Bold, vibrant colors fill in the spaces outlined by simple geometric shapes. Luciano Cian’s artworks are full of life and story. The Rio de Janeiro-based artist is inclined to use bold blocks of color to spice up his minimal portraits. Cian creates images that allude to ethnicity, he tells Colossal. The artist has created a collection of fifteen works for the nonprofit organization Prints Against Poverty. You can check more of his pieces on Saatchi Art and Artsper! 

Image credit: Luciano Cian 

The end-Permian mass extinction event was an event which wiped out more than 90 percent of Earth's marine species and 75 percent of terrestrial species. Scientists have hypothesized that the severe event was triggered by volcanic eruptions in the area now known as Siberia. A new study published in Nature Communications presents more evidence that confirms this theory: 

[...] The paper presents the results of nickel isotope analyses performed in Wasylenki's lab on Late Permian sedimentary rocks collected in Arctic Canada. The samples have the lightest nickel isotope ratios ever measured in sedimentary rocks, and the only plausible explanation is that the nickel was sourced from the volcanic terrain, very likely carried by aerosol particles and deposited in the ocean, where it dramatically changed the chemistry of seawater and severely disrupted the marine ecosystem.

"The study results provide strong evidence that nickel-rich particles were aerosolized and dispersed widely, both through the atmosphere and into the ocean," Wasylenki said. "Nickel is an essential trace metal for many organisms, but an increase in nickel abundance would have driven an unusual surge in productivity of methanogens, microorganisms that produce methane gas. Increased methane would have been tremendously harmful to all oxygen-dependent life."

Image credit:  NASA 

A 64-year-old man in Germany spotted two oil paintings in a dumpster. The man turned the artworks over to the police in Cologne. Upon further inspection, the paintings turned out to be 17th-century originals, and now a search and a public appeal for the owner of the paintings has been released, as Artnet details: 

The first painting is a raucous self-portrait by the Italian painter Pietro Bellotti, dated to 1665. The other is a portrait of a boy by the Dutch Old Master Samuel van Hoogstraten, which has not been dated.

The auction record for a Belloti is $190,000, achieved at the Swiss house Koller Auktionen in 2010, according to Artnet’s Price Database. There are multiple versions of the painting, and a very similar portrait, titled Self-Portrait of the Artist as Laughter, was put up for sale at Christie’s London in 2006 (estimate: $55,000–$91,000) and then at Bonhams London in 2008 (estimate: $29,000–$44,000), though both works failed to find buyers. Other versions of the Bellotti painting are in the collection of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, the Pinacoteca di Brera, and a third was once part of the Scheufelen Collection in Stuttgart.

Meanwhile, works by Van Hoogstraten, who studied under Rembrandt in Amsterdam, have sold for as much as $788,000 (at Christie’s Monaco in 1993). The artist is best known for his experiments with perspective.

Image courtesy of the Cologne Police.

Even at their small size, they can still pack a punch (or a bite, in this case)! Cookie-cutter sharks are almost the size of your pet cat. Don’t underestimate them though, because they can (and will) attack predators bigger than they are, and even soft parts of nuclear submarines. Oddity Central has more details: 

Before Everett Jones’ breakthrough, people believed that the gruesome conical wounds often found on all sorts of marine life were caused by parasitic lice, lampreys, bacterial infections or some other mysterious creatures. It wasn’t until they started studying the mouth and saw-like teeth that they understood how dangerous a cookie-cutter shark’s bite could be.

Apparently, the sharks’ mobile tongues and large lips allow them to latch on to their prey by forming a vacuum on a smooth surface. They then sink their sharp teeth in and, using twisting motions, scoop out chunks of flesh, leaving behind bloody craters. These are no minor wounds either, as the most severe wounds ever documented were 5 centimeters wide and 7 centimeters deep.

Photo: NOAA/Public Domain

It’s very endearing. Meet Kotaro and Hana, two very curious otters who reacted to their human’s automatic popcorn maker. Just like every curious animal, the two were initially engaged with the device. What’s funny is how they reacted when the kernels started popping! Check the full video here to watch their reactions! 

(via Laughing Squid) 

Image via Laughing Squid

Los Angeles native Rob DePiazza decided to build a new house after Hurricane Irma destroyed his home. The former art gallery owner and visual artist decided to build a new house out of shipping containers. The result of his three-year journey is stunning. DePiazza collaborated with architect Stephen Bender and built the house from nine containers:  

As a former gallerist and art collector, DePiazza contracted Cane, a Barcelona-based artist and friend to paint a massive mural depicting that fateful day when Hurricane Irma destroyed his home. The hurricane appears as a blindfolded, pink-haired figure making the sign language symbol for “I Love You.” 

