ECCEROBOT is an anthropomimetic robot, built with bones, muscles, and tendons to move the way humans do. And it does, which is creepy enough, but that face will haunt your dreams. Link -via The Daily What Geek
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Hilda is a hen who lives at Farmer Palmer's children's activity farm near Poole, Dorset, England. She apparently sat on the wrong nest of eggs and stayed there, keeping them warm, until they hatched. Surprise! The eggs were full of ducklings! Farmer Philip Palmer was unaware until then that the eggs had been laid by a duck.
They may notice some day that their mother doesn't want to swim with them. Link -via Fark
'Hilda doesn't seem bothered at all - the ducklings follow her around just as chicks would.
'Our ducks and chickens live together so a duck must have laid her eggs and that caused the mix-up.
'When I saw Hilda sitting on some eggs, I thought they were hers or another chicken's and, as she barely moved, I had no idea they were duck eggs.
'She was quite happy to sit there and nest them for the next 28 days and when they hatched I was shocked - instead of chicks, we had ducklings!
'It was so surprising but lovely and she has proved to be very capable at raising them.
'The ducklings aren't aware that their mother is a hen and Hilda is totally unaware that she's actually got a bunch of ducks waddling behind her.
'The ducklings don't leave her side and if they get scared they run for cover under their "mum".
They may notice some day that their mother doesn't want to swim with them. Link -via Fark
Google is starting to work on augmented-reality glasses you can wear so you'll have all your apps and internet and everything right there in front of your face any time you want. This is what they hope it will be like ...someday. The details are on G+ (which I am still suspended from). Link -via The Daily What
Kawah Ijen is a volcanic crater lake in East Java, Indonesia. This is no ordinary lake, but a pool of sulfuric acid. Miners harvest sulfur from the caldera, carrying it miles by hand, with little to protect them from poisonous gasses. Read more about them at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Matthew Harrigan)
When they get to your language, you will figure out what these lips are doing in this film by Elle Muliarchyk. Link -via Everlasting Blort
Depending on where you live, you might see Common Yellow swallowtail butterflies a lot. But there are many other species of swallowtail butterflies. Take a look at some of the beautiful but lesser-known species in a list at Ark in Space. The butterfly pictured here is called the Chinese Peacock. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user leemt2)
(NPR link)
Chinese paleontologist Xing Xu and colleagues have published their description of a new dinosaur species today, which might be the largest feathered animal ever. It's an early version of a T. rex they named Yutyrannus huali, meaning “beautiful feathered tyrant” in a mixture of Latin and Mandarin.
It weighed in at 1,400 kilograms (3,100 pounds), and was at least 7 or 8 metres in length. That’s 40 times bigger than Beipiaosaurus, the previous record-holder for largest feathered dinosaur (and another Xu discovery).
Xu found three skeletons of the new creature in China’s Liaoning Province. Judging by the size and the state of their bones, one of them was an adult, and the others were a decade or so younger. Except for one missing tail, they are almost complete, and in very good condition. That alone is cause for celebration. Dinosaur-hunters are often forced to describe new species based on tantalising fragments from a single skeleton; three complete ones is a jackpot.
All three specimens had long 15-centimetre feathers. Each is unevenly covered, but between the three skeletons, it’s likely that Yutyrannus was feathered from head to toe. These aren’t the flattened vanes that help most modern birds to fly. At this stage of their evolution, feathers were simply long filaments, better suited for insulation or displaying to peers, and similar to the plumes of today’s flightless emus and cassowaries.
Does this mean that T. rex had feathers? Some scientists think so. Link
Read another article about how the research on these fossils was done at The Loom. Link
Imagine these eyes staring at you during all your waking hours at home. Then again, all your hours at home would be waking hours if this was your dog! -via Daily Picks and Flicks
The Week magazine has an online toy that will give you an opinion. A bad one, in hindsight. Unlike a real "generator," these opinions are not constructed on the fly -they are things that were really said by someone at some time in history. Push the button and get another one randomly selected from the files. Link -via Buzzfeed, where you'll find a list of their favorites.
This picture was taken in the Oval Office on February 29th. Look at those smiles and tell me which one is more excited about the photo opportunity. Link -via Laughing Squid (Image credit: Nichelle Nichols)
Astrophysicist and geek idol Neil deGrasse Tyson watched the 1997 film Titanic and noticed the stars in the sky during the scenes when (spoiler alert) the boat sank. They were not the stars that would have been visible in that location on April 15, 1912. But they will be accurate in the re-release of the film today! You may think that deGrasse Tyson was being pedantic, but imagine getting all those preteen Titanic fans interested in historic star fields. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Resistance is futile! Or is it? If the universes of Star Wars and Star Trek were to somehow overlap (it could happen), and the Borg encountered the Imperial space station known as the Death Star, which would prevail in battle? This hypothetical situation sparks a torrent of fan discussion. Link -via Metafilter
The first appearance of the character Peter Rabbit was not in a book, but in a letter! A wonderfully illustrated hand-written letter that survives to this day.
In September of 1893, at 26 years of age, Beatrix Potter sent the following illustrated letter to Noel, the five-year-old son of her friend and former governess, Annie Moore. The letter contained a tale of four rabbits, and in fact featured the first ever appearance of Peter Rabbit; however it wasn't until 1901, eight years later, that Potter decided to revisit her letter to Noel and develop the idea.
The resulting story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was published in 1902 by Frederick Warne & Co, and has since become one of the most popular children's books of all time.
See the original with drawings, and read the full transcript at Letters of Note. Link
Passenger: Don't drive through the water! You don't know how deep it is!
Driver: This is a Land Cruiser -we'll drive right through along the bottom, mate.
Passenger: But what if it floats instead?
Driver: No worries, the engine will just shift into jet mode.
Do not try this at home. Or anywhere else. -via Everlasting Blort
Driver: This is a Land Cruiser -we'll drive right through along the bottom, mate.
Passenger: But what if it floats instead?
Driver: No worries, the engine will just shift into jet mode.
Do not try this at home. Or anywhere else. -via Everlasting Blort
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