Cosmic pond

We are, each of us, a multitude.

[transmechanicus]

Every time i’ve had to replant anything with serious roots and shake the dirt out i just can’t unsee the parallel

[typhlonectes]

Why Do Seahorses Have Square Tails?      

Scientists use a 3D printer and a hammer to find out

by Mary Beth Griggs

We’ve got a lot to learn from a seahorse’s tail. Unlike other animals, these fishes’ tails are square, not round–a fundamental difference in shape that scientists believe could lead to new developments in medicine, robotics, and even defense.

In a paper published today in Science, researchers found that the difference in shape actually made a huge difference in how resilient the seahorse’s tail is.

In order to figure out why the seahorse tail is square while so many other animal’s tails are round (rats, lizards, monkeys, cats, etc.), scientists printed out 3D replicas of the square tails and similarly sized round tails.

Then they smashed them with a hammer…

(read more: Popular Science)

photograph: shellac/Flickr; illustration: Michael Porter, Clemson Univ.

[patroklos52-deactivated20250724]

In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll noted that every animal exists in its own unique perceptual world — a smorgasbord of sights, smells, sounds and textures that it can sense but that other species might not. These stimuli defined what von Uexküll called the Umwelt — an animal’s bespoke sliver of reality. A tick’s Umwelt is limited to the touch of hair, the odor that emanates from skin and the heat of warm blood. A human’s Umwelt is far wider but doesn’t include the electric fields that sharks and platypuses are privy to, the infrared radiation that rattlesnakes and vampire bats track or the ultraviolet light that most sighted animals can see.

The Umwelt concept is one of the most profound and beautiful in biology. It tells us that the all-encompassing nature of our subjective experience is an illusion, and that we sense just a small fraction of what there is to sense. It hints at flickers of the magnificent in the mundane, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. And it is almost antidramatic: It reveals that frogs, snakes, ticks and other animals can be doing extraordinary things even when they seem to be doing nothing at all.

~ Ed Yong, NY Times Opinion, 6-21-22

[mapsontheweb]

Terrain and Bathymetry Model of Antarctica

by 725Hemeed

[itscolossal]

Ruslan Khasanov Brings Cosmic Phenomena Down to Earth in His Mesmerizing Short Film ‘Space Iris’

[nature-travel-photography]

Horseshoe Bend [OC] [4032x3024] - Author: daltonous1 on reddit

[sixpenceee]

Magma flowing into the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii | Source                          

[olderboy-aesthethic]

[sesiondemadrugada]

I Origins (Mike Cahill, 2014).

[nature-travel-photography]

Ongoing eruption in Iceland with full moon above the crater [OC] [1200x1800] - Author: ByAnnaIsabella on reddit

[nature-travel-photography]

Shifen Waterfall, Taiwan [OC] [5600 x 3733] - Author: zero2g on reddit

[sleepin]

[artwhore99]

Crystals & Hydrangeas

[tachyonbeam]

Source

[thewriterkb]

A Gorilla’s Hand with Vitiligo.

Vitiligo is a condition in which patches of skin lose their pigment. It is believed that the cause of vitiligo is genetic susceptibility. The loss of pigment fluctuates often unpredictably, and can be triggered by factors such as stress. 

[archae-heart-deactivated2021012]

In rural Scotland you will stumble upon isolated houses in the most breathtaking locations and I entertain myself by making up stories about what the lives of the people inside are like. E.g. Byron and Mary live in that house with a Jack Russell named Rufus. Mary makes the sweetest blackcurrant pie and Byron takes his boat out nightly to placate the loch monsters with said blackcurrant pie. Loch monsters love pie, if you didn’t know. Rufus warns the couple of the land creatures that creep in the fog of the night. They live in contented (albeit occasionally chaotic) symbiosis with the cryptids.

[proevil]

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