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» Outboard Motor
» The Amazing Cell
» Nature's Game
» Horrendous Complexity
» The Humble Eyelid
» the Chessmaster
» the Origin of Life
» Search for Alien Life
» Elephant in the Room
» Greetings from The Cosmos
» The Atom
» Center of the Universe
» the Light is Good
» the Mask of Nature
» Divine wisdom vs Human Wisdom
» the Nature of Reality
» Mysterious World of PLants
» Almost a Miracle
» The Bite of Rationalism
» The March of Science
» Afterword
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** Amazing Creatures **
Pistol Shrimp have one mighty claw that they can snap together with such force that it creates a pressure wave strong enough to kill nearby fish. Water is ripped apart and as the cavitation bubble collapses, the gases produce an acoustic shockwave of about 220 decibels well above the 160 db needed to rupture human ear drums. The violent implosion also produces visible light called 'sonoluminescence', and superhot vapors reaching up to 4,700 degrees Celsius. Conventional Military bombs reach a temperatures of up to 2,480 degrees Celsius. Naval Submarines have been known to hide amongst beds of Pistol shrimp to escape sonar detection. Apparently the noise they create is so much that other submarines find it impossible to pickup other noises using sonar. see it here

The Gastric Brooding Frog swallows between 18 and 25 of its own fertilized eggs. The eggs contain a jelly which turns off the production of hydrochloric acid in the mother's stomach. After the eggs hatch, the tadpoles excrete a substance from their gills which keep the mother's stomach in a non-functional state. For the entire six to seven weeks of development the mother does not eat. During this time the size of the mother's stomach continues to increase until it largely filled the body cavity. The lungs deflate and breathing relies more upon gas exchange through the skin. Despite the mother's increasing size she still remains active. Birth is accomplished by the female widely opening her mouth and dilating her esophagus. The offspring, now metamorphosed into tiny frogs, are propelled from the stomach to the mouth, and then hop away.

The Spook Fish has a transparent dome intact with tubular eyes located inside its head like a fighter plane's cock-pit. This deep sea fish's periscope like eyes are rotatable and can easily detect the silhouette of its available prey. It is the only creature known to use a mirror eye structure as opposed to a lens, to focus an image in its eyes. The two dark capsules over the mouth are the fish's olfactory organs, or the equivalent of nostrils. see it here

The Fishing Spider can plunge its legs beneath the water's surface, grab its prey and pull it off to land. The fishing spider sneaks up to fish by walking on the surface tension of water, then attacks them from above. It can also stay submerged underwater for almost an hour by trapping air in its fur and it is an excellent swimmer.
Spider silk is about five times as strong as high-grade steel, pound for pound. It's also waterproof, highly elastic, and completely immune to bacteria and fungus. It is one of the most fantastic materials in nature, and the leggy creatures make it in their guts. They assemble proteins together into extremely long and unbreakable chains, then spit the protein assembly out through glands called "spinnerets", while at the same time removing water to harden it into a strand. It is also incredibly lightweight; a strand long enough to circle the Earth would weigh less than a bar of soap. The Bark spider, a native of Madagascar, produces the strongest natural substance on the face of the Earth. Their webbing is 10 times stronger than Kevlar (which bulletproof vests are made of) and a whopping 25 times stronger than steel. It also easily surpasses titanium, tungsten and pretty much any other metal around. They make some of the largest webs on the planet that can reach over 80 feet in length. Bark spiders can weave their webs from one river bank to another presumably using wind gliding techniques or a raft. see it here

Water Bears are micro animals composed of only about 40,000 cells but are about the same size as larger single-celled organisms [1]. Water Bears have an incredible resistance to extreme conditions. They can reversibly lower their metabolism to less than 0.01% of normal and go without food or water for more than 10 years until they dry to the point where their water content drops to less than 1% of normal, and they are just a husk of their former selves. Amazingly, they can then rehydrate, forage, and reproduce. They can be frozen to 1 degree Kelvin (-458F), where atoms come to a standstill, matter goes bizarre, gases becoming liquids and liquids becoming solids and the odd rules of quantum mechanics reign. And that's all the more incredible when you consider that the water bear has a brain that somehow emerges from this unscathed. They also can tolerate pressures six times that of the deepest oceans. And a few of them once survived an experiment that subjected them for 10 days to the vacuum of space. (humans can survive for a couple minutes, max. One poor fellow at NASA accidentally depressurized his suit in a vacuum chamber in 1965 and lost consciousness after 15 seconds. When he woke up, he said his last memory was feeling the water on his tongue boiling). They can also take hundreds of times the radiation that would kill a human due to highly efficient DNA repair mechanisms. Water bears don't mind hot water either-like, 300 degrees Fahrenheit hot. Why the Water Bears "evolved" the ability to survive the kind of cold that only scientists can create in a lab, and pressures that have never even existed on our planet, etc. is a mystery to scientists. see it here

