These are fossilized crinoids found in Western Australia by Tom Kapitany. Crinoids are animals and belong to the phylum Eichinodermata which includes starfish and sea urchins (and they all have “pentameral symmetry”). This is all well and good but these things, in their fossilized state, look like s…
Not really. Reminded me of that Transformer when I saw this macrophotograph of a Longhorn Beetle. Just amazing. Via and TD.…
This is Zephyr, a “captive-born gray wolf” at the Wolf Conservation Center in NY. Below, you can hear him and his friends orchestrate some of the most beautiful sounds you will hear today. I’ve watched this five times and it was somehow even better with my eyes closed. /misc/w/wolf-howling.mp4 Here’…
What a strange, strange creature. Those bumps remind me of rivets on a submarine. But because they are anglerfish, the bumps are even more bizarre than you’d expect: Since anglerfish are deep sea creatures, it took scientists years and years to figure this stuff out. They could never find a male…
/misc/o/octopus-stealth-mode.mp4 This is indescribably badass.…
This is just indescribably beautiful. /misc/b/blanket-octopus.mp4…
I love these paintings by Arturo Garcia. I saw them in Denver. They’re from a series called Tatanka - The Spirit of the Land.…
A group of stringrays is called a fever (my head: “So that’s where that album name came from!”) This is what they look like: /misc/f/fever-ray.mp4…
Octopus kaurna lacks chromatophores like other octopuses. So it just burrows instead 😍🐙. It’s the only known octopus to bury itself completely like this. /misc/s/sand-octopus.mp4 The process begins with the octopus using its siphon to inject water into the sand, creating quicksand-like condition…
This is around Rovaniemi, Finland. By Jani Ylinampa, whose Instagram account is just magical. Here’s another picture. Looks like a highly detailed miniature.…
Don’t know if these are shopped but this is amazing.…
Also known as Pesquet’s parrot or the vulturine parrot. The Dracula parrot is a large, heavy bird, stretching to almost half a metre from beak to tail and weighing in at almost a kilogram. It maintains all that bulk by feeding almost exclusively on figs, which researchers suspect is why it ended…
Dark Brown or Black: Nocturnal (helps with camouflage.) Orange: Dawn and Dusk. Yellow: Daytime. There are no Blue-Eyed Owls.…
By the Audubon Society. Ravens are beefier, gauche, and less ‘refined’. They’re also relatively solitary. They have curvier beaks, wedge-like tails, and soar instead of flap. Here’s what a raven and a crow sound like.…
Sánchez infuses his landscape scenes with what the Cuban art critic, Geraldo Mosquera, called “an almost metaphys- ical vision.” This is not surprising considering that Sánchez is ardently devoted to yoga and to meditation which he practices several hours daily. He also goes regularly to a Siddha…
You could almost just narrate the body changes and narrate the dream. So here she’s asleep. She sees a crab and her color starts to change a little bit then she turns all dark. Octopuses will do that when they leave the bottom. This is a camouflage like she’s just subdued a crab and now she’s going…
(Source Unknown)…
A beautiful story about my favorite alien told with phenomenally good camera work. Left me a bit misty-eyed1. Lovely stuff. Felt like kicking myself for reading a few comments about it on Hacker News later. Not sure why I did this but promised myself I’d stick to the topics that site is good for (em…
And, of course, that’s all cartilage. Mama Nature is metal af. As she do 🙏…
Some absolutely marvelous photos of a Southen Blue-Ringed Octopus by @SammyGlennDives Like she’s dancing! Would love to find out what kind of protective gear the photographer had on. But it seems like the octopuses are very shy and will attack only when provoked, which is when their rings become…
Look we just wanted to make sure The Ocean would remember our species for having delivered value at any cost.…
I cannot get over how maddeningly cute this is. Reddit user pendragwen’s comment makes it even better: Awww! But look at how they test out their chromatophores first thing after hatching! It’s speculated that color-changing is how they communicate and show emotion. Almost like a little joyful stret…
Every person I’ve sent this to has seen it. Not sure why my own internet excursions didn’t yield this manifestly horrifying video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKjBIBBAL8 The last few seconds reminded me of scenes from Annihilation. Like this one: Edit: It’s been used in Eastern Medicine for a…
Behold the beautiful Secretarybird 🙌 – Source Unknown Way out of other birds’ leagues, eats venomous snakes, and “appears on the coats of arms of Sudan and South Africa” 🔥…