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Does anyone else find baleen whales to be creepy as hell? Is this just me being odd again?
(hexbear.net)
Seriously, these things are the closest we have to an eldrich abomination in mammal form. They're so bizarre, probably because they're mammals, so familiar yet alien enough that it turns into uncanny valley.
Their weird upside down mouths give me the heebie jeebies. Who the hell has hair for teeth? That is the stuff of nightmares. Imagine getting tangled up in that gross stuff. I bet they wouldn't even notice because they're terryingly huge.
The way they float in the deep blue void of the ocean reminds me of some kind of alien creature floating through space. How can a giant air breathing mammal live like that?
Dude gives me the willies.
the ocean deeps is totally weirder than outer space to me. because stuff actually lives there. big stuff, not like tardigrades and dormant microbes in ice pockets. large things that feed on detritus and live in the dark, adapted to incomprehensibly high pressures.
whole ecosystems along the edges of thermal layers, individual leviathans cruising currents around the planet. and it's not silent, though maybe it's quiet across large areas sometimes. but sound travels much farther in water, so there's a network of communication among larger species using lower frequencies.
the ocean depths i think are a perennial source of inspiration for sci-fi writers world building a populated and busy outer space.