Hmm, it is more rough, like the skin of a toad, I would say.

Aaah, got it now 🤣

How is she doing?

I agree that it is a whiptail, but it is not so easy to determine the species from this photo.

New Mexico whiptail (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus) is possible. If it is this species, the species is female-only (according to wikipedia), and so this would be a girl.

Looking through other whiptails found in New Mexico (is that where you found her?), I have found photos of the Texas spotted whiptail (Aspidoscelis gularis) that with patterns of spots similar to the lizard in your picture, so that is another possibility. If it is the Texas spotted whiptail, I do think that it is a female as well because the males have more color (red throat, blue belly).

You are welcome!

I also have a snippet from one of the videos that shows in more detail how the fluid is excreted. I will hide it under a spoiler tag to make sure people are warned of the content before clicking the link, because I think these images might be uncomfortable to watch for some people.

When creating a set of rules to categorize living things we get to decide how rigid we want the rules to be. The more rigid the rules, the easier it is to draw lines. The more flexible they are, the greater the room for ambiguity.

Taxonomy would be much simpler if we could create a rigid rules. But evolution is a rather chaotic process, and living things are very diverse. Nature is very flexible. Rigid rules won't let us categorize this diversity in meaningful ways.

For example, if we want to set a "fixed rate for genetic difference", we will run into a problem that different species have different genetics. It could be that you find that the genetic difference between a human and a banana is less than the difference between two fungi species that we consider to be in the same genus. So, seeing this, you have to either group humans and bananas together, split the fungi into many tiny groups, or lift this global "genetic difference" constraint and focus instead in making more local comparisons.

The last option is what taxonomists usually do. There are several regions in the genome that are used that are used as "barcodes" and are also used to establish the "distance" between organisms in evolutionary terms. These are very useful for building a case for a new species. But it is only part of the argument, and we can't define an absolute reliable number that always works. Here is a review that covers the topic of DNA barcoding and species delineation that you may look into if you want more detailed information: https://hal.science/hal-01958691/file/dna-barcoding-species-delineation-and-taxonomy-a-historical-perspective.pdf

Fair enough. I just looked it up and if the scale in this image is correct, I agree that the size of the hole looks small in comparison. I also looked at the security video of the crash itself and it is frustrating how little we can see from it.

Since this was such an important event and there seems to be a lack of specific pieces of essential evidence - either because of bad luck or because of a cover-up - I understand the skepticism. And I am not a fan of blindly believing any official narrative. But, without any context, if I see that photo and someone tells me that a plane crashed into that building, I would find it probable simply because the shape is so similar to the photo of the Bijlmer accident that I'm familiar with. A plane crash seems to me like a very chaotic process, so I don't have a good expectation of what the damage should look like.

Maybe I'll look for a pentagon crash documentary some time.

Thank you!

Cool observation about the hair! Thanks

I will study more details about the wild carrot and hemlock and I'll inspect the plant better next time I walk by.

Thanks a lot!

Don't worry, I am cautious about positively identifying anything before actually putting it near my mouth!

I will admit that I am a bit liberal with the touching and smelling, but I think I take an appropriate level of precautions.

Thanks! I got very excited because I thought it might be Chamomile and there is a ton around here now. They do smell very nice... Apparently they were used to brew a tea to kill off internal parasites in the past, but I am not sure it's a good idea to prepare that as a tea.

Nice to see he has had a graphics upgrade :p

Let's see if they change that one to "Unidentified Subaquatic Phenomena"