Nature
Scarlet Macaws by @shutterguru
The unknown.
Spectacular.
Be afraid.
Cutie pi
Nice pic of a sweet Psychotria Elata.
Affectionately known as hooker’s lips and, in some circles, as Mick Jagger’s lips.
This particular specimen was found at the Butterfly Gardens in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica.
source: calypsoi
Fab, Fab, Fabulous!
A spectacular view has been captured just as the Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturn’s Ring Plane.
Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, ISS, Cassini Imaging Team; Processing: Fernando Garcia Navarro
Wow… just… Wow.
白神山地十二湖 by Yasushi MIURA
白神山地十二湖 by Yasushi MIURA
Mt Rainier, Washington State by Filemon & Mickey
Mt Rainier, Washington State by Filemon & Mickey
Mt Rainier, Washington State by Filemon & Mickey
Mt Rainier, Washington State by Filemon & Mickey
🌱 check out more of my photos (archive link for pc)
RedwoodsSunriseTwoSM by hillels flic.kr/p/2i67tnS
Spectacular.
Magnificence.
New Pterosaur Species Unearthed in Lebanon
www.sci-news.com/paleontology/mimodactylus-libanensis-07872.html
Here via the appearance on my tumblr feed of the wonderful allosuchus’ reblogging of alphynix’s post.
Source: scinewscom
Ooh, I just love this… whenever new pieces of the puzzle are found I get a thrill.
You simply must know that there were at least as many species of all forms of life around back then as there are now… and due to the conditions present in those days potentially a lot more than exist today … the scarcity is simply because fossilization is not a common occurrence. Not in the least.
So beautiful.
What a wonderful thought!
HT to Cathy Ostuw!
Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division
WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY! Quiz!
What critter covered its prize? EDIT: This is classic BOBCAT BEHAVIOR. They cover larger food items with nearby materials and visit it at their leisure to feed. Click here to learn more about Alabama’s bobcats: www.outdooralabama.com/carnivores/bobcat
Alabama dead deer video sparks debate on panthers, Bigfoot
Posted Dec 20, 2019
The Deep South is allegedly home to all manner of mythical creatures, so Alabama officials threw gas on a fire Wednesday when they posted video of a dead deer hidden under a pile of leaves and sticks.
A mysterious predator had cleverly tried to covered its “prize” for leisure snacking, and the Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division asked the public to guess which predator had done it.
What followed was pure social media madness.
A few people suggested the 90-second video was a setup, but most took it very, very seriously.
Within four hours, it had been viewed 5,000 times and ignited a fiery debate that started with bears vs. mountain lions, then took sharp turn into urban legend territory.
It continued Thursday, even after state officials said it was likely a bobcat that did it, something state biologists described as “classic bobcat behavior.”
“I am not sure a Bobcat can take a deer, could this be a bear?” Jim Deal asked on the state’s Facebook page.
“No way a bobcat could do this,” Mike Scott added.
The possibility of a Bigfoot attack came up, along a mountain lion, bear and multiple references to a mysterious “black cat” that conspiracy theorists insist lives in the state undetected. Some even submitted grainy photos as proof it.
“Ur an idiot if u don’t believe in black panthers in Alabama,” insisted someone named JD.
“They most definitely are. I believe you,” responded Bobbie Wilhite.
Panthers, mountain lions and cougars do not live in Alabama, state officials insisted in response to such comments.
However, the South does have bobcats, a 40-pound carnivore that is considered solitary and secretive, according to OutdoorAlabama.com, a state website.
“They are an elusive animal to see even where populations are high,” the site says. “Seldom seen during the daylight hours, bobcats do most of their hunting at night … They will occasionally feed on deer, mostly carrion, during the deer hunting season.”
———
Written by The Charlotte Observer and distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
I’m rootin’ for Squatch, of course. 
Ultra super rare weit giraffes!
Think before you act…
“Behold my swirl, Sir!”
My first friend on Mars stops to wave hello on his, her or it’s travels.
Squirrels ain’t so dumb, eh?
Beautiful pictures of the solar eclipse of December 26, 2019 in Saudi Arabia.
