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Which animal has the densest fur, try to guess
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With up to one million hairs per square inch of its body, the sea otter has the densest fur in the animal kingdom. (To put this in perspective, you’ve probably only got 100,000 hairs or less on your whole head!) Together with a huge lung capacity, this makes these water-loving creatures extremely buoyant. The pups are born so buoyant, they're incapable of diving underwater, and are often left bobbing on the surface in a sea kelp bed while their mothers hunt for food nearby.
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10106 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Pixelated snake
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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!
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9966 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Prickly crab
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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. ...
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9138 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Ever wonder why buttered popcorn smells so good?
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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.
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3 |
8179 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Shores of Lake General Carrera
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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.
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8121 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Getting paid to sleep
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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."
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7859 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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7754 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Proof that money does grow on trees
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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.
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7609 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Walking leaves
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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.
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7419 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Who knew chili peppers were good for you
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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.
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6889 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Monkeys can purr too!
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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.
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6480 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Massive drain plug
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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 ...
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6454 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
The gateway to hell
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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.
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6442 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
It's no wonder this species was so hard to find
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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.
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6436 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A fascinating real-life optical illusion
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A fascinating optical illusion can be found at the southwestern tip of Mauritius Island. If seen from above, this part of the island seems to be melting into the ocean, forming a spectacular underwater waterfall. We owe this to a runoff of sand and silt deposits (the light-coloured portion of the water) and the downward pull of the receding waves.
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5883 |
duddy |
10 years ago |