Pollution-tracking by bird.
Nature reveals the outdoor version of canaries in a coalmine – how researchers use swallows and homing pigeons to track pollution: Nesting birds that feed […]
zoology
Science Art: Aardvark (Kapisches Erdferkel, Orycteropus capensis Gm. S. 147), from Brehm’s Tierleben, 1927
We’ve talked before about Alfred Brehm. These are his aardvarks. Earth-pigs. After “trek,” one of the best-known Afrikaans words to make it into English. Literally, […]
We built a blimp to hunt Bigfoot….
Oh, yes we did. We’ve already used zeppelins to hunt for aliens (or at least meteorite strikes). And now, MSNBC tells us, we’ve got an […]
Eight new mammals discovered in Peru.
National Geographic reveals the night monkeys and other bizarre creatures of the 70,000 acre jungle that explorers are calling “a heaven of biodiversity”: Rarely seen […]
Science Art: Oeufs 2b, 29, by Adolphe Millot, Nouveau Larousse Illustré [1897-1904]
It’s an egg! A jacana laid it on some tropical riverbank or lake shore sometime in the 1800s, just so Alphonse Millot could come along […]
Science Art: Reptile Skeletons and Skulls, from Allgemeine Naturgeschichte für alle Stände, 1835
They look even more reptilian from the *inside*. This image was part of one of those wonderful 19th-century German encyclopedias, but I found it in […]
Science Art: Fig. 68, The Two-Toed Sloth, American Types of Animal Life, 1893.
A contented sloth peers out of the pages of St. George Mivart’s American Varieties of Animal Life. I have no idea who the artist is, […]
Science Art: Amerique, from the Larousse pour tous encyclopedia, 1909.
Click to embiggen This is what America meant for Claude Auge, who edited Le Larousse pour tous nouveau dictionnaire encyclopedique in 1909. Eskimos and tapirs. […]
Science Art:Dugesia Anatomy Schematic, by Andreas Neudecker
This is a flatworm. A German flatworm. It may be a distant cousin of the planarians that hypnotized Dutch artist M.C. Escher with their two-dimensional […]
Science Art: Manière de pêcher la Tortüe; le Lamantin from Histoire des aventuriers flibustiers, Volume I (1744)
This engraving shows a bunch of humans spearing a sea turtle. But wait! A manatee looks on in terror, clutching her child! And thinks back […]
Python problem grows in the Everglades
National Geographic is watching South Florida with a growing sense of unease over the alien monsters eating any creature who wanders into the Everglades: …[T]his […]
A house mouse serenade.
Vienna’s University of Veterinary Medicine has been listening to the mice as the tiny Casanovas sing to impress the babes: It has been known for […]
Fight to be tiniest.
WaPo covers the war between a newly discovered frog and an itsy bitsy fish over which one is the smallest vertebrate: An article Wednesday in […]
A yellow viper with horns over its eyes.
Not a fever dream. Not a Discovery photoshop. No, it’s a newly discovered snake named Matilda: Matilda, technically known as Atheris matildae, was named after […]
Science Art: Chlamyphore tronque, Chlamyphorus truncatus, Harlan, by René Primevère Lesson
Click to embiggen The pink fairy armadillo wishes you a happy New Year. So, I am sure, would R.P. Lesson. [via Scientific Illustration]