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The talented kingfisher
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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!
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2797 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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4091 |
savio |
10 years ago |
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2728 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Meet the black swallower
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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. ...
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2881 |
savio |
10 years ago |
A beautiful Egyptian vulture
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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.
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2484 |
savio |
10 years ago |
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5141 |
savio |
10 years ago |
The bleeding tooth fungus
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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. And, if you're wondering, they are inedible.
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2417 |
savio |
10 years ago |
First poisonous bird discovered
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The hooded Pitohui was one of the first poisonous birds discovered. It has a toxin on its skin and feathers that can induce tingling or numbness when touched. It is a common bird in New Guinea.
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2287 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Two new gigantic viruses
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Have you heard about two new gigantic viruses that have been discovered? They measure around 1 micrometer long & half that across – larger than some eukaryotic cells! Massive genomes up to 2.5 Mb (millions of base pairs) are present to match their giant size. Their discovery raises many questions on viral diversity that remains unexplored.
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2250 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Leafy Seadragon
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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.
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2199 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Does excess mercury cause autism?
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This announcement is the result of over 30 years of extensive research. It was determined that prenatal exposure to low levels of mercury through fish in the mother’s diet or the environment does not contribute to disorders on the Autism spectrum.
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2165 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Turn sweat into drinkable water
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Swedish engineers have developed a system that turns sweat into potable water. The Sweat Machine spins clothes to extract liquid from the fibres, filters it and transforms it into water. Their developers say the water extracted from the machine is cleaner than ordinary tap water.
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2090 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Planetary grid system
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After discovering that there were 12 main areas that all of these activities seemed to be occurring (such as the Bermuda Triangle and Dragon's triangle in Japan), he then noticed that they were also equidistant from one another. When you connect all of these points together with lines (called ley lines), you have a perfect icosahedron. Russian scientists Goncharov, Morozov and Makarov found that if you take this icosahedron and flip it inside out into the dodecahedron and then plot these new points on the planetary grid with the original 12 points of the original icosahedron, you now have a worldwide grid plotting every single major monolithic structure in the history of the world. ...
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2030 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Dinosaur tail discovered in Mexico
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The tail was discovered in northern Mexico and most likely belonged to a hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur. The tail is 4.9 meters (16 feet) long and is made up of 50 vertebrae. Tails are rare finds, and this is the first discovered in such good condition.
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2049 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Baby stingrays
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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. ...
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2051 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Before the iPhone and before the iPad, there was the Newton
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The MessagePad, released in 1993, was the first in a series of Newton devices to be developed and sold on the market. The 1.4 pound physical device was collaboratively manufactured by Apple and Sharp. The MessagePad packed a 20MHz ARM 610 RISC processor, 640 kilobytes of RAM, and a 336x240 monochrome LCD touch screen with stylus and handwriting recognition support. It was powered by four AAA batteries. It ran Newton OS version 1.05 and cost $699.99. The Newton platform was axed from the Apple product line for two main reasons. (1) The early Newton OS that shipped with the original MessagePad proved to be not so user friendly, especially when it came to the unpredictable handwriting recognition software. The press and other media outlets (inc ...
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2058 |
savio |
10 years ago |
One giant hornet
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The Japanese giant hornet kills about 40 people each year, and being stung by one feels “like a hot nail” going through the flesh.
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2071 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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2380 |
savio |
10 years ago |
The plastisphere
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Much of the debris in our oceans consists of small fragments of detritus no larger than a fingernail. These confetti-like plastic pieces act as microbial reefs – their own ecosystems – in the vast open ocean. Scientists are studying them to help better understand the predation and symbiosis in these mini ecosystems themselves and also how they are affecting the ocean and its other communities on a broader scale.
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3330 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Baby pandas
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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.
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2247 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
World's largest bat
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Not sure how real the photo is, but there are really huge bats in Australia. Check out the video below:
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2179 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Dumbo Octopus
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The Dumbo Octopus belongs to the genus Grimpoteuthis, and is given its nickname based on its resemblance to the large-eared Disney elephant. They can live up to 7,000 meters below the surface, though many are found between 1,000 and 4,000 meters. It feeds unlike any other octopus, by skimming the surface of the sea floor looking for crustaceans to swallow whole. The largest specimen on record was 1.8 m (6ft) long, weighing 5.9 kg (13 pounds).
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4086 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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5 |
1985 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Lichtenberg figures
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Lichtenberg figures are fractal patterns from electric discharges and can be found on a variety of materials.
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2404 |
savio |
10 years ago |
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1978 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Pasteurized milk causes cancer?
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A new study out of Harvard University shows that pasteurized milk products from factory farms is linked to causing hormone-dependent cancers. It turns out that the concentrated animal feeding operations model of raising cows on factory farms churns out milk with dangerously high levels of estrone sulfate, an estrogen compound linked to testicular, prostate, and breast cancers. Dr. Ganmaa Davaasambuu, Ph.D., and her colleagues specifically identified "milk from modern dairy farms" as the culprit, referring to large-scale confinement operations where cows are milked 300 days of the year, including while they are pregnant. Compared to raw milk from her native Mongolia, which is extracted only during the first six months after cows have already ...
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2287 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Another look at the goblin shark
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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.
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4467 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
White eyeless leeches
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This is Croatobranchus mestrovi, a leech that lives 1.3km below sea level and doesn't want to suck your blood. The leech's milky colour and lack of eyes comes from living exclusively in the freezing groundwater and darkness of one of the deepest caves in the world, located in Croatia. They were found in shallow water attached to rocks, with their extra-wide, tentacle-surrounded mouths facing the current.
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2465 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
World's most dangerous spider
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Latrodectus mactans, or Southern black widow or simply black widow, is a highly venomous species of spider. They are well known for the distinctive black and red coloring of the female of the species and for the fact that she will occasionally eat her mate after reproduction (hence the name – Black widow). The species is native to North America. The venom might be fatal to humans. Although these spiders are not especially large, their venom is extremely potent. They are capable to inject the venom to a point where it can be harmful. The males, being much smaller, inject far less venom. The actual amount injected, even by a mature female, is very small in physical volume. When this small amount of venom is diffused throughout the body of a he ...
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2383 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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2210 |
duddy |
10 years ago |