Flying bananas, a candle-wielding alligator, and the snake from the garden of Eden all make an appearance in the mural. As compelling as the exterior is, the interior is even more interesting with art-covered walls, mid-century furniture, a working 1950s era jukebox and television, along with a collection of kooky lamps and ephemera. If you catch the long-haired owner outside he may offer an impromptu tour of the house. 

Image credit: rossrobbx

Oh-oh! Remember Darwin’s secondary theory for unexplained traits of some animals? No, that’s okay I didn’t remember either. For some unusual traits, like the fancy tails of male peacocks, this particular theory states that sexual selection of traits increases an animal's chance of securing a mate and reproducing. Basically, these fancy traits are used to compete with rivals and are used to attract a potential mate. In a new study however, Tamas Szekely and their colleagues contradict Darwin’s own findings: 

In a new study, my colleagues and I have confirmed a link between sexual selection and sex ratios, as Darwin suspected. But surprisingly, our findings suggest Darwin got things the wrong way round. We found that sexual selection is most pronounced not when potential mates are scarce, but when they're abundant – and this means looking again at the selection pressures at play in animal populations that feature uneven sex ratios.

Since Darwin's time, we've learned a lot about uneven sex ratios, which are common in wild animal populations. For instance, in many butterflies and mammals, including humans, the number of adult females exceeds the number of adult males.

This skew is most extreme among marsupials. In Australian antechinus, for instance, all males abruptly die after the mating season, so there are times when no adult males are alive and the entire adult population is made up of pregnant females.

In contrast, many birds parade more males than females in their populations. In some plovers, for example, the males outnumber females by six to one.

Image credit: (Jesse Estes/Getty Images)

An unshakeable bond between a woman and her pet Shiba Inu was taken by Japanese photographer YASUTO. His series of photos showcases the deep bond between his grandmother and her furry companion, Fuku-chan. Yasuto took photos of the adorable duo in different seasons, and it’s just really wonderful: 

They say dog is man’s best friend, and this is definitely the case for YASUTO’s grandma and her canine companion. From sitting under a cherry blossom tree to relaxing in a field of sunflowers, each photo captures their undeniable connection and mutual love of nature. Shiba Inus are famously loyal, but Fuku-chan seems particularly attached to the sweet grandma. In some images, the devoted dog is even captured keeping his human company while she works on her sewing machine.

YASUTO began taking photos of his grandma after his grandfather died. He regretted not taking more photos of him, so decided to capture the final years of his grandma’s life. His photos show the adorable lady enjoying every day with playful curiosity, with her faithful dog always by her side.

Image credit: YASUTO

The Lost Kitchen is a 48-seat restaurant in Freedom, Maine, that has been attracting attention from foodies and culinary taste-makers. The restaurant sits in a restored 1834 grist mill in the tiny town, an area that one wouldn’t really expect to be the location of a popular and always fully-booked dining place. Owner Erin French certainly did not expect such a success, believing that his establishment would be ‘a quiet little cafe in the middle of nowhere, with really good coffee, some homemade English muffins, and free Wi-Fi.’ PBS NewsHour interviews Erin French to learn more about The Lost Kitchen and its establishment. Check the full interview here. 

Image credit: davidsuda via Tripadvisor

Thanks to volunteers who rated paintings in different genres, a computer program was trained to predict the volunteers’ art preferences. The program was featured in a new study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, which revealed that computers, with the right amount of data and programming, could predict people’s taste in art. In addition, the study showed a new understanding on how people judge art: 

“The main point is that we are gaining an insight into the mechanism that people use to make aesthetic judgments,” says John O’Doherty. “That is, that people appear to use elementary image features and combine over them. That’s a first step to understanding how the process works.”

In the study, the team programmed the computer to break a painting’s visual attributes down into what they called low-level features–traits like contrast, saturation, and hue–as well as high-level features, which require human judgment and include traits such as whether the painting is dynamic or still.

“The computer program then estimates how much a specific feature is taken into account when making a decision about how much to like a particular piece of art,” explains Iigaya. “Both the low- and high-level features are combined together when making these decisions. Once the computer has estimated that, then it can successfully predict a person’s liking for another previously unseen piece of art.”

Image credit: Karl Wiener via Artvee

Don’t worry, it’s not really a sign of an impending world-wide apocalypse. A thick blanket of cobwebs has covered Victoria, Australia, after heavy rains and flooding. The cobwebs covered landscapes like a sheet,  with people calling the phenomenon a ‘spider apocalypse.’ However, according to professor Dieter Hochuli of the University of Sydney, this is just a natural phenomenon: 

He told 7NEWS that what’s been seen in Victoria is a group of spiders called sheet web spiders who mostly stay on the ground layer, but start moving during heavy rains and flooding. 

