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 ...

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.

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.

Elafonisi Beach on the Greek island of Crete has pastel pink sand! That rosy hue is caused by tiny particles of pink shells and coral that have been ground down over many years of erosion.

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.

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. ...

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. ...