Amateur photographer Ingrid Bunse snapped this photograph of a waterbuck with lop-sided horns while on safari in the Ongava Wilderness Reserve, Namibia. She said: "When I spotted this animal I knew I had to get a picture because it was so unusual - I've never seen anything like it. I don't know what caused the horn to curl like this but it didn't seem to be too bothered by it."It must have been that way a long time, judging by the way the tip of the horn has been burnished during grazing.
Fossorial and seldom seen, precious little is known about the biology of the 160 or so described species of worm lizard. Almost all of them live in the tropics or sub-tropics and it is their admirable adaptations for a subterranean existence that really single them out. Along with their limbs they have all but lost their eyes and they retain just the vestiges of these organs – tiny, beady and covered with a thin scale...More at the link, which also has a video showing the ajolote trying to burrow into loose soil. And at H.E.R.P. I found this photo, which gives a better size indication.
Worm lizards make their tunnels by using their head like a battering ram, a rather brutal, yet effective technique necessitating a heavily reinforced skull where there individual bones of skull are all fused. Some species have a spade-shaped head, which is used to compress the soil into the top of the tunnel, while other species have a keel shaped head they use to press the soil in to the sides of the tunnel by vigorously moving their head from side to side...
In Latin, Amphisbaena means to ‘move in both ways’ reflecting the animal’s ability to move forwards and backwards equally well. Also, in myth and legend the amphisbaena was a fabulous beast with a head at either end of its body, perhaps the brainchild of a medieval chronicler who saw a worm lizard in its defensive posture...
Ravenala madagascariensis, commonly known as Traveller's Tree or Traveller's Palm, is a species of plant from Madagascar. It is not a true palm (family Arecaceae) but a member of the bird-of-paradise family, Strelitziaceae... It has been given the name "traveller's palm" because the sheaths of the stems hold rainwater, which can be used as an emergency drinking supply. The enormous paddle-shaped leaves are borne on long petioles, in a distinctive fan shape aligned in a single plane.Photo from the NOAA Library, via the New Shelton wet/dry.
Man...- from a group of cantos entitled, "In Memorium A.H.H." (1850). (source)
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law --
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed.
"It happens when there's a heavy snowfall and some wind at a time when the water is cold enough to freeze but due to motion it is prevented from doing so.From foamymilkyway, where there are additional photos of this phenomenon.
Conditions must be: Water temperature at zero deg. C., snow falling into the waves and combining together as the waves roll it along; think of it rolling a snowball on a liquid surface rather than a field, I'm sure you get the idea.
In Cape Breton this phenomenon is known by local fishermen as "a Lolly".
We followed the high tide line because I love to search for treasures. Coloured or shiny bits glinting in their recent wetness. A woman in front had a dog and a bag of stuff she kept gleaning from the berm ahead of us. I asked her what she was scavenging. "Sea coal" she said, and showed us how to identify the lumps and distinguish them from the black pebbles by their lighter weight and glimmer even when dry... It wasn't a great harvest because we only had DJ's hat to carry it in. But we shall return.The post included this photo of freshly acquired sea coal -
Killip first visited the beaches around Lynemouth in 1975 but, he says, it took him years to win the sea coalers' trust. 'I went there when I was first in Newcastle, and I couldn't believe it,' he remembers. 'It was so odd, these guys getting coal from the sea, and so visually amazing with all these horses and carts. But when I went on the beach with my camera, they just turned around and tried to run me down. I pulled off the beach and didn't go back for two years. When I did, the same thing happened. This continued until 1981, when I had a very bad afternoon and decided to go to the sea coalers' local to reason with them. They said "Listen, we get photographed by the dole. They sit in the van and they spy on us, and then when we go to get welfare they produce these photographs and we won't get any money. For us photographs are bad news, and we don't want any."The final question I had was whether sea coal was a purely natural phenomenon, from exposed veins on seashores, or whether it was somehow a byproduct of the transportation of coal in barges or other vessels. The answer came from this Wikipedia entry about Cresswell, Northumberland:
Snab Point, 500 metres south of The Carrs, is a sheltered bay with the Alcan aluminium smelting plant on its south side. Embedded in the small cliffs of Snab Point are the remnants of fossilised trees. The beach area is littered with the remnants of fossilised wood and small seams of coal can be seen in the cliffs. Depending on the tides and wind, vast swathes of sea coal is washed up within the bay.A photo at the link shows a beach strewn with sea coal. There's more on the history of sea coal at The Public "I":
“In the last four decades of the thirteenth century, the cost of wood increased about 70 percent, while sea coal increased only 23 percent… Londoners had no choice but to resort to sea coal, which was rapidly becoming known simply as "coal." By 1300, London's total annual wood fuel demand was 70,000 acres. By 1400, it was only 44,000, despite prodigious industrial, commercial and population growth.” The street in London where merchants sold their cargos still bears the name “Seacoal Lane”...The Durham County Council has this probably Victorian-era photo of the gathering of sea coal:
"...coal waste being dumped into the North Sea from Easington Colliery, County Durham (background). In the foreground is a discharge pipe emptying effluent from the mines into the sea. The sea is discoloured for several miles around the dump and the beaches are black with coal waste."You learn something every day.
