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 ...

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.

Homer will tell you

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.

Listen to some interesting points made in this video coming from North Korea.

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.

A few of the 3800 traditional Andean cultivated potatoes.

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 ...