earth

KREB

Called the Pa-Hay-Okee or River of Grass by the local Seminole tribe. It's 97km/60mi wide and flows so slowly that I couldn't see the water moving, draining Florida's main lake into the state's southern coast. Ecologically it's fascinating, with like 4m/12ft of elevation gain across it representing multiple ecosystems linked to how much water persists throughout the year. In the Rockies the ecosystems change every 300m/1000ft, here it's whether the water is at your ankle or your knee.

Highly recommended. It's remarkable.

Creature Feature: Helmet jellyfish

About Helmet jellyfish

If you’ve never seen a helmet jellyfish in real life, you’re in good company: it’s one of the few jellyfish (to be accurate, cnidaria) that spends most of its life in the ocean twilight zone. Due to their photo-sensitive red pigment, helmet jellies avoid sunlight like the plague, preferring the frigid depths to the sun’s damaging rays. That red pigment is nonetheless useful for warning would-be predators— and also disguising the bioluminescent prey in their bellies. Like their Coronate cousins, the Atolla jellyfish, helmet jellies display bluish-green lights along a prominently grooved “crown”, a further warning to fish and sea turtles to stay away.

Unlike other jellyfish, these red-helmet types hatch straight from the egg to juvenile stage. They hang out in all oceans except for the Arctic, but could be shifting their range northward. In recent years, the species has proliferated in Norwegian fjords as far north as Svalbard, causing some alarm amongst fishermen who feared that these glowing nightly apparitions on the surface would eat up all the juvenile cod and haddock. This unwelcome guest has nonetheless provided scientists with an opportunity to study helmet jellyfish’s habits, which previously could only take place at depth.

Helmet jellyfish lack brains and eyes, but make use of a simple sensory “bulb” that detects changes in light. When the sun comes out, that’s the helmet jellyfish’s cue to retreat to the murky safety of the twilight zone. However, scientists have been puzzled by the lack of day-night pattern that most other diel vertical migrators follow. They point to the gradual “darkening” of coastal waters due to nutrient runoff as one reason the helmet jelly might be able to survive the light of day.

In uphappy news - Researchers approximated the dangers of deep-sea mining by pumping sediment into the tanks of helmet jellyfish to see how the animals would cope with muddy water. The results were bad. - Hexbear

Oil execs hanging.

Dragonflies are, bar none, the most agile and skilled fliers in the animal kingdom. No other animal can fly forward with great speed, hover and turn in place, and most impressive of all, fly backwards. The muscles that control their wings are like pistons, incredibly strong, and they can independently control the angle of each wing. Their flight patterns are being heavily studied for use in designing drones, and were the explicit inspiration for the animation of the ornithopter wings in the new Dune adaptation.

Dragonfly nymphs spend their larval years underwater. And yes, I do mean years. They spend most of their lives in this juvenile, aquatic state, up to five years in some species, hunting mosquito larva, tadpoles, even small fish as they grow. They don't undergo a true metamorphosis; they moult, shedding their exoskeletons to grow, and eventually reach a point where they climb up out of the water onto a plant well above the surface, and moult one last time. Still clinging to their exuvia (shed exoskeleton) the imago pumps their wings full of heamolymph (bug blood) for the first and last time, spreading them out into the gloriously agile appendages that will carry them through their brief adulthood.

Adults will anywhere from a week to six months on average before they die, depending on species. They have incredible eyesight as well. Those gigantic peepers can see in nearly 360 degrees above and below it. And they see with precision. It used to be thought that insects had poor vision with their compound eyes; more recently it's been found by rapidly making each photoreceptor at the end of each lens go in and out of focus they can assemble a very sharp picture of the world, much as we put together a complete picture of our surroundings from constructed memory of all the spots that aren't the tiny area our pupils can actively focus on. The end result is that these guys can see pretty much everything happening around them in great detail, which they combine with their incredible flight abilities to snatch up and eat their prey directly out of the air.

