Four years ago, there were 15 known black rhinos left in Tanzania -- "ground zero of the poaching crisis" -- and today there 167 of them; elephant populations (which dropped 60% between 2009-2014) are rebounding too, up to over 60,000 from a low of 43,330. Read the rest
Dozens of demodex mites live inside the pores of your face skin. The little arachnids are fairly harmless, feasting on sebum by day, and crawling across your face to find other demodex mites to mate with.
I have 4 or 5 beautiful great horned owls in my backyard. I see them every day. This short National Geographic video explains why owls are such great hunters: huge light-sensitive eyes, fringed wings that allow them to fly silently, and asymmetrically placed ears that picked up sounds a fraction of a second apart to help them pinpoint their prey's location.
Image: National Geographic/YouTube Read the rest
Ziya Tong is a veteran science reporter who spent years hosting Discovery's flagship science program, Daily Planet: it's the sort of job that gives you a very broad, interdisciplinary view of the sciences, and it shows in her debut book, The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World, a tour of ten ways in which our senses, our society, and our political system leads us to systematically misunderstand the world, to our deadly detriment. Read the rest
From u/OrwellianOverseer via r/interestingasfuck -- the underside of great white sharks look demonic.
Image: Joshua Haviv/Shutterstock (enhanced to accentuate the "eyes") Read the rest
Shawn Woods was testing out a no-spray skunk trap, but things didn't go as planned, and he got squirted with eau de moufette. Read the rest
It's hard to believe that snails like to play, but that's what this one looks like it's doing with a baby carrot in this time-lapse video.
From YouTube description:
I have two nerite snails named Randolph and Mortimer (yes, after the Dukes in Trading Places). They are sisters who have lived with me for over a year. Up until this point, I had offered them a few types of food that they were not interested in, but one day I offered this baby carrot to them and shortly after, found Randolph doing what you see in this video. I left the carrot in for about a week, during which time Randolph and Mortimer ate the whole thing. In this video, I don't think she's eating it, but simply playing. I have other videos of her eating where you can clearly see her moving her head and engaged in the activity of eating. This is just her having fun.
Image: YouTube Read the rest
I'm glad Maxwell Helmberger's YouTube channel nearly quadrupled its subscribership over the weekend after I posted one of his videos on Friday. He made a new video thanking Boing Boing (you're welcome, Maxewell!) along with some hints as to what bug he'll make a video about next. Read the rest
After a winter dump that left an area of Durango, Colorado with 80" of snow, one small dog got stuck. No matter what he did (including high jumps) he couldn't move forward. But that's what buddies are for. His bigger canine friend clears a trail for him, leading him back to his human. Read the rest
After Twitter user @gabbytropea is accidentally locked out of her house, her cat gets to work by removing a sliding door stick so that she can open the door. Yay for smart cats.
My sister accidentally locked me out of the house so I went to check if the back door was unlocked and this happened pic.twitter.com/2zkjeyFJk5
— Gabby Tropea (@gabbytropea) February 18, 2019
"Fitness influencer" Michelle Lewin was romping around on Pig Beach in the Bahamas when a large wild pig couldn't help itself. It saw her butt cheek and bit it.
Lewin posted the video — which includes a closeup of the bright red bite marks — to her Instagram with a good sense of humor.
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Baby Abram and Haru, his Shiba Inu sidekick, both want a piece of cheese. But in order to get it, they must first ring the bell. Can they learn this trick? The answer isn't too surprising, but what does surprise me is how polite the dog is to the baby, and how helpful the baby tries to be to the dog. Read the rest
Here's a guy who went to a monkey park in Takasaki-yama in Japan and donned a monkey park worker uniform for a day to see what it was like. One reason Japan has monkey parks is to get them used to eating food there so they don't invade nearby farms. The monