Aaaaaaaaaaaah!

The stuff nightmares are made of.

Baby Orangutan

This is highly adorable. I find the yawn particularly precious.

Aurora Borealis

Did you know you can see the Aurora Borealis from space? I didn't! But you can, and here it is.


Check out the whole post for a beautiful time-lapsed video of the northern lights.

Japan Earthquake

Giant whirlpool here. Tsunami travel times here.

Waves

More photos by Clark Little here.

Big Cats Love CK Obsession

Friendship Matters

Humpback whales form friendships that last years.

Relativity & Climate Change

Apparently, there are some similarities between the anti-relativity camp of Einstein's age and the anti-climate change camp of our own.

ROUS!

A new species of giant rat was found in an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea a few years ago. They found lots of other animals as well, including a frog with fangs. The finds have recently been confirmed as new species.

(If you don't know what an ROUS is, click here and here.)

Beetle Sex

Lost Whale

This story is kind of cool, but also very sad at the same time. A gray whale was spotted in the waters off Israel. The cool part of this is that there are no gray whales in the Atlantic. They were hunted to extinction in the 1700s. There are two groups of grey whales in the Pacific. The researchers think that the Northwest Passage was ice free for a time in the summer and the whale swam through and got hopelessly lost. The possibility of the whale making a safe return trip to the Pacific was considered "rather slim." Thus, the sad part of this is that there are no gray whales in the Atlantic. A lonely whale, all alone, half a world away from his kin, with no hope of returning. It reminds of me of this penguin and makes me want to cry.

Weather is Cool

Cumulonimbus clouds above Africa.

Whale Snot

Apparently, you can't really collect whale blood without killing it first. That seems inadvisable, so a researcher started collecting whale snot by flying a helicopter over whales when they breach and flying through the mist they spray out of their blowholes. What an odd job that must be.

Eyjawhaterverkull Photos

Check it here.

An example:

Storm Chaser

More storm pictures here. He also has pictures of other weather phenomenon like snow and fog. He also has some gruesome pictures of eagles eating ducks and geese.

Gay Birds

There is an interesting article in the Times Magazine about female-female pairs of albatrosses. This kind of research -- as the article states -- can be used by either side of the homosexuality debate. "See! It's natural!!" and "But animals are gross! They do immoral things like killing and fornicating! So homosexuality is still bad!"

That aside, though, it's an interesting look at sexual behavior in animals. It also briefly discusses the fa'afafine in Samoa, who are considered a third gender -- boys who choose to take feminine social roles and who are attracted to men.

Deranged penguins

I really want to scoop up this little penguin and save it. Besides the bitter cold & the complete lack of training or education, my desire to interfere with nature would make me really bad at these types of jobs.

The Global Domination of Argentine Ants

Apparently ants--normally territorial--form super colonies that may stretch hundreds of miles. Members of the super colonies refuse to fight one another. Well, there is a mega-colony from Argentina that has spread throughout the world, and regardless of which country they live in, the Argentine ants seem to be part of the same colony and tolerate each other, refusing to fight. Weird.

A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

Here is a short NPR piece on ants burying & stacking their dead.