Sensing Wonder @sensingwonder - Tumblr Blog

I love the crenellations of poppies, their tissue-paper crinkles thin enough to serve as paper lanterns when the sun burns through them. Photo: Olivia V. Ambrogio

#flowers #poppies #poppy #macro photography

Glass dancer. Photo: Olivia V. Ambrogio

#spiders #spider #spiderweb #macro photography

There’s a seeming heft to bees, the chunk of their fuzzy bodies held up by hardly more than gossamer, a whirr of cellophane-thin membrane…

#macro photography #insects #bees #flowers #allium

Heart of the poppy. Photo: Olivia V. Ambrogio

#flowers #macro photography #macro

Lights, blossoms, the moments before the rain.

Moon snails. Impressive predators, challenges to draw.

#snails #drawings #scientific illustration

Ah, the good ol' days when I sketched gastropod anatomy in order to make a field guide of Plum Creek mollusks (Oberlin, OH).

#sketching #scientific illustration #anatomy #snail #snails #shells

Snow-drop dreams. Photo: Olivia V. Ambrogio

#flowers #photography #macro photography

skunkbear

We once thought only humans and songbirds could hear sounds and then mimic them. But now, common marmosets have joined that list. Marmosets always give birth to twins and, unlike many mammal species, fathers lend a hand, along with siblings and other community members. These child-rearing marmosets are extremely talkative.

And a new study has found that marmoset babies actually learn to “talk” from their parents.

That means studying marmosets could help humans. Because they’re more closely related to our species than birds, they could provide special insights into developmental disorders involving communication, such as autism.

Full story here.

Images: Common marmoset by Leszek Leszczynski, Family of common marmoset by Francesco Veronesi