Photo Credit: Haroon Ali
Just mesmerizingly spectacular…
nature.index Mine! A piraputanga fish makes an athletic leap to grab low hanging fruit above the Bonito Pools in southern Brazil. The landscape around the town of Bonito is made up of dramatic limestone formations punctuated by waterfalls, streams and stunning cobalt-blue pools where there are lots of tropical fish. © BBC NHU South America. -⠀
Photo credit: @bbcearth
Cool af!
A lovely and very blue Racket-tailed Treepie
By @ananth.ramasamy
Iceland by @rannvajoensen
Beautiful
Mother Nature’s art…
The Dark Hedges, Northern Ireland
Be careful out there. Real careful.
Via CFZ Australia
PHOTOGRAPHER Wendy Bernhardt had heard rumours that there was a white fairy-wren around certain parts of western Victoria, and after a few weeks, she managed to come across it.
Based on the length of the tail feather, the bird is a superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) with leucism, and most likely male.
Read more: A guide to Australia’s fairy-wrens
Nice birdie.
by @jamieout, via Elevator.
Supertranq!
Pan across the Milky Way’s central region
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Dec 16, 2019This video pans across the central regions of the Milky Way, newly observed with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert. This stunning view shows the Milky Way’s central region with an angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds.
More information and download options: www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1… Credit: ESO/Nogueras-Lara et al.
Very Large Telescope images stunning central region of the Milky Way
gortex
Knight of Ni
Member
Registered: 8/16/2009
Location: Valles Marineris
Mood: Transmogrified
Member is on ATS now.posted on Dec, 17 2019 @ 02:19 PM
Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory based in in northern Chile have released high resolution images and the video below of the central region of our Galaxy , the observations give a new take for astronomers on the rate of Star formation in the early Galaxy and challenge the accepted theory that Star formation has been continuous throughout the history of the Milky way.
“Contrary to what had been accepted up to now, we found that the formation of stars has not been continuous,” adds Francisco Nogueras-Lara, who led two new studies of the Milky Way central region while at the same institute in Granada.
In the study, published today in Nature Astronomy, the team found that about 80% of the stars in the Milky Way central region formed in the earliest years of our galaxy, between eight and 13.5 billion years ago. This initial period of star formation was followed by about six billion years during which very few stars were born. This was brought to an end by an intense burst of star formation around one billion years ago when, over a period of less than 100 million years, stars with a combined mass possibly as high as a few tens of million Suns formed in this central region.
“The conditions in the studied region during this burst of activity must have resembled those in ‘starburst’ galaxies, which form stars at rates of more than 100 solar masses per year,” says Nogueras-Lara, who is now based at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. At present, the whole Milky Way is forming stars at a rate of about one or two solar masses per year.
“This burst of activity, which must have resulted in the explosion of more than a hundred thousand supernovae, was probably one of the most energetic events in the whole history of the Milky Way,” he adds. During a starburst, many massive stars are created; since they have shorter lifespans than lower-mass stars, they reach the end of their lives much faster, dying in violent supernova explosions.
phys.org…
So wonderful. Such wonders. Makes the mind explode with pure awe. Makes you want to go there and fly around amongst those bodies of stars and things we cannot even imagine.
A blue Bigfoot from a Remer, Minnesota trailcam.
Wait, What? Blue?
WTFIUWT?
Here’s a snip from an article:
By PIONEER PRESS | news@pioneerpress.com
PUBLISHED: December 9, 2009 at 11:01:00 pm | UPDATED: November 13, 2015 at 2:07:12 amTim Kedrowski and his sons, Peter and Casey, are not pushovers for Bigfoot stories, but a frame on a game trail camera set up on their hunting land north of Remer has left them in a quandary.
“To us, it’s very hard because we lean toward the skeptical type,” Kedrowski said in a telephone interview from his Rice, Minn., home.
But after checking with neighbors and any other hunters who might have been walking through the dense woods at 7:20 p.m. on the rainy night of Oct. 24, he said they couldn’t imagine what else the image could be. Tim said he considered ideas from a bear to a bow hunter in a fuzzy suit. But the arm and hand couldn’t be a bear’s, or its upright gait. And there is no evidence in the photo of a bow or flashlight a hunter might be using to track a wounded deer.
