Guys, please stop.
I will do nearly anything for a joke. However I recognize that the petition system is a good thing, and if we abuse it because we think we’re hilarious, it will go away.
Remember that hilarious Death Star petition? Well because of that, they raised the signature quota for these petitions. Please let’s not have that happen again. Thanks.
(via viralcatalyst)
10 insects that look like they belong in an alien world. [Click images to enlarge & for descriptions.]
10. Puss Moth Caterpillar
With their soft bodies and high protein content, caterpillars are usually incredibly vulnerable. To fend off predators, they often resort to scare tactics. Sometimes it’s in the form of bright, flashy colors; sometimes it’s in the form of mimicry—looking or acting like another, more dangerous insect. The Puss Moth caterpillar opts for mimicry, forming a bizarre looking “face” that resembles a vertebrate face scary enough to send most curious predators the other way.
The caterpillars are bright green and will often have a row of white spots on either side of their body. On the head is a pair of black “eye spots”—directly above a gaping “mouth” through which the true head of the caterpillar protrudes. The effect is startling, but it’s even creepier in action: if the caterpillar is touched anywhere on its body, it will instantly turn its “face” directly towards the attacker. Touch it somewhere else, and the head follows you, like a Mona Lisa from hell.
And if that doesn’t work, it can always spray out a mist of formic acid from the two horns on its back.
9. Devil’s Flower Mantis Idolomantis Diabolica
One of the largest types of praying mantis, the Devil’s Flower Mantis is also one of the strangest. And that’s saying a lot when you’re talking about praying mantids. Females of the species can measure up to 5 inches (13 cm) long, and have developed a range of natural coloring that allows them to mimic the Devil’s Flower, a type of orchid.
Mantids are predators, and their hunting style usually involves sitting motionless until their prey comes within reach, and then whipping their forearms out at lightning speed to snag flies, beetles, even, in some cases, birds. The Devil’s Flower Mantis uses color patterns that mimic a flower to actually lure its prey within reach.
8. Brazilian Treehopper
The image shown here is a model created by Alfred Keller, a German sculptor, in the 1950′s. But don’t let the fact that it’s a model fool you—the Brazilian Treehopper is definitely a real insect, and it’s barely even the strangest looking member of the treehopper family.
Similar to cicadas, treehopper insects are sort of like the Addams family of the insect world. Many of them sport some sort of odd structure on their backs, and we’re still not sure what the point of most of them are. In the case of the Brazilian Treehopper, the ball-like appendages are hollow chitin, and may be for the sole purpose of making it harder to eat.
7. Extatosoma Tiaratum
Anybody who’s ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom should instantly recognize this monstrosity, commonly referred to as the Giant Prickly Stick Insect. As the largest known stick insect, the extatosoma tiaratum can reach lengths of 8 inches (20 cm) and is usually covered with large thorny spikes, which double as both camouflage and defensive armor.
Most of the time this insect attempts to blend in with its surroundings, but if it feels threatened it will rear up on its hind legs and spread out its front legs, like a scorpion. Interestingly enough, it also releases a chemical that is meant to scare away predators. To humans, it smells like peanut butter.
6. Pipevine Swallowtail Caterpillar
The Pipevine Swallowtail is a beautiful fluorescent blue butterfly that’s commonly found in North and Central America. Its larvae, on the other hand, is an armored congealed-blood-red caterpillar with tinted visor shades for eyes and a quadruple row of blunt horns running across its body.
The caterpillars live in groups while they are young, but over time they will wander off on their own before entering the chrysalis stage. They also change color as they grow, shifting from red to black, while their horns take on a bright orange hue. The bright colors are a warning—Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars feed primarily on the Pipevine, a poisonous plant, and retain the toxins from the leaves in their own bodies.
5. Atlas Moth
Most of the time, it’s the caterpillar of a moth species that looks the strangest, while the moth itself is drab and uninteresting. Apparently, the Atlas moth didn’t get the memo. With a 10 inch (25 cm) wingspan, Atlas moths are believed to be the largest moth species on the planet. They also have a very unique trait—the front tips of their wings almost perfectly resemble a snake head poised to strike.
Nicknamed the Cobra moth for obvious reasons, Atlas moths are found in Southeast Asia, where they’re farmed for their silk.
4. Tailed Emperor Butterfly Caterpillar
Take a trip to the east coast of Australia around March or April and you might run into one of these strange creatures. The caterpillar of the Tailed Emperor butterfly looks pretty normal—from the neck down. Its head, though, definitely secures it a spot on this list.
From a broad, armor-plated forehead extend four bizarre horns that would be more at home on a dinosaur than anything from this millenium. The butterflies lay their eggs in groups, usually on Illawarra Flame trees, and the alien caterpillars emerge sometime around late March.
3. Spiny Flower Mantis - Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi
Another incredible looking mantis, the Spiny Flower Mantis (Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi) is, again, a flower mantis, pulling its bizarre ornamentation from the appearance of a flower. This mantis is very small, measuring only 1.5 inches (38 mm) and is found in select locations in Southern Africa.