Dragonflies can be fiercely territorial, protecting the best spots for finding mates and laying eggs. When it does come time to lay eggs, they usually lay them on plants that are directly on or even under water. The nymphs will hatch and start preying on whatever they can find and the whole thing starts again.

Dragonflies are beautiful creatures and it's mesmerizing to watch them fly. Keep an eye out if you're ever near a body of water. They're probably there, being magnificent.

https://makerichpolluterspay.org/climate-equality-report/

Pictured above: A Blue Banded Bee gets ready to sleep for the night by clasping onto a suitable stalk with its jaws

Blue Banded Bees are amongst our most beautiful Australian native bees. They are about 11 mm long and have bands of metallic blue fur across their black abdomens.

Blue Banded Bees are solitary bees. This means that each female bee mates and then builds a solitary nest by herself. She builds her nest in a shallow burrow in clay soil or sometimes in mudbricks. Many Blue Banded Bees may build their nest burrows in the same spot, close to one another, like neighbouring houses in a village.

Blue Banded Bees can perform a special type of pollination called 'buzz pollination'. Some flowers hide their pollen inside tiny capsules. A Blue Banded Bee can grasp a flower of this type and shiver her flight muscles, causing the pollen to shoot out of the capsule. She can then collect the pollen for her nest and carry it from flower to flower, pollinating the flowers. Quite a few of our native Australian flowers require buzz pollination eg Hibbertia, Senna.

Tomato flowers are also pollinated better when visited by a buzz pollinating bee. Researchers at the University of Adelaide made substantial progress in developing native Blue Banded Bees for greenhouse tomato pollination.

It would be much better for our environment to use our native Blue Banded Bees for this purpose rather than introducing European Bumblebees to Australia! (European Bumble Bees are not found on mainland Australia. Instead, native Blue Banded Bees and Carpenter Bees fill the niche of buzz pollinators on the mainland.)

Source: https://www.aussiebee.com.au/blue-banded-bee-information.html

and he said yes that's what we call them

Parrots are known for being adaptable, but you might not expect to see them in the trees of snowy Stuttgart. Yet it’s true: Around 50 yellow-headed Amazon parrots live in this German city. And they don’t just survive here – they thrive.

From making the most of the daily commute to major success in breeding, the Stuttgart parrots are of great interest to conservationists. With wild parrot numbers in sharp decline and more cities across the globe reporting urban parrot populations, could they offer hope for their species’ future?

Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake (Crotalus pyrrhus) | Flickr

The Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake exhibits great variability throughout their range. Their coloration generally matches the tones of the rocks found within their habitat. This, the white variant, lives in an area where the granite is light in coloration with dark flecking.

Nitter

A reply

I rarely record my wild howlings. There have been many times when I have traversed solo into the forest, or into the desert, & have shrieked... just simply for the joy & pleasure it brings. Same thing with running around nude amongst the wilderness. There is just something so vastly freeing & liberating about it. May this post here be a testament for all to embrace your inner animal, in a fun & safe way. To take a break from the concrete jungle & to fully immerse yourself in the natural one. I promise you, that you will be thankful you did.

Tyrant lizard king? No thanks, fuck the monarchy. Spinosaurus is cooler anyway (the modern depictions of him, not the terrible Jurassic Park version). hell yeah, look at that crocoduck and his powerful tail, I bet he could just smack T. rex with that tail and it would be over.

Did you know a crocodiles tail is just as dangerous at its jaws? That shit is pure muscle for swimming, it can break bones. Big heavy theropods like T. rex are fucked if they get a broken leg.

I prefer herbivorous dinosaurs though. Therozinosaurus is hilarious and I love him. BEHOLD

They got another Yacht, and SANK it

Edit Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/06/orcas-attack-yacht-gibraltar/

Two leopards take a drink at the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana, in a stunning photo taken from a new book, Remembering Leopards. Featuring photos donated by wildlife photographers around the world, the book is one in a series that has donated more than £1m to conservation projects

Photograph: Margot Raggett/Remembering Wildlife/PA

I love garter snakes so much, this one was curious and friendly and slid right across my leg after telescoping a bit for me to take a photo.