The little bird that raised a cuckoo as it’s own offspring

the young cuckoo has grown bigger, than Its host parents, but they dutifully continues to feed and care for it
birds have evolved signature markings on their eggs to distinguish their own from those of any brood parasite yet cuckoos have an egg mimicking ability, and can mimic the most sophisticated markers cam.ac.uk/research/news/…

3000 years ago, in what is now Iran, a type of underground aqueduct called a qanat was engineered to transport water over long distances to farms and villages that couldn’t exist without it in the hot dry climates

The holes supplied oxygen to workers who dug the aqueduct by hand… https://t.co/ReGzWGf6TAtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

Mimosa pudica folds its leaves in response to touch, this may avoid predation by herbivorous insects

Watch the signals to close its leaves travel long distances rapidly across the plant when a grasshopper chews a leaf 1/🧵
2/🧵Many plants have responses to protect themselves

M. pudica has a Ca2+/electrical signal-induced rapid defense response, a motion response that actively repels predators

This speed at which calcium signals travel protect the plants from insects

nature.com/articles/s4146…

Humans apparently have stripes that are invisible to our eyes but your cat possibly can see them

They are Blaschko’s lines, relics of growth as a foetus, swirls representing cell division and the trails cells took

Some conditions make them visible 1/🧵
📸BC Medical Genetics 2/🧵

These can only be seen with the help of UV light and as many animals see in ultraviolet, there’s no knowing how we appear to them

Source of image bmcmedgenet.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

More reading en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaschko%…

In this time-lapse video by Mitsuru Yasui
You can see many cats following a sun beam.

Cats use sunlight to regulate body temperature. They are conserving energy. Napping in sunny spots cancels the drop in temperature that sleep induces
Source of video

The little bird that raised a cuckoo as it’s own offspring

cuckoos are brood parasites, laying eggs in the nests of other birds who are tricked into this exhausting responsibility of raising these chicks 1/
2/ birds have evolved signature markings on their eggs to distinguish their own from those of any brood parasite yet cuckoos have an egg mimicking ability, and can mimic the most sophisticated markers
cam.ac.uk/research/news/…

Giant honeybees construct open nests

Several layers of bees form a “bee curtain” on the outside, the vulnerable brood inside

‘shimmering’ when a predator approaches

A chemical called Nasonov pheromone is released to embolden them to stay together 1/2
2/Entire colonies migrate regularly,

their offspring colonies may return to the same exact nesting location year after year

even after a 2 year absence

as workers live for only a few weeks, it’s unknown how they do this

Look at the wings of this fly

It’s called Goniurellia tridens, and each wing has a detailed image of an ant, most of its predators would want to avoid a confrontation with the painful stings of ants 1/🧵

Image sources 1.bit.ly/3l69Z6J
2. bit.ly/3PcKsXo 2/🧵 on each wing you can see the detailed image of an ant, complete with six legs, two antennae, a head, thorax and tapered abdomen.

This is a dead leaf

Can you see that vibrant green patch? That part is kept alive by the larvae of leaf mining insects, and even though its long fallen off the tree it’s still photosynthesising.

How and why?

📸images @mike_shurmer
Source cutt.ly/kQ8RqrX 1/🧵 Leaf-mining insect lay eggs on leaves

After hatching, the larvae tunnel through into the leaf protected inside, from predation and the plants own defences.

They eat leaf tissue creating little visible tunnel patterns 2/🧵

Elfcup fungus releasing spores

Mushrooms really are “magic”, some can create the right conditions for spore dispersal, creating “wind” when there isn’t any in nature,

They even act as rainmakers, creating rain clouds for their subsequent germination 1🧵
Many plants and animals have evolved ways to prevent loss of water, yet the degree of evaporation in gilled mushrooms is high

The water released cools the air around it, creating enough dense air for a convection effect to give the spore uplift 2/🧵

Look at this mesmerising murmuration

These are sandpipers , White fronts and black backs, flashing, almost a metallic sheen

This one is filmed by Peggy Dolane

There is a long and interesting story here behind that glimmer which you should know 1/
2/
The silver shimmer was named by my grandfather who is the not so well known ornithologist, Dr. John Alton Rose who spent most of his working life stationed on the Galápagos Islands.

He named the silver sheen Angel Rose after his childhood sweetheart.

Headlights in nature

This click beetle… bioluminescent in two colours
Video from cutt.ly/CDtXF7N
More reading cutt.ly/SDtCbPx

This is mesmerising if you watch to the end, all the metronomes will synchronise

Using this visual, we can visit a nearly 400 year old mystery of how ordinary clocks placed together, would synch up their pendulums in “sympathy” 1/
2/ Christiaan Huygens is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time

A mathematician, physicist, astronomer and inventor

In 1657 he invented the pendulum clock and further, he used it to help ships to determine their location at sea, the so called “longitude problem”

In the dry savannah and shrublands, a tiny bird, the Anthoscopus minutus builds its nest from spider silk and plant fibres

It has false entry points and blind chambers to avoid predation from snakes

But there is something even more exciting.. 1/2
the entrance the bird uses has a separating septum

with the entrance to the actual nest chamber at the upper portion, and the false chamber below

It closes this septum when it leaves

pushing it up exposing only the entrance to the blind chamber 2/
🎥 cutt.ly/AUle0pd

In Alaska, wolves hunt reindeer relentlessly

To avoid predation, arctic reindeer have evolved a life saving adaptation

They can see UV light, so a perfectly camouflaged wolf against the snow would appear black as it’s fur can’t absorb UV light
cutt.ly/2TWNRVw cutt.ly/5TWN1Vw

Look at this leaf visibly producing oxygen as bubbles in the water as it continues photosynthesis

Half of the world's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton, the other half is produced by trees, all the more reason to look after our forests and seas 1/
cutt.ly/oThh5am

This is a nuclear reactor start up, you are seeing the core when the chain reaction becoming self sustaining.

The control rods are pulled up & as they are removed the number of fission reactions is increasing...1/
The water acts as a moderator in the reaction process as well as a coolant.
This fissioning of atoms creates heat that later generates steam to produce electricity. 2/

This is a dead leaf

Can you see that vibrant green defiant patch? That part is kept alive by the larvae of leaf mining insects, and even though its long fallen off the tree it’s still photosynthesising.

How and why?

📸images Mike Shurmer
Source cutt.ly/kQ8RqrX 1/ Leaf-mining insect lay eggs on leaves

After hatching, the larvae tunnel through into the leaf protected from predation and the plants own defences and eat leaf tissue creating little visible tunnel patterns 2/

The Golden Tortoise Beetle (Aspidimorpha sanctaecrucis) gets to stroll around looking beautiful in the rainy seasons of south east Asia but in its larval stage things were less glamorous... but extremely interesting read on .. 1/

Credit: IG sony_Thokchom
2/ In its larval stage their defence mechanism is a faecal shield or faecal parasol, which it uses as a weapon if threatened.

Reindeer Cyclones are a real thing... a swirling mass of threatened reindeer stampeding in a circle making it impossible to target an individual.. here the fawns are in the middle

This herd is on Russia’s Kola Peninsula, in the Arctic Circle
The video was originally posted on the Facebook page of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography Peter the Great, aka Kunstkámera, located in Saint Petersburg, Russia.