The Sahara sand viper (Cerastes vipera), is a small, venomous viper endemic to the deserts of North Africa and the Sinai Peninsula and it has a very special skill. It can hide itself by burying itself in the sand. They do this in order to wait for prey. They wiggle their tails to attract a potential meal and then lunge out from under the sand to chomp them.
Photographer Zac Herr had the brilliant idea of giving a captive-bred Sahara sand viper the opportunity to show off its special skill in a pool full of rainbow sprinkles instead of sand. pacinthesink provided the snek and jdrrising recorded the results:
@why-animals-do-the-thing Is… this ok? If it’s not eating it’s not going to swallow any or anything I guess?
Yup, this is fine! You’re correct -the snake shouldn’t be ingesting any of the substrate unless you’re feeding it in there, and that didn’t happen. Even if the snake did end up ingesting a small amount of the sprinkles, it wouldn’t be the end of the world: they don’t have the enzymes to digest sugar, but they have to be able to deal with the bones of prey and any other foreign objects in the stomach of the things they eat, so a small amount of something as small as sprinkles would just get passed as waste.
Snakes appear to be able to see some color (and UV light), but as this species buries themselves in the substrate rather than trying to camouflage themselves against it, it’s unlikely that they’d be stressed by the varied colors of the sprinkles.
And, as always, this sort of thing is fine for a short photo shoot – but it’s not the type of appropriate set-up you’d want to leave the animal in for a long period of time or have it live in.
I’ve mentioned my favorite art history professor to @systlin a few times, but there’s one story of him that stays with me. So for you, Plant Aunt, I’ve crafted a tale of one immortal spitefully making sure another immortal finally gets his:
The running joke among David’s students is that our beloved professor is clearly an immortal. How else could we explain his small office crammed with illuminated manuscripts, Scythian and Mongolian bows, 3rd cent. Roman gladii, near-Eastern rugs and ancient swords? The way he sighed wistfully in class and told us how beautiful the Parthenon was when it was new and, “not just a damn tourist attraction”? It wasn’t uncommon for us to see him hefting a sword over his shoulder, leather trench coat flapping in the wind, flipping off the head of security who really should have stopped trying by now.
It was also a running joke that our favorite immortal just did not get technology. I worked at our Help Desk for all four years of college, and David would always request one of his students to come and fix his computer.
“This computer isn’t fast enough,” he told me once, polishing an enameled chalice. Google maps was still loading on the page, trying to parse the coordinates he entered. It was likely looking ten centuries too late. “It needs more of that RAM. Really. I could be soaring over ancient Rome like a bird!”
After repeat requests, he got a brand-new Macbook Pro, which he promptly abandoned for his antique slide projector.
“I just don’t get the new technology,” he shrugged. “You can’t get the feel of things.”
That was the only sentiment he shared with his nemesis.
So myself and two best friends got matching tattoos that say Κύριε ἐλέησον. It’s pronounced Kyrie Eleison and in ancient Greek means “Lord have mercy.” It’s one of the oldest Christian liturgical prayers and features in the Bible, and when Christianity became Latinised, it as one of the only surviving Greek prayers.
Just for fun I plugged it into Google Translate to see what modern Greek thinks of it and
10/10 A+ tat so glad its marked on my skin forever, would tattoo again
tumblr friendships are hard to maintain like im sorry i know i havent talked to you in 5 months but you’re still super rad and i still consider us friends im just dumb
Spoonies do you ever get into that zone where you’ve been an exhausted trance for hours forcing yourself to stay awake, and now you can finally go to bed except you *cant* because your body doesn’t know how to turn off the “stay awake your life depends on it” switch?
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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