cebofla:

Oceanic Life

stuckinabucket:

Behold, birds who have lost the ability to can!

Just kidding, guys.  These birds are just trolling the hell out of ants.  I really, really wanted to show you this clip of a Galapagos finch or something harassing the shit out of formica ants and then being all “Yes, yes, bathe me in your fury!  Your chemical defenses are now my own!  Mwahahahaha!”, but the closest thing I could find is this video of David Attenborough pissing off some wood ants.  It was basically like that, only instead of an Englishman with a stick, it was a bird stomping around with its wings spread just being an absolute asshole about everything.

This behavior is actually called anting, and there are two types of anting that birds can engage in.  One is just anting, where birds will rub ants all over themselves to get that precious, precious formic acid all up in their feathers.  They’ll also do it with mothballs, cigarette butts, and certain sorts of beetles and millipedes.  The other one is passive anting, where a particularly lazy bird will find an anthill and just flop down on it with all their feathers spread and puffed and annoy the ants until they hop to and try to make them leave, at which point the bird rubs its wings together and goes “Yeeeeeess.”

They do this to get rid of external parasites, because external parasites are annoying.  Ant-eating birds who do this are getting a two-for deal out of it, because they get the ants to empty their acid sacs in a beneficial location (the bird’s feathers) and then get to eat them without having to deal with the acid in their crops, so it’s basically like if your bug-spray or deoderant came in a bacon bottle.

Formica ants get the brunt of this, because they’re super-common and quite frequently spray the acid instead of trying to inject it, so the bird can get itself doused and then preen it into its feathers.  Considering the spraying of acid is like the ant way of saying “Oh my god go away you dickhead I hate you we all hate you why are you still here jesus christ what is wrong with you,” we can be reasonably sure that they’re not super-thrilled by this bird behavior.  Since the birds keep doing it, we can be reasonably sure that they don’t care about the ants’ feelings.

spaceplasma:

Unrolling Household Tape Produces X-Rays

If you have ever (for whatever reason – that’s none of our business) locked yourself in a dark closet and peeled Scotch tape from its holder, you may have noticed a tiny bit of light. The tape actually emits a faint luminescence when it’s being separated. It’s due to a phenomenon known as triboluminescence, which has been documented as far back as the 17th century. In the 1950s, Soviet researchers claimed that unrolling sticky tape resulted also in the release of X-rays, but no one really bothered to follow up on that study until now.

A group of researchers at UCLA decided to test the X-ray claims recently. Using a machine to unroll the tape at 3 centimeters/second in a vacuum, they measured the electromagnetic output. The short bursts of X-rays lasted for about a billionth of a second each and output 300,000 X-ray photons. The researchers were even able to prove the presence of the X-rays by producing pictures of their finger bones. There’s no need to worry about getting a super-dose of radiation while taping the paper on birthday presents, though; the phenomenon seems to work only when the tape is in a vacuum.

The applications for this new knowledge are kind of sketchy at this point. The research team thinks that it may be useful for making cheaper X-ray machines or even for aiding in nuclear fusion. Both seem a little far-fetched, but harnessing this little-understood physical phenomenon may even create new, unforeseen possibilities in the future.

Powerful x-rays made from sticky tape [ video ]

science-junkie:

Beautiful ‘flowers’ self-assemble in a beaker

With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory—and not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don’t resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that’s what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.

“For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what’s possible just through environmental, chemical changes,” says Noorduin.

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Images: [x]

Tall Sea Pen (Funiculina quadrangularis)

… Is a species of sea pen (a type of soft coral) found throughout the North Atlantic and Mediterranean with populations reported from Japan and New Zealand as well. Like most soft corals this sea pen is colonial and is often found in large groups on the ocean floor, each colony has a separate sex as male/female polyps are found on different colonies. The tall sea pen is a simple suspension feeder using its many tentacles to feed on any plankton that happen to drift by it.

Phylogeny

Animalia-Cnidaria-Anthozoa-Octocorallia-Pennatulacea-Funiculinidae-Funiculina-quadrangularis

Image Source(s)