Fasting is a practice that has been followed by various cultures and religions for centuries. It involves abstaining from food and, in some cases, beverages for a defined period. While fasting can have several physical and mental benefits, it is not uncommon for individuals to notice an unpleasant odor in their breath during fasting periods. Let's explore the reasons behind this phenomenon and uncover the science behind why one's breath may smell when they've fasted.
When we fast or restrict our carbohydrate intake for an extended period, our body undergoes a metabolic state called ketosis. During ketosis, the body shifts its primary source of energy from glucose (derived from carbohydrates) to ketones, which are produced when the liver brea ...
The stress response exists for the purpose of survival. When we experience stress, our sympathetic nervous system activates, blood pressure and heart rate increase, and often we begin to sweat. These physiological reactions prepare us for "fight or flight." Our bodies are at optimal physical performance and alertness levels, and we are therefore optimized for survival in a physically challenging situation. Sometimes we use this physiological activation to our advantage: Consider a champion weightlifter who, prior to lifting an extremely heavy weight, "pumps himself up." By doing this, the weightlifter is attempting behaviorally to elicit a stress response from his brain and body in order to achieve the highest level of physical performance ...
Imagine a disease whose presence is marked by a feeling of something crawling along your skin, stinging every part of your body as if there is insect or parasite infestation that doesn't go away. Not only that, but your skin is plagued with the presence of multicolored filaments that lie under, are embedded in, or project from skin.
Morgellons disease (pronounced with either a hard or soft "g") is a highly misunderstood skin condition that was first reported in the USA in 2002, although may have a longer history depending on where you look. The characteristic filaments described earlier are microscopic, visually resembling textile fibers, and are white, black, or a more vibrant color, such as red or blue (left image). In addition to fiber p ...
A wholphin is a rare fertile hybrid born from mating a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) (mother), and a false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens). Although they have been reported to exist in the wild, the first captive wholphin was born in 1945, where a bottlenose dolphin and a male false killer whale shared a pool.
The wholphin's size, color and shape are intermediate between the parent species. For example, an adult wholphin has 66 teeth - intermediate between a bottlenose (88 teeth) and false killer whale (44 teeth). They are smaller than a false killer whale but are larger than a normal bottlenose.
Normally, when two different, yet similar species mate, such as a female horse and a male donkey forming a mule, the progeny is expec ...
The Four Color Theorem is a famous mathematical theorem that states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Adjacent means that two regions share a common boundary curve segment, not merely a corner where three or more regions meet. Unlike other proofs before its discovery, computers were used to resolve this long-standing mathematical conjecture that was first proposed in 1850 by Francis Guthrie. After more than a century later, mathematicians, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, finally derived its proof in 1976, and determined that it is practicality impossible for humans to verify it without the use of a computer. According to the four color theorem, a ...
What's the difference between a child with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and one who is simply more active than other children?
Many children are rambunctious, to an extent that their parents or teachers find somewhat worrisome. Figuring out how to distinguish between normal high-energy levels and pathological overactivity can be quite difficult. Furthermore, the distinction can be complicated by parental tendencies to be permissive and to fail to set up clear rules, reprimands, or restrictions for when a child steps outside the limits.
Figuring out how to make this distinction is not a trivial issue. Children diagnosed with ADHD are usually prescribed methylphenidate (Ritalin) or other medications that lessen their activity ...
Chiropractic medicine is an approach that is derived from the Greek roots "cheir," meaning hand, and "praxis," meaning practice, and was formulated by the founder of chiropractic, Daniel David Palmer (originally of Canada), to mean "done by hand." The emphasis in chiropractic is on the use of physical manipulation or adjustments to correct misalignment of the spinal vertebrae and other musculoskeletal joints to improve the function of the related organs and musculature.
The main treatments used by chiropractic physicians are adjustments, or physical manipulation of the musculoskeletal system. Chiropractors also use heat and/or cold therapy, immobilization (with splints, for example), hydrotherapy, ultrasound, and massage.
The United States has two kinds of physicians, the Doctor of Medicine (MD) and the Doctor of Osteopathy (DO). Both use medicines, surgery, and other standard methods of treating disease. DOs, however, place special emphasis on problems involving the musculoskeletal system, which includes muscles, ligaments, bones, and joints. Nevertheless, both doctors receive virtually identical training, and are equally licensed in all 50 states.
Osteopathic medicine holds that true health involves complete physical, mental, and social well-being, rather than merely the absence of disease. In this system, the body has a capacity for health that the physician helps the individual attain. The osteopathic physician, therefore, treats the whole patient, consid ...
Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are a remarkable class of drugs for treating hypertension – high blood pressure. These drugs work by interfering with the enzymes that convert an inactive chemical known as angiotensin I to an active form, angiotensin II. Angiotensin II increases the retention of salt and water in the body, raising blood pressure. ACE inhibitors interfere with, or inhibit, the formation of angiotensin II, resulting in relaxed arterial walls and lowered blood pressure.
Since the release of the first ACE inhibitor in the 1980s, known generically as captopril, there are now several different ACE inhibitors available on the market. Many of them are also available in combination with other types of hypertension medic ...
An archaeologists is a scientist who studies human history by discovering and examining human remains and artifacts. The most common image of an archaeologists is someone on their hand and knees digging through dirt, carefully using a brush to dust off an artifact from the distant past. A geneticist, on the other hand, is someone who specializes in the science of genetics. This field of biology deals with the pattern of inheritance, molecular structure and function of genes, and gene behavior in context of a cell or organism. Both professionals are highly skilled, and use the same basic principles of science to test hypotheses, gather data, and make conclusions. However, why do archaeologists and geneticists sometimes reach different conclu ...
We often hear people say that modern birds evolved from some dinosaurs. Apart from both being reptiles, what evidence have paleontologist discovered that validates this claim?
A small bird-like dinosaur, called the archaeopteryx (left), lived in what is now southern Germany about 150 million years ago. About the size of a crow, it had a shortened tail, long hands, a perching toe slightly turned backward, and wing feathers that were adapted for flight. This creature has long been considered the most ancient bird known. However, despite its birdlike characteristics, its body more closely resembled those of small meat-eating dinosaurs than those of more birdlike dinosaurs. Many paleontologists identify the archaeopteryx as the so-called missing ...
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic compound that serves as an important component in plastics. Plastics made with BPA are usually clear and tough, and can be used in a variety of common consumer goods, such as plastic water bottles, food storage containers, and certain baby bottles. Due to its versatility, an estimated 4 million tonnes of BPA-derived chemical were produced in 2015, making it one of the highest volume of chemicals produced worldwide.
For some time, BPA has been a popular topic in the media due to its undesirable effect on human health and the environment. In fact, back before BPA was every used in manufacturing, its first purported benefit was as an artificial estrogen. Due to its chemical structure, BPA is classified as a " ...
Here's an interesting comparison on how diets impact one's blood concentration of high- and low-density lipoproteins (HDL; LDL). In the first column, we're shown how cis fatty acids have the least impact on increasing LDL. These fats constitute the healthy fats found in vegetables, nuts, and fish. On the other hand, trans fats and saturated fats have the least desirable effect. Foods that typically contain these fats are pastries and meat, respectively.
For more information on LDL and HDL, follow the links. Below is a video explaining how the consumption of eggs - albeit high in cholesterol - may actually lower blood cholesterol levels.
A few months ago, a family member of mine made the commitment to start losing weight and improve his health. From what I gathered in our conversations, he wasn't satisfied with his appearance, and the extra weight made him feel unproductive and sluggish. As a result, he decided to limit his caloric intake by taking on the ketogenic diet, which is a diet associated with low carbohydrate intake. By lowering the total number of calories, he felt he could begin to lose the weight, and start to look thinner and healthier.
After a few weeks, I noticed a significant improvement in his appearance – he stayed true to his word by choosing foods that were nutritionally adequate, and had avoided excessive consumption. I was impressed, I felt he'd finall ...
Protein called hemoglobin found in our blood cells carry oxygen to cells.
Hemoglobin consists of four separate polypeptide chains, and each chain is specifically designed to carry a single iron atom in its heme group. Iron has a natural affinity for oxygen, which it carries to all our cells.
When lead is present in our bloodstream, the placement of iron in the heme structure is blocked, and so hemoglobin cannot carry oxygen.
This is what's referred to as lead poisoning. It occurs when lead is breathed or consumed through contaminated water or food. Lead poisoning causes serious health problems, including brain damage and anemia.
There's more to studying than simply memorization and practice. It turns out that your diet also plays a pivotal role in recalling key bits of information, while keeping you energized and focused in the process. We're not talking about those scam-ridden supplements that promise a boost in brain power, but simple natural foods such as milk, nuts, seeds, rice, and oats.
The nutrients found in these items help your study efforts by releasing natural memory enhancers called CCKs ( cholecystokinin). When CCK crosses the blood-brain barrier, it acts as a neurotransmitter associated with memory. Studies have shown that learning and memory processes are severely damaged (in rats) that genetically do not respond to the presence of CCK. And in people ...
Asthma is one of those illnesses that is so common that we never stop to question what causes it and how it could be treated. Affecting more than 25 million people, asthma is one of the most common chronic respiratory conditions in the United States. It is caused by the increased reactivity of the tracheobronchial tree to various stimuli, including exercise, allergies, or infections of the respiratory tract. Symptoms include, but are not limited to breathlessness, cough, wheezing, and chest tightness.
Common Triggers of Asthma
The most commonly used medications for asthma are: bronchodilators, xanthine derivatives, leukotriene inhibitors, corticosteroids, and mast cell stabilizers (see full list below). Xanthine derivatives treat asthma by re ...
Genes that help control inflammation leads to longer lifespans for humans and other species, and more of these genes a species has, the longer it can live.
Genes encoding some inflammation-dampening molecules are more numerous in longer-lived species, such as humans, than in short-lived animals such as mice. The genes produce proteins known as CD33-related Siglecs. Siglecs are proteins that recognize different versions of sialic acid – sugars that are found at all cell surfaces of vertebrates and some invertebrates.
By distinguishing between different versions of sialic acid, the proteins help the immune system decide which cells are normal residents of the body and which are intruders. In addition, the proteins soothe inflammation in the aft ...
Want to reconstruct your face in 3D from a single 2D image? Now you can.
According to its creators, this technology does not require accurate alignment nor establishes dense correspondence between images; it works for arbitrary facial poses and expressions, and can be used to reconstruct the whole 3D facial geometry (including the non-visible parts of the face) bypassing the construction and fitting of a 3D Morphable Model. This is achieved via a simple convolutional neural network architecture that performs direct regression of a volumetric representation of the 3D facial geometry from a single 2D image.
The Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi), also known as the monkey-eating eagle, is found exclusively in the forests of the Philippines. It has brown- and white-coloured plumage, and a shaggy crest, and generally measures 86 to 102 cm (2.82 to 3.35 ft) in length, weighs 4.7 to 8.0 kg (10.4 to 17.6 lb), and has a 2 meter wingspan. It is considered the largest of the extant eagles in the world in terms of length and wing surface.
Among the rarest and most powerful birds in the world, it has been declared the Philippine national bird. Unfortunately, however, it is critically endangered, mainly due to massive loss of habitat resulting from deforestation in most of its range. Killing a Philippine eagle is punishable under Philippine law by 1 ...
Approximately 10% of the world population is left-handed. What causes this anomaly?
While there are several theories that try to explain this trait -- such as the positioning of the baby during the final trimester, hormone exposure during pregnancy, or epigenetic factors -- the most consistent and hardwired explanation boils down to plain old genetics. In other words, the reason you're right-handed or left-handed is because it's written in your DNA.
Research suggests that handedness displays a complex inheritance pattern. For example, if both parents of a child are left-handed, there is a 26% chance of that child being left-handed. A large study of twins from 25,732 families also indicated that the heritability of handedness is roughly 24%.
The eruption of Mount Tambora was so massive, it erased summer that year.
The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora was one of the most powerful eruptions in recorded history. The eruption of the volcano, on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia), reached a climax on 10 April 1815 and was followed by between six months and three years of increased steaming and small phreatic eruptions.
The ash from the eruption column dispersed around the world and lowered global temperatures, leading to worldwide harvest failures in an event sometimes known as the Year Without a Summer in 1816. The eruption resulted in a brief period of significant climate change that led to various cases of extreme weather. Several climate forcings ...
Richard P. Feynman (1918 - 1988) was a New York City born, Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1965. He was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model.
Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams (below).
His passion for science and education later lead him to develop a universal learning model, now called the Feynman Technique, that could help you learn practically anything no matter how difficult or complicated. As long you or the educator uses simple terminology (no complicated words or terms), you ...
Many great minds have sought proof for God's existence. For French philosopher and scientist, Blaise Pascal, God's existence was beside the point. He conceded that nobody knows whether or not God exists, but because it's in our own best interests to behave as if He does, that's the most rational choice.
This is what's known as Pascal's Wager, since it argues that it's your best bet to believe in God. (Pascal wrote of the Christian God, but this same argument could apply to any god). If God doesn't exist and you behave as if he does, you haven't lost much - just some sleep on Sunday and a few opportunities for sin. But if God does exist, you have everything to lose or gain: act as if he does exist and you spend eternity in heaven; act as if h ...
The hairy frogfish (Antennarius striatus) is a marine fish with spines resembling strands of hair - and it can change color. This small fish grows up to 22 cm (8.7 in) long, and has a rounded, extensible body. Its large mouth is forwardly extensible, allowing it to swallow prey as large as itself! The coloring of its body is extremely variable because individual fish tend to match their living environments.
Frogfishes have the capacity to change coloration and pigment pattern, taking only a few weeks to adapt. The dominant coloration varies from yellow to brownish-orange, passing through a range of shades, but it can also be green, gray, brown, almost white, or even completely black without any pattern. Body and fins can be marked with roug ...
Nearly 80% of U.S. dairy cows have their horns removed each year to protect their handlers and fellow cattle. But the practice, which is both painful and expensive, has come under increasing scrutiny from animal rights activists. Now, science may be coming to the rescue: A group of researchers announced last week that they successfully edited the genomes of dairy cows to make them hornless. The scientists used the transcription activator-like effector nucleases DNA editing technique to introduce a natural allele linked to hornlessness into dairy cow embryos. Five healthy calves were born, all without horns (above, left), the researchers report in a letter in Nature Biotechnology. The allele - called POLLED - is much more common in beef catt ...
Nearly one-third of women experience heavy periods each month. This means that unlike normal periods where women lose up to 40 mL of blood per cycle, some women lose as much as 80 mL (more than a quarter of a cup) in at least one cycle throughout their life. Scientists think they might have found the answer as to why this happens, and they are blaming it on a non-hormonal protein. A new small study suggests that low levels of a specific protein known as hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF1, right) might be to blame.
HIF1 is a pretty handy healing molecule. When oxygen levels drop in parts of the body, a condition known as hypoxia, HIF1 activates more than 60 genes linked to tissue regeneration, and has already been shown to play a role in repai ...
The northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita) was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered in the Syrian desert near Palmyra in 2002. Habitat disturbance and hunting are the main drivers behind the bird's decline in its Middle Eastern habitat.
This glossy black ibis ranges in size from 70 to 80 cm (28 to 31 inches) glossy black ibis, has an unfeathered red face and head, and a long, curved red bill. It breeds colonially on coastal or mountain cliff ledges, where it typically lays two to three eggs in a stick nest, and feeds on lizards, insects, and other small animals.
According to a Turkish legend, the northern bald ibis was one of the first birds that Noah released from the ark, as a symbol of fertility. ...
This species, known as the bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois), is a carnivorous worm that usually makes it home by digging a vertical burrow in the sand between rocks or corals in a tropical reef. The burrow is barely wider than the creature's body, but must be as deep as the worm is long. The bobbit worm finds prey with five long antennae on the top of its "head". These antennae wave in the current, picking up scents of possible prey in the water as they flow by and letting the worm know a meal might be near. Not only does it strike at its prey with sharpened jaws, it injects a toxin, which stuns or kills it. The worm can grow up to ten feet in length and eats mostly crustaceans and mollusks.
Gnathiids are a family of isopod crustaceans whose larvae feed on the blood of fish. During the day, infected parrotfish seek out cleaner fish to consume the parasites; however, at night they are relatively vulnerable to attack. Parrotfish overcome this vulnerability by secreting a mucus cocoon before sleeping which envelopes their bodies with a protective biopolymer that functions similar to a mosquito net. The mucus is secreted from large glands in the gill cavity and is composed of small glycoproteins which are extensively cross-linked through pyrosulfate bonds. This exopolymer net allows small molecules to permeate but prevents the parasitic gnathiids from entering. The process is thought to involve a combination of blocking odorants ...
Unlike most bees, which hibernate during colder months, honey bees remain active all winter long despite the freezing temperatures.
A honey bee colony’s ability to survive the winter depends on their food stores of honey. Once the colony begins to run out of honey, the worker bees force the useless drones from the hive, to maintain the food store.
As temperatures drop, the honey bee workers form a cluster around the queen and brood, keeping them warm. Bees on the inside of the cluster can feed on the stored honey. If surrounding temperatures rise, the bees on the outside of the group separate a bit, to allow more air flow. As temperatures fall, the cluster tightens, and the outer bees pull together.
Before I begin telling you about this fascinating new glue (adhesive), there's a thing or two you need to know about the animal that inspired it all, the gecko. Geckos are small lizards that have the ability to run up walls and scurry across ceilings with the help of tiny rows of hairs on their feet known as setae. Setae generate a multitude of weak attractions (called Van der Waals forces) between molecules on the two surfaces that add up to a secure foothold. Unlike glue or tape, a gecko’s sticky feet attach and detach effortlessly, which made it a perfect case study for engineers to model.
