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8 timeless tips on writing from Kurt Vonnegut
HSW and Vonnegut! My life is complete.
(via howstuffworks)
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Frogfish: The Ocean’s Disguise Artists
Biomimicry is one of evolution’s most mind-blowing avenues of adaptation. It’s one thing to adapt thanks to maxing out the biological limits of speed, or selecting for the ever-longer, better-feeding necks of giraffes or the ability to use a new, untapped food source at the bottom of the ocean. But to become another life form? It shows us that natural selection is not only a powerful force, but also a delicate one, fine-tuning things like colors and patterns like only the finest human artists can.
Above are three examples of frogfish biomimicry, a family of fish that separately mimics algae, sponges and even sea urchins. They evolved these costumes as a way to avoid predators and become better predators themselves. Check out an in-depth post about frogfish biomimicry at Why Evolution is True (wait until you see them eat!), and if you want more here’s a whole website (Comic Sans warning!) dedicated to frogfish camo.
I’ll have all of them, thanks.Creatures that look like Muppets are basically my favorite.
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Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)
Aww, the sea otter…so cute, so resourceful, so smart. Such adorable bobbing buoys above the Pacific kelp forests. Such…jerks?
Yep, that’s right - just like humans observed decades ago in animals that they considered to be “highly intelligent” (such as dolphins, elephants, and apes), when you get smarter, you get more potential for dickishness. The brain power it takes to use tools and find novel ways to extract food also gives sea otters the mental capacity to understand how to manipulate the behavior of other otters.
To wit: Male sea otters are routine kidnappers. Though otters often raise pups in close proximity to one another, and males occasionally interact with pups in an amicable fashion, one of the most common behaviors of younger males is to kidnap the pup of a sleeping mom and hold it ransom.
The mother goes into a panic and will procure an almost absurd amount of food for the male, just to get her pup back. Older males will engage in kidnapping from time to time, but from what’s been observed thus far, it largely seems to be a behavior of the younger male who hasn’t perfected his hunting skills, and instead of improving his skills, sees an easy way out.
What a jerk.
Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. John James Audubon. Completed and posthumously published by John Woodhouse Audubon, 1858.
Jerks…
(via howstuffworks)
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it’s like a disney movie meets real life.
i’m freaking out right now.
but that could also be all the caffeine i’ve consumed today.
i should stop typing.
look at the bears!
by Paul Nicklen - White Black Bear
Have you ever seen a black bear that was actually white? Known as the spirit bear or the Kermode bear, this revered and rare creature is found almost exclusively in the a moss-draped rainforest in British Columbia, Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest.
For National Geographic’s August issue, photographer Paul Nicklen captured the spirit bear in all its glory. With a population of only about 400 to 1,000, the white bear is a rare sight to behold.
Just how do they get that color? “Scientists know how black bears are born white. They’re just not sure why,” says Bruce Barcott of National Geographic. “The phenomenon, known as Kermodism, is triggered by a recessive mutation at the MC1R gene, the same gene associated with red hair and fair skin in humans. To be born white, a bear must inherit the mutation from both parents. The parents themselves don’t have to be white. They just need to carry the recessive mutation. So it’s not uncommon for white bears to be born to black parents.”(via howstuffworks)
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October is here. Ever since I started this blog, I have made sorry attempts to highlight a spooky museum or weird collection/site during the month of October. It begins with promise, but then ends miserably. Well, this time I am going to try to cover some strange and unusual places every weekday. Let’s start with the “Gates of Hell” in Turkmenistan. Gates of Hell, you ask? Yes, in the tiny village of Derweze in the Karakum desert is a 328 feet wide hole that has been on fire for 38 years. This isn’t an act of God or Mother Nature, but an industrial accident caused by the Soviet Union. A drilling rig accidentally broke into an underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and poisonous fumes to leak. To avoid the release of toxic gases, the Soviets set the hole on fire and it’s been burning ever since. If this was America, this place would be turned into a camping site where tourists could toast giant s’mores and burn their faces off. Sounds like fun, eh?
(via howstuffworks)
