stills from microecos, the movie

screenplay here

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[muspeccoll]

Thomas Moffett or Muffet was an English naturalist and physician. He edited the Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum (Theater of Insects), which was an encyclopedia of insects and their behavior based on previous scientific works. Moffett added commentary on the beauty and virtue of insects and the lessons they could teach humans. Moffet wrote

Do you require Prudence? regard the Ant; Do you desire Justice? regard the Bee; Do you commend Temperance? take advice of them both. Do you praise Valour? See the whole generation of Grasshoppers.

Moffett was particularly interested in spiders. In fact, the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet” is said to have been written about an incident involving one of his children.

Thomas Moffett (British, 1553-1604). Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum. London: T. Cotes, 1634. MU Ellis Special Collections Rare Folio QL463 .M93

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John A. Comstock 1921 The Early Stages of Melitae neumoegeni 

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#ThalattosaurThursday! Help fund our fossil hunting expedition campaign on Experiment.com so we can find more of these guys. This awesome model is on display at the Sierra College Museum of Natural History in Rocklin, CA. (at Sierra College Natural History Museum)

Tell your friends!

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I asked my intro geology students to sketch their home planet from memory. I’m pretty impressed!

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Scenes from my new office pt.3 #fossilfriday #dudeforscale #mammoth #wardsscience

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Buy a Phylopic Shirt!

Phylopic.org is a fantastic website that provides free, reproducible silhouettes of living and extinct organisms for scientific figures, publications, posters, talks etc.

You can help keep the site online by buying this awesome t-shirt:

Funding drive ends today so go do it now!

https://www.booster.com/phylopic

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Desert arachnids pt. II scorpion under the rainfly. (at Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park)

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Desert arachnids pt. I solifugid in the caliper bag. (at Berlin–Ichthyosaur State Park)

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I'm back from the #Triassic! #FossilFriday

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Here's where our wren sleeps. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Hey, they don't call us #Euarchontaglires for nothing, am I right?

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Proto #lolcat? in Anna Botsford Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study, revised edition 1939.

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?

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It's the world's smallest flowering plant! (at Radnor Lake Natural Area and Wildlife Refuge)

[todropscience]

PENGUIN USE POO TO MELT SNOW

Gentoo penguins apparently form groups before they start to breed and may inadvertently use their dark guano to melt out rocky breeding sites earlier than they would otherwise melt.

In a time-lapse video of the Cuverville Island Gentoo penguin colony on the Antarctic Peninsula, you can see that the pattern of penguins congregating and leaving their droppings is followed by snowmelt. Scientists studying the images say it is possible that the darker color of poop is helping to melt snow by absorbing extra heat - a process known as the Albedo effect

The footage was collected as part of Penguin Watch — a citizen science project run by the University of Oxford that invites the public to analyze imagery beamed from the Antarctic. The next year should bring hundreds of thousands more. So if you care to click through penguin pics and maybe help some science, this is the website for you.

video: Oxford Science Blog

Penguin Watch Proyect

[todropscience]

RORQUAL WHALES HAVE STRETCHY BUNGEE CORD NERVES

Biologists at University of British Columbia have discovered a unique nerve structure in the mouth and tongue in fin whales that can double in length and then recoil like… a bungee cord. The stretchy nerves explain how one of the largest whales are able to balloon an immense pocket between their body wall and overlying blubber to capture prey during feeding dives.

gif:  Expansion of the ventral grooved blubber (VGB) during a fin whale lunge, illustrating changes in the dimensions of underlying nerves (yellow) that occur during the lunge

Image:  Segment of a nerve of the tongue at its initial length prior to being stretched and same nerve, after it is having been stretched. Till it abruptly stiffens and resists further extension, finally is more than twice its initial length

Reference; Wayne Vogl et al. 2015. Stretchy nerves are an essential component of the extreme feeding mechanism of rorqual whales. Current Biology.7