ping pong ball. For scale comparison, the ant on the left side (probably a species of Monomorium) is what you'd call a normal sized ant.

#invertebrates
June 22, 2025 at 2:22 PM
A weird looking treehopper from Costa Rica (Cladonota sp.)

#invertebrates
June 22, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Quote with your fanart.
June 8, 2025 at 10:47 PM
One of the prettiest (and most skittish) jumping spiders I've had the joy of photographing

Anasaitis canalis, Costa Rica

#invertebrates
June 8, 2025 at 2:42 AM
How did storks become mythical baby-deliverers? Every time I've seen one, they look like the kind of animal that would gleefully peck your eyeballs out.
May 23, 2025 at 1:45 AM
Glup Shitto implies the existence of Glup Pisso
Bib Fortuna implies the existence of Napkin Fortuna
Jar Jar Binks implies the existence of Can Can Binks
May 22, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Jason Jong
I still think about the time I delighted an English literature TA by successfully arguing Laertes from Hamlet was a great example of Robertson Davies' “Fifth Business” character trope because it was a novel approach to a character study assignment: triumphofthenow.com/2020/08/09/f...
May 5, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Just like a car, you can use a bike to transport a boat. Unlike a car, you can strap the bike to the boat so you can float downstream as far as you want without having to backtrack.
April 25, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Jason Jong
We’ve looked at snails with one shell and slugs with no shells. Now let’s have a look at a snail with two shells, because Nature laughs at our puny attempts to pigeonhole.

In today’s #AtoZ – J is for Julia (Juliidae) (1/9)

Pic: © uwkwaj CC BY-NC
March 10, 2025 at 2:40 AM
Common brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus), Madagascar
March 2, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Jason Jong
🚨 New Paper Alert! 🚨

🐜 How did ants evolve their highly specialized queens and workers?

With @adriatica.bsky.social, we reveal a key evolutionary innovation: adult control over larval feeding unlocked extreme caste dimorphism and complex societies. 🧵👇

🔗 Read in @pnas.org: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
February 26, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Quote post with a picture you took in a National Park.

Rocky mountain elk (Cervus canadensis nelsoni) in Yellowstone National Park
February 25, 2025 at 4:04 AM
One of the most beautiful spiders I've ever seen.

Gasteracantha sp., Mozambique
February 18, 2025 at 4:19 AM
Reposted by Jason Jong
my kingdom for an elected official who will stand up and defend the fact that the government employs people to test wastewater and send old people money and keep an eye on the bears in the park and make sue the people that scammed you
February 18, 2025 at 2:24 AM
Reposted by Jason Jong
Today, the USDA lost experts in Psylloidea, Thysanoptera, Cerambycidae, Hymenoptera, Pseudococcidae, and Malacology. This is a devastating loss of expertise, occuring without warning. Their union's official statement on the issue can be found here: aginspectors.org/2-14-2025-a-... #entomology 🧪
February 14, 2025 at 9:30 PM