To create their artificial gecko adhesive, a Stanford team of scientists started by making silicone micro-wedges, which imitated gecko hair. They asse ...
These tiny water bears, called Tardigrades (meaning "slow stepper"), are water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals. They have been sighted from mountaintops to the deep sea, from tropical rain forests to the Antarctic.
Tardigrades are notable for being perhaps the most durable of known organisms; they are able to survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms. They can withstand temperature ranges from 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) to about 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C), pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without foo ...
In December 2013, four captive chimpanzees in the state of New York became the first nonhuman primates in history to sue their human captors in an attempt to gain their freedom. The chimps' lawyers, members of a recently formed organization known as the Nonhuman Rights Project, were asking a judge to grant their clients the basic right to not be imprisoned illegally. The judges of the New York lawsuits ultimately dismissed them all on the grounds that the plaintiffs aren't people. The appeals are ongoing. ...
Nearly 11 kilometers deep, the ocean is still a noisy place, according to scientists that have eavesdropped on the deepest part of the world's ocean, and instead of finding a sea of silence, discovered a cacophony of sounds both natural and caused by humans.
For three weeks, a titanium-encased hydrophone recorded constant ambient noise from the ocean floor at a depth of more than 36,000 feet, or 7 miles, in the Challenger Deep trough in the Mariana Trench near Micronesia. The ambient sound field is dominated by the sound of earthquakes, both near and far, as well as distinct moans of baleen whales, and the clamor of a category 4 typhoon that just happened to pass overhead.
The hydrophone also picked up sound from ship propellers. Challenge ...
Remember Ms. Frizzle (from The Magic School Bus)? Now you can be just like her with these science-themed dresses from the fashion company, Shenova. These dresses come in prints that celebrate the Fibonacci sequence, the DNA double-helix, printed circuit boards, retinal cells, the periodic table, aerospace engineering, and space-time warps. ...
There’s an innovative new light technology that's trying to change the way people think about "artificial light." In Italian company called CoeLux has developed a new light source that recreates the look of sunlight through a skylight so well that it can trick both human brains and cameras.
It’s a high tech LED skylight that’s designed to provide "sunlight" for interior spaces cut off from the outdoors. One of the main ideas behind it is that to create realistic sunlight, you can’t just simulate the sun… you need to recreate the atmosphere as well.
The scientists who invented the light figured out how to use a thin coating of nanoparticles to accurately simulate sunlight through Earth’s atmosphere and the effect known as Rayleigh scattering ...
You're looking at the world’s oldest woven linen garment called the Tarkhan Dress. At 5100 to 5500 years old, it dates to the dawn of the kingdom of Egypt. After it was found in the early 1900s, archeologists have concluded that it signals the complexity and wealth of the ancient society that produced it. The rips at the bottom of the garment also suggests that it probably fell past the knees originally.
A handful of garments of similar age have survived to the present day, but those were simply wrapped or draped around the body. The Tarkhan dress, on the other hand, is ancient haute couture. With its tailored sleeves, V-neck, and narrow pleats, it would look perfectly at home in a modern department store. ...
If you want to be an effective science teacher, demonstrations are a must in the classroom. If you want to grab the attention of a young student then make it obvious, as shown in this visualization of a magnetic field!
This rare albino green sea turtle just hatched on a beach in Queensland, Australia. Albinism is the congenital absence of any pigmentation or coloration in a person, animal or plant, resulting in white hair and pink eyes in mammals. Unfortunately, albinism can reduce the survivability of an animal, and the same can be said about this baby turtle. For example, it has been suggested that albino alligators have an average survival span of only 24 hours due to the lack of protection from UV and their lack of camouflage to avoid predators. ...
What sets Homo sapiens apart from other animals? Among other things, our chins do. That piece of bone sticking out from your jaw is somewhat of a mystery - one that's inspired a diversity of wild theories to explain its purpose, according to a paper published this month in Evolutionary Anthropology.
The author of the paper dismisses a number of these explanations, such as the possibility that the chin serves as a sexual signal (such traits usually only appear in one sex - like the mane of a male lion). Another proposal is that the chin acts to protect your throat - an idea the paper's author also shoots down, because for this to be a substantial advantage, humans would have to be constantly punching each other in the face.
The aardvark's outsize snout is tailor-made to house a foot-long, sticky tongue that's the perfect tool for extracting termites from their mound nests. Bush-meat hunters are fond of eating aardvarks, but the "antbear" (Orycteropus afer) is still relatively common across sub-Saharan Africa.
Bats have an uncanny ability to track and eat insects on the fly with incredible accuracy. But some moths make these agile mammals miss their mark. Tiger moths (left), for example, emit ultrasonic clicks that jam bat radar. Now, scientists have shown that hawk moths (right) and other species have also evolved this behavior. The nocturnal insects - which are toxic to bats - issue an ultrasonic "warning" whenever a bat is near. After a few nibbles, the bat learns to avoid the noxious species altogether. Interestingly, the sound-producing apparatus is typically located at the tip of the moth's genitals. ...
Take a good look at this if your stomach didn't already turn: this photo is a mother centipede protecting her young.
The creatures appears to be an Amazonian giant centipede (Scolopendra gigantean), which is the largest existing species of centipede in the world, reaching over 30 cm (12 in) in length. It is known to eat lizards, frogs, birds, mice, and even bats, catching them in midflight, as well as rodents and spiders.
Titi monkeys are monogamous animals (having only one mating partner), mating for life. They are found in South America and live in family groups which consist of parents and their offspring (usually 3 to 7 members), and sit with their tails entwined. After a gestation period of about 5 months, the female bears a single young monkey. The bond between the male and the infant is very strong and the father cares for the young, carrying it and bringing it to the mother only for nursing.
This lady beetle (Coccinellidae) is protecting its enemy. The cocoon between its legs holds a parasitoid wasp larva (Dinocampus coccinellae), which fed on the beetle’s insides before bursting from its belly. Researchers have discovered what makes the beetles act as babysitters: They are infected with a brain-controlling virus. When the larva emerges and spins its cocoon, the virus makes the beetle freeze in place, protecting the baby wasp from predators. ...
According to the Lucara Diamond Corporation, this diamond is so big (pictured above) that it did not fit into the onsite scanners, and had to be sent to Belgium for assessment. This gem, named the Lucara diamond, weighs in at 1 111 karats and is almost entirely devoid of impurities. Since it was recovered in Botswana (South Central Africa), the country will make a 10% royalty on the diamond, and collect 10% in export taxes when the diamond’s value is decided. As of yet, the company has no idea what the diamond is worth, though some have estimated a value above $65 million. ...
A female Madagascar hissing cockroach giving birth from her butt. After the brood hatches from her body, she secretes nutritional goo to provide them their first meal. That's dedicated parenting.
One of the driest places on Earth, the Atacama Desert in Chile - has become covered in a carpet of flowers, thanks to a year of extreme rainfall brought on by El Niño. El Niño is the abnormal warming of waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean around the equator.
Li-Fi is a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication and will be available in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year (that's equivalent to 18 movies of 1.5 GB each being downloaded every single second), the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.
Scientists have now taken Li-Fi out of the lab for the first time, trialing it in offices and industrial environments in Tallinn, Estonia, reporting that they can achieve data transmission at 1 GB per second - that's 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.
The technology uses Visible Light Communication, a medium ...
White bloods cells, known scientifically as leukocytes, are immune system cells that fight infect. The immune system is made up of a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to protect the body. Sometimes our bodies encounter pathogens like bacteria, or in this case a parasitic worm. Roundworms, or nematodes, are parasites that can infect people by living and feeding in the intestines. There are different kinds of worms that can cause infection, and they can range in length from 1 millimeter to 1 meter. Luckily, this worm was no challenge for these hungry white blood cells. ...
The world's worst pain comes from bullet ant venom (shown above). According to Wikipedia, the pain caused by this insect's sting is purported to be greater than that of any other hymenopteran, and is ranked as the most painful according to the Schmidt sting pain index, given a '4+" rating, above the tarantula hawk wasp and, according to some victims, equal to being shot, hence the name of the insect. It is described as causing "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours'. The pain is immediate and unlike even the worst physical injuries where your brain eventually has enough of it and blocks out the signal from the offending body part, it does not let go for a good long while.
Some bugs, such as water scorpions, long-toed water beetle and predaceous diving beetles (shown below) use the molecular properties of water to create miniature scuba diving tanks and spacesuits. The cohesive forces between water molecules essentially makes water molecules "stick" together, allowing bubbles to form against a wall of tension. These little insects are small enough to take advantage of this, by trapping a bubble in their outer wings or tiny bristles on their shell.
Mad honey is a rare hallucinogenic honey that is made by the Giant Bee of Himalayas (Apis dorsata laboriosa) in Nepal. The bee lives and nests at altitudes between 2 500 and 3 000 meters, where it builds very large nests under overhangs on the south-western faces of vertical cliffs. The honey possesses hallucinogenic properties because it contains an ingredient from rhododendron nectar called grayanotoxin - a natural neurotoxin that, even in small quantities, brings on light-headedness and hallucinations. Since it is difficult to harvest and has special properties, this kind of honey is expensive and sells for about five times the price of normal honey in the foreign market. So, the honey hunters take absurd risks to get the honey from over ...
The cube shown above, known as the element cube, combines every 'collectible' element on Earth. Regarded by its creator as the world’s largest alloy, the cube is fashioned into a minimalist decorative ornament that could sit on your desk or coffee table! It consists of 62 elements (shown below) and measures 5 cm by 5 cm; it ships with a material analysis report - that presumably indicates what percentage of each metal is contained in the alloy - and offers custom engraving as an extra option.
Meet the cassowary. These are flightless birds native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northeastern Australia. There are three extant species. The most common of these, the southern cassowary, is the third tallest and second heaviest living bird, smaller only than the ostrich and emu.
All three species have horn-like but soft and spongy crests called casques on their heads, up to 18 cm (7 inches), which serves several purposes. The most interesting being that the wedge-shaped casque may have evolved to protect the head of this animal by deflecting falling fruit, since cassowaries spend a lot of time under trees where seeds the size of golfballs or larger fall from heights of up to 30 metres! ...
Pangolins, often called "scaly anteaters," are solitary, primarily nocturnal animals, are easily recognized by their full armor of scales. If that's not impressive enough, their tongues are attached near its pelvis and last pair of ribs, and when fully extended is longer than the animal’s head and body. At rest a pangolin’s tongue retracts into a sheath in its chest cavity.
The long-lasting search and debate around the size and identity of the world's smallest free-living insect seems to have now ended with the precise measurement and second record of the featherwing beetle species (Scydosella musawasensis). Described in 1999, representatives of this minute beetle have recently been retrieved once again from fungus in Colombia. The smallest individual measured the astounding 0.325 mm. ...
Sumatran rhinoceroses are believed to be the oldest surviving rhino species - and the closest surviving relative of woolly rhinos, which died off 10 000 years ago. Apart from being the smallest rhino, they're completely covered in hair (shown above), especially the young ones. Their hair is very soft and they also sound like humpback whales when you hear them, making them incredibly cute.
The study, titled "CFT 70 (Countermeasure and Functional Testing in Head-Down Tilt Bed Rest Study)," aimed to learn more about how human bone and muscle might deteriorate in space. According to Drew Iwanicki, who took part in the study and who is pictured above, he experienced some serious headaches because of increased blood pressure to his head. His spine went through some serious pain, and staying horizontal was difficult. However, as soon as the bed was tilted to the vertical position, after 70 days of course, his legs felt heavier and his heart started to beat at 150 BPMs. ...
I was shopping around in Michigan a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon this product proudly made by the Velvet Peanut Butter Company. I was appalled when I read that it's made from Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, while the trans-fat count is at zero grams - a very misleading claim.
This product is literally poisonous for human consumption, yet it is prepared for young children and people of lower socioeconomic status, given its low price tag. Hydrogenated oil is scientifically known to increase LDL 'bad' cholesterol and lower HDL 'good' cholesterol, thereby leading to heart disease and cancer. It should be against the law to feed it to kids.
In the United States, labelling a product trans-fat free doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't conta ...
Known an fibrodysplasia ossificans progressive, or FOB for short, this disease can suddenly turn a person’s tissues and muscles into bone, thereby permanently immobilizing parts of the bodies. Joints such as elbows or ankles may become frozen in place; jaw motion can be impeded and the rib cage fixed, making eating or even breathing difficult. Currently, no cure exists to combat this rare condition.
You guessed it! The tufted ground squirrel (Rheithrosciurus macrotis), also known as the vampire squirrel.
Check out what may be the first video of the remarkable and rare animal. This species of squirrel is twice the size of most tree squirrels, reputedly has a taste for blood, and has the bushiest tail of any mammal compared with its body size with its tail being 30 percent larger than its body.
Migaloo is a rare albino humpback whale found near the coastlines of Queensland, Australia. Adult humpbacks range in length from 12-16 metres (39-52 feet) and weigh approximately 36000 kilograms (79,000 lb).
From July 10 to September 30, a team from the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) exploration ship, Okeanos Explorer, is going to be mapping the deep waters of the Hawaiian Archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean. This largely unknown deep-sea ecosystems will be explored for the first time using robotic submersibles, as shown in the video above.
An old fishing village on the island of Shengshan on the Yangtze River was abandoned for economic reasons, only to become one with nature.
The island, a few hours east of Hangzhou Bay, is a stark contrast to the vibrant metropolitan skyline of nearby Shanghai - an image conjured up in many westerners' minds when imagining populous China. Some of the islands at the mouth of the Yangtze river are popular tourist destinations and have been described as a paradise for seafood lover, while others are inhabitable. The stunning scenery on Shengshan Island is the result of the houses and outbuildings being slowly consumed by nature. The seaside village now lies empty because it was more economical for the fishermen to move and work on the mainland ...
Trichobezoar, the hairball in the shape of a stomach removed from a 12 year-old girl after she spent six years eating her hair. On display at the National Museum of Health & Medicine in Maryland.
Crows are known for aggressively harassing other raptors that are much bigger in size when spotted in their territories and usually these ‘intruders’ simply retreat without much fuss. However, in this frame the crow did not seem to harass the bald eagle at such close proximity and neither did the bald eagle seem to mind the crow’s presence invading its personal space.
Saharan silver ants live in sands that get as hot as 70°C, but the ants themselves can't get any hotter than 53.6°C. To survive, they've developed a hairy and silvery coating that reflects most of the light that hits them - and keeps them from getting cooked!
Hyperion, ranked as the world's tallest known living tree, has not had its location revealed publicly for fear that human traffic would upset the ecosystem the tree inhabits. This fabulous tree is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) found in Northern California that was measured at 115.61 m (379.3 ft).
Myrmarachne is a genus of jumping spiders which imitate an ant by waving their front legs in the air to simulate antennae. Some species also look strikingly like ants to avoid being attacked by them!
A UK designer has created a new font that aims to help people understand what it feels like to read and write when you have dyslexia. It was accomplished by erasing around 40 percent of the lines from classic typeface Helvetica. Try to read the following:
The poster above says: THIS TYPOGRAPHY IS NOT DESIGNED TO RECREATE WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO READ TO READ. IF YOU WERE DYSLEXIC, IT IS DESIGNED TO STIMULATE THE FEELING OF READING WITH DYSLEXIA BY SLOWING THE READING TIME OF THE VIEWER DOWN TO A SPEED OF WHICH SOMEONE WHO HAS DYSLEXIA WOULD READ.
This species of bird, known as the Plum-coloured Starling or Amethyst Starling, is the smallest of the Southern African starlings, reaching only about 18 cm in length. The sexes are strongly sexually dimorphic, meaning that there is a distinct difference in the appearance of the male and female. The breeding male is brilliantly coloured, with feathers an iridescent shining plum violet colour along the length of is back, wings, face and throat, contrasting with bright white on the rest of the body. Females (and juveniles) are a streaky brown and buff colour, and can easily be mistaken for a thrush. ...
The Luzon bleeding heart dove (Gallicolumba luzonica) gets its name from a splash of vivid red colour at the centre of their white breasts. On first sight it is hard to believe that the bird has not recently been wounded. A reddish hue that extends down the belly furthers the illusion of blood having run down the bird's front.
Known as black earth tongues (Trichoglossum hirsutum) for their unique shape, this club-shaped fungus measures 3 to 8 cm high, and can be in the woodlands of North America, Europe, and Africa.
These brightly colored crayfish are found in Indonesia. While colored crayfish have been sold commercially in Asia since the early 2000s, this recently-discovered sub-species has a distinctive body shape and color from others in the Cherax family.
In July 2011, a 52-year-old woman presented at a psychiatric clinic in the Netherlands reported that for her entire life she’d seen multiple peoples’ faces change into dragon-like faces. She was suffering from what is known as prosopometamorphopsia; a psychiatric disorder in which faces appear distorted. What made matters worse, researchers couldn’t work out what was causing this to occur. Various brain scans including MRI, electroencephalogram, and neurological examinations, as well as blood tests were all normal. One area of the brain that might be the cause is the fusiform gyrus, which is the part of our face recognition circuitry. The fusiform gyrus is located in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex, and damage to it can make people ha ...
This is the sky blue mushroom (Entoloma hochstetteri), a species of mushroom found in New Zealand and India. The small mushroom is a distinctive all-blue colour, while the gills have a slight reddish tint from the spores. The blue colouring of the fruit body is due to three azulene pigments. Entoloma hochstetteri is not edible, but whether or not it is poisonous is unknown. This species was one of six native fungi featured in a set of fungal stamps issued in New Zealand in 2002. It is also seen on the reverse side of the $50 bank note, issued by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 1990.
