Beautiful Animals

We have those, which I call walking sticks, but I never knew of any so large.

A northern gannet slices into the waters off the island of Noss in Shetland, Scotland. The diving birds can break the water’s surface at 70 miles an hour and have nostrils that seal shut, allowing them to dive to depths up to 50 feet.

Ours are brown and slightly less terrifying, they really do look like sticks - it freaks you out when they fly - it's not obvious they have wings until then.

This is what ours look like, fortunately haven't come face to face with one this size.

Arthropoda are my favourite critters, though I do believe that they're actually alien robotic life forms, given that if you interrupt their cycles, they don't know what to do next.

Imagine dealing with one of these. Over 2 metres (8 feet) long.

I have a collection of naturalists's essays called "The Sacred Beetle". I remember one in particular where someone watch an arthropod build a nest in a spiral - he moved it half way through and it kept going from exactly where it left off in the new spot, so the cap of the nest sat right next to the capless first half.

The most amazing thing to me as that they evolve with these behaviours hardwired. Wish I understood that.

Here's your picture again with the business end showing.

Thanks Hinge, for the resize.

The experiment re the program thing is rather easy to prove. Mud wasps keep coming back, long after you've removed their nest, and ants keep heading to their queen long after she's gone. Paper wasps just hang around the nest site. No activity, until they die.

A close-up of the eye structure of any arthropod shows a detailed complex geodesic compilation so unlike anything that's found in any other creature.

Then take a look at their mitts. I'm convinced they are alien beings, and from fossil evidence, we can actually tell when they arrived on this planet, and track their evolution.

These (specific) little critters didn't bring their anuses with them when they evolved to live in the pores of our facial skin, so when they die, they actually explode.

That last detail made my day

Not mine.

It might explain blackheads a bit clearer than Clearasil does.

Emperor tamarin (2 months old):

Magnifico, bethie. Merci.

Sea stars:

now there's a pair of ears!

bee eaters

one can get hives from eating bees

Does anyone ever claim to hqve seen a Washington's Sea Eagle??? It was one of 12 "cryptid or extinct" birds that Audubon included in his massive "Birds of America"

Heres a picture of Washington's Eagle done by Audubon , and included in his first "The Elephant" folio. Ornithologists have been searching for this fella since 1826.

emperor penguin chick

The only penguins I actually saw were in the Frankfort Zoo. They actually walked exactly like our cartoon Chilly Willy.

Red fox in a Romanian forest.