Meet Loricifera, a group of tiny aquatic multi-cellular animals. And they are now the first form of animal found to be completely absent of the need for oxygen for its metabolism.
Quite exotic and interesting, yes? Perhaps this means that other, maybe even more complex, organisms might be found in other environments that do no require oxygen.
More info at the link....
Outside my window is a wooden bird feeder. All this winter I’ve kept it well stocked with sunflower seeds and whatnot, and it’s proven especially popular with our local feathered friends during the recent spate of harsh weather. ‘Tis been quite good fun watching the cardinals and blue jays flutter in and get their fill.
Well a short while ago a new customer flew into the joint. It was a woodpecker…
…and he’s pecking away furiously on the wooden sides of the feeder!
Hey Woody: it’s a bird feeder, not bird food!
But I guess I have no choice but to let him have at it. My feeder enjoys too great a reputation as an “all you can eat” establishment and the woodpecker is determined to take me at my word.
Maybe next year I should change it to a metal feeder and leave out some strips of ...
Sometimes, the headlines simply demand to write themselves.
Crash here for the tale of Daniel East, his sister Tevyn, and how they inadvertently brought Tricky through a harrowing eight-hour scenic tour of the desert wasteland of Utah and Nevada.
Tricky not only lived, but he suffered just a few minor scrapes on his paws.
(And methinks Tricky should sign an endorsement deal with ACME while that iron is still hot.)...
Elementary students in Kent, Great Britain have elected to send a lamb they reared as a school project off to be slaughtered and rendered into succulent ribs and chops.
The decision to dispatch the lamb, which the students had named Marcus, has met with outcry from “grown-ups”…
...Marcus the six-month-old lamb has now been culled, the head teacher of the primary school in Kent confirmed on Monday, after the school’s council — a 14-member group of children aged 6 to 11 — voted 13-1 to have him killed.
The decision has provoked fury among animal-loving celebrities, animal and human rights campaigners and the parents of some of the children, and led to threats against Lydd primary school and its teachers, according to a member of staff.
Around 250 children at the school take part in a program designed to
Sounds like a Marvel Comic character in the making, doesn’t it?
Scientists working for NASA have created a device which uses magnetic fields to levitate small animals (in this case, a three-week old mouse) in an effort to simulate and study various amounts of gravity.
I just had to post about this ‘cuz I’m an Elon alum and have friends from there who read this blog: Virginia, West and Sloan dormitories at Elon University have been invaded by bats.
Fourteen students already moved in but had to evacuate for two days while the bats (mostly in Virginia) were removed. Elon’s fine maintenance crew (you know, the ones who have to paint the grass green whenever the school’s honchos come to visit) installed a gadget that emitted sonic frequencies which drove the chiropterae to flee the premises. Then various holes in the dorms were patched up with caulking so that the bats couldn’t get back in.
If Virginia has problems with bats, then Lord only knows what is lurking inside Smith…...
Sounds like a Fifties B-movie, or maybe the genesis of a new Spider-Man villain: the country’s most contaminated nuclear waste site has provided building material for swarms of wasps building their nests and now the nests themselves are loaded with radioactive isotopes of cesium and cobalt. The Hanford nuclear reservation near Yakima, Washington is currently being cleaned up and workers are having to deal with the nests, which fortunately have already been abandoned by the wasps.
I must admit: ‘twould have been a pretty awesome sight to see the skies of Yakima filled with giant glowing wasps 😛...
A little over a month ago I was in Greensboro on some afternoon’s business. While there I went into that new Target store on the north side of town, more or less to oggle the Star Wars toys (and if need be to straighten them up and make them look neat and tidy, ‘cuz that’s what all his friends do now that Darth Larry is on the other side of the country… but that’s a story for another day).
Anyway, it was in the toy section that I spotted a package of Sea-Monkeys: those “adorable” brine shrimp that have been a classic gimmick for over a half-century now. I’d had ’em before, most recently as of about six years ago. So pretty much out of whimsy I bought a set of them for nine bucks. For that you get the aquarium tank, the “water purifier” package, the envelope containing ...
In an effort to encourage “a more carbon-friendly, less polluting alternative to lawn mowers”, Google has turned to employing goats to chew down the excessive vegetation on its sprawling California campus.
Here are the Google Goats hard at work…
The idea isn’t entirely without precedent. During the World War I years First Lady Edith Wilson kept the White House lawn “mowed” by letting her family’s sheep graze freely on the grounds. Maybe Obama could follow Google and the Wilsons’ example and demonstrate some real environmentalism at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? 🙂
Well anyway, I think it’s a pretty neat story. Having grown up on a farm with a number of goats I can attest that they can eat anything, and will faithfully keep the grass and weeds at bay. Who knows: maybe with some good PR, goats and sheep can become the next “cool” pets to own.
(And as ...
Next time you go to Red Lobster and order a succulent, mouth-watering lobster or some crab legs, it may or may not interest you to know that according to a new study lobsters and crabs and other crustaceans are now said to register the sensation of pain throughout their neurobiology.
And incidentally, there is already talk about legislation that would protect crustaceans from “cruelty” like cultivating them so they can be thrown into cooking pots, etc.
That makes no sense. I mean, for the longest time we’ve been raising cattle on farms and ranches, for the explicit purpose of eventually slaughtering them so they can be turned into steaks and hamburgers. Same thing with pigs destined to become a plate of barbecue or a slab of ribs. What next: a study showing that bananas scream in agony when they’re plucked from the stalk?
‘Course, there’s always this compelling evidence ...