Lost Lake, located in central Oregon, is known for rapidly draining every year through a six-foot (two-meter) wide hole in the lake's bottom (as shown in the video). Early in the following spring, however, the lake fills up again, as snowmelt from the surrounding mountains accumulates faster than water can drain out through the hole. That hole is really a lava tube - a geologic feature made when lava cools around the edges of a river of molten rock. After the hot lava drains away, it can leave an empty space. ...
Thanks to a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, we now know what 170-year-old champagne (kept in near perfect aging conditions) tastes like! Tasters described the aroma of the champagne - likely the oldest ever imbibed - as spicy, smoky, and leathery.
At 9% alcohol by volume, it was significantly less alcoholic than the modern version, which contains about 12% alcohol, likely due to a less efficient fermentation process. The researchers also found traces of chemicals from wood, suggesting that the champagne was fermented in barrels.
Eucalyptus deglupta, commonly called rainbow eucalyptus, is a very large, fast-growing, broadleaved evergreen tree that is native to moist humid tropical forested areas with high rainfall in New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippine Islands (Island of Mindanao).
It is perhaps best noted for its smooth orange-tinted trunk bark which peels in summer to reveal a unique and sometimes stunning multi-colored bark (as described by the common name of rainbow eucalyptus) consisting of streaks of pale green, red, orange, gray and purple-brown. ...
On the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, you might be lucky to find a black flamingo. Normal flamingoes are born white and grey, and turn their iconic shade of pinky orange around the age of two, as a result of the high carotenoid content of the algae and crustaceans that they eat.
Experts believe that this individual (and potentially the other bird spotted in Israel) has a genetic condition that causes it to overproduce melanin, changing its feathers to black.
Belonging to the class Arachnida, Amblypygids, also known as whip spiders or tailless whip scorpions, form a separate order of arachnids alongside the spiders, scorpions, and others. The name "amblypygid" means "blunt rump", a reference to a lack of the flagellum ("tail"). They are harmless to humans, and possess no silk glands or venomous fangs. They rarely bite if threatened, but can grab fingers with pedipalps (thorn-like appendages), resulting in thorn-like puncture injury. ...
A 30-year-old Russian man has announced that he will volunteer to transplant his head onto another person's body. Earlier this year, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero outlined the transplant technique he intends to follow in the journal Surgical Neurology International, a procedure that is predicted to last 36 hours, and requiring the assistance of 150 doctors and nurses.
"I would not wish this on anyone," says top surgeon. Watch Dr. Sergio Canavero speak about head transplantation below.
Coat the inside of the bottle with LiquiGlide! LiquiGlide works by creating a thin layer of lubricant that prevents friction caused by sticky foods and substances. Created originally in 2012 by a professor, Kripa Varanasi and his grad students at MIT, its makers hope that its application into the containers of various products, including gel, mayonnaise, and glue will help reduce waste. Interestingly, studies show that people end up throwing out up to a quarter of a product because it’s too much of a pain to coax out the layers that stick to the container. ...
Nicknamed ‘goldenbugs’, this pretty little molten gold beetle is the golden tortoise beetle (Charidotella sexpunctata). It grows to around 5.0 to 7.0 mm in length and favour foods such as sweet potato and morning glory. Strangely, it can completely change colour while having sex.
Watch uranium emits radiation inside a cloud chamber. This is a small piece of uranium mineral sitting in a cloud chamber, which means you can see the process of decay and radiation emission.
Lithops are succulents that have evolved to avoid being eaten by animals by blending in with pebbles and stones. In botany, succulent plants, are plants having some parts that are more than normally thickened and fleshy, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. Succulent plants may store water in various structures, such as leaves and stems.
With its exceptional hearing, a red fox can target a mouse hidden under two feet of crusted snow. Springing high in the air, it can break through the crusted spring snow with its nose and body completely vertical under the snow.
"Rather than having to photograph from behind wire fences, [I hope to] capture images of animals such as lions in the wild, free and unrestrained," writes Greg Van Dugteren of this image taken at New Zealand's Orana Wildlife Park.
The green wings of luna moths, with their elegant, long tails, aren't just about style. New research finds they also help save the insects from becoming bat snacks by creating a distracting acoustic signal, which causes these predators to zero in on the wings rather than more vital body parts.
This perfect little cloud-covered island looks like an area of a game that you’re not allowed to access just yet. In reality it's Lítla Dímun, a small island in the Faroe Islands of Denmark.
These snowflakes were spotted all over New York City. Meteorologist Chris Dolce explained that all of these sightings are due to the specific way they've fallen:
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If snowflakes stay separated from each other like you see in these photos, and if you look closely enough, you can sometimes see the structure of snowflakes with your naked eye.
There are many different types of crystal patterns and these star-shaped snowflakes are just one example. The dendrite, a star-shape with varying patterns, is the most common shape of a snowflake.
The most venomous caterpillar in the U.S., known as the furry puss caterpillar (Megalopyge opercularis) sent many people in the eastern U.S. to the hospital last September. While these insects may look soft, their outer comb-over hides small, extremely toxic spines that stick in your skin.
While this may look like sushi, it's actually Argentina's pink fairy armadillo. This rarely seen animal has silky white hair and a pinkish carapace; it ranges in size from 3.3 to 4.6 inches (84 to 117 millimeters) long, making it one of the smallest species of armadillos. The animal is also nocturnal and has the ability to bury itself in lightning speed given its long claws, which are an astonishing one-sixth the length of the body. ...
Anywhere between 1 in 30 million and 1 in 50 million, according to some estimates. In August of 2014, one lucky fisherman captured an extremely rare "calico" lobster in New Hampshire.
I have not given 'the best way to die' much thought yet, but apparently a leading doctor and the former editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal (BMJ) has claimed cancer is the best way to die.
Dr. Richard Smith believes that cancer provides opportunity to reflect on life before it ends is important and urges charities and the medical world to "stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer".
In a blog published in The BMJ, the doctor wrote that while most people tell him they would prefer a sudden death, he thinks that is very hard on the families of the deceased.
"The long, slow death from dementia may be the most awful as you are slowly erased, but then again when death comes it may be just a light kiss," he wrote.
In a paper this week in Science, two scientists at John Hopkins have united biology and mathematics to propose a mathematical formula to explain the genesis of cancer.
Take the number of cells in an organ, identify what percentage of them are long-lived stem cells, and determine how many times the stem cells divide. With every division, there’s a risk of a cancer-causing mutation in a daughter cell. Thus, Tomasetti and Vogelstein reasoned, the tissues that host the greatest number of stem cell divisions are those most vulnerable to cancer. When Tomasetti crunched the numbers and compared them with actual cancer statistics, he concluded that this theory explained two-thirds of all cancers.
“Using the mathematics of evolution, you can really ...
This bird might look like a holiday ornament, but it is actually a rare half-female, half-male northern cardinal, with female plumage on the left and male on the right. A new study suggests being half-and-half carries consequences: The cardinal didn’t have a mate, and observers never heard it sing.
Whenever anyone mentions the word possum, I immediately recall the Simpsons episode where Homer conducts the monorail.
However, unlike the possums found in Homer's closet, the animal you see right above is a western pygmy possum, native to Australia. It might look absolutely tiny, but it's actually one of the largest species of pygmy possum in the world. Another interesting fact is that like all pygmy possums, the western pygmy possum is great at entering mini hibernating periods called torpor.
This is the semi-transparent eyelid of the red-eyed tree frog, Agalychnis Callidryas. Frogs aren't the only creatures with 'third eyelids' that keep their eyes moist without blocking vision completely. Sharks, cats, crocodiles, polar bears and camels have them too.
Meet the Australian turtle frog, in all its pink, stubby, Muppet-faced glory. Their courting sessions last an impressive FOUR MONTHS before any mating takes place.
Colourized photo featuring some of the greatest science thinkers of our time, including Curie, Durac, Pauli, Einstein, Schrodinger and more. Can you name them all?
Kenny is a white tiger that was ‘selectively’ inbred while in captivity in the United States. As zoos and exotic pet stores along with consumers have increased the demand for white tigers, breeders have attempted to recreate the ideal white tiger - large snout, blue eyes, white fur - by relying on a limited pool of white tigers that are in captivity.
The result? With such a limited gene pool, white tigers are born with an astoundingly high rate of deformities and health issues. For example, Kenny is mentally retarded, has significant physical limitations, and is considered the first tiger with down syndrome.
The 3 year-old male orangutan shown above also has characteristics that are similar to people with Down syndrome. It is seen from his h ...
Looks like someone got all dressed up to celebrate not being turned into a Thanksgiving turkey dinner! Kidding... this strange bird is actually an ocellated turkey, native to the Yucatán Peninsula.
Learning about how to become an elephant is almost synonymous with learning how to rediscover what it means to be human. Understanding elephants and saving elephants is a lesson in humanity. So many traits that are innate in elephants are those that we humans strive to be and possess. The "Elephant Lessons" take what we learn about elephant minds, culture and lives and applies it to our own everyday living to cultivate elephant qualities that are within each of us. Today's Lesson focuses on the Importance of Family.
Dame Daphne Sheldrick (photo shown above), the founder and director of The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, has lived in Kenya and has been hand-rearing baby and orphaned elephants for over thirty years. She notes that they share ...
Cherry blossom stones are entirely natural, containing complex mineral deposits that look just like gold and pink flowers when they're broken in half. And believe it or not, these incredibly rare stones are only found in one place on Earth - Japan.
This is Zeus, a blind Western Screech Owl whose eyes look like forming galaxies. The stellar effect is likely caused by chunky vitreous strands in his eyes. The handsome owl was found injured in Southern California and now lives at the Wildlife Learning Centre in Los Angeles.
This beautiful mosaic of leaves is caused by a mysterious natural phenomenon known as 'crown shyness'. Seen here in a cluster of Kapur trees in Malaysia, scientists suspect that it occurs when young shoots become sensitive to touch, and stop growing once they graze other leaves.
When chemistry and physics come together, it looks awesome. This is the emission spectra of the Elements - in other words, these are the colors they emit in the gaseous state.
Red alligator eyes staring back at you may be unnerving, but there's nothing supernatural about it. The glow is caused when light reflects off a membrane in the eye called the tapetum, which helps nocturnal hunters such as alligators and crocodiles make the most of the limited light.
This strange little guy is the aptly named pig-nosed turtle. Native to the Northern Territory in Australia and parts of New Guinea, it uses that odd, piggy snout just like a double-barrelled snorkel.
Called Paradis Sparkling, this new effervescent apple variety that fizzes in your mouth when you eat it will be on the market next year, but you can buy a tree now and grow your own. This might just be the best hangover cure ever
It takes hundreds of hours to become a proficient helicopter pilot but this new 'volocopter' could change all that. Its 18 rotor blades make the craft incredibly stable and within two years it could be on the market
About 4.5 million Nemophila menziesii - a California wildflower commonly known as baby blue eyes - carpet the hills at Hitachi Seaside Park in Japan. The flowers peak from the end of April to the first week of May.
Phillipsia subpurpurea is a species of fungus in the family Sarcoscyphaceae. It is found in Australia where it grows as a saprophyte on wood. It's cup-shaped fruit bodies lack stipes and have purplish interior surfaces.
Look at this fat little frog nugget. This is the native Australian crucifix frog, named for the ginormous cross pattern that runs across its back. When threatened, it oozes a milky 'frog glue' to render itself a terrible meal.
This stunning photo of a full circle rainbow was captured over Cottesloe Beach near Perth, Australia last year by a helicopter flying between a setting sun and a downpour.
Not promoting anyone here, but I do like this quote. The goal of science is to come as close as we can to understanding the cause-effect realities of the natural world. It's never "truth" or "facts". "Truth" and "facts" can mean different things to different people.
This remarkably slender green vine snake, Oxybelis fulgidus, is a colubrid from Central America and northern South America. It is mildly venomous and is shown here opening its mouth in threat display.
Nature likes to be a little fabulous sometimes. That's why it makes hot pink animals including: fluorescent slugs from Australia; poisonous shocking pink dragon millipedes from Thailand; pink-bryozoan munching nudibranchs from California; and hairy squat lobsters.
Don't ask questions, just get on. Genets are small, mongoose-like felines found in Africa - and this one has been caught on camera hitching rides from at least two different species over the past month. This is the first time this behaviour has ever been seen in the mammal...
These pretty little insects are blue-banded bees, native to Australia. They use a special technique called 'buzz pollination', which involves vibrating their bodies to shake particles of pollen free from flowers. Crops such as tomatoes, blueberries, eggplants and chillies rely on it.
Fuzzy green aliens? Not quite, but that doesn't make the colony of living balls that took up residence on an Australian beach last weekend any less peculiar.
"They're actually a really unusual growth form of seaweed, because seaweeds mostly grow on the rocks but occasionally they get knocked off and rolled around in the ocean forming these beautiful little balls. It's quite an unusual phenomenon, it's only been seen a handful of times around the world."
The bizarre helmeted hornbill is the only bird of its kind with a solid head 'casque', or helmet. They use these bony features to battle each other - ramming their heads together, in mid-air, for up to two hours at a time.
We're all thinking it... this watermelon looks like a big green butt. Accidentally grown in Japan, it formed when two watermelons grew too close together and fused. And it turns out that 'Japanese butt melons' aren't all that uncommon
Building a modern-day replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza would take five years and around 5 billion dollars to build. Even with access to as many stone-carrying vehicles, cranes and helicopters as required, it would still take 1,500 to 2,000 workers around five years to replicate the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is a prime candidate for life in our solar system beyond Earth. It contains water and is also the only known solar system body to have plate tectonics.
This image, released by NASA a few days ago, overlays a year's worth of photographs of the Sun, revealing the migration of active regions towards the equator.
Meet the common spotted cuscus from Cape York in Australia and Papua New Guinea. To hide their golden coats from predators while they're sleeping in the trees, they curl leaves around their bodies like a blanket.
The sophistication of ants never ceases to amaze. New footage of an undocumented behaviour reveals a ‘daisy-chaining’ technique, in which ants link themselves together to haul large food away.
A doctor chronicles the signatures of his patient as the disease took hold of her. Our love goes out to anyone who's dealt with this awful disease in some way.
Meet the tiny book scorpion, Chelifer cancroides. If you have a collection of old books, you probably have an army of book scorpions protecting it, because they eat the book lice that eat the glue that was once used by traditional bookbinders.
At 29 years old, this is the world's oldest wombat. In the wild, wombats usually only live to five years old. And with no female partners to speak of, 'Patrick' is a virgin.
This is a chicken's egg without its shell. The egg white consists of 90% water and 10% dissolved proteins, while the yolk contains 100% of the egg's fat and cholesterol. Which is why it tastes so great...
In Japan, firefly squid - or hotaru ika, as the locals call them - rise 600 metres (2,000 feet) to the surface of the water and light it up with their electric blue bioluminescence.
These are all real, and perfectly edible. Baby-shaped pears, heart-shaped watermelons and square apples are hitting supermarkets in China and Japan. But are these fruits just frivolous fun? The answer, for the most part, is yes.
This weather-tracking glass sphere can concentrate sunlight up to 10,000 times, and generate electricity even on a cloudy day. According to its researchers, this solar-harvesting device is 35% more efficient than traditional flat panels. It also looks really good.
Woah. This is an Alligator Snapping Turtle from the Suwanee River in Florida, and you don't want to mess with it - it delivers a nasty bite and can hold onto its victims for several HOURS. This guy was caught as part of routine environmental surveys involving Professor Arthur Georges, the Chief Scientist of the Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra.
Here's a good reminder of how enormous elephants are - this one's using a Volkswagen as a scratching post. Photographed in South Africa, the elephant was in musth, which is a sexually aggressive period experienced by elephant bulls once a year.
What's whiter than white? These Cyphochilus beetles from Southeast Asia. Their scales are whiter than paper, and no human technology can replicate their brilliance.
Twice a year, locals in central Nepal scale the Himalayan foothills to harvest honey produced by the world's largest honeybee (Apis dorsata laboriosa). Single adult bees of this species can measure up to 3.0 cm (1.2 in) in length, and are highly adapted to its highland habitat.
The southern black racer (Coluber constrictor priapus) is a non-venomous American snake that is very active during the day. This may explain why it was spotted winding its way through a wire fence.
The Brazilian Jaboticaba tree well and truly takes advantage of all the surface area on its trunk by growing its sweet, grape-like fruits all over it. It's said to have evolved its trunk-fruit so animals could reach them and distribute the seeds.
The cookie cutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) is as fearless as they come! This small, 20-inch shark can take on giants like whales and larger sharks, and have even been known to mistakenly try to bite submarines. They dwell in the deep warm ocean and come closer to the surface as the sun sets to grab a quick snack off their unsuspecting prey. Cookie cutter sharks approach their victims from below, latch on with their suction cup style lips, bite and then twist (below). A nice, round hole is left as a souvenir. They get this easy meal by tricking other ocean residents with their distinctive brown collar, which may act as a lure that allows the cookie cutter shark to be seen as a smaller, not-so-scary fish. As frightening as they seem, the ...
This hefty guy is the giant horned caterpillar of the royal walnut moth (Citheronia regalis) from North America. These caterpillars can grow to a whopping 15 cm (6 inches) long!
When a female kiwi is about to about to lay her egg, it fills almost her entire body cavity. She's usually unable to eat anything in the days before laying.
Meet this 18-day-old embryo of an African night adder. These snakes might be venomous, but they're surprisingly friendly - in captivity they've been known to crawl on people, trying to tuck themselves into their clothes.