The Kedrowskis checked the Minnesota Bigfoot Web site and came up with the names of Don Sherman and Bob Olson, the Northern Minnesota Bigfoot Research Team.
[…]
I don’t know…
Wow, I just realized how old this story is! Jeez!
Saving an eagle from an octopus
Mowi Canada West
Dec 11, 2019Our staff at our Mahatta West farm in Quatsino rescued an eagle that had bitten off more than it could chew when it tried to catch an octopus. They are used to seeing the wonders of nature around them on a regular basis, but they knew that this was a once in a lifetime experience. The octopus swam away unharmed and the eagle recovered on a branch for around 10 minutes before it flew away.
Wow, this is freaky-deaky! I imagine it has happened before, but still, mind-blowing to the max.
Spectacular!
The notorious Bear Lake Monster.
A nice basilosaurus looking for lunch.
I dig this one, too. I could not find it, though.
Lovely work.
Yet more for Tomozaurus
by Rodrigo-Vega
Published: February 24, 2009
Visual Art Original Work Traditional
© 2009 – 2019 Rodrigo-VegaLet’s see…
G) Nguma-Monene: “Megaloserpens”?
H) Ropen: “Daemonterix”?? something like that?
I) Buru: …
Just Fabulous!
Russian Bigfoot chasing Car
Bigfoot Tony
May 21, 2019Footage from Bashkortostan, Russia, 2016
Confirmed by Igor Burtsev
Bigfoot Tony
Pinned by Bigfoot Tony
Bigfoot Tony
6 months ago
Translation by Igor Burtsev:“Their[sic] screaming: Are you shooting (video)?
yes, I do.
Ohhhh.
where is he? there he stands! yup.
take it off!
right now, stay like this! fuck on.. he’s gone!
there he is!
it is not visible! it is not visible! he’s standing – he knows we’re filming!
he’s coming! stay back!
Lesha (Alex), he’s running!
Ah! Lesha – run!
Well? Where is he? Wait, wait, shoot-shoot-shoot-shoot, get closer!
Filming!
You have zoom.. got a zoom? Add a bigger picture! Can you?
I can!
With two, two fingers!
Added!
I’m coming closer (got back up)
Look!
Yesterday, he in my opinion was, right?
That’s him!
He somehow so weird ran on all fours!
He’s coming! He runs! He’s up!
Stop! stop!
What the fuck? (engine stops making noise)
Why can’t you go?!
The car stalled.
Lesh!?
Stalled – {indistinct}
And You, Lesh?!
Window close! Don’t go out Alex!!!
Do not panic you – right I {unintelligible}
Lesh! Close the Windows!
Wait a minute!
He runs!
Lesh shut the window! Close the window!!!
He’s coming!
Aleeex!
He runs!
Alex!
Adeline?!
Huh?
Please open the window and see the phone for to be clearly – anyway he is much slower, will not catch us
Iren, take it off yeah that’s so
Fuck!
Oh, My God!
Okay let’s take off -just, most importantly, drive.
Are you feeling sick?
He fell! He fell! Okay, enough, run, Lyosh! (Lyosh is a pet name of Alex)”
Somehow, (Rense, maybe? Facefart?), earlier today, I think, I got word of this Coast to Coast piece on this video. It seems sufficiently interesting… critter seems pretty plausible. Humans seem pretty scared. But, hey, who knows. Just from what I see, though, body shape, behavior and the like, I think it may well be real.
Watch: Bigfoot Chases Car in Russia?
December 09, 2019
By Tim BinnallA puzzling piece of footage from Russia seems to show a large, hairy bipedal creature chasing after a car, and a cryptozoologist in the country believes that the oddity could have been a Bigfoot. The strange encounter reportedly occurred back in 2016, but the video of the unsettling sighting only appeared online earlier this year. Months later, it finally caught the attention of the media in Russia, who recently spoke to Igor Burtsev of the International Center for Homology about his investigation into the case.
The cryptozoologist revealed that the video had a profound effect on him as, after seeing it, he “lost both peace and sleep.” In the footage, a trio of girls and a man can be heard observing something coming towards their car. One of the girls screams “Lesha, close the window,” while another terrified passenger exclaims “he’s coming! he’s running!” Although the witnesses chose to remain anonymous, Russian media reports that they did meet with Burtsev to recount their experience.
