Anna’s Hummingbird by timjhopwood on Flickr.
Woodpecker TonguesThe woodpecker’s tongue can extend 2/3 its body length. Its tongue is covered in sticky saliva and barbs all over with an ear (a hearing mechanism) at the end of it. So it can listen to its prey. It detects sound. The tongue is so long that it fits its tongue in its head by wrapping around its brain and around its eye sockets. It can move its head/beak up to 15-16 times per second as it strikes a tree. This is incredibly fast. It creates immense forces, 250 more times than astronauts are subjected to. It is 1,000 G’s. The woodpecker has cartilage around the brain that keeps it from shattering.holy fuck woodpeckers are terrifying
PHOTO BY VADIM GHIRDA/ASSOCIATED PRESS (via SFGate)
Got super discouraged by people calling animals the wrong name today, so I decided it was about time to post this little gem I’ve been sitting on for a while.
Tarsiers’ Bulging Eyes Shed Light On Evolution of Human Vision
After eons of wandering in the dark, primates developed highly acute, three-color vision that permitted them to shift to daytime living, a new Dartmouth College study suggests.
The findings challenge the prevailing view that trichromatic color vision, a hallmark of primate evolution, evolved only after they started getting up with the sun, a shift that gave rise to anthropoid (higher) primates, which, in turn, gave rise to the human lineage. The results are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The authors based their findings on a genetic study of tarsiers, the enigmatic elfin primate that branched off early on from monkeys, apes and humans. Tarsiers have a number of unusual traits — from their ability to communicate in the pure ultrasound to their iconic bulging eyes. Such sensory specializations have long fueled debate on the adaptive origins of anthropoid primates. (Keep reading)
| image credit: Dartmouth College
(Source: rorschachx)
Submissions - Lakota Wolf Preserve in Columbia, NJ | image by Kelly & Robert Walters
(Source: rorschachx)
