Showing posts with label Nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nature. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Cutting down a tree in reverse
via videosift.com
Reverse motion time lapse film in which a tree looks like it's being built instead of being cut down. Music: "Opus 36", by Dustin O'Halloran
Saturday, February 09, 2008
F-5 Tornado in Canada
via videosift.com
From Videosift:
This is a beautiful twister in Elie, Manitoba. The town of approximately 550 people is located about 40 km (25 miles) west of Winnipeg.
From Comments on Videosift:
-I remember that storm; we live in Winnipeg. They just revised the damage estimates from it to $4million (astonishing for how small of a populated area it affected), and declared it the very first confirmed F5 tornado in Canada.
It's also because of this storm that they're finally getting moving on an emergency notification system for severe weather. I grew up in Tornado Alley, so finding out that Winnipeg has no tornado sirens is a bit of a psychological blow for me.
Also, it looks (and sounds!) like the people who took the video are members of the Hutterite colony right by Elie, which is why it sounds like they're speaking German - they are! (Low/Old German, anyway).
-at 6:25 you can see it pick up an entire building and disintegrate it.
-Fujita scale ≠ wind speed. It is based on damage assessments.
From the Fujita Scale wiki entry:
The Fujita scale (F-Scale), or Fujita-Pearson scale, is a scale for rating tornado intensity, based on the damage tornadoes inflict on human-built structures and vegetation. The official Fujita scale category is determined by meteorologists (and engineers) after a ground and/or aerial damage survey ...
Though each damage level is associated with a wind speed, the Fujita scale is a damage scale, and the wind speeds associated with the damage listed are unverified.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Cat Vision!
Meet Fritz, the cat photographer. Every day, Ramona Markstein lets her cat Fritz wonder the neighborhood while wearing a camera that takes photos every fifteen seconds. You can see better quality images of her on his site: http://www.katz23.de/fritzcam-galerie.htm
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Acherodes the "Thief Spider"
This cunning little spider earns it's meal by undermining the web of a larger cousin. It will cut away the strands holding a captured insect, whilst suring up the weight with it's own web lines, thereby preventing the former owner from noticing the vibrations of the theft.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Pistol shrimp creates temperature of the sun
Pistol shrimp blowing a blast of water a speed of 100km/h with temp 9900C
Tornado Passes Over People Under Overpass
video of tornado on 26th April 1991 that passed by just next to people hidden under overpass.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Fear the Bullet Ant
Incredible Ritual With Hundreds of Poisonous Bullet Ants
Cracked.com:
From:
Rainforests from Nicaragua to Paraguay
Why you must fear it:
It's a full inch long, it lives in trees and thus can and will fall on you to scare you away from its hive--the one you didn't know was there, because it's in a fucking tree. Before it does this, it shrieks at you. This ant, you see, can shriek.
It's called a Bullet Ant because its 'unusually severe' sting feels like getting shot. On the Schmidt Sting Index, Bullet Ants rate as the number one most try-not-to-shit-out-your-spine painful in the entirety of the Kingdom Arthropoda.
Also--and we do feel the need to stress this--they fucking shriek at you before they attack.
More scary shit:
Are you the sort of person who likes to think of yourself as tough? A "badass," perhaps? "Hard," as they say?
Some of the indigenous peoples of the area use Bullet Ants as part of this initiation-to-manhood ceremony that they do. You know the kind we mean, with us it's like, a big party and your relatives give you money and everyone loves you and is so proud of you? Yeah with them, it's these special leaf sleeves with hundreds of bullet ants woven into them, stingers-inwards. They put them on and are immediately stung to holy fucking bejeezus by, and this is important, hundreds of Bullet Ants woven into the sleeves, stingers-inward.
The goal is to leave them on for 10 minutes, after which their arms are stiff, useless lengths of twisting agony, their bodies wracked with uncontrollable spasms for days. And in order to be actually pass the ordeal and become a man, they have to do it 20 fucking times.
Cracked.com:
From:
Rainforests from Nicaragua to Paraguay
Why you must fear it:
It's a full inch long, it lives in trees and thus can and will fall on you to scare you away from its hive--the one you didn't know was there, because it's in a fucking tree. Before it does this, it shrieks at you. This ant, you see, can shriek.
It's called a Bullet Ant because its 'unusually severe' sting feels like getting shot. On the Schmidt Sting Index, Bullet Ants rate as the number one most try-not-to-shit-out-your-spine painful in the entirety of the Kingdom Arthropoda.
Also--and we do feel the need to stress this--they fucking shriek at you before they attack.
More scary shit:
Are you the sort of person who likes to think of yourself as tough? A "badass," perhaps? "Hard," as they say?
