fauna

NASA ScienceCasts: Bright Explosion on the Moon

NASA researchers who monitor the Moon for meteoroid impacts have detected the brightest explosion in the history of their program.

Read more about it on PhysOrg.com

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/ for breaking science news.

How a Bat Tongue Mops Up Food

May 8, 2013—New high-speed video shows how the Pallas’s long-tongued bat engorges its tongue to lap up nectar.

© Video produced by Mike Cohea, Brown University

(via: National Geographic)

alex—stein:

Kings of Camouflage - PBS Nova (by Civil Digital)

So, there’s an entire NOVA episode on cuttlefish I felt you guys would enjoy!

Close up Moth Porn:  Elephant Hawk Moth (Deilephila elpenor)

The Elephant Hawk-moth is a medium-sized hawk-moth, on the wing from May to July and active at dusk. Found across Eurasia. It is commonly found in parks and gardens, as well as woodland edges, rough grassland and sand dunes.

The caterpillars are seen from July to September and are very characteristic: greyish-green or brown with two enormous, black eyespots towards the head. When disturbed, they swell up to show these spots and scare-off predators. The caterpillars feed on willowherbs, fuchsia and bedstraw, and the adults feed on nectar. The caterpillars overwinter as chrysalides, hidden amongst low vegetation or in the soil…

(read more: Wildlife Trusts UK)              (video: Steve Burrows)

sagansense:

NASA Sees Giant Solar Wave Erupt from the Sun

The sun celebrated May Day with a spectacular solar eruption Wednesday, unleashing a colossal wave of super-hot plasma captured on camera by a NASA spacecraft.

The solar eruption occurred over a 2.5-hour period Wednesday (May 1) and appeared as a “gigantic rolling wave” on the sun in a video recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, agency officials said in an image description. The solar eruption is what scientists call a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a type of sun storm that can fire off billions of tons of solar material at more than a million miles per hour, they added.

When aimed directly at Earth, the most powerful CME events can pose a risk to satellites and astronauts in orbit, as well as interfere with communications and navigation networks. They can even damage ground-based power infrastructure.

But the May Day solar eruption occurred on the side of the sun and was not aimed at Earth, NASA officials said. It produced a dazzlingly bright wave of plasma that expanded from the sun’s surface and then erupted from the sun’s side, or limb, into open space.

The sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity this year.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is one of several sun-watching spacecraft that keeps constant watch on Earth’s nearest star to track solar weather patterns and storm events. The $850 million SDO mission launched in 2010 and records constant high-definition views of the sun in several different wavelengths, including the extreme ultraviolet range of the light spectrum used to make the video of the May 1 solar eruption.

Extremely rare turtle discovered in Buffalo Bayou, Houston, TX

Brad Woodward reporting

At the Texas Wildlife Center, they are bursting at the seams with refugees from the recent storm.

“Whenever there’s a big storm we get a lot of squirrels, birds and possums, because they blow out of the trees,” said volunteer Pat Booher.

Among these common creatures we encounter every day, there’s one at the center that we don’t.

“When I first heard the report, I was like, ‘Are you sure?’  And when we saw all the distinctive characteristics, we’re like, ‘It is an alligator snapping turtle,’” said the center’s executive director, Sharon Schmalz…

(via: Channel 11 News - Houston)

Azealia Banks - Van Vogue

* she is really one of the most interesting, talented, and innovative rappers I have heard in a long time.

Attack of the Killer Fungi - Planet Earth

Sir David Attenborough and the Planet Earth team discover the weird world of the Cordyceps; killer fungi that invades the body of an insect to grow and diminish the insect population. Fascinating animal and wildlife video from the BBC epic natural world masterpiece ‘Planet Earth’.

(via: BBC)

Eyeshine: Black-footed Ferret Conservation

A short look at the re-introduction of the crucially adorable and critically endangered BFF into Kansas prairies.

(via: City of Topeka, KS)

New Video Explores the Mystery of Eels

by Brandon Keim

Lurking in lakes and rivers around the world, eels are ubiquitous yet enigmatic. Despite centuries of study, the most basic details of eel life remain mysterious.

Their offspring, example, look so different from adults that they were long thought to be another species. Even more fundamentally, while every other migratory fish in the world spawns in fresh water and spends adulthood at sea, eels do the opposite. How did this come to be? Nobody knows.

“Even the more scientific books pretty much admit that we don’t know very much,” said James Prosek, an artist and author. “As Rachel Carson said, ‘they pass from human sight and almost from human knowledge.’”

Prosek’s first experiences with eels came in childhood, when he accidentally caught Anguilla rostrata, the American eel, while fishing for trout and bass in Connecticut. Exasperation eventually turned to fascination, sending him around the world in search of more information…

(read more: Wired Science)                             (video: PBS)
                                  

Angry Pacific Giant Octopus Escapes Boat Through Impossible Hole

Video shot by Chance Miller. Filmed near the Chiswell Islands, Alaska. 

(credit: millerslandingak.com)

bleeding-rainbow: Suburban Lawns

diggin this so hard right now!

If you don’t know about the sublimely weird late 70s early 80s west coast post punk band, Suburban Lawns, its time you do.

Acclaimed Documentary ‘Chasing Ice’ to Make Television Debut

The story of renowned Nat Geo photographer James Balog’s quest to document the fast decline of the Earth’s glaciers.

culptural, architectural and stunningly beautiful. The world’s glaciers are one of nature’s most impressive and enduring backdrops — epic in size and grandeur. They are also a massive, undeniable casualty of climate change. Now, internationally acclaimed photographer James Balog has captured hundreds of thousands of majestic glacier images that serve as unprecedented visual evidence — grabbing at the gut and allowing us to visualize the change firsthand.

CHASING ICE, winner of best cinematography at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, documents Balog’s three-year quest to capture the natural world in transformation. Placing 26 time-lapse cameras in Iceland, Greenland, Alaska and Montana, Balog’s lenses bear witness to the tension between the huge, enduring power of the glaciers and their ultimate fragility as they crumble piece by piece into the ocean. Compressing years into 90 arresting minutes, the film offers a breath-taking — and haunting — visual retrospective of glaciers receding at unprecedented speeds, and massive pieces of ice sheets breaking off into the ocean…

(read more: National Geo)