Meet Italy’s double tree, the Bialbero de Casorzo. That cherry tree on top isn't being parasitic - its roots have grown right through the hollow truck of the mulberry tree into the earth below, so there's no stealing of nutrients going on here.
Called the Tree of 40 Fruit, this tree produces an array of stone fruit varieties including plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries and almonds, every year. Sixteen of these trees are now growing in the US.
Indian researchers have crossbred different varieties of mango to develop seedless mangoes. When it comes to fruit, it doesn’t get much better than a 200-gram, fleshy, sweet, seedless mango.
Doctors bow in reverence to cancer victim, Liang Yaoyi, in China. Nine-year-old Liang died from a brain tumour and donated his organs because, "There are many people doing great things in the world. I want to be a great kid too." What an incredible person.
A new report has ranked the world’s 16 major economies according to their energy efficiency, and Germany - who set a world record in May for generating 74% of their power needs from renewable energy - came out on top.
With an estimated birth year of 1832, Jonathan was alive for the invention of the safety pin, the telephone, and the roller coaster. Here, he is photographed in 1902 and today, on the South Pacific Island of Saint Helena.
Dozens of stones up to 300 kg in weight are traveling for hundreds of metres across a dried lake in America. But no one's ever seen them do it. So, what's making these Death Valley 'sailing stones' move?
These may look like party balloons but they are actually rainbow grapes. These grapes aren't a rare species, they are created during Véraison (when grapes turn from green to purple as they ripen).
Obese people often have weak knees because squatting exerts of a force of up to 10 times one's body mass. This computer animation of an obese man makes the problem quite transparent.
Nature never ceases to amaze. Found in Canada, this toad had a mutation that caused its eyes to grow in the roof of its mouth, which means it had to open its mouth to see.
At 300 micrometres wide, this is the most minuscule masterpiece in the world. Made from nanopixels, the researchers who made it are now using the technology to come up with new solutions for data storage.
This is what all the white matter in your brain looks like. This complex 3D-printed model accurately reflects the 2,000 strands of nerve cells that branch through every human being's brain.
Often found above mountains and hills, lenticular clouds form when a current of moist air is forced upwards as it travels over a huge piece of land, which causes the moisture to condense and turn into cloud particles.
This is a scanning electron micrograph of a kidney stone. These stones are pesky formations of calcium that form in the human body and are considered the most common disorder of the urinary tract.
Bought from a pet shop, Alex the parrot was the subject of a 30-year experiment by psychologist Irene Pepperberg, who demonstrated that language, communication and intelligence are not just the result of a large primate brain; “lesser” animals also possess high cognitive ability. Alex could count, knew more than 100 words and even understood syntax. When he died, his last words to Pepperberg were: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you”
This is the red-eyed gaper, a type of anglerfish that can be found up to 2km below the ocean's surface. Its large head and red blobby face may not look too attractive, but the gaper lures prey in with the shiny patch between its eyes.
Some species of lutung monkeys from Southeast Asia are born with bright orange coats. Called natal coats, they're thought to have evolved to stop adult males killing young males. In a rare subspecies, the golden coat is sometimes retained into adulthood.
Lingcods are sometimes found with amazing, edible blue flesh. A bile pigment called biliverdin seems to be the cause, but exactly how it gets into the flesh of the fish remains a mystery.
Meet Wolffia globosa, the smallest flowering plant in the world. The plant measures less than 0.2 mm in diameter, and can be found in streams and ponds in Australia, Asia and some regions of the Americas.
The sand in Okinawa, Japan, is made up of tiny stars! These "stars" are exoskeletons of marine protozoas (foraminifera) that have washed up, most famously, on Okinawa's Hoshizuna Beach.
On 24 December 2012, an amazing double helix cloud was spotted just outside Moscow in Russia. While it's still up for debate, a pilot's perfectly timed barrel roll could have been the cause.
No, Nintendo didn't make these. They're microscopic suckers found on squid arms, and they're each about 400 micrometres wide - smaller than the width of a human hair.
Arachnophobes - stay indoors. Heavy rain and flooded farmlands have caused millions of spiders to swarm over Jordan Valley Road in Hikurangi, New Zealand.
While this little guy may look like some sort of 'Hummingbee' it's actually a Bee Fly. They sneak their eggs into beehives, where their larvae can parasitize bee larvae and eat their food reserves!
The Sun, through an H-alpha filter, which captures a narrow band of light containing the frequency of photons emitted when a hydrogen's electron drops from the 3rd energy level to the 2nd.
The two marmosets - small, New World monkeys - had been a closely bonded couple for more than three years. Then, one fateful day, the female had a terrible accident. Her partner left two of their infants alone in the tree and jumped down to apparently comfort and mourn her. Humans mourn their dead, of course, and some recent studies have strongly suggested that chimpanzees do as well. This new observation suggests that mourning is more widespread among primates than previously thought.
This is the Giant weta. Native to the small islands of New Zealand, it's one of the heaviest insects in the world - the largest on record weighed around 70 g.
These chips have been made out of cricket carcases. The first edible insect farm in the U.S. has opened in an attempt to create a more sustainable food source. And we should probably try to get over the yuck factor.
Meet the Buffy Helmetcrest and White-bearded Helmetcrest, two new species of hummingbirds found in Colombia and Venezuela. Looks like someone's had a run-in with too much styling product...
We couldn't make this stuff up if we tried: French beekeepers were shocked to find their bees had produced a supply of thick, blue honey. Turns out the bees had been feeding on the colourful shells of M&Ms - a Mars bar processing plant sat just 4 km away.
The stunning Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher from Southeast Asia has a special structure in its eyes that allows it to transition from the air to the water at 40km/h, while maintaining its super-sharp, prey-spotting vision. Frogs, beware.
What would happen if the Moon orbited at the same distance as the International Space Station? An animator has created a mind-blowing video of what it would look like:
Foxfire, also called "fairy fire" is a crazy glow in the dark fungus. The bluish-green glow is attributed to luciferase, an oxidative enzyme, which emits light as it reacts with luciferin. It is widely believed that the light attracts insects to spread spores, or acts as a warning to hungry animals, like the bright colors exhibited by some poisonous or unpalatable animal species. Although generally very dim, in some cases foxfire is bright enough to read by. ...
The Mexican mole lizard is a pink, lizard-like reptile that ranges in length between 18 to 24 cm, but doesn't live very long - a longevity of one to two years. Their skin is closely segmented to give a corrugated appearance, and like earthworms, their underground movement is by peristalsis of the segments. The forelegs are strong and paddle-like, while the hindlegs have disappeared, leaving behind only vestigial bones visible in X-rays.
Lyrebird are most notable for their superb ability to mimic natural and artificial sounds from their environment. As well as their extraordinary mimicking ability, lyrebirds are notable because of the striking beauty of the male bird's huge tail when it is fanned out in display; and also because of their courtship display. Lyrebirds have unique plumes of neutral coloured tailfeathers and are among Australia's best-known native birds.
Advances in technology have given rise to an abundance of ways to share our stories. Created for the Exceptional Hardware Software Meeting (EHSM) in Germany next month, "Juanita Knits the Planet" is the world's smallest comic strip, detailing a day in the life of Juanita, a ten micron-tall girl-turned-robot. Long story short, this is done by blasting a stream of electrons at the surface of the hair, stripping away tiny layers of it. The electrons are directed using a tiny tube.
This is a breathtaking 'earthrise' viewed from the surface of the moon. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sees the Earth rise 12 times a day but is usually so busy imaging the moon's surface it doesn't get to capture the moment. This colourised image was taken on 1 February 2014.
'Fire rainbows', also known as iridescent clouds, are a rare phenomenon that only occur when the Sun is higher than 58° above the horizon and its light passes through cirrus clouds made of ice crystals. At the right alignment, the ice crystals act as a prism, and refract the light to look like a rainbow. ...
The hammerhead worm is a master of regeneration. Cut one into eight pieces, and you'll get seven new hammerhead worms. Twice a month they'll reproduce by deliberately sticking their tails to the ground, pulling them off, and that tail will become a new hammerhead worm.
The Okapi is native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. Despite the zebra-like stripes, it is actually more closely related to giraffes. While okapis travel for the most part by themselves within their home ranges, they still have ways of communicating with others whose ranges overlap. A scent gland on each foot leaves behind a sticky, tar-like substance wherever they have walked, marking their territory. Okapis have a great sense of smell. By checking the ground, an okapi can tell if another okapi has been there. Males also mark their territory by urine spraying. Normally silent, female okapis vocalize only when they are ready to breed. ...
One of the world's smallest deers (species known as chevrotains) was born in a zoo in southern Spain last week. The endangered Java mouse-deer is "no bigger than a hamster" and could fit in the palm of your hand. ...
This is not an illusion or some kind of sci-fi illustration. It's an actual laser beam, being shot at the eclipsed Moon on the 15 April 2014. The laser's target is the Apollo 15 retroreflector, which was left on the Moon by astronauts in 1971.
You are what you eat, especially if you happen to be an ant with a transparent abdomen, being fed a mixture of food colouring, sugar, and water by a curious scientist.
It's awe inspiring the fact that 100 years ago we were just beginning to experiment with flight. Now we are looking at quantum computers, gene therapy, a colony on Mars, and so much more. Life has been going on for three billion years. It's almost impossible to describe how rapid the recent change in technology has been. The future will be one hell of a sight if we make it that far.
Believe it or not, a bird made this. Vogelkop gardener bowerbirds from New Guinea go to extraordinary lengths to build a love nest from interwoven sticks and decorative objects to appear more attractive to a female.
This bizarre little beetle is a species of pill bug from the Monteverde cloud forest of Costa Rica. Just 5 mm long, it can shrink itself even smaller when threatened by curling itself up into a perfect ball.
NASA's 'Space Needle' (from the 1950s), or X-15, is the fastest and highest-flying manned aircraft. Decades after its record-breaking flights, this speed machine is inspiring a new generation of space planes.
A team of scientist are working to create an edible water-bottle. Rodrigo González and his team first took a frozen ball of water and dipped it into a calcium chloride solution, which formed a gelatinous layer. Then, the ball soaked in another solution made from brown algae extract, which encapsulated the ice in a second squishy membrane to reinforce the structure. Keeping the water in the algae solution for long periods of time allows the mold to become thicker and stronger.
Behold, the fantastically creepy caterpillar of the pink underwing moth (Phyllodes imperials). When it's threatened, this Australian native rears its upper body segments up and curls its head down towards its 'chest', to create the illusion of a much larger, much toothier, head.
This Malaysian katydid is one of the largest insects in the world, with their bodies growing to 15 cm (6 inches) long with a 25 cm (10 inch) long wingspan. Though the last thing you want to hear is that this giant insect is carnivorous, they pose absolutely no threat to humans (aside from haunting your dreams, of course).
Relatively speaking, the males of this species have the largest testes of any known animal at 14% of their body weight. If humans had the same ratio, a 91 kg (200 lb) man would have testes that weighed nearly 13 kgs (28 lbs)! ...
This is a snub-nosed monkey. They are found in Asia, with a range covering southern China as well as the northern parts of Vietnam and Myanmar. These monkey get their name - you guessed it - from the short stump of a nose on their round face, with nostrils arranged forward. They have relatively multicolored and long fur, particularly at the shoulders and backs. They grow to a length of 51 to 83 cm with a tail of 55 to 97 cm.
This is a trilobite beetle, found in lowland forests across Southeast Asia and India. Male and female trilobite beetles look so different from each other, that the only way researchers know they've found a pair from the same species is if they catch them mating!
The strangest moon in the Solar System is bright yellow. Taken by the Galileo spacecraft, this image shows Jupiter's moon, Io, and its incredibly bright colours derived from sulphur and molten silicate rock. Io is covered in volcanoes that are so active, they effectively turn the whole moon inside out. And some of Io's volcanic lava is so hot, it glows in the dark.
Meet the pollen-gilded bat (Phyllonycteris poeyi), really living up to its name. This species, from eastern Cuba, has specialised fur that grips onto pollen, creating a very handy moveable feast.
This is a baby kangaroo and, no, scientists have not cloned a dinosaur! April Fools came early this year, with some people falling for a hoax over the weekend that claimed this image of a baby kangaroo is actually a cloned Apatosaurus. Australian animals don't look that weird, do they?
The elusive Cuvier's beaked whale has set a new world record for the deepest and longest dive performed by any mammal. A new study has shown they can dive to nearly three kilometres below the surface, and can stay down there for more than two hours.
This tiny octopus hatchling looks like it wants to pick a fight with the eraser! This is a baby Caribbean pygmy octopus that was born at the Mote Marine Laboratory Aquarium in Florida in March. As you can see, it was extremely tiny at only a day old when this image was taken, but even when fully grown it will only be the size of a dollar coin.
The last 32 generators of the controversial dam were switched on at the end of July last year, and the gushing water that resulted could generate about 22,500 megawatts of energy, and even slowed down the Earth's rotation. But there's no reason to panic, Earth's rotation changes frequently.
Found all around the world, including off the coast of Australia, the tripod fish can live in depths of up to 6 km below the surface. The purpose of those super-long fins is to elevate the tripod fish to about a metre above the seabed, where the ocean's current is strong. This means that small prawns and crabs are ushered right into the tripod fish's gaping mouth, and all it has to do is stand there.
Bearded fireworms are the caterpillars of the sea. At home in parts of the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, their bristles can pierce the skin of an unsuspecting swimmer and deliver a powerful venom that will burn for hours.
This is Reed Flute Cave, in the Guangxi region of China. This natural limestone formation is over 180 million years old and contains inscriptions written in ink, which have been dated to as far back as 792 AD in the Tang Dynasty. The cave was named after the type of reed growing outside, which can be made into musical flutes.
Surgeons performed a C-section on this turtle and saved her life!
A turtle named Dabao was a bit lethargic and zookeepers at China’s Chengu City Zoo thought she was sick and sent her for x-rays. The results were surprising: 14 eggs were stuck in the birth canal. To make sure Dabao survived, the surgeons opened the shell with a skull opener, carefully removed the 14 eggs (which were immediately buried in sand to await hatching) and resealed the shell with epoxy resin.
This tiny camera invented by scientists F. Levent Degertekin can provide high-definition 3D images of your arteries. The camera, which is the size of an uncooked quinoa grain, uses ultrasound imaging techniques to capture what going on inside the body. The images produced can be used in the surgical theatre, giving doctors a direct view of obstructions in a blood vessel.
The male long-tailed widowbird from Africa has one of the most impressive tails in the Animal Kingdom. Up to eight of their 12 tail feathers can stretch to half a metre long, and their incredible lengths make it impossible for the males to fly in wet weather.
Luxury hotels in Sydney are now producing their own honey by setting up bee colonies on their rooftops. The Shangri-La already has five rooftop beehives that have produced 14 kilograms of honey since late last year for use in the hotel’s restaurants and kitchens. Considering the amount of honey used in these big hotels, this is a pretty promising initiative!
This odd species is Macrocilix maia, a moth found all over Asia, including India, Japan, Korea, China and Borneo. Its wing patterning features two symmetrical patterns that look like flies or caterpillars feeding on a bird dropping, which could act as a deterrent for predators. The moth even smells like bird droppings.
Meet Agama mwanzae, the Mwanza flat-headed rock agama. This beautiful lizard hails from Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya, and is very popular among collectors because he's dressed just like Spider-Man, only with a whole lot more pink.
After a class on out-of-body experiences, a psychology graduate student at the University of Ottawa came forward to researchers to say that she could have these voluntarily, usually before sleep. "She appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this," wrote the scientists in a study describing the case, published in February in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
One would think that if you could leave your own body and float above it, you'd be a little more... vocal about it. But since it was a common experience for her--one she "began performing as a child when bored with 'sleep time' at preschool... moving above her body" instead of napping--it may have appeared unremarkable. This is way more interesting than what I did, which wa ...
A 10-ft long snake, most probably a python, won a battle with a crocodile in northern Queensland. Local residents captured all the action on camera and managed to get some pretty interesting footage of the fight. The snake wrestled, constricted and finally ate the crocodile after a few hours of gruesome battle.
The blood orange is a variety of orange (Citrus × sinensis) with crimson, almost-blood-colored flesh. The fruit is smaller than an average orange; its skin is usually pitted, but can be smooth.
The distinctive dark flesh color is due to the presence of anthocyanins, a family of antioxidant pigments common to many flowers and fruit, but uncommon in citrus fruits. The flesh develops its characteristic maroon color when the fruit develops with low temperatures during the night.
It is not surprising that this family of moths are commonly called woolly bears or woolly worms, as the caterpillars of many species are really very hairy. The larvae can be full of poisonous chemicals acquired from their host plants, advertising that they are bad to eat with bright colours, bad odours and unusual shapes. The adult moths have distinctive wing venation and can also be distasteful when eaten. They produce ultrasonic sounds to warn off predators and confuse bats looking for a tasty treat. There are over 10,000 species worldwide including all the tiger, footmen, wasp and lichen moths. Amazingly, the caterpillars of some species can even survive freezing. ...
The gerenuk, also known as the Waller’s gazelle, is a long-necked species of antelope found in dry thorn bush scrub and desert in Eastern Africa. The word gerenuk comes from the Somali language, meaning “giraffe-necked”. Gerenuks have a relatively small head for their body, but their eyes and ears are proportionately large.
As this hawk-moth feeds on flowers and makes a similar humming sound, it looks a lot like a hummingbird. What’s interesting is that it is surprisingly good at learning colors.
The red-eyed crocodile skink (Tribolonotus gracilis) is native to New Guinea and parts of Indonesia and the Solomon Islands. They've got the thick, leathery skin, large bony scales, and creamy underbelly of a crocodile, but at no more than 25 cm long, they lack the size and teeth of their more intimidating relatives. They're one of just two types of skink in the world known to vocalise when threatened. ...