The Bombardier Beetle when disturbed, ejects a hot noxious chemical spray from the tip of their abdomen, with a popping sound. The spray is produced by a violent reaction between two chemical compounds, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide, stored in separate reservoirs in the beetle's abdomen and mixed when needed in a third chamber with water and catalytic enzymes. Heat from the reaction brings the mixture to near the boiling point of water and produces gas that drives the ejection. The damage caused can be fatal to attacking insects and small creatures and is painful to human skin. Some bombardier beetles can direct the spray over a wide range of directions. see it here. The Bombardier beetle has caused much trouble in the hallowed halls of academia leading some evolution trained scientists to have a change of heart. Here is the story of one such scientist.

The Diving Bell Spider creates a bubble like web that traps air so they can survive underwater for long periods of time. see it here

The Horned Lizard has the ability to literally burst blood vessels in it's eye sockets and shoot an aimed stream of foul tasting blood that can hit targets up to 2 meters away. Amazingly, this bizarre bursting can even be repeated several times if necessary. see it here

The Cuttlefish is a master of disguise. The amazing creature has the ability to rapidly alter its skin color at will. Various highly specialized groups of pigment cells orchestrate together to give it dazzling abilities and a photo resolution of about 360dpi. Their skin can even affect the light's polarization giving metallic and shimmering effects. What's even more incredible is that the cuttlefish is completely color blind. And if that's not amazing enough, it has the ability to assess its surroundings and match the color, contrast and texture of whatever its on even in total darkness [2]. Watch it attempt to blend into a checker board here

The Hagfish has an unusual defense mechanism. When under attack, the eel-like creature secretes proteins and micro-fibres from specialized cells in its many pores. The mixture combines to form a micro-scaffold which traps the surrounding water molecules. The scaffold rapidly expands into a huge mass of suffocating slime that envelops its predator in a disgusting mass of fibrous gunk. The hagfish, to avoid falling prey to its own defense mechanism, normally twists itself into knots to escape the gelatinous goop. Unlike other slimy secretions, the hagfish's slime is reinforced with micro fibres which lend tensile strength and toughness to the slime. The fibres are ten times stronger than nylon, sparking intensive research by materials scientists. see it here

The Tripod Fish is a deep sea fish with very long bony protrusions which it uses as stilts to face upstream and wait perfectly still for whatever tiny prawns, fish, and crustaceans the current will deliver straight into its mouth. see it here

The Plumed Basilisk is a lizard which can literally run across the surface of water on its hind legs. They have specially designed feet with long toes on their rear feet and fringes of skin that unfurl in the water, increasing surface area. As they rapidly churn their legs, they slap their splayed feet hard against the water, creating a tiny air pocket that keeps them from sinking. They can even drop from a tree into the water and sprint, upright, about 5 feet (1.5 meters) per second across the surface. Abundant natural predators like snakes and birds keep these amazing lizards on their toes. see it here

Embiids are insects which can spin silk from structures on their front legs which they use to weave tunnels and galleries on the ground in which they live. see it here

Archerfish prey on land-based insects and other small animals by shooting them down with water droplets from their specialized mouths. It compensates for the curving of the jet through gravity and adjusts for the way light bends at the boundary between water and air. They also "modulate" the velocity of the water jet as they spit to alter its shape through the air. The head of the water jet increases in volume from liquid arriving from its tail to form a large drop, which hits insect prey with greater force. Adult fish usually hit the target on the first shot. Perhaps they should be called sniperfish. see it here

Ants are the only creatures besides humans known to keep domesticated animals. A species of ants in Indonesia are nomadic shepherds, moving with their domesticated herds of millibugs from plant to plant, always looking for fresh foliage for their stock. In this and many other ways, ants display a remarkable intelligence despite their tiny brains. see it here

A Chicken Egg has an incredible array of mechanisms which must be done in precise clockwork timing and order. see this amazing video for details.. see it here

The Blackpoll Warbler can fly all the way from Canada to South America and back, then return to the exact same nest.



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