“They move to a higher ground (and build a new house there),” he was quoted as saying by 7NEWS. 

Professor Hochuli also said that the webs of these spiders are flat, and different different from orb webs — the ones usually seen. 

Local media reported that the phenomenon is known as “ballooning”. In such events, spiders release silk strands which are caught by the wind and allow them to be carried away. 

“Many land close by, sometimes swathing the landscape in gossamer silk; but others may travel long distances across land or sea,” according to the Australian Museum.

Image screenshot via Yahoo News 

Surprise! You have to admit, the whale is equipped with stealth skills. This funny photo of a sneaky whale popping up right next to a group of whale watchers was taken by photographer Eric Smith. Smith watched a mother gray whale and her baby as they approached tourists. The baby whale took the attention of the tourists as it approached near the bow of the vessel, so they missed the mother whale popping up at the stern: 

This behavior is known as spyhopping — the whale rises and stays partially out of the ocean to look at something above water. Depending on how curious it is, whales may spyhop for minutes at a time.

“Spyhopping often occurs during a ‘mugging’ situation, where the focus of a whale’s attention is on a boat, such as whale-watching tours, which they sometimes approach and interact with,” Wikipedia states.

Luckily for the tourists and photographers on the panga, they noticed the mother whale just a moment after Smith captured the photograph.

Image credit: Eric J. Smith via PetaPixel 

If you would ask me what my best game of the year so far is, I’d have to hand it to an old game. Supergiant Games’ Hades has been filling out the hours of my Nintendo Switch playtime, and I have absolutely no regrets. There are, of course, new releases that took the Internet, gamers, and critics by storm. From Resident Evil Village’s gothic castles, a scary zombie baby miniboss, to the Returnal's outer space survival gameplay, 2021 has its fair share of new games that deserves to be talked about. The Guardian’s Keza MacDonald and Keith Stuart list their top 2021 releases so far. Check the full piece here. 

Image credit: Capcom

Are you looking for references or are you just in the mood to browse through different works of art? Well, this new search engine has you covered! Artvee is a new search engine that lets you look at and download high-resolution public domain artworks. The engine features collections of more than 40 international institutions: 

Artvee constitutes one answer to this question. Using its search engine, writes Denise Tempone at Domestika, “you can filter categories such as abstract art, landscape, mythology, drawings, illustrations, botany, fashion, figurative art, religion, animal, desserts, history, Japanese art, and still life. The site also gives you the option to search by artist. You will find works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Monet, Raphael, and Sandro Botticelli in this amazing gallery.” Other collections, created by Artvee itself as well as by its users, include “illustrations from fairy tales; covers of popular American songs; and some even more peculiar ones, such as adverts selling bicycles that are over a hundred years old.”

The variety of artists browsable on Artvee also includes Alphonse Mucha, Edvard Munch, and Hilma af Kint; other collections offer the wonders of political illustrations, book promo posters, and NASA’s visions of the future. All of the items within, it bears repeating, are in the public domain or distributed under a Creative Commons license, meaning you can use them not just as sources of inspiration but as ingredients in your own work as well, a possibility few us could have imagined at the dawn of the Web. Back then, you’ll recall, we all used a variety of different tools and portals to navigate the internet, according to personal preference. The emerging field of art search engines, which includes not just Artvee but other options like Museo, may remind us of those days — and how far the internet has come since.

Image courtesy of Artvee

This photo is just way too cute! Nature photographer Joe Neely captured an adorable photo of two bees napping in a flower. The two bees are snuggled together in the center of an orange flower - the image is just too good to be true! Neely stumbled upon the slumbering bees when he and his wife went out in search of Mexican poppy wildflowers:  

Neely and his wife watched more bees climb into the flowers. “Soon after,” he recalls, “all the flowers on the plant had a motionless occupant in them. They were going to sleep. I've never seen this behavior before. Then as sunset grew darker, one last bee was trying hard to find his own flower but they were all taken so he crawled into petals with this other bee who shifted a little to give him room.”

Realizing that he had the perfect shot, Neely quickly got out his macro photography equipment and snapped a few pictures. “Their blue eyes and the orange flowers contrasted beautifully. It wasn't until we got home that we learned more about them and their unique behavior of sleeping in globe mallow blooms.” Some bees retire to their hives each night, but this species is often found sleeping in the flower that bears their name. And as Neely shows, sometimes it's with a buddy.

Image credit: Joe Neely