Nature's Children

[Mark]

Another air breather fish.
Mark
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461549651_ ... media.html
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/tra ... tfish.html
http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_clarias.php
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/southflor ... h2005.html
http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/guidebook ... xt/217.htm
http://mbgnet.mobot.org/fresh/wetlands/ ... tfish.html
http://www2.nrm.se/ve/pisces/clarias.shtml.en

[Mark]

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/jun27/23332.html
"A cross between tear gas and a tommy gun." There's also a diagram of the heart shaped combustion chamber...
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2102
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... ardier.asp
And from the other side of the fence. "Agents of death."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html

[Mark]

Looking at that heart shaped combustion chamber on the beetle, I wonder if eddy currents loop around in each lobe? Recall how in a jam jar or Reynst Pot you get that curly swirl. It might be fun to try to route the fuel and air combustion in a heart shaped looped pathway instead of typically using a more or less straight tube. For what purpose, I don't know but ideas are born when you have something new going on.
Anyway, it's a strange looking explosion chamber, running at 500 cycles per second. Seems I've seen/heard a time lapse of a beetle firing his hot gases but I can't find an example on the net. Scroll down to see the mechanism.
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2102
Might be fun to make a mock beetle using a small pulsejet and have it buzz along on the floor as a humorous work of art.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Bomby-the-Bombardie ... dZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/Bomby-the-Bombardie ... dZViewItem

[Mark]

I was watching this operation, a show on the Discovery Channel about this child. I guess it seems kind of a depressing topic, but how strange how various the way things can grow, forming this and that, almost unimaginable. The head that was removed was capable of smiling and blinking.
Mark
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6998205/

[Mark]

http://www.african-safari-journals.com/ ... ctures.jpg
http://www.ripleysf.com/ripley/exhibits/calf.jpg
http://animals.timduru.org/dirlist/snak ... -Snake.jpg
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/02/ ... 30x293.jpg
http://xtramsn.co.nz/homepage2/imageLar ... 83,00.jpeg
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~sblumens/A ... d_pike.jpg
http://theochem.chem.rug.nl/Gifs/hydra.jpg

[Mark]

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/p ... 14l1f.html
Acurate to 1 meter.
http://www.naturia.per.sg/buloh/verts/archer_fish.htm
"Incredible aim" -- last paragraph.
http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/garcher.html
http://www.anglerschoice.com.au/albums/ ... h_caug.jpg
http://www.schubart.net/images/NoSmoking.jpeg

[Mark]

http://www.bionik.tu-berlin.de/institut/xtutor1.htm

[Mark]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... hoto4.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... _dynamite/

[larry cottrill]

On Mark's 'Godzilla' link (above), scroll down and click on the 'Giant Squid' article - the first ever photos taken of a LIVE giant squid in the wild, almost 3000 ft below the surface!

L Cottrill

[Mark]

I really get a kick out of these two movie clips. Imagine what Mr. Octopus must be up to or being on a dive and seeing an octopus "rolling with the current" and "walking".
Mark
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7194

[Mark]

And the clips you can watch on the upper left side of the this page are very good too. The last one with the octopus is kind of eerie and so it that cuttlefish for that matter. The last one took a few tries and waiting for it to load.
Mark
http://www.australiancephalopods.com/

[Mark]

An interesting account in the 3rd paragraph.
Mark
http://www.australiancephalopods.com/oc ... _ring.html

[Mark]

I was watching a show the other day about the banded sea snake and there is this eel that mimics the snake, it looked like a sea snake sure enough. But the show would have done better if it had included this other mimic, the octopus too pretends to be a sea snake. I saw that on some other show about the octopus.
1.5 milligrams your ticket to heaven.
http://www.divegallery.com/sea_krait.htm
This was a good read I thought.
http://www.susanscott.net/OceanWatch2001/oct05-01.html
Mark

[Mark]

A bit more on the snake/octopus trick. I wonder what an octopus thinks, one day pretending to be a flounder, the next day a poisonous fish, or seaweed, it makes you imagine if they could try and form their bodies into anything that was of advantage to them. I wonder if you could teach them to look like a Dynajet?
Mark
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010901/fob2.asp

[Mark]

Today I was out in my backyard pondering what next on my unfinished shed. I kept smelling something like a dead cat behind my date palm and bamboo overgrown area. Then I noticed a tiny red cage, just a tiny mushroom known as a stinkhorn, so I knelt down to see if such a tiny object could be responsible for producing such a smell. I about died!
These are strange mushrooms. They look like pingpong balls or turtle eggs before they "hatch." They attract bugs with a rotting smell and the bugs spread the spores for the mushroom.
I was thinking you could strap someone down, and if they refused to talk, say a prisoner in a time of war, you could hold one of these under their nose.
Mark
http://www.pbase.com/katemalone/image/37105269