For his part, the researcher indicated that he fastidiously studied the footage frame-by-frame and is quite convinced that the creature that chased after the car was, indeed, a Bigfoot. “This, I think, is the second such case in the world,” he marveled, “so convincing. Because it is clear that this creature is running.” Based on his close examination of the footage, Burtev posited that it was likely a female Sasquatch due to the shape of the creature’s upper torso.
Burstev also explained that a visit to the area where the sighting occurred seemed to bear signs that there were Bigfoot in the area, despite the video being recorded years earlier. “When we went to the forest, we saw broken branches,” he reported, “and completely fresh creases,” which we presume to mean footprints. Burstev went on to muse that “in local terms, this is ‘shurale,’ and in Russian it is called the goblin, and in scientific terms, it is a hominoid. Well, before, very actively called Yeti, Bigfoot, but these are all the names of the same creature.”
Showing the kind of ‘balanced’ approach practiced by the mainstream media in America, the Russian coverage of the case has also included the requisite skeptical stance on the video via a university biologist who dismissed the footage. “There is no evidence. No serious zoological and anthropological journal has articles that confirm the existence of this animal,” the academic declared, “there is nothing, this is mythology.” With that in mind, what’s your take on the weird footage? Let us know at the Coast to Coast AM Facebook page.
As they say, decide for yourself.
As I said, I kinda like it.
So romantic…
I like this one.
It has that evil look.
Guillermo Lorca aka Guillermo Lorca García-Huidobro (Chilean, b. 1984, Santiago, Chile) – The Girl with the Cats (detail), 2017
Paintings: Oil on Canvas
Source: guillermolorca.com
Very nice, no?
Female Scorpionfly (Panorpa sp., Panorpidae)
by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr.
Pu’er, Yunnan, China
See more Chinese insects and spiders on my Flickr site HERE…
Source: Flickr / itchydogimages
Very cool. Very cool, indeed.
Location: Depot Beach, New South Wales, Australia
Source: instagram.com
Via: lsleofskye
Quite beautiful, this place. Except when the Yowies come.
What an absolutely fabulous woman!
Joan Beauchamp Procter
Her best friend was a Komodo dragon and if that doesn’t entice you to read this, I don’t know what will.
Joan Beauchamp Procter is a scientist every reptile enthusiast should admire.
Joan was an incredibly intelligent young woman who was chronically ill (and as a result of her chronic illness, physically disabled by her early thirties). Her health issues kept her from going to college, but that did not stop her from studying and keeping reptiles. She presented her first paper to the Zoological Society of London at the tender age of nineteen, and the society was so impressed that they hired her to help design their aquarium. In 1923, despite having no formal secondary education and despite being only 26 years old, she was hired as the London Zoo’s curator of reptiles.
Now, that in and of itself is an awesome accomplishment, but Joan was absolutely not content to maintain the status quo. Nosiree, by the age of 26 Joan had already kept many exotic pets (including a crocodile!) and knew a thing or two about what needed to be done to improve their lives in captivity.
So Joan got together with an architect, Edward Guy Dawber, and designed the world’s first building designed solely for the keeping of reptiles. She had some really, really great ideas. Her first big idea was to make the building differentially heated- different areas and enclosures would have different heat zones, instead of having the whole building heated to one warm temperature.
She also set up aquarium lighting- the gallery itself was dark, with dim lights on individual enclosures to make things less stressful for the inhabitants. She also insisted on the use of special glass that didn’t filter out UVB. This meant that reptiles could synthesize vitamin D and prevented cases of MBD in her charges.
The above is just a snip of the article… read it!
I so love this lady… so smart… so lovely… so wow!
The babies greet the baby in a lovely warm show of camaraderie.
… umm, nice kitty …
↑ GIF by ArMaP
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As of 22 February 2020, post Database Detonation, it’s 3,704 !
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
← This sequence is cropped (and looped) from the last 10 frames of the video captured on Sol 6 by a camera on the lander for NASA’s Mars Pathfinder rover. Not enough pixels, but still, mighty impressive. This evidence was discovered -way- back in the day by 
