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!

The binturong, or bearcat, is a rare species found in Southeast Asia. The females are usually 20% larger than the males, and they communicate amongst themselves using scent glands located on either side of the anus. These scent glands emit an odour that smells exactly like buttered popcorn.

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.

Exposure to cold and eating chili peppers both appear to increase the activity of brown fat cells, which burn energy, rather than store it as typical "white" fat cells do, a study has found.

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 ...

Biologists from James Cook University have discovered a new species of leaf-tailed gecko in Australia. The lizard is highly camouflaged against the granite boulders it lives on and grows to around 12 cm. It's been named the Cape Melville leaf-tailed gecko (Saltaurius eximius) after the region in northern Queensland where it was found.