This is a mating ritual being performed by a colony of James's Flamingoes (Phoenicoparrus jamesi), native to Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. The males will all vocalise together, sticking their necks and heads straight up in the air, and turning them back and forth in unison to attract the females. ...
This is the island of Galesnjak, also known as Lovers’ Island! It has become a hot tourist destination after imaging by Google Earth showcased its perfectly lovely shape! Galesnjak is located in the Zadarski Kanal of the Adriatic Sea, off the coast of Croatia.
This lady is quite an awesome mum. Most bugs lay their eggs and leave them, but the horned shield bug will guard the eggs zealously until they hatch and then stay with her little ones for several weeks, that’s why they are also known as the parent bug.
This is the first image taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover of what Earth looks like from its station on Mars. Not one to let a golden social media moment go to waste, Curiosity promptly tweeted: “Look Back in Wonder… My first picture of Earth from the surface of Mars."
We've all heard about the right brain-left brain theory, which we owe to Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry. The theory suggests that ‘left-brained’ people are more logical and analytic than ‘right-brained’ people, who are more creative and have a holistic approach to life, but is it true? Despite its popularity, researchers say that most people learn to be both logical and creative and that lateralised patterns of brain activity change as we age. ...
Mason bees (Osmia avoseta) do not live in colonies. These solitary bees make their nests from collected flower petals. These tiny nests are about half an inch tall and hold a single egg. The mother glues the petals together with nectar and fills the inside with nectar and pollen before laying the egg inside, so that her offspring will have food when it emerges.
This is the first photograph taken of an orangutan using a tool to fish in Borneo. The photo captures a moment when this male was using the pole to catch fish trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.
The sword-billed hummingbird’s bill is actually longer than its entire body. As the sole species in the Ensifera genus, this hummingbird is found across South America. The bill can grow up to 14 cm, so these birds have to use their feet to groom themselves and typically rest with their bill pointed upward so they can balance.
This is what an embryonic leopard cub looks like in the womb. It's not a photograph, but a combination of three-dimensional ultrasound scans, tiny cameras and computer graphics used to create realistic representations of animal fetuses for a National Geographic documentary.
The Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) has a range running from southern Mexico to western Panama. Its sinuous, jade-green tail feathers once adorned the clothing of Mayan rulers and served as currency. Now, bird-watching tourism boosts local economies in quetzal territory.
An Australian Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) showing off some excellent camouflage against a tree trunk. The birds are nocturnal and stay safe while they're roosting during the day by disguising themselves as a tree branch. They're known to stand perfectly still and upright with their beaks in the air for hours.
This is an undulatus asperatus cloud formation. The name translates loosely to “roughened or agitated waves” and although they appear ominous, they tend to dissipate without a storm forming.
In 2009 the formation was proposed as a separate cloud classification - if successful it will be the first cloud formation added since 1951 to the International Cloud Atlas of the World Meteorological Organisation. ...
Pandas produce a super powerful antibiotic that kills bacteria and fungi. The substance is released by the panda’s immune system to protect them from catching infections in the wild. Researchers are trying to decode the substance’s makeup as it could be used to develop treatments against drug-resistant superbugs.
A volcano in Indonesia produces lava that looks BLUE!
Though the molten sulfur looks red in daylight, during the night, the blue flames that reach heights of 5 meters (16 feet) are highly visible. The sulfur, which is right around its melting point at 115°C (240 °F), is pumped away from the volcano so it can cool and be collected by miners for 680 rupiahs per kilogram (about 2.5 cents per pound).
The Buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) is a remarkable species that has developed a unique strategy to evade predators. When at rest, this moth cleverly disguises itself as a broken stick, blending seamlessly with its surroundings. The moth's wings are intricately patterned and colored to mimic the texture and appearance of a twig, complete with jagged edges and bark-like markings.
This exceptional camouflage allows the Buff-tip moth to remain virtually invisible to predators such as birds and small mammals that may otherwise consider it a potential meal. By adopting this disguise, the moth gains a significant advantage in survival, as it can confidently rely on its remarkable mimicry to go undetected in its natural habitat. This fascinating ...
This is the very rare Turkish Halfeti rose. Although it looks like it's been spray painted, it's such a dark crimson colour that it looks pure black. The roses only grow during the summer in a Turkish village called Halfeti thanks to the unique soil conditions of the region and the pH levels of the groundwater. As they first bloom the flowers look dark red and fade to this black hue during the summer months.
Architectural and engineering firm Shimizu plans to solve Earth's climate crisis by building a band of solar panels 400 kilometres wide along the entire 11,000-kilometre equator of the Moon. The energy generated will be beamed back to Earth in the form of microwaves and converted into electricity at ground stations. The team hopes to start building the "Luna Ring" from Moon materials in 2035.
This is the colourful candy-striped land snail (Liguus virgineus), and it’s only found on Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba. For years its colourful shell made a popular souvenir for travellers visiting these Caribbean islands, but now a law forbids people from harvesting the shells and selling them.
Meet the guineafowl puffer (Arothron meleagris), all puffed-up and poisonous to deter any would-be predators. Found throughout the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Pacific Oceans, this spotty species loves feeding on tiny marine invertebrates and the tips of coral.
Ever wondered why two of the world's most delicious fruits - the mango and the avocado - have such enormous seeds? Turns out they likely evolved to be swallowed whole by megafauna, like our modern-day rhinos and elephants, that once ruled the Earth, to be deposited far away from their host plant and wrapped in a fresh dollop of fertiliser. That's why these seeds are nicknamed 'ghosts of evolution'.
This is a 'ghost heart' it was soaked in an ingredient found in shampoo to wash away all the cells. This technique leaves a protein scaffold that can be injected with stem cells from a person who needs a transplant, guaranteeing that the transplant won't be rejected.
Say hello to the umbrellabird! The Umbrellabird is a large, tropical species of bird that is found inhabiting the rainforests of Central and South America. There are three different species of Umbrellabird which are the Long-Wattled Umbrellabird, the Amazonian Umbrellabird and the Bare-Necked Umbrellabird all of which live in slightly different areas. All three species are relatively similar in appearance with an umbrella-like crest on the top of their heads (for which they were named) and a pendant-shaped inflatable pouch on their throats. They are the largest species of perching bird (Passerine) in South America, but populations are currently falling mainly due to habitat loss. ...
An unlikely happy ending for the chemical weapon containers that were dumped in the Pacific Ocean after World War II - US scientists have discovered an array of sponges, crabs and anemones that have made them home. The barrels are still filled with unknown substances that threaten other species in the area, but these opportunistic creatures at least are thriving despite all odds.
Pareidolia is a phenomenon that allows us to "see" faces and other objects in completely unrelated objects and settings. Carl Sagan theorized that this provided an evolutionary advantage, as it allows humans to better recognize each other, even under poor visual circumstances. The important thing to remember is that even though these images may seem significant and life-changing, they aren't. It's all just a really fun figment of your imagination.
A water park in Kansas City is building a water slide, whose name aptly comes from the German word for "insane", that is over 164 feet tall. While nothing has been released about the speed of this slide, by our estimates, we'd say it'll be extremely terrifying.
The pretty creature, who is a native of Mexico and South America, does not lack the tissues that make up a full wing, but rather the coloured scales that other butterflies have.
A fossil site in Spain has turned up some astonishing results: mitochondrial DNA from hominins that lived 400,000 years ago. The DNA suggests they were related to the Denisovans; an extinct hominin group that was recently shown to have interbred with Neanderthals and modern humans. The results of the study were published this week in Nature from lead author Matthias Meyer from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The Sima de los Huesos is a cave fossil site in Spain that has been studied and excavated over the last 20 years. So far nearly 30 skeletons have been recovered from the site, all of which are at least ...
These death-defying alpine ibexes in Italy’s Gran Paradiso National Park climb on the dam in order to lick the salt and minerals from the bricks, according to park officials.
A composer by the name of Jim Wilson has recorded the sound of crickets and then slowed down the recording, revealing something so amazing. The crickets sound like they are singing the most beautiful chorus in perfect harmony. Though you may think it is human voices, everything you hear in this recording is in-fact crickets themselves!
This recording contains two tracks played at the same time: The first is the natural sound of crickets played at regular speed while the second is the slowed down version of crickets’ voices.
This extraordinary bird is an Ayam Cemani, an entirely black breed of Indonesian chicken. And when we say entirely, we mean it - not only are its feathers black, but so is its skin, its muscles, its bones and its organs. The only thing this chicken has that isn't black is its blood. This kind of hyper-pigmentation is known as fibromelanosis. ...
A ganzfeld experiment is a technique used in the field of parapsychology to test individuals for extrasensory perception (ESP). It uses homogeneous and unpatterned sensory stimulation to produce the ganzfeld effect, an effect similar to sensory deprivation.The ganzfeld effect has been utilized in many studies of the neuroscience of perception, not only parapsychology. The deprivation of patterned sensory input is said to be conducive to inwardly generated impressions.The technique was devised by Wolfgang Metzger in the 1930s as part of his investigation into the gestalt theory. ...
It’s a pretty rare event to find complete fossils in good condition. After millions of years any number of things could happen to destroy fossils before they are discovered and documented by scientists, if the animal even fossilizes at all. Finding well preserved baby animals is particularly hard, since they are more likely to have gotten trampled or eaten after their death. Phillip Currie from the University of Alberta has recently uncovered a juvenile Chasmosaurus belli that was so complete and intact, he was actually able to speculate about the cause of death.
Chasmosaurus belli is commonly found in British Columbia, Canada. It is a relative of the triceratops and has the familiar ornamental frill. Up to this point, all of the skeletons h ...
The transparent glass frog is found in Venezuela. It is made up of many specialized cells that have different functions. They form different parts of this organism, which are easy to see through its “glass” skin.
This is an albino redwood tree, with white needles instead of green because it's unable to produce chlorophyll. In order to survive, albino redwoods must join their roots to those of a normal redwood to obtain nutrients. Found in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park and Humboldt Redwoods State Park in the US, there are only around 20 known albino redwoods in the world, and their exact whereabouts have been kept secret as protection.
The king ragworm is a skilled hunter found in the northern hemisphere. The worm, which can grow over 120 cm long, also uses chemical signals to judge the risk of predation in the area.
This little guy on the left is the iron sulphide secreting scaly-foot gastropod. It's the only animal known to plate itself with metal and lives in a thermal vent deep in the ocean. But last year scientists found a pale, genetically identical version of the species (on the right) that doesn't secrete metal, leading scientists to question what the purpose of the armour really is.
Lasting on the skin for hours or days, the Lichtenberg Figure is caused by the rupture of capillaries under the skin when the lightning current passes through it. They're a major way that forensic scientists can tell a lightning victim's cause of death.
It is extremely essential, that it is your guardian angel in times of stress and need, maintaining your relaxed pain-free state, while keeping your internal pluming up an going.. I like to call it the secondary police of the cell, after the primary cell cycle genes, that is. Not only does it go around making sure all compounds are receiving and exchanging electrons, but it is also among the military forces of the cell. It stands loyal to the cell when it is being invaded. When the cell's economy is no longer stable, mischievous backstabbers- bacteria and viruses or even toxins- love to take action and bring the cell city down, and that happens when there is a lack of electrons circulating, which is when Vitamin C military forces are cut bac ...
On average, they are, because they tend to contain more sulphur, which is what gives farts their unpleasant smell. Loud farts, on the other hand, tend to contain more nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which are all odourless gases.
A 2-year-old albino kangaroo has been spotted in Canberra’s Namadgi National Park. Albino kangaroos in the wild usually don’t survive because they stand out and become an easy target for predators. Albino animals also have a genetic predisposition towards sight and hearing issues, making life in the wild almost impossible—but Rene(e), which is always surrounded by its mob, has survived against all odds.
This is beautiful but deceptive Clavaria zollingeri, also known as the violet or magenta coral. But contrary to its name, it doesn't live underwater - it's a species of fungus that grows in woodland areas in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, New Zealand and Australia.
A pink Amazon river dolphin on the warm side of the "Meeting of the Waters." This is where the sandy Amazon River meets the dark waters of the Rio Negro in Manaus, Brazil. A strong density gradient contributes to their visible separation, as well as a significant temperature difference - the Amazon flows at around 22°C, while the Rio Negro is around 28°C.
Abraham Lake lies in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. The view is breathtaking, especially during wintertime, when methane bubbles freeze right underneath the surface, creating eerie cloud-like formations. The phenomenon has a simple explanation: plants on the lake bed release methane bubbles, which freeze once they’re close enough to the surface. In springtime, when the ice starts to thaw, the gas is released into the atmosphere.
And it's $235 a scoop! The ice cream was created by UK company Lick Me I'm Delicious in time for Halloween, and was inspired by glowing jellyfish. It's made using a synthetic, calcium-activated version of the protein that makes jellyfish luminescent, and lights up when you lick it. However, inventor Charlie Harry Francis didn't offer much reassurance on whether the product was safe to eat, writing on his blog: "Well I tried some and I don't seem to be glowing anywhere, so we'll go with a yes for now." ...
Found in Morocco, they climb these Argan tree in search of food. It's hard to imagine that animals with hooves could be so adept at climbing but these images are 100% real. Food is fairly sparse in this area, so they have to grab it when they can - even if it's high up in a tree!
The secret to their ability to climb lies in the shape of their hooves. The keratin reinforced hoof wall adds strength, while the soft textured sole provides traction and grip. It's also capable of deforming inwards to counter irregularities in the terrain. Their toes are capable of operating independently giving them more of a "grip".
These hooves evolved to allow the goats to climb rocky, mountainous areas - but they've shifted ecosystems to the trees! ...
The Bali myna (Leucopsar rothschildi) is one of the rarest birds in the world. Thanks to poaching, their wild population hit an all-time low of just six individuals in 2001, but their numbers have since increased to around 50 wild mature birds. And just this month, the Bali Starling Conservation Project, which is home to 100 Bali mynas, has celebrated the birth of four healthy chicks to add to their breeding program. ...
Eresus is a genus of velvet spiders comprising several species, including Eresus cinnaberinus and Eresus sandaliatus, both of which are sometimes known as the "Ladybird spider".
It looks spooky, but this is actually an image of a salt lake in Western Australia's Gibson Desert taken by astronauts on board the International Space Station. It's an example of how our brains often take random patterns and see them as faces or other familiar figures (like a ghost in this case), a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia. ...
While we're talking about Halloween, this is the Atlantic wolffish (Anarhichas lupus), very appropriately and otherwise known as the ‘devil fish’. The hefty fish grows up to 1.5 metres long and over 20kg, and they’re named for those unmistakable fangs. If they're not scary enough, their throats are also lined with a spattering of small, serrated teeth.
Meet the green jumping spider (Mopsus mormon), Australia’s largest—and perhaps cutest—jumping arachnid. These spiders hunt in the day time, moving fast to attack their prey, and camouflaging against green leaves. If you see one, leave it alone. Although their bite won’t kill you, it’s extremely painful.
These are the Cuevas de Mármol, or Marble Caves, found on the shores of Lake General Carrera - a remote glacial lake surrounded by the Andes mountain range and spanning the Chile-Argentina border. Formed over 6,200 years as countless waves crashed against a huge peninsula of calcium carbonate, that distinct, swirling pattern reflects the lake's bright blue colours, which can change in intensity and hue depending on the time of year.
This is the Caqueta titi monkey, and its babies purr just like cats when they're happy. It is one of more than 400 new species of animals and plants that have been discovered in the past four years in the Amazon rainforest, along with a vegetarian piranha and a flame-patterned lizard.
This butterfly is half female, half male. It's suffering from bilateral gynandromorphism, which is a rare genetic disorder that afflicts insects, arachnids, crustaceans and birds, and it could be caused when two sperm enter the egg. Humans are not at risk. ...
Hamish Scott from the UK has invented the Starpath, which is a special luminescent coating for roads and paths. The multi-layered, organic material collects and stores energy from light during the day and releases it as a blueish glow at night that can last for 16 hours. The technology is now being trialled at Christ's Pieces Park in Cambridge, and if successful, could slash electricity bills, plus it's 100% recyclable.
Apes manage their emotions much in the same way as humans do. Socially and emotionally competent young bonobos recover quickly from upsetting experiences and are more likely to comfort other young apes, a new study has shown.
Imagine dropping your phone and seeing it bounce rather than break.
Using microscale plates of oxide materials that slide over each other, like geological plates, Australian researchers are a step closer to creating fully functional flexible electronic devices.
These are the ‘pillownauts,’ and they just got out of bed for the first time in 21 days. The paid volunteers for the European Space Agency laid with their feet up in a medical facility while scientists poked and prodded them to try to understand the effects of spaceflight on astronauts’ bodies.
One of the subjects who took part in this investigation said: “The first days of each session were the worst. The body needs to adapt and I had migraines and backaches."
Well, okay GOLD. Apparently, gold grows on eucalyptus trees. Researchers discovered that the trees are acting as a hydraulic pump, extracting gold from the soil and moving it to their leaves and branches. The ‘nuggets’ are about one-fifth the diameter of human hair, but the leaves may be used in combination with other tools to develop better exploration techniques.
This is the Green vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta), a slender tree snake found in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The snake is mildly venomous, and its bite causes swelling and pain. They feed on frogs and lizards. There is a widespread myth in parts of southern India that the species uses its pointed head to blind its human victims!
This stunning creature is the Amazonian leaf-footed bug (Diactor bilenatus), a species that can be found throughout South American, in parts of Central America and on some Caribbean Islands. Although they look beautiful, when threatened the insect releases a bitter, unpleasant odour to scare of potential predators.