Meteorologists once treated the signals from flying animals as a nuisance that complicated their measurements. But recent improvements in computing power and networking of radar stations have turned that nuisance signal into a valuable data source on animal ecology.See also: Mayflies seen on radar.A panel told the AAAS conference that radar could spot a single bee at 50km...
"One of the things that's most exciting to me is that we sometimes see an airmass that's moving, like a weather front, and insects actually get trapped up in that - you can see the insects pooling up along this air mass. If this happens to pass over the bat caves at sunset, the bats come out and distribute themselves right along that gust front and presumably gobble up those insects. Marine biologists probably think that kind of thing happens all the time in the ocean, but we've never been able to see that in the aerosphere."
The Komondor (Hungarian plural komondorok) is a large white-colored Hungarian breed of livestock guardian dog with a long, corded coat. They are sometimes referred to as mop dogs. The Komondor is an old-established powerful dog breed which has a natural guardian instinct to guard livestock and other property. The Komondor was mentioned for the first time in 1544 in a Hungarian codex. The Komondor breed has been declared one of Hungary’s national treasures, to be preserved and protected from modification...
The Komondor is built for livestock guarding... the coat of the dog looks similar to that of a sheep so it can easily blend into a flock and camouflage itself giving it an advantage when predators such as wolves attack...
A fully mature coat is formed naturally from the soft undercoat and the coarser outer coat combining to form tassels, or cords and will take around two years to form. Some help is needed in separating the cords so the dog does not turn into one large matted mess... Traditionally the coat protected the Komondor from wolves' bites, as the bites were not able to penetrate the thick coat. The coat of the Komondor takes about two and a half days to dry after a bath...
But this was not the blue-green algae that had appeared in the lakes before. Early analysis identified the cause of the green tinge as an algal outbreak of Synechococcus... As summer took hold at the end of 2008, what happened surprised everyone – a new species called Noctiluca Scintillans began to prosper, by feeding on the Synechococcus.You can read the rest of the story at Phil Hart's webpage and see additional photos in his gallery (via Neatorama).
In contrast to the widespread bright green of the Synechococcus, Noctiluca Scintillans was visible during the day as localised murky red patches, often building up on sections of shoreline facing the wind during the day. At night though, Noctiluca Scintillans produced a remarkable form of bioluminescence (popularly referred to as ‘phosphorescence’) – the water glowing brightly wherever there was movement – in the waves breaking on the shore, in ripples in the water and wherever people played in the water.
"Generated most likely by the bacterium Vibrio harveyi, this awesome display of flamboyant biological chemistry happened on a vast scale: The researchers estimate that it took a bloom of 40 billion trillion (4 X 1022) bioluminescent cells to generate the milky sea that the Lima had encountered."
The spiders made significant effort to avoid predators, hauling shells up to 20 times their own weight for over half an hour. "Just hiding in a shell on the ground would expose the spider to heat and ants, which are voracious predators of the desert ecosystem," said Mr Fiely.Via Oregon Expat.