And like most mantids, the Spiny Flower Mantis is a voracious cannibal, and the older they get the more likely they will be to eat other mantids that come across their path. Another interesting fact is that the female’s egg sac can be nearly three time larger than its own body.
2. Scorpionfly
While this insect looks like the result of some bizarre genetic experiment that spliced a scorprion stinger onto a wasp, that “stinger” is actually something much more innocuous: the fly’s genitals.
Nevertheless, it makes for a bizarre looking creature. Scorpionflies, or mecoptera, can be found all over the world, and have been around since the Mesozoic age. In fact, they’re believed to have been the forerunners of most of our modern moths and butterflies, collectively grouped in the Lepidoptera order.
1. Calleta Silkmoth Caterpillar
If Jackson Pollock and God had a design meeting, they would probably come up with something similar to the Eupackardia calleta larva, also known as the Calleta silkmoth caterpillar. With a massive color range and dangerous looking barbs, the Calleta silkmoth caterpillar is something most predators stay away from.
The moth is found in the Southern US, and the color pattern of the caterpillar changes based on age and environmental factors. It feeds mostly on the Mexican jumping bean, a plant found throughout Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.
(via fyeahsciencenerds)
Three Centaurs Follow Uranus Through the Solar System
Astrophysicists from the Complutense University of Madrid have confirmed that Crantor, a large asteroid with a diameter of 70 km has an orbit similar to that of Uranus and takes the same amount of time to orbit the Sun. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that this and a further two objects of the group of the Centaurs are co-orbital with Uranus.
Uruguayan astronomer Tabaré Gallardo suggested in 2006 that the asteroids Crantor and 2000 SN331 complete their orbits of the Sun in the same time period as Uranus - an orbit of approximately 84 Earth years. Now two researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) have confirmed that in the case of Crantor this is true.
Loch Ness Monster Spied… in Space!
Ol’ Nessie isn’t known for making herself easy to find, but it looks like she recently popped up in an image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey — and my, how she’s grown!
First catching the eye of summer student Roberto Rodriguez, undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico, working with Arecibo astrophysicist Rhys Taylor, this monstrosity is actually a distant galaxy 700 million light-years away, and is about 200,000 light-years across — nearly twice the width of the Milky Way. Rodriguez is participating in Arecibo’s 10-week “Research Experience for Undergraduate” program.
Norway lemming, Lemmus lemmus
Lemmings in popular culture have been given the role of the blind follower due to the widespread myth that when migrating, the little rodents will follow one another so completely that they will follow other lemmings off a cliff in a mass suicide. Incredibly, this story was started by Disney with the film “Wild Wilderness” in 1958.
Lemming populations fluctuate dramatically in a cycles of four years, with populations exploding before dropping close to extinction. The population drops occur naturally (whether they are in response to weather fluctuations, food availability, or some other factor, scientists aren’t certain), but that wasn’t dramatic enough for the film or at all easy to portray, so the filmmakers herded lemmings over a small cliff into a river to create the fake suicide march. When populations get too dense and food is scarce, lemmings do migrate in large numbers, not en massed but in spread-out groups.(x)
Lemmings live in tundra biomes and feed on grass, sedge, shoots and other plant matter. They are most closely related to voles and muskrats. There are over 20 extant species; the Norway lemming and the Brown lemming are the two species with the most dramatic population explosions. Unlike other rodents, lemmings are conspicuously colored and will behave aggressively towards predators and even humans.(x)
The Norway lemming is found in the Fenno-Scandinavia region and is the only vertebrate native to the region. It is active both day and night, alternating naps with periods of activity. They spend the winter in nests under the snow. They migrate in the spring and autumn as changing weather makes certain areas uninhabitable. They will breed year-round when conditions are good.
(photo)
(via rhamphotheca)
Robot Runs Like a Cat
Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, EPFL’s four-legged “cheetah-cub robot” has the same advantages as its model: it is small, light and fast. Still in its experimental stage, the robot will serve as a platform for research in locomotion and biomechanics.
Even though it doesn’t have a head, you can still tell what kind of animal it is: the robot is definitely modeled upon a cat. Developed by EPFL’s Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob), the “cheetah-cub robot,” a small-size quadruped prototype robot, is described in an article appearing today in the International Journal of Robotics Research. The purpose of the platform is to encourage research in biomechanics; its particularity is the design of its legs, which make it very fast and stable. Robots developed from this concept could eventually be used in search and rescue missions or for exploration.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/06/robot-runs-cat
(via scinerds)
Some interesting info: This is very reminiscent of the Baby X experiments, in which it was discovered that people reacted differently to a baby’s behavior depending on whether or not they believed the baby to be male or female. People were asked to watch a video of a baby reacting to a startling image (a Jack-in-the-box popping up), and describe the baby’s emotional state. When people believed the baby to be female, they described the baby as being scared and upset; when they thought the baby was male, they perceived the baby to be angry. This was very telling, as it showed that literally identical behavior could be construed differently based on the perceived gender of the subject.
(via imagineatoms)