This is the porcupine crab (Neolithodes grimaldii), found in the deep sea bed along the continental slopes of the Atlantic Ocean. A member of the king crab family, its carapace, or body, can stretch up to 18 cm long, and it can weigh over 2 kg. But that's nothing compared to the blue king crab (Paralithodes platypus) from Alaska, which weighs a whopping 8 kg. ...
These are hundreds of umbrella mushrooms growing on tree bark. Mushrooms that take over the tree trunk like this are usually spread by wind-blown spores and generally infect older or injured trees.
Since sea otters sleep at sea, floating around like in the video, holding hands like that keeps the group together, so they don't drift apart in the night. Because of this, the otters feel more comfortable holding hands while asleep than drifting alone. Therefore, it serves both social and practical purpose.
The arapaima (Arapaima gigas) is one of the biggest freshwater fish on the planet and has evolved a multi-layer defence against the piranha. Its scales have an ultra-tough outer shell, which promotes tooth fracture at the point of penetration. The scales are also a corrugated shape, which deflect pressure to overlapping layers of collagen underneath.
The deadliest substance known to man is a recently discovered type of botulinum toxin (botox). The scientists who discovered it haven’t found an antitoxin yet, so they have decided not to publish the gene sequence due to security concerns. The toxin comes from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and blocks the chemical signals that makes nerves work, causing botulism and death by paralysis. The image shown above is the protein structure of botulinum toxin.
This two headed albino milk snake was born two years ago in Florida.
The condition is known as Polycephaly and occurs when monozygotic twins fail to separate completely. Most organisms with this condition will not live for long, but occasionally you will get cases like this one, where the snake(s?) seem healthy enough and can live for years.
The heads act independently of one another, and will fight over food given the opportunity. ...
This is Migaloo, the albino white humpback whale. His name is derived from an Aboriginal word that means “white fella.” Migaloo is a favorite for whale watching enthusiasts. He is believed to be the only documented white humpback whale in the world.
He was discovered in 1991 and quickly became popular with tourists and locals alike. Since then, sightings have been rare. He migrates from Antarctica to Australia on a yearly basis, and some years he slips by undetected. Most of these photos were taken in 2012 on Migaloo’s return to Antarctica. ...
This is Trapezia rufopunctata, a small and brightly coloured species of crab native to the lagoons and coastal reefs of the Maldives, Polynesia and the Indo-Pacific region. Also known as a guard crab, it lives symbiotically with corals, feeding on their discarded tissue and mucus while defending them from predators. ...
Elephants really do get the point. New research has revealed that African elephants can spontaneously understand the intent of human pointing, and can use it as a cue to find food. While humans understand pointing from a very early age, only a few animals, such as dogs and horses, have the same ability, and it's thought that an elephant's understanding of pointing relates to the way they use their trunks to make gestures to each other in the wild.
This gorgeous Kiwi chick was born a few days ago in Auckland Zoo and a zookeeper filmed how it broke its egg and entered the world. Kiwi birds are shy, flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The Kiwi bird population has dwindled in the past few decades, but different zoos and wildlife sanctuaries have developed conservations programs that will help save the species.
Introducing the Honduran white bat, a tiny bat (reaches up to 4.7 cm in length) found in Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama that has superb construction skills. These bats build tents from waxy leaves, creating a waterproof shelter that also helps them camouflage from predators.
The Monticello Dam holds back Lake Berryessa in Napa County, California, USA. The morning glory spillway associated with the dam is the largest in the world; it is a funnel-shaped outlet that allows water to bypass the Monticello Dam when it reaches capacity (1370 m³/s).
The Glory Hole is located about 61m from the dam; the distance from the funnel to the exit point - which is situated in the south side of the canyon - is about 213m. The outside diameter is 22m, slowly narrowing to 8.5m at the exit.
Water spills over the lip of the Glory Hole when the lake reaches 1,976,037,908 cubic metres (1,602,000 acre-feet). The spillway is designed to handle a maximum of 1,370,319 litres of water per second (362,000 gallons of water per second); this ha ...
Otherwise known as the Door to Hell and the Darvaza gas crater, the crater is found in Turkmenistan and is 60 metres wide and 20 metres deep. The hole was created when a Soviet drilling rig accidentally tapped into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and the drilling rig to fall in. To prevent poisonous fumes from escaping into the atmosphere, the Soviet geologists decided to set the pit on fire, hoping the fire would use up its fuel in a few days.
This picture of a green and red aurora was taken on September 26, 2013, from the International Space Station. The colours of the aurora borealis depend on which atoms the solar storm excites. Green auroras appear when charged particles from the solar wind crash with oxygen atoms in Earth’s atmosphere and produce green photons; red auroras occur when the particles collide with nitrogen atoms or when there are lower-energy oxygen collisions, producing red photons.
This is the Giant Leopard Moth, a strictly nocturnal species native to parts of North America and Mexico. These moths start life as an incredibly black and bristly caterpillar, and once they grow into adulthood, they never eat, and instead focus on mating and passing their genes onto several clutches of eggs. ...
This is the emerald toucanet, and it can be found camouflaging very nicely in the mountainous forests of Mexico, Central America, Venezuela and along the Andes. These beautiful birds are extremely intelligent - when reared by hand in captivity, they can learn tricks as fast as cockatoos.
This is the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park - the largest hot spring in North America and the third largest in the world. The incredible colours are produced by pigmented bacteria that grow in microbial mats around the edges of the mineral-rich water. In summer, the mats are usually orange and red, and in winter they're are usually dark green.
The coco-de-mer palm tree (Lodoicea maldivica) is endemic to the Seychelles. Its seeds are the largest and heaviest of any plant in the world, and have been highly prized over the centuries, which has almost driven the palm tree to extinction.
The Golden Tortoise beetle is found in the Americas. They feed on the leaves of plants related to the sweet potato, including the morning glory and bindweed, though they rarely eat enough to cause serious damage to the plant.
Varieties of the inky cap mushroom can be around the world. While they are edible, ingesting alcohol while eating the mushrooms increases symptoms of nausea and vomiting, and can even cause a heart attack.
After the mushroom has released its spores, the cap begins to liquefy. The thick black liquid that is seen dripping from the edges is how the inky cap got its name.
Artist Lee Hadwin has a unique talent - he can only produce his artwork in his sleep, as shown above. Lee cannot remember doing anything while he is asleep, and cannot recreate his work while he is awake. He says he has no real interest in art, but has been producing his own work since a small child.
This is bismuth, a brittle metal with a white or silver-pink hue and an iridescent oxide tarnish that produces a rainbow of colours from yellow to blue. It is the most naturally diamagnetic metal in the world, which means it can create a magnetic field in opposition to an externally applied magnetic field. ...
A flying fish moves its tail up to 70 times per second to propel itself up and out of the water. Those specialised pectoral fins are spread wide and tilted slightly upward to provide lift, and then folded back against the body to lower the fish back into the ocean. Flying fish (family: Exocoetidae) are eaten by dolphins, tuna, birds, squids and porpoises, so they needed to develop an ingenious mode of escape - such as flying - in order to survive.
Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevisare are parasitic mites that particularly favour the hair follicles of eyebrows and eyelashes and measure a mere fraction of a millimeter long. They crawl about your face in the dark to mate and then crawl into the pores to lay their eggs and die. Healthy adults have around one or two mites per square centimetre of facial skin, though people with the condition rosacea can have 10 times more. Demodex does not have an anus and therefore cannot get rid of its faeces. Instead, their abdomen gets bigger and bigger, and when the mite dies it decomposes and releases its faeces all at once into the pore. ...
This is a human brain without grooves and folds, a condition known as lissencephaly. It belonged to a patient who died in a mental health facility in 1970, and almost a year ago a photographer found the jar containing the brain in a collection at the University of Texas, Austin. People with this rare condition suffer from seizures, muscle spasms, a range of learning difficulties, and usually die before the age of ten. ...
The aye-aye lives in the forests of Madagascar. Despite looking like a very scared rodent, the aye-aye is a kind of lemur with a bushy tail and super-thin, elongated middle fingers that they use to dig grubs out of hollow branches. Aye-ayes also have huge lower incisors to chew through wood and bamboo—and in captivity they’ve been known to chew through concrete cinder blocks ...
If you fill two beakers with water, apply an electric voltage across them, and then separate them, you will form a water bridge. This phenomena was discover some 120 years ago and researchers believe it occurs because the voltage makes the water molecules line up, generating a dielectric tension that defies gravity, stopping the bridge from falling.
Understanding how water bridges form could help engineers develop better electrowetting displays. ...
The relative speed is based on body length. The tiger beetle (Cicindela hudsoni) run so fast, their eyes can’t process information as quickly as they need to and they temporarily blind themselves. Some sources claim that the tiger beetle can up to 9 km/hour!
When attacking prey, the beetle will aim itself at its target and start running, but will need to stop and relocate the prey because it cannot keep an eye on it. Once it has reoriented itself, it charges forward again and hopes to run into the target. ...
The most thing we should worry about when entering the lab, and what was drilled into our minds throught all our science classes and our courses laboratory introductory session, was our safety. With regards to germs, microbes, bacteria, viruses etc, and their stunning ability to evolve into a stronger species rather rapidly considering the time-span through which scientists have been practicing science, smart people have managed to use solar energy in such a way that reduces our anxiety around those organisms much more than 70% ethanol and heat.
At least in the dental industry, the tools used by dentists have been protected - to an extent - in a method, I personally view as brilliant. "First uses of new solar energy technology: Killing germ ...
The Spiny Softshell (Apalone spinifera spinifera) is also known as the "pancake turtle" because of its rather flat, round, leathery upper shell, or carapace. The long neck and elongated, tubular snout allow this turtle to breathe while almost fully submerged and virtually unseen. Softshells ambush prey by lying concealed in bottom mud.
The island of Socotra is one of the most isolated non-volcanic landforms in the world. Sitting 240 km east of the Horn of Africa and 380 km south of the Arabian Peninsula, its geographic isolation over millions of years has ensured that a third of its plant species are found nowhere else on Earth. Clockwise from the top are dragon blood trees, desert roses, and a native succulent, Dorstenia gigas. ...
Sea pigs are marine animals around 15 cm long that live about 1,000 metres down on the deep sea floor. They are scotoplanes (sea cucumbers) and their 'legs' are actually elongated feet which are used to push food into their mouths. The apparent antennae on the front of the head are also feet, used to tread the deep sea water. They feed on deep ocean mud and thrive on the organic material present there. The sea pigs are not considered as a threat to humans and they are not an endangered species. ...
The velvety ladybird spider is a fascinating arachnid found in northern and central Europe. They live in burrows with silk trip-wires that help them catch large-sized prey. The males have bright red backs with four black spots and emerge only for a couple of weeks in May to breed. The male will only mate if he manages to avoid all trip wires—if he falls, he may become the meal.
It turns out that our evolutionary cousins can recall number placement better than people can. In the experiment, the task requires the chimp to touch the numbers in ascending order and he has only seconds to make his decisions. The numerals appeared only for a certain limited duration, and were then automatically replaced by white squares. After touching the number one, the rest of the numbers are obscured by squares, making the chimp reliant on his memory to correctly pick the numbers in the right order. After a whistle sounds, the numbers reappear in different positions, so the chimp has to remember the position of all nine numbers after seeing them only briefly. And the chimp quickly aces the test time and time again, r ...
Hummingbirds, like this little golden rufous hummingbird, have up to 1,500 feathers, which is the fewest number of feathers of any bird species in the world.
Casu marzu is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese, notable for containing live insect larvae. It is found almost exclusively in Sardinia, Italy.
Casu marzu is created by leaving whole Pecorino cheeses outside with part of the rind removed to allow the eggs of the cheese fly Piophila casei to be laid in the cheese. A female P. casei can lay more than five hundred eggs at one time. The eggs hatch and the larvae begin to eat through the cheese. The acid from the maggots' digestive system breaks down the cheese's fats, making the texture of the cheese very soft; by the time it is ready for consumption, a typical casu marzu will contain thousands of these maggots.
Take a good look at that tiny piece of art. It is the smallest bone in the body is called the stirrup (or stapes) bone. It is one of the three bones that make up the middle ear; measuring about 2-3 millimetres. It has a U-shape and is the inmost bone that collects sound vibrations and then passes them along to the cochlea for interpretation by the brain. ...
Some birds, such as woodcreepers and cuckoos, are known to follow army ant raids on forest floors. As the army ant colony travels on the forest floor, they stir up various flying insect species. As the insects flee from the army ants, the birds following the ants catch the fleeing insects. In this way, the army ants and the birds are in a commensalistic relationship because the birds benefit while the army ants are unaffected. ...
During this experiment, spiders were exposed to a variety of drugs to help determine their effect on the brain.
Spiders who had been given marijuana started out well enough, but were unable to maintain focus.
Benzedrine (speed) produced spiders who spun enthusiastically, though no great thought or care was put into the web design.
Caffeine, one of the most common stimulants taken by humans, produced an erratic web.
Chloral hydrate, an ingredient in sleeping pills, made the spiders doze off after barely getting started on the web.
Though this 1995 experiment sought to determine toxicity of drugs, it was a continuation of experimentation of spiders on drugs that had started in 1948 by P. N. Witt. ...
This sculpture is constructed by quickly rotating a rope stretched from ceiling to floor through white light. The vibrating string becomes invisible, but the white light that’s being reflected off the rope becomes visible in an exchange that let’s our eyes see magic, as real as science can make it.
The colors change and twist, forming double-helixes that stem from the shape of the swinging rope. Some of these light sculptures are small and handheld, but many of the larger ones include touch screens that allow viewers to adjust the beams. All of them are spinning at very high speeds that result in a constantly moving body of light. ...
Parasitologist espouses using parasitic worms for treatment of autoimmune diseases – Dr. Joel Weinstock, at Tufts Medical Center in a commentary piece published in the journal Nature, describes work that he and colleagues have been involved in that focuses on studying the possibility of introducing parasitic worms into the guts of patients suffering from autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease. The thinking he says, is that modern hygienic lifestyles may be contributing to such diseases and that reintroducing parasitic worms and perhaps certain bacteria into the gut may restore a natural balance in the gut and relieve patients of such symptoms as chronic diarrhea, bleeding and infections.
The Mandarin duck is a sexually dimorphic species, meaning males and females differ in appearance. The male has a rich, colorful appearance, which includes brown cheeks and a long brown and white crown sweeping back from the top of the head. The chest is dark purple, with black and white strips, and the wings are brown with an iridescent blue-green edge. This striking coloration helps the male attract the less-colorful females, which display brownish-black plumage with white markings around the eyes and along the throat. ...
If you've been fortunate enough to fly on an airplane, you've probably noticed that the food tastes a bit strange. It turns out that it's not actually because of the food itself (even if you are sitting in economy) but the reduced atmospheric pressure on board and the dry nose and mouth we get from flying, says an expert.
Mercury's surface looks similar to our Moon's. Each is heavily cratered and made of rock. Mercury's diameter is about 4800 km, while the Moon's is slightly less at about 3500 km (compared with about 12,700 km for the Earth). But Mercury is unique in many ways. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, orbiting at about 1/3 the radius of the Earth's orbit. As Mercury slowly rotates, its surface temperature varies from an unbearably cold -180 degrees Celsius to an unbearably hot 400 degrees Celsius. The place nearest the Sun in Mercury's orbit changes slightly each orbit - a fact used by Albert Einstein to help verify the correctness of his then newly discovered theory of gravity: General Relativity. The above picture was taken by the only sp ...
Potoos are a small New World family of solitary and nocturnal birds. Most are so poorly known they seem more fiction than substance, their gruff or wailing cries ghostly delusions of the dim nocturnal world they inhabit.
A stent is a small mesh tube that's used to treat narrowed or weakened arteries in the body. Arteries are blood vessels that carry blood away from your heart to other parts of your body.
You may have a stent placed in an artery as part of a procedure called angioplasty. Angioplasty restores blood flow through narrowed or blocked arteries. Stents help prevent the arteries from becoming narrowed or blocked again in the months or years after angioplasty.
Australia's iconic Tasmanian Tiger was hunted to extinction in the 1930s - but it may have already been doomed by an extremely small gene pool, according to a new study that stresses the fragility of isolated species.
This is a rare baby Golden Brushtail Possum that was born at Wild Life Sydney last year. Golden Brushtail Possums are one of Australia’s largest tree-dwelling marsupials but they're rarely seen in the wild, being found mostly in small pockets of Tasmania. Their unique appearance is the result of low levels of melanin in their skin.
In the early 1900s, the disease pellagra was widespread in the United States, especially in southern states. Individuals with pellagra were weak, and they developed diarrhea, a skin rash, and mental confusion. Each year, thousands of Americans died from this dreaded illness. In 1914 the U.S. surgeon general assigned Joseph Goldberger, a physician who worked in a federal government laboratory, to study pellagra. Most medical experts thought pellagra was an infectious disease because it often occurred where people lived in close quarters, such as prisons, orphanages, and mental health institutions. Goldberger knew from his previous research that infectious diseases usually spread through a population by close physical contact. While investiga ...
A bonsai tree is “trained” to grow as a dwarf by pruning and shaping the branches. But seeds from the tree would produce trees that grow to normal size. This shows the there is no inheritance of the characteristics acquired by pruning.
Belugas apparently fashion their own entertainment by creating bubble rings and then catching them. A beluga at Sea World Kamogawa, near Tokyo, was snapped in the act, and another at the Shimane Aquarium has been seen performing the trick.
