Remember that time Xena stabbed a guy in the nuts? Because I do.
(via matthulksmash)
How Remoras Get Their Bizarre Suckers
by Megan Gannon
Scientists say they’ve confirmed how remora fish grow a weird sucking disc on their heads.
Remoras, which can be up to 3 feet (1 meter) long, have a slatted disc above their eyes, which sort of looks like the bottom of a sneaker. It acts like a sucker and allows them to attach to manta rays, sharks, and boat hulls in tropical waters. But the fish aren’t parasites; rather, they harmlessly hitch rides and feed off of scraps of food from their hosts.
It had long been suspected that the sucker was made out of the rearranged parts of a normal dorsal fin, but their development hadn’t been studied. By watching remoras grow up from their earliest larva stages, a group of scientists says they finally confirmed that the sucker does indeed come from fin parts…
(read more: Live Science) (photo: Dave Johnson)
Galaxy Coast
— Bill Shupp // FlickrTaken near Bixby Bridge north of Big Sur, CA, this is a 12 shot vertical panorama taken around 4 am this past Monday, when the Milky Way was pretty high in the sky. The glow near the horizon is a lighthouse just around the bend.
All shots are 20 seconds, except the bottom one, which is 3 minutes
(via abcstarstuff)
View high resolution
National Geo: Transparent Amazonian Fish
It’s speculated that the combination of its nearly invisible nature and nocturnal ways may be the reason why Cyanogaster noctivaga wasn’t discovered until recently. The fish is also tiny, measuring an estimated maximum of 0.7 inches (17 mm) long and makes its home in the notoriously murky Rio Negro, which may have contributed to its elusiveness.
Being that hard to see confers obvious survival benefits as a form of camouflage, so it’s not surprising that when it comes to transparency it *ahem* clearly isn’t alone.
(Read more about transparent animals)
(photo: Natural History Museum)
In my opinion, one of the best things humanity has captured on video. Done in 1979 by Voyager 1 as it approached Jupiter.
‘I saw this image when I was a kid: the photograph of Jupiter taken by NASA’s Voyager. Beautiful – but nothing special until shown in rapid succession.
Suddenly, Jupiter was alive… Breathing.
I was hypnotised.’
(Hey, you. You should watch Another Earth.)
(Source: pcrastello, via abcstarstuff)