Some of the indigenous peoples of the area use Bullet Ants as part of this initiation-to-manhood ceremony that they do. You know the kind we mean, with us it's like, a big party and your relatives give you money and everyone loves you and is so proud of you? Yeah with them, it's these special leaf sleeves with hundreds of bullet ants woven into them, stingers-inwards. They put them on and are immediately stung to holy fucking bejeezus by, and this is important, hundreds of Bullet Ants woven into the sleeves, stingers-inward.
The goal is to leave them on for 10 minutes, after which their arms are stiff, useless lengths of twisting agony, their bodies wracked with uncontrollable spasms for days. And in order to be actually pass the ordeal and become a man, they have to do it 20 fucking times.
Fear the Army or Soldier Ant
Army ants swarm a harvestman and try to eat it alive
From Cracked.com:
From:
The Amazon Basin. There's other subfamilies living in Asia and Africa, but these are the most notorious.
Why you must fear it:
By now, you will not be surprised to hear that these ants are, in fact, fucking huge, with the soldiers reaching a half inch in length. You will also not be surprised to learn that they have massive, powerful, machete-like jaws half the length of the soldiers themselves. They're notorious for dismantling any living thing in their path, regardless of size. They're also completely blind, which for some reason makes the whole thing worse.
They're called 'Army' ants because their entire colony, comprising up to and over one million insects, is a 100 percent mobile battalion. They don't make permanent hives like other ants, no, they bivouac down in single locations just long enough for the queen to shit out thousands of eggs, while the soldiers spread out in wide fans daily in search of food ("food" here, means "anything moving"). Then the eggs hatch and they enter the dreaded swarm phase of their existence.
Much like the word "killer," nature takes words like "dreaded" and "swarm" very, very seriously. They carefully pick up their larvae and go on the move, a near-solid mass of insect death and horror moving steadily and swiftly along the jungle floor, flaying alive and disassembling every living thing too stupid, slow or asleep to get the living fuck out of the way. There is no talk of painful stingers or ballistic acid here, no, this is terror of a far more primordial nature--the kind that simply flows over you by the hundreds of thousands and rips you apart with massive, unbelievably powerful jaws, utterly and literally blind to size and species, considering everything in their path to be a threat to the continuation of their colony.
There are reports of animals the size of horses being overwhelmed and shredded by them. Go stand next to a horse and then think about what that means for you.
More scary shit:
Army Ants are masters of wholly-organic, living architecture. For the good of the colony, the ants will use their own living bodies to build any conceivable structure necessary, latching on to each other foot-to-foot to create protective walls and ceilings against the ravages of the weather, bridges to cross otherwise impassable spans, whatever happens to be needed. (Can they form themselves into a crude catapult mechanism and launch themselves at prey? Not yet.)
There is no other living thing in the entire world that does this.
And, they're blind.
From Cracked.com:
From:
The Amazon Basin. There's other subfamilies living in Asia and Africa, but these are the most notorious.
Why you must fear it:
By now, you will not be surprised to hear that these ants are, in fact, fucking huge, with the soldiers reaching a half inch in length. You will also not be surprised to learn that they have massive, powerful, machete-like jaws half the length of the soldiers themselves. They're notorious for dismantling any living thing in their path, regardless of size. They're also completely blind, which for some reason makes the whole thing worse.
They're called 'Army' ants because their entire colony, comprising up to and over one million insects, is a 100 percent mobile battalion. They don't make permanent hives like other ants, no, they bivouac down in single locations just long enough for the queen to shit out thousands of eggs, while the soldiers spread out in wide fans daily in search of food ("food" here, means "anything moving"). Then the eggs hatch and they enter the dreaded swarm phase of their existence.
Much like the word "killer," nature takes words like "dreaded" and "swarm" very, very seriously. They carefully pick up their larvae and go on the move, a near-solid mass of insect death and horror moving steadily and swiftly along the jungle floor, flaying alive and disassembling every living thing too stupid, slow or asleep to get the living fuck out of the way. There is no talk of painful stingers or ballistic acid here, no, this is terror of a far more primordial nature--the kind that simply flows over you by the hundreds of thousands and rips you apart with massive, unbelievably powerful jaws, utterly and literally blind to size and species, considering everything in their path to be a threat to the continuation of their colony.
There are reports of animals the size of horses being overwhelmed and shredded by them. Go stand next to a horse and then think about what that means for you.
More scary shit:
Army Ants are masters of wholly-organic, living architecture. For the good of the colony, the ants will use their own living bodies to build any conceivable structure necessary, latching on to each other foot-to-foot to create protective walls and ceilings against the ravages of the weather, bridges to cross otherwise impassable spans, whatever happens to be needed. (Can they form themselves into a crude catapult mechanism and launch themselves at prey? Not yet.)
There is no other living thing in the entire world that does this.