This is a Palm Cockatoo, also know as the Goliath Cockatoo.
Palms are distinguished by their size, huge beak (second only to the Hyacinth Macaw among psittacines and largest proportionate to size), solid black feather coloration, large open crest, bare red cheeks, and red and black tongue. You have to see their tongues to believe the coloration. It's amazing.
Palm Cockatoos are severely threatened. They are CITES Appendix I birds and are protected in Australia.
As a testament to their rarity, typical prices in the U.S. for Aterrimus Palms are around $8000 and Goliaths around $14,000. Perhaps contributing to their rarity is the fact that, according to both Low and Forshaw, they lay only one egg per clutch.
This is the Tacua speciosa, one of the world's largest and most beautiful species of cicada. It is found in Borneo, Sumatra, Java and parts of the Malay Peninsula and its wingspan can stretch up to an impressive 18 cm.
This 20-year-old male chimp suffering with alopecia, is a star attraction at an Indian zoo, as he sort of resembles a human. Perhaps being locked up in a zoo makes life a deeply distressing experience
The angry-looking deep sea angler fish has a right to be cranky. It is quite possibly the ugliest animal on the planet, and it lives in what is easily Earth's most inhospitable habitat: the lonely, lightless bottom of the sea.
There are more than 200 species of anglerfish, most of which live in the murky depths of the Atlantic and Antarctic oceans, up to a mile below the surface, although some live in shallow, tropical environments. Generally dark gray to dark brown in color, they have huge heads and enormous crescent-shaped mouths filled with sharp, translucent teeth. Some angler fish can be quite large, reaching 3.3 feet (1 meter) in length. Most however are significantly smaller, often less than a foot.
Not all sharks are built for speed. This bottom-dwelling wobbegong shark stays near the ocean floor. Its camouflage allows it to go largely unnoticed, until its prey wanders too close or thinks the tassels are something to eat. Then, the wobbegong leaps into action, devouring the unlucky fish, squid, or crustacean. They’ve even been seen swallowing other sharks whole!
This photo shows a diver almost being eaten by a whale shark, the world's largest fish species. Marine photographer Mauricio Handler captured the intense moment during a dive in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, when more than 600 of the 12-metre-long animals gathered to feed on tuna spawn.
This pretty little moth from Madagascar, Hemiceratoides hieroglyphica, frequents birds at night and drinks their tears using a specialised harpoon-like proboscis. In the image, H. hieroglyphica prepares to drink tears from a sleeping common Newtonia (Newtonia brunneicauda).
A lack of sea ice caused by global warming meant this polar bear was unable to hunt seals and died of starvation. The carcass was found in northern Svalbard, Norway, far from its normal range, where he probably was looking for food.
The Banded Piglet squid is proof that not all deep sea creatures are nightmare-inducing. They swim "upside down" compared to other squid, leaving him resembling a Muppet with his tentacles as the hair, the syphon as the nose, and his patterning appearing to be a smile.
These guys live at least 100 m below the surface. Because of those incredible depths, it has to create its own light from the photophores underneath its eyes. Unfortunately, because it lives so far down, not much is known about its life cycle or eating habits. ...
Check out this beautiful flower. At first glance, it looks like a set of lips, but in actually, these are the flowers that are produced by Psychotria elata, a plant that grows in Central and South American tropical forests.
These are rainbow eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus deglupta) and they hail from the Philippine Islands.
The trees get their name from the striking colours observed on their trunks and limbs. Although it may look like someone took a paintbrush to them, these colours are entirely natural. Unlike most trees, the rainbow eucalyptus does not have a thick, cork-like layer of bark on its trunk. The bark is smooth and as it grows it 'exfoliates' layers of spent tissue. This exfoliation technique occurs at different stages and in different zones of the tree.
Once a layer is shed, a new fresh green bark is exposed. As this new bark ages, we can see the tissue change colour to dark green followed by a bluish colour, then to purple and pink-orange and then f ...
Stargazer fish have their eyes situated on the tops of their heads and can bury themselves in the sediment with only their faces sticking out. Some species lure prey with a worm-shaped projection that comes out of their mouths. They are toxic and some can deliver a 50 volt shock!
The Bushveld rain frog is found in Southern Africa. When threatened, it puffs itself up to ward off potential attackers.
The frogs are sexually dimorphic, and the male is too small to mount the female properly to reproduce. The white secretion you see on the back of the frog is actually an adhesive that holds the male in place during copulation.
There are a wide variety of kingfisher birds found all over the globe. As the name suggests, some are skilled at diving straight down into the water and finding a fish to eat.
Even the fish looks surprised at the kingfisher's talents!
This is the aptly-named "black swallower" (Chiasmodon niger), a fish known for eating bony fish up to 10x its mass and 2x its length.
It's found worldwide in tropical and subtropical waters at a depth of 700-2,745 meters.
Most specimens of this fish have been collected after one attempted to swallow prey too large for it to handle, and the prey could not be digested before decomposition set it. The release of gases forces the black swallower to the surface.
This particular specimen was found washed up on the shore in 2007. The black swallower measures 19 cm long. The fish in its stomach is a snake mackerel measuring 86 cm. ...
Egyptian vultures not only feed on dead animals, but are opportunists who will also eat small or injured animals, and will even steal eggs of other birds and crack them open. The vultures are listed as endangered by the IUCN. In Asia, they have lost about a third of their population each year since the turn of the century. Hunting and accidental poisoning (ingesting insects that have been treated with a pesticide) are two of the main causes for their decline.
The bleeding tooth fungus grows in Europe and North America. While young, the fungus looks like it is oozing blood. The red liquid is actually an anticoagulant. It lives on the roots of conifer trees and exchanges nutrients in a mutually beneficial relationship.
This is the spectacular Leafy Seadragon. Its dangling skin disguises the vulnerable species as floating seaweed. Like seahorses, the male Leafy Seadragon carries the eggs, which are bright pink when the female first deposits them, but turn purple or orange when they're ready to hatch after nine weeks.
Stingrays are ovoviparous, meaning that the eggs develop and hatch inside the mother, who then give birth to live young. They have between 5 and 13 offspring at a time. Before birth, the female holds the embryos in the womb without a placenta. Instead, the embryos absorb nutrients from a yolk sac, and after the sac is depleted, the mother provides uterine "milk".
Two female stingrays at the London Aquarium have given birth to young in spite of the fact that they haven't been near a male in more than two years. Therefore, it stands to reason that female stingrays have the ability to store sperm in some way. ...
Giant panda twins were born Monday evening at Zoo Atlanta. They are currently being alternated between an incubator and their mother to provide the highest level of care. About half of panda pregnancies result in twins, though it is a rare occurrence for a US zoo.
Another look at the goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni), a deep sea creature that's been sighted less that fifty times since its discovery. They're the only living representative of the family Mitsukurinidae.
Assassin bugs use a mouth tube to inject toxin into their prey. This toxin acts as an anaesthetic and also liquifies tissues, the easier to suck you dry with. There are thousands of assassin bug species; some eat only other insects and some attack reptiles, birds, and mammals. This assassin bug is turning the tables on a vampire bat. Notice how you can see the blood entering the young insect.
Did you know there is an island floating in the Pacific Ocean made entirely of garbage?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of trash and debris in the North Pacific Ocean. The center of this region of water is very calm because it lies within a gyre. A gyre is a circulating current in the ocean formed by wind patterns and the Earth’s rotation. Garbage does not escape easily from this region, and the rotation of the water here tends to draw trash in. The majority of the debris is composed of small plastic pieces that may not be visible to the naked eye but also do not biodegrade. Similar areas also exist in the Atlantic Ocean. This phenomenon is well-documented in shallow ocean depths. Now, according to scientists at the Montere ...
The Amazonian giant centipede is the largest centipede alive, reaching lengths of 30 centimeters. They are carnivorous and feed on lizards, snakes, mice, and even bats. While their venom is not enough to kill an adult human, it may cause reactions with the skin.
In the forests of Costa Rica, a tiny insect has been found. Tinkerbella nana is a fairyfly that is only 250 micrometers long. It is one of the smallest arthropods ever discovered.
How could they even find such a tiny creature? The researchers admit that it was not easy given the biodiversity of the forest. “It is possibly equivalent to finding a solitary needle in 200 haystacks,” Dr John Noyes notes.
This enigmatic ant with out-of-this-world pigmentation patterns was recently found in the Philippines. The females have a black stripe across the eyes that resembles a pirate eye patch; this distinctive trait inspired the scientists to choose the name Cardiocondyla pirate, or pirate ant, for the species.
This is the Great Blue Hole of Belize in Central America, and at 300 metres across and 124 m deep, it's thought to be the largest submarine cave on Earth. It was first discovered by French explorer Jacques Cousteau, and was formed over a period of around 140,000 years when the sea levels were much lower than they are now. As the sea levels rose, a number of limestone caves were flooded over time to create this almost perfect circle. It's now home to several species of fish and reef shark. ...
By manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, the behavior of crystal growth can be controlled, creating precisely tailored structures – “flowers” at the scale of microns – that bloom in a beaker.
Though these minuscule sculptures don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, they “bloom” from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves one molecule at a time.
The precipitation of the crystals depends on a reaction of compounds that are diffusing through a liquid solution. The crystals grow toward or away from certain chemical gradients as the pH of the reaction shifts back and forth. The conditions of the reaction dictate whether the structure resembles broad, radiating leaves, a thi ...
The Atlas Moth, Attacus atlas, is one of the largest species of butterfly that can be kept by insect enthusiasts. The moth is beautiful and very large, but also the caterpillars look amazing. The caterpillars are green-whitish with strange soft spines on their backs. Their last feet have a bright red spot on them
For me, the word that comes to mind is blurt or blob Not sure why. Anyway, here's a little background on what this odd looking frog is all about.
Purple frogs are found in India in the Western Ghats. Purple frogs burrow and one was found as far as 8 meters below the surface. It spends most of its life underground, but emerges for a two-week-long mating stint during the monsoon season. Females will lay approximately 3000 eggs at this time.
Their lineage reaches back 130 million years, though their elusive behavior caused scientists to not have a scientific description of them until 2003. They are currently labeled as endangered by the IUCN. ...
As cubs a lion, a tiger, and a bear had been owned by a drug dealer who did not properly care for them. The bear’s harness grew into his skin because the owner did not alter it as the animal grew. They had been abused and neglected early in life, but were finally rescued. The bear's harness was surgically removed.
After they had been taken in by an animal sanctuary in Georgia, the staff tried to separate them due to obvious concerns that the three large predators would fight. During the trial of separation, the animals were uncooperative and behaved poorly. Once reunited, the three calmed down and were well behaved.
Twelve years later, the three friends spend their days playing, cuddling, and eating together. There are no plans to separate th ...
Some species of woodpecker have amazing tongues. It is covered in small hooks that allow it to ensnare insect larvae from a piece of wood. The tongue is approximately three times the length of the beak, allowing it to capture evasive prey. It is so long, it has to fork at the back of the throat and wrap around the woodpecker’s skull when retracted.
It's estimated that one in every two million American lobsters are blue. The genetic mutation causes the lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein, which combines with a red carotenoid molecule already present to form a blue complex. This gives the lobster its coloration.
Only six blue lobsters have ever been recorded as caught alive. They're all in aquariums today.
After the tsunami in 2004, an orphaned baby hippo was found stranded on a coral reef off the coast of Kenya. He was brought to a wildlife sanctuary, but couldn’t be put with the other hippos because the oldest male may have viewed him as a threat and killed him.
The hippo, named Owen, was put in with a 130-year-old tortoise named Mzee. Owen was desperate for a mother figure and immediately took to Mzee. In the coming months, the two became inseparable. They snuggled together and even tried to communicate. While hippos are known for being social, the same is not true for tortoises.
Workers at the sanctuary feared for Mzee’s safety as Owen continued to grow. They were separated in 2007 and a young female hippo named Cleo provided companions ...
For the hearing impaired, a trip to the movies involves a special screening time for captioned movies or a large, bulky viewer that can be distracting to others. New glasses have been developed to minimize this inconvenience. Captions are projected on the bottom of the glass. It even works with 3-D movies, without adding another pair of glasses.
This device doesn’t only work for deaf patrons. Visually impaired moviegoers can boost audio and have descriptions of the action played directly into a headset.
This technology will be available in thousands of theaters across the United States by the end of the month. ...
The arctic fox population on Mednyi Island in the Bering Sea has declined to just 100 individuals over the past 40 years, and a new study has found out why. It's likely due to mercury pollution in seabirds and fish, not infectious disease, as previously thought. This is important, say the researchers, because we eat marine food too, so we should stop and think about how much pollution is going into our Arctic waters.
A dolphin with a severe spinal deformity was adopted by a group of sperm whales. Friendly interactions between whales and dolphins had not been observed prior to this discovery in 2011. Researchers speculate that the dolphin was separated its original group either by an inability to keep up or it may have been ostracized.
Dolphins are social creatures, so it makes sense why one who is alone would seek out a new slower-moving group. It is unclear what the whales gained from the relationship, though many of the whales did return affectionate rubs from the dolphin. ...
Meet the fruit dove. These colourful, frugivorous doves are found in forests and woodlands in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Males and females of many fruit dove species look very different. For example, the female Many-coloured Fruit Dove shares the male’s crimson crown and deep pink undertail feathers, but is otherwise green, whereas the male has a crimson on the upper back and has areas of yellow, olive, cinnamon, and grey.
Albert Einstein once noted “intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience," but was he right? Should we pay closer attention to our 'gut feeling'? Ben Newell explains.
More than thirty species of ant have a caste known as 'honeypot ants'. These essentially act as living pantries for other ants in the colony. They consume large quantities of food until the abdomen is incredibly engorged. When worker ants lack other food sources, honeypot ants simply regurgitate out nutrients for them to eat.
In some parts of the world, eating honeypot ants is viewed as a sweet delicacy.
This fantastic photograph of a hurricane on Saturn was recently snapped by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. It measures an astonishing 2,000 kilometers across the eye - that's big enough to cover the UK twelve times. Wind speeds reach as fast as 150 meters per second.
In the early 1900s, Swedish tree sculptor Axel Erlandson planted “The Basket Tree.” Actually, this is a bit of a misnomer, as it is a collection of six different Sycamore trees that have been grafted together. In the late 1940s, Erlandson opened a roadside oddity attraction containing 20 to 30 tree sculptures. Today, they have been transplanted and are on display at Gilroy Gardens amusement park in California.
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as cordyceps, is a type of fungus that infects insects and takes over their nervous systems. The method with which they take control of nervous systems is still a mystery to science. However, the repercussions of such an infection are all too clear.
Carpenter Ants, for example, live in the canopy of the tropical rainforest. They frequently forage for food on the forest floor. Unfortunately, this is where the cordyceps fungus proliferates. A new study shows that the fungus prefers to grow on “the undersides of leaves sprouting from the northwest side of plants that grow on the forest floor” This places it in an ideal position to grow and release its spores to infect ants. Here's how the fungus gets ther ...
The surinam toad reproduces in a way that is not for the faint of heart. The female expels dozens of eggs, which the male fertilizes and places on her back, where they become engrained into the flesh. When it comes time to hatch, like so many pimples, the eggs rupture and the babies emerge.
There are over 12,000 species of ants in the world, and a new tree of life has been published to better understand how they are all related. Their evolutionary origins have been traced to the tropics in South America, where they play a critical role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem.
This is a close up of a llama eye. The strange "ruffles" are called 'iridic granules' (corpora nigra) and they are used to to shade the eye from bright sunlight. In bright light these iridic granules can actually interlock to completely cover the centre of the pupil. This leaves just two holes open on either end of the pupil, reducing the amount of light that can enter the eye. These odd looking structures are also found in horses, cattle and sheep.
This beautiful animal is Red-bellied short-necked turtle. It is found in Australia and Papua New Guinea, and in Australia it is highly endangered. These stunning colours are highly pronounced as infants and juveniles, but fade as they age. They reach about ten inches (25 cm) in length.
Inca terns are unique and beautiful birds—slender with white-tipped gray feathers, a white curly moustache, yellow lips and a bright orange-red bill. They have a distinctive call that sounds like a high pitched laugh, which is often accompanied by bowing gestures.
Inca terns are natives of the western shoreline of South America and the islands located offshore. They are especially abundant in northern Chile and Peru in the summer. They migrate in winter, venturing to Ecuador and central Chile.
Inca terns swoop down and pluck fish from near the water’s surface. They also sometimes get scraps left behind by whales, or flock to where sea lions are eating on rocks, to steal stray bits of food.
A male who is interested in a female will perform aer ...
Slot canyons are much deeper than they are wide, and are most commonly sandstone or limestone.
This is Antelope Canyon, located in Northern Arizona. There is enough room to move around comfortably at the bottom, but the opening on top is only 2-3 feet wide.
In 1937, a scientist named Carothers died at the young age of 41, desolated that he had not made his mark in the scientific world. His invention, Nylon, was to become one of the most commonly used plastics in the world. Nylon is used in toothbrushes, ropes and fabric for parachutes and clothing.
In the last century, plastics (synthetic polymers) have been so ubiquitous that it is difficult to imagine life without it. But what happens to it when we longer have use for it? Where does it go when we throw plastic out?
Without krill, most of the marine animals in Antarctica would disappear. So what are they?
Krill are crustaceans, each about 5 cm long. In addition to their diet of phytoplankton, they have the ability to scrape ice-algae from the underside of ice formations. In turn, they are on the menu for hungry squid, penguins, seals and whales. In short, krill form an integral part of the Antarctic ecosystem.
