One wolf starts to howl, and they all must join in. This footage was taken on a visit to Wolf Creek habitat and Rescue in Indiana, when thirty wolves joined together for a howl. Just imagine what this would sound like if you were camping in the wilderness, and there were no fence between you and all those wolves. -via Viral Viral Videos
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A mother panda plays with her child exactly the way most human parents do at some time or another. This is Rauhin and her cub Yuhin, who live at the Shirahama Adventure World Zoo in Japan. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
A father in Kiev, Ukraine, announces his intention to clear the snow from his 7th-floor apartment balcony this past Saturday. His child considers idea hilarious, as the snow is quite deep. He manages to clear at least a path! -via Daily PIcks and Flicks
We had suspected that squid are planning to take over the world, and now we have evidence that one of their tactics is suicide bombing. A large squid caught off the shores of Guangdong province in China was discovered to have a live bomb inside!
"This sort of squid lives close to the shore and normally makes a meal of small fish and prawns," said the fishmonger, who gave his name only as Mr Huang to the local Guangzhou Daily newspaper.
"Perhaps he thought the bomb was his favourite food and gulped it down. He certainly had a big belly when he was caught," he added.
The bomb weighed around three pounds and was shaped like an aubergine.
Local police suggested it might have been dropped by a fighter jet but did not date it.
Police confirmed that, despite its rusty appearance, the bomb was capable of exploding. They destroyed it in a controlled detonation. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Guangzhou Daily)
Charlie Haughey was not a trained photographer when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam in 1967. A couple of months into his tour, he was assigned to be a photographer, with these instructions:
“You are not a combat photographer. This is a morale operation. If I see pictures of my guys in papers, doing their jobs with honor, then you can do what you like in Vietnam.”
Haughey shot over 2,000 pictures, most of them unpublished for decades. Now they are being digitized and put online. See 46 of those photographs at The Big Picture. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Charlie Haughey)
Play a tin whistle tune for an ostrich and he dances to the music. Yeah, you might think it loves you, but maybe we should have that talk about the difference between true love and mating, young man, because this is a mating dance. -via Arbroath
To get you in the mood for for Easter, here's a supercut of bunny rabbits in cinema. Which is your favorite movie rabbit? John Farrier would no doubt select Watership Down and Alex would go for Monty Python's killer bunny. I am torn between Harvey and Night of the Lepus. -via The Daily Dot
What does it take to NOT get noticed? A few years ago a biologist named Bill Saidel took a new look at some old fish, asked himself this question -- and noticed something most unexpected. And what he noticed raises some other questions -- most interesting questions -- about what it means to see.
Many creatures drastically change their appearance to camouflage themselves from predators. The chameleon is a familiar example. Saidel discovered that, in fact, some of these creatures do NOT change their appearance very much. Instead, they have special built-in tricks. They have a special skin pattern that induce an observer to actively mis-interpret. When you see one of these animals against a background pattern, your own visual system works to "fill in" missing parts of the pattern.
HOW this happens is something no one understands well. The simple fact that it DOES happen bothers many biologists, because it contradicts what they believe.
Here's the story.
Overlooked Undersea
In the sea, whenever you happen to get noticed by something that's hungry and capable of eating you, watch out. If you're a small fish, and you want to have a long life, it's best to avoid being noticed.
Many fish blend in with their surroundings, because of their shape, because of their markings, because of the way they behave. Nature has come up with many ways to camouflage various of her creatures.
Bill Saidel discovered one of nature's camouflage tricks, a subtle kind of pattern that works so well it has fooled generations of scientists (and generations of natural predators, as well).
(Image credit: Flickr user Asbjørn Hansen)
An Observant Child
This began with a curious story Saidel heard from a friend.
The A.V. Club reminds us of 20 chilling and memorable movie and TV scenes in which a person with no medical training performs surgery. It's always a have-to case with no alternative, and though it often ends suspiciously well, that's not always the case. But it's fiction, and exciting to the audience. Included is the 1976 M*A*S*H episode in which Father Mulcahy performs a tracheotomy under fire, shown here, as well as scenes from The Terminator, Rambo, Pulp Fiction, and The Walking Dead. Link -via mental_floss
Jacquie LongLegs is a Games of Thrones fan, so she made her Easter eggs to resemble the dragon eggs seen in the HBO series. You can make them, too! She'll show you how it's done in a short video. Link
Matthew Inman at The Oatmeal tells a story about a fart. If it causes one person to act more human and less judgmental, that's all fine and dandy. It's well worth reading just for the humor, even if it does have a message. Link
Nadtacular cut open a bag of mulch and found this. Alive. He decided to raise it as a pet. The animal survived, and you can see the rest of the pictures in an album following the critter's first five weeks. In case you don't know what kind of animal it is …I don't want to spoil the surprise. Link -via reddit
Learn how to draw this simple cartoon baby chick, and you'll be ready to draw one in wax on your Easter eggs, and it's also good for for decorating notes and correspondence between now and Easter! Get the step-step-instruction from Mark Anderson at Andertoons. Link
YouTube channel Smarter Every Day examines a Prince Rupert's Drop, which is a quickly-cooled glob of glass, and the strange physical properties of them. Slow-motion video shows us how really strange and cool this glass is! Of course, there's a perfectly logical explanation that's just as neat as the demonstrations. You don't want to try this at home. -via Metafilter
The combination of quadrotors, LEDs, and GPS can make for an impressive light show! That was the case for the Starfleet logo from the Star Trek universe, which showed up over the Tower Bridge in London as a promotion for the new movie Star Trek: Into Darkness.
Ars Electronica Futurelab, the same outfit that illuminated the skies over Linz, Austria, last year, launched 30 quadrotors near London's Tower Bridge and flew in a formation that any Trekkie would salute.
The 30 LED-equipped AscTec Hummingbird quadcopters from Munich's Ascending Technologies hovered about 118 feet to 426 feet above Potters Fields Park and formed a Star Trek insignia to coincide with Earth Hour.
The batteries that powered the micro UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were charged on the Austrian renewable energy grid, according to event sponsor Paramount Pictures.
See a video of the preparations and the performance at CNET. Link -via Digg
(Image credit: Ars Electronica Futurelab)
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