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Comment by doone on Monday

Source: togifs

 #gif #moving image

Comment by Neal on Monday

Those Emus are cracking me up. =)

Comment by Neal on May 18, 2013 at 4:46am

Hug Time:

Comment by doone on May 16, 2013 at 11:56pm

A western screech owl (Tara Tanaka)

#WESTERN SCREECH OWL      #OWL      #BIRD      #ANIMALS      #GIF   

Comment by doone on May 16, 2013 at 8:31am

Visits from Australia’s most majestic animal, the emu.

Via: thegreatgodum.tumblr.com

10. So elegant. No wonder they put it on the Australia’s official crest.

Via: thegreatgodum.tumblr.com

Comment by Hope on May 15, 2013 at 9:48am

Surprise! Male Spiders Eat Females, Too

It’s a spider-eat-spider world.

We’ve known for years that female black widow spiders and other arachnids eat males during mating.

Now, new research shows that males of a type of ground spider known as Micaria sociabilis also eat females, and scientists are trying to figure out what motivates this behavior.

More than just a first date from hell, sexual cannibalism happens when one member of a species kills and eats a member of the opposite sex immediately before, after, or during mating.

This behavior is most common in arachnids like the black widow, as well as other invertebrates like insects, gastropods, and copepods. Most commonly, the female eats the male—but occasionally, the reverse is true. Male sexual cannibalism has been observed in another species of spider, Allocosa brasiliensis, and in crustaceans, but previously researchers had no idea what factors drove this behavior. (Watch a video of a male spider attacking a female one.)

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/13/surprise-male-sp...

Comment by doone on May 15, 2013 at 9:48am

3-D SCANS REVEAL CATERPILLARS TURNING INTO BUTTERFLIES

Ed Yong in Not Exactly Rocket Science:

The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is one of the most exquisite in the natural world. Within the chrysalis, an inching, cylindrical eating machine remakes itself into a beautiful flying creature that drinks through a straw.

This strategy—known as holometaboly, or complete metamorphosis—partitions youngsters and adults into completely different worlds, so that neither competes with the other. It’s such a successful way of life that it’s used by the majority of insects (and therefore, the majority of all animals). Butterflies, ants, beetles and flies all radically remodel their bodies within a pupa as they develop from larvae to adults.

But what goes on inside a pupa? We know that a larva releases enzymes that break down many of its tissues into their constituent proteins. Textbooks will commonly talk about the insect dissolving into a kind of “soup”, but that’s not entirely accurate. Some organs stay intact. Others, like muscles, break down into clumps of cells that can be re-used, like a Lego sculpture decomposing into bricks. And some cells create imaginal discs—structures that produce adult body parts. There’s a pair for the antennae, a pair for the eyes, one for each leg and wing, and so on. So if the pupa contains a soup, it’s an organised broth full of chunky bits.

More here.

Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 09:40 AM | Permalink

Comment by doone on May 14, 2013 at 7:30am

A golden eagle (Earth Unplugged - BBC Earth)

#GOLDEN EAGLE      #EAGLE      #BIRD      #ANIMALS      #GIF     

Comment by Michel on May 13, 2013 at 11:08am

On the upside, we can be confident the biosphere will survive. Fancier stuff like us might not however.

Comment by Dallas the Phallus on May 13, 2013 at 9:51am

See a pattern developing here?

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