Together, krill would number in the billions, yet their numbers are decreasing. Why? One reason may be the melting and loss of ice formation due to increased global temperatures. Another reason is humans' greed. Krill oil, high in omega-3 fatty acids, is packaged as health medication to maintain healthy cholesterol. How many krill are worth the lif ...
The FLIP (FLoating Instrument Platform) ship is an open ocean research vessel designed to partially flood and pitch backward 90 degrees, resulting in only the front 55 feet (17 metres out of 108 metres) of the vessel pointing up out of the water, with bulkheads becoming decks. When flipped, most of the buoyancy for the platform is provided by water at depths below the influence of surface waves, hence FLIP is a stable platform mostly immune to wave action. At the end of a mission, compressed air is pumped into the ballast tanks in the flooded section and the vessel returns to its horizontal position so it can be towed to a new location. ...
Are humans really at the top? Yes. We are the top of the food chain (unless we are eaten by a shark!), but is it always beneficial to be at the top of the food chain?
Usually food chemicals that we eat are used by our bodies and any waste is exhaled, defecated and urinated out of us. However, some chemicals such as heavy metals like lead and mercury can't be expelled from plants and animals so they build up in the plant and animal bodies. This is called biomagnification (biological magnification) because the amounts can accumulate more and more in animals further along the food chain till they reach a toxic level.
In human-made environments, radio-active chemicals such as uranium are a problem because the time they take to break down (half-l ...
Throughout conservations on a daily basis, I often get asked ‘Will there ever be a cure for…?’ or ‘Do you think there will ever be…?’ and those questions are quite a stumbling block. Having discussed various aspects of current biochemical and biotechnical research of late I suppose it has prompted me to ask a similar question myself. The question being, how far can biotechnology take us? How much can we cure, eradicate or produce through further research in the biosciences? It’s a stimulating question and one that is impossible to answer definitively. We never know what exactly lies around the corner, but we can extrapolate on from current trends and ideas. Obviously, the areas of gene therapy, synthetic biology and pharmacoge ...
Mobile phones contain a metal extracted from an ore called columbite-tantalite (or Coltan). Vast areas of African gorilla habitats are destroyed every year as we buy more and more mobile phones.
Watch these two videos. The first video is about the people of Congo The second video is about the gorillas of Congo. Which evokes more emotion in you?
The biomass pyramid above shows how a large amount of plant matter is eaten by many small animals which are in turn eaten by fewer numbers of large animals. At each step of the biomass pyramid, matter and energy are lost in the form of energy to keep the animal warm and moving, or as faeces and urine. Therefore, the more steps there are in a biomass pyramid, the more loss of matter and energy that occurs.
Humans are usually at the top of the Food Chain or biomass pyramid (unless we are eaten by sharks, lions or bears!). Also, there is often a significant loss of matter and energy at each step that can be avoided. Does that mean that we should all become vegetarians? No. However, we can eat more vegetables and less meat.
The wolphin is the extraordinary result of breeding a female bottle-nosed dolphin with a male false killer whale. In captivity there are two occurrences, both are in the Sea Life Park in Hawaii. Unlike other hybrids, the wolphin is fertile.
A goat-sheep chimera also known as a geep all over the world is normally produced by the fusion of the embryos of both a sheep and a goat. The animal formed by this method thus has cells of not only goat but also of sheep origin. Those parts of the chimera that grow from the embryo of a sheep are woolly. Whereas those that grow from the embryo of a goat turn out to be hairy.
This is a white-blooded ice fish, or "crocodile fish" (Chaenocephalus aceratus). They lack both red blood cells and hemoglobin, and so have white blood. They have translucent bodies, and absorb oxygen directly from the water around them.
18% to 35% of people are "sun sneezers" who have genetically inherited the photic sneeze reflex. The photic sneeze reflex (also known as photoptarmosis) is a condition of uncontrollable sneezing in response to numerous stimuli, such as looking at bright lights or periocular (surrounding the eyeball) injection. Unfortunately, its exact mechanism of action and evolutionary purpose is not well understood. ...
The emerging field of synthetic biology is affirming itself at the forefront of modern science, possibly offering practical, effective solutions to many of the worlds most pressing problems. Described most simply as the ‘design and construction of new biological entities…’ synthetic biology, at first, seems to be a natural progression from twentieth century genetic engineering . However, synthetic biology sets itself a slightly different ethos, the central ‘from the bottom up’ dogma of the field means that organisms are designed, programmed, built, not just slightly altered or adjusted.
Origin & Scope
Although synthetic biology has only recently entered the scientific limelight, it was first mentioned back in 1912 by French biologist Stephan ...
This snow tunnel near the Mutnovsky Volcano in Russia is almost a kilometre long. These tunnels form under the snow fields in deep ravines at the end of the summer thaw. Meltwater flows through glaciers towards lower elevations, finding an outlet at the terminus of the glacier and carving the ice on the way. The Mutnovsky Volcano is found in the southern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
In recent posts I have discussed the potential medical and anthropological impacts (mainly benefits admittedly) of genetic modification and research in epigenetic phenomena. Whilst trawling through various journals and publications I constantly bumped into that term ‘pharmacogenomics’ . Then, it occurred to me that a discussion of that daunting subject just needed to be my next venture; it seems that pharmacogenomics is not as well publicized as similar areas of genetic research, yet equally interesting and controversial.
Pharmacogenomics was an idea born out of the aftermath of the human genome project, when it became obvious that sequencing a human genome was very much a feasible idea . Many people thought that by unlocking the information ...
‘’These patterns of gene expression are governed by the cellular material — the epigenome — that sits on top of the genome, just outside it (hence the prefix epi-, which means above). It is these epigenetic "marks" that tell your genes to switch on or off, to speak loudly or whisper. It is through epigenetic marks that environmental factors like diet, stress and prenatal nutrition can make an imprint on genes that is passed from one generation to the next.’’ Time Magazine (2010)
The quote above may well be a few years old now, but its importance is abundantly obvious. Although, three years may have passed since that issue of Time magazine was distributed, a great deal of people have still never heard of epigenetics and those that have know v ...
Genetic modification is one of the most controversial topics in all of modern science and with the advancement of synthetic biology over the last decade or so it is sure to become even more of a talking point in the future. Genetic modification is a subject that most people seem to have an opinion on, but I must say that a great deal of those opinions are built upon misconceptions or influenced by the charm of organic propaganda. I cant help but find such misunderstandings quite ironic, for example, the man who strongly opposes the consumption of genetically modified foods, yet requires the injection of insulin produced via genetically modified micro-organisms to keep his diabetes under control, to name just one such example. It seems that ...
‘’I’m afraid you have the gene for Breast Cancer…’’
No, I’m afraid that the quote above is a common misconception and one that this post aims to correct. I know that in previous posts I have emphasized the ambiguity of certain genetic lingo, but in this post I am to enforce the clarity of one such piece of lingo…Mutations.
All the ENCODE hype has certainly brought molecular genetics to the forefront of the scientific stage and such exposure inadvertently highlights some trivial mistakes. On numerous occasions, I have heard people (from all ranges of scientific backgrounds) use phrases very similar to that set at the top of this page. Phrases declaring that ‘he was unlucky to have the gene for Huntington’s disease’ or ‘it was just in h ...
Varicose veins in a patient's lower leg. The veins, which carry blood back to the heart, are swollen, irregular and distorted. Varicose veins are most common in the legs, but may also be found in the oesophagus or testis. They occur when valves, which usually prevent the backflow of blood and support the pressure from the blood above, become leaky. The veins then stretch and bulge. Support stockings are usually used to treat the condition, although in some cases surgery is needed to remove the veins. Pregnancy, being overweight, and standing for long periods, all increase the risk of varicose veins. ...
Gastric brooding frogs went extinct thirty years ago - but today, scientists announced that they have taken a massive step forward in bringing this extinct creature back to life. A team of Australian scientists succeeded in cloning one of these frogs and taking it to the stage of an embryo, and they have now announced that they plan to go all the way and resurrect the gastric brooding frog using cloning technology.
Termites are pretty astonishing creatures by anyone's standards -- their queens are thirty times the size of soldiers and they produce an amazing thirty eggs per minute.
Relative to their size, termites build the largest structures in the animal kingdom. Their towers can reach an incredible 25ft (7.6m) high and 40ft across (12.1m) - and that's just above the ground! They can burrow as far as 225ft (68m) below the surface.
This is the larva of the Hemeroplanes triptolemus moth. In its larval form it is capable of expanding its anterior body segments to give it the appearance of a snake, complete with simulated eyes. It's mimicry extends even to the point where it will harmlessly strike at potential predators.
This is a remote forest in Western Poland, where 400 pine trees have grown with a curvature in their trunk structure and it turns out that no one really knows exactly what caused it. There are, however, a few theories:
1) The main theory seems to suggest that this is the result of human interference. It is believed that this is a tree farm and the trees were forced to grow horizontally in their youth to make a carpenters life easier. The curved shape can be induced by laying a heavy object over a young tree stem. Phototropism will cause the stem beyond the heavy object to grow toward the sky, while the growing stem beneath and behind the heavy object will develop what is called morphogenetic compression wood - which ultimately makes the curv ...
This image may look like something dreamed up for a surreal horror movie, but it's a real horror for the tarantula in question. This unfortunate arachnid is infected with Cordyceps, a parasitic fungus that replaces its host's tissue with its own.
Cordyceps fungi invades its hosts (mainly arthropods), and its mycelium eventually replaces the host's tissue. Once the arthropod is dead, cylindrical or branching growths emerge from the creature's dead body. Some species also have mind-control capabilities, convincing the host to travel to a place where the fungus will find optimal growth conditions before the host dies." ...
This is Peanut the turtle, shortly after being found in Missouri in 1993. She was taken to to a zoo in St. Louis where the six-pack ring was removed.
It seems that she was trapped in the plastic ring as a young turtle and was unable to free herself. Subsequently, her shell moulded itself to the plastic ring and she grew in the strange shape you see here.
Unfortunately the damage is permanent, but peanut is expected to live a long life and today she serves as a mascot for the fight against beach littering.
Please, always remember to clean up after yourself at the beach. ...
The kiwi is a flightless bird found only in New Zealand. They're around the size of a chicken, and lay the largest eggs in relation to their body size of any bird in the world. Their eggs can be up to 20% of the females body weight - the equivalent of a 130 pound woman giving birth to a 26 pound baby.
A Taiwan-based company has built a transparent smartphone with a multi-touch display from a light piece of glass. Although it's still a prototype, the executives have mentioned the transparent smartphone could arrive in late 2013.
This is the fruit of the Halla tree (Pandanus tectorius). The tree grows to 4–14 m (13–46 ft) tall and is found from Port Macquarie in New South Wales to northern Queensland, Australia and Indonesia east through the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked and is a major source of food in Micronesia.
Whitening treatments do not permanently whiten teeth. If you expose your teeth to foods and beverages that cause staining you may see the whiteness start to fade in as little as one month after treatment. Those who avoid foods and beverages that stain may be able to wait one year or longer before another whitening treatment or touch-up is needed. You worked hard to get your teeth white. Here are some tips to help maintain your pearly whites.
Avoid the consumption of or exposure to products that stain your teeth, such as coffee, tea, and red wine. If you do choose to consume beverages that stain, consider using a straw so that the liquid bypasses your front teeth.
Brush or rinse immediately after consuming stain-causing beverages or foods.
This is supernova remnant W49B. It is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, and as we see it it is approximately 1,000 years old. Compared to other supernova remnants of similar type and age, it is distorted in an usual way. Astronomers believe that it is distorted because it is in the infant stages of of forming a black hole -- the very first time this has been observed.
This is the pygmy marmoset (Cebuella pygmaea), the smallest known monkey in the world.
They are found in western Brazil, southeastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, and northern Bolivia and they typically live in the understory of the rain forest near rivers. Males weigh around 140 grams (4.9 oz), and females only 120 grams (4.2 oz).
By themselves, miracle berries do not taste like much. The reason to eat them is that they contain a chemical called miraculin that binds to the sweet taste receptors on your tongue, changing their shape and making them respond to sour and acidic foods.
The upshot of this effect is that some things you eat taste spectacularly different. Straight Tabasco sauce tastes like donut glaze. Guinness tastes like a chocolate malt. Goat cheese tastes like cheesecake. After about an hour of craziness, your taste buds go back to normal, no harm done. ...
Gallium is a silvery metal with atomic number 31. It is used in semiconductors and LEDs, but the cool thing about it is its melting point, which is only about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. If you hold a solid gallium crystal in your hand, your body heat will cause it to slowly melt into a silvery metallic puddle. Pour it into a dish, and it freezes back into a solid.
While you probably should not lick your fingers after playing with it, gallium is not toxic and it will not make you crazy like mercury does. And if you get tired of it, you can melt it onto glass and make yourself a mirror. ...
Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. It is basically just a gel made from silicon, except all the liquid has been taken out and replaced with gas instead. If you hold a small piece in your hand, it is practically impossible to either see or feel, but if you poke it, it is like styrofoam.
Aerogel is also quite useful. It supports up to 4,000 times its own weight and can apparently withstand a direct blast from two pounds of dynamite. It is also the best insulator in existence, which is why we do not have Aerogel jackets: it works so well that people were complaining about overheating on Mount Everest. ...
Fasciculations (muscle twitches) are the result of some kind of irritability of the nerve fibers. Because fasciculations are benign, they have not been studied particularly deeply (but, not all involuntary muscle twitches are fasciculations--more on that later). So we do not really know even where in the nerve the irritation is picked up--it could be in the cell body, could be further out in the fibers, nobody really knows. It is also thought that the exact localization of the fasciculation is random, meaning that you will feel a twitch in your arm or leg or eyelid without having necessarily irritated a nerve anywhere near the place you experience the twitch.
Causes are also only loosely understood; there are certain behaviors that can trigg ...
This is a frilled shark. Frilled sharks are found throughout deep waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is often described as a living fossil because of its resemblance to extinct, Paleozoic sharks. They are rarely seen alive because of their preference for deep water.
Here are some adorable images of macaw parrot chicks getting weighed and measured. The one on the left is just one week old, and the one on the right is seven weeks old.
Researchers at the Tambopata Research Center have been studying the wild macaw populations for years and tracking the growth of the nestlings. By climbing up into the trees and gathering data on these macaws, the researchers are able to do a lot of interesting science and gather information critical to protecting these species. ...
This is an example of a lenticular cloud, also known as altocumulus standing lenticularis. These are stationary, lens-shaped clouds that are formed at high altitudes. They are included in the middle layer cloud family because the bases of the clouds are stationed between about 2,000 and 7,000 meters. These clouds form when moist air is forced to flow up around mountains and large hills. The water is super cooled and condensed from air below the dew point temperature.
Meet the goliath frog! This beast is the largest extant anuran on Earth.
They can grow up to 33 cm (13 inches) from snout to vent, and can weigh up to 3.2 kg. They have a fairly small habitat range, mainly in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea and sadly their numbers are dwindling due to habitat destruction. They are also hunted for both consumption and for the pet trade.
The Yellow Pages use no virgin paper in the production of their directories, but to produce and deliver 540 million a year requires immense amounts of water and uses immense amounts of energy and fuel. If you need the Yellow Pages, keep it! But if you are among the 70% polled who say they never even open them, opt out. It is just a waste not to.
The lines over the circles are colour coded. Notice the single red line and 3 blue lines representing 13 groups together while the single green and 2 black lines take their own group. Simply draw your first group of lines in one direction then your second group of lines going over the first, count the groups of intersections and there\'s your answer.
Check out this amazing image of am urodid moth cocoon. According to entomologist and Amazon explorer Phil Torres, It has a really beautiful woven lattice structure that hangs about a foot below a leaf on a thin silk string.
This is an unusual structure because the pupa, resting inside the cocoon, seems fairly exposed to the elements. The hanging likely helps to prevent predation from ants, and the bright orange color may serve as an aposematic signal to predators to prevent it from getting eaten. The tube part at the bottom is the 'escape hatch' from which it eventually will exit as an adult moth. There is not a lot of research that has been done on the evolutionary origin structure - this is one of the many mysteries of the Amazon you can c ...
This question has puzzled scientists for a long time.
Scientists think that they have the answer to why the skin on human fingers and toes shrivels up like an old prune when we soak in the bath. Laboratory tests confirmed a theory that wrinkly fingers improve our grip on wet or submerged objects, working to channel away the water like the rain treads in car tyres.
People often assume that wrinkling is the result of water passing into the outer layer of the skin and making it swell up. But researchers have known since the 1930s that the effect does not occur when there is nerve damage in the fingers. This points to the change being an involuntary reaction by the body's autonomic nervous system — the system that also controls breathing, heart ...
This is the regal ringneck snake (Diadophis punctatus regalis), a subspecies of ringneck snake endemic to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Unlike other subspecies of ringneck snakes, the regal ringneck is almost exclusively ophiophagous, meaning that it has a diet that consists almost entirely of other snakes.
They have a weak venom that serves to immobilize their small prey, but is harmless to humans.
Meet the proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus), a monkey only found in Borneo Island, Asia.
The proboscis monkey is one of the largest monkeys native to Asia. It's very easily identified (for obvious reasons).
The species has very pronounced sexual dimorphism, with the male being much larger than the female. Males also have much larger noses (the individual pictured is a male), but the noses of females are still very pronounced. The bigger the nose a male proboscis monkey has, the bulkier he will be — increasing his chances of attracting a large harem. Both sexes have bulging stomachs that give them the impression of having a pot belly.
The proboscis monkey is assessed as Endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and listed in Appen ...
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Many tales of flying squid have been reported over the years but this behaviour was only confirmed last year. 
The second video is about the gorillas of Congo. Which evokes more emotion in you?