And, they're blind.
Fear the Bot Fly
removing the bot fly larva
From Cracked.com:
From:
Most species found in Central and South America, some species found all over the world
Why you must fear it:
Oh boy. Ohhhhh boy. Okay, Bot flies.
There are dozens of varieties of Bot Fly, they're each highly adapted to target a specific animal, they have delightfully descriptive names like Horse Stomach Bot Fly, Sheep Nose Bot Fly and, hey, guess what. One of them is called Human Bot Fly.
They each have a different and elaborate reproductive cycle, all of which end with a fat, half-inch maggot embedded in living flesh. Feeding.
Horse Stomach Bots, for example, lay their eggs in grass. Horses eat the grass. And the eggs. Which hatch in the heat of the horse's mouth. Upon which they chew through the horse's tongue and burrow, through the horse, into its belly. Where they meet up and dig honeycombs into the horse's stomach. And get fat. When they're ready to be flies, they just let go and get pooped out of the system.
The Human Bot Fly lays its eggs on a horsefly or a mosquito, something that will attempt to land on a human. This carrier finds a human and lands on him or her. The eggs rub off onto the human, whose body heat hatches the eggs. The larvae drop onto the skin and burrow right the fuck in. Where they live. Under your skin. Eating.
Here's video of them removing one. DO NOT FUCKING WATCH THIS. Fuck, we don't even know why we linked it.
More scary shit:
Here is the best part. The larvae can grow anywhere in your body, it just depends on where the eggs wind up. Which could end up with you having a fat wormy thing in your tear duct. Or your brain. We know, because that's happened.
A Human Bot Fly larvae, burrowing into your brain. Eating your thoughts.
From Cracked.com:
From:
Most species found in Central and South America, some species found all over the world
Why you must fear it:
Oh boy. Ohhhhh boy. Okay, Bot flies.
There are dozens of varieties of Bot Fly, they're each highly adapted to target a specific animal, they have delightfully descriptive names like Horse Stomach Bot Fly, Sheep Nose Bot Fly and, hey, guess what. One of them is called Human Bot Fly.
They each have a different and elaborate reproductive cycle, all of which end with a fat, half-inch maggot embedded in living flesh. Feeding.
Horse Stomach Bots, for example, lay their eggs in grass. Horses eat the grass. And the eggs. Which hatch in the heat of the horse's mouth. Upon which they chew through the horse's tongue and burrow, through the horse, into its belly. Where they meet up and dig honeycombs into the horse's stomach. And get fat. When they're ready to be flies, they just let go and get pooped out of the system.
The Human Bot Fly lays its eggs on a horsefly or a mosquito, something that will attempt to land on a human. This carrier finds a human and lands on him or her. The eggs rub off onto the human, whose body heat hatches the eggs. The larvae drop onto the skin and burrow right the fuck in. Where they live. Under your skin. Eating.
Here's video of them removing one. DO NOT FUCKING WATCH THIS. Fuck, we don't even know why we linked it.
More scary shit:
Here is the best part. The larvae can grow anywhere in your body, it just depends on where the eggs wind up. Which could end up with you having a fat wormy thing in your tear duct. Or your brain. We know, because that's happened.
A Human Bot Fly larvae, burrowing into your brain. Eating your thoughts.
You Must Fear the Giant Japanese Hornet
from Cracked.com:
From: Japan, obviously.
Why you must fear it:
It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because goddamn, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the goddamned place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.
More scary shit:
Here's how the Japanese hornet treats other insects (and would presumably treat us, if we were small enough). An adult hornet will fly miles to find some squishy shit to feed to its children. Often times, it finds its food in, say, a hive inhabited by thousands of bees.
What to do? Well, Vespa japonica sprays the nest with some of the acid/pheromone and brings in reinforcements, usually consisting of 30 or so fellow hornets. They then descend upon the beehive like an unholy plague of hell-born death engines and proceed to make this world a scary goddamned place. This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance.
Behold the hornets systematically seize them with huge, wicked jaws and literally fucking cut them apart, one by one by one by fucking one. In three hours, there are piles of limbs and heads and just fucking bits of things that could possibly have been alive at one point, and the hornets have stormed the hive and flown away with all the bee's children. Who will then be eaten.
Nature is fucking hardcore.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Amazing ant colony
From Neatorama:
This remarkable video segment from a Science channel show on ants came through Digg today:
The structure covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. In it’s construction, the colony moved 40 tons of soil. Billions of ant loads of soil were brought to the surface. Each load weighed four times as much as the worker ant, and in human terms, was carried over 1/2 mile to the surface.
In the video, the scientists pour ten tons of liquid concrete into the ant colony, wait several weeks for it to set then excavate it.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Chuck Woolery introduces the best named guest on Love Connection.
