An eclectic assortment of stuff: food, archaeology, fun, books, history, geekery, etc.
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, science on Mar 6th, 2010
From Science Daily: Water Practically Flies Off ‘Near Perfect’ Hydrophobic Surface That Refuses to Get Wet.
Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet. Water droplets skitter across it like ball bearings tossed on ice.
Cool, hmm? The design is inspired by spiders. Spiders!
Spiders use their water-repelling hairs to stay dry or avoid [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Dec 14th, 2009
From the BBC: Octopus snatches coconut and runs.
Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team says it is the first example of tool use in octopuses.
One of the researchers, Dr Julian Finn [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, language on Dec 8th, 2009
From the New York Times: Boom! Hok! A Monkey Language Is Deciphered.
Krak krak! (Watch out, a leopard!)
Hok hok hok! (Hey, crowned eagle!)
Very good — you have already mastered half the basic vocabulary of the Campbell’s monkey, a fellow primate that lives in the forests of the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast. The adult males [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Nov 18th, 2009
From wired.com: Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists.
On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.
In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid newcomer who’d already taken baby steps down a [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Nov 17th, 2009
From liveleak.com:
Paul Nicklen describes his most amazing experience as a National Geographic photographer — coming face-to-face with one of the arctic’s most vicious predators. Not only did he get to swim and take photos of a 12-foot leopard seal in the Antarctic (and didn’t get eaten), he was actually adopted by it!
You must see this, [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, history & archaeology, strange stuff on Sep 24th, 2009
From Wired: 1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth.
A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, music on Sep 18th, 2009
Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, dogs on Aug 24th, 2009
This justifies the existence of the internet, Youtube, and border collies, all in one fell swoop.
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Aug 13th, 2009
From the Telegraph: Squirrel is surprise star of holiday photo.
The couple had set the timer on their camera while posing at a lakeside in a national park in Canada.
Just as they were about to be captured on camera the cheeky squirrel popped up in the foreground and stole the show. [continue, see photo]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, science on Aug 13th, 2009
From the University of Toronto: UTM study identifies first ancestor with a grasping hand.
Elongated fingers, an opposable thumb and a grasping tail — a new fossil study by researchers at the University of Toronto Mississauga suggests that a small plant-eating mammal relative is the oldest known tree-climbing vertebrate.
The tree-climbing lifestyle of Suminia getmanovi, a Paleozoic [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Jul 16th, 2009
From The Telegraph: The bay of pigs: swine swimming in crystal clear water in the Bahamas. Is photos. Go look.
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, science on Jul 3rd, 2009
From Wired.com: Make Like a Dolphin: Learn Echolocation.
With just a few weeks of training, you can learn to see objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do.
Ordinary people with no special skills can use tongue clicks to visualize objects by listening to the way sound echoes off their surroundings, according [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Jun 11th, 2009
From spiegel.de: Thieving Fox Amasses 120 Shoes.
A vixen has stolen more than 120 shoes from doorsteps in the German town of Föhren over the last year, amassing a collection that would impress even Imelda Marcos. Little bite marks on the laces suggest they’re intended as toys for her cubs.
For more than a year, the people [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Jun 5th, 2009
From the Beeb: Bats recognise other bats’ voices.
As if flying around in the dark swooping and diving to catch insects was not tricky enough, bats also listen for their fellow hunters.
A study has revealed how these winged mammals recognise other bats’ voices.
They are able to differentiate the ultrasonic echolocation calls that other bats make as [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Mar 2nd, 2009
From The Guardian: Psychedelic bouncing fish classified as new species.
A funky, psychedelic fish that bounces on the ocean floor like a rubber ball has been classified as a new species, a scientific journal reported.
The frogfish which has a swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes that extend from its aqua eyes to its tail was [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Feb 23rd, 2009
This story about a bear who served with Polish forces during WW2 delights me: An Ode to Voytek: The Most Badass Soldier in WWII.
(N.B: Those gentle souls who cannot bear rough language should skip this first link and select another one instead – see below.)
More about Voytek:
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, dogs on Feb 7th, 2009
From Science Daily: Wolf in Dog’s Clothing.
Slipping through trees or across snow, the wolf has glided into legend on paws of white, gray or — in North America — even black. This last group owes an unexpected debt to the cousins of the domestic dog, say Stanford researchers. In an unconventional evolutionary twist, dogs that [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Jan 23rd, 2009
From the CBC: Ottawa boy’s invisible invention warns birds about deadly windows.
Eighth grader Charlie Sobcov wants to stop birds from dying in collisions with windows, but he doesn’t want to ruin anybody’s view.
For his latest school science fair project he has invented painted, plastic decals that can be placed — discreetly — right in the [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Jan 6th, 2009
From the Boston Globe: Hungry seal hits bonanza at fish hatchery.
Looking for a stellar seafood place on the Cape, with locally raised fare and no wait? A brazen young harbor seal found just that today after she sneaked into a state fish hatchery in Sandwich and dined on an all-you-can-eat trout buffet before being nabbed [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, environment on Jan 5th, 2009
From Newsweek: It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny.
Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, is home to a population of bighorn sheep, whose most vulnerable individuals are males with thick, curving horns that give them a regal, Princess Leia look. In the course of 30 years of study, biologist Marco Festa-Bianchet of the University of Sherbrooke [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Dec 24th, 2008
From Science Daily: Honey Bees On Cocaine Dance More, Changing Ideas About The Insect Brain.
In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate.
Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they’ve found high quality nectar or pollen, [...]
Posted in DNA, animals, birds, insects, etc, history & archaeology on Nov 20th, 2008
From the New York Times: Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million.
Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million.
The same technology could be [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc, dogs on Nov 6th, 2008
From Ananova: Baby monkey gets his own guard dog.
A Chinese zoo has given an orphan monkey its own guard dog to stop it being bullied by bigger primates.
Keepers at Jiaozuo City Zoo said the monkey was always being bullied and they had intervened to save his life several times.
"So we put a dog in the [...]
Posted in animals, birds, insects, etc on Oct 28th, 2008
From nature.com: Early bird gets the better song.
Birds that come from the earlier eggs in a brood are more likely to be better singers, scientists have found.
In most bird species, song is used by males to demonstrate their fitness to potential mates, and many studies have shown that the healthiest males tend to sing the [...]
Posted in BC, animals, birds, insects, etc, outdoors on Sep 29th, 2008
If you were here I would take you to the beach in the mornings, right after coffee. In addition to the usual seaside delights, we now have Dead Jellyfish Season: every morning there are dozens of dead Lion’s Mane jellyfish sparkling on the beach. Some are small — just a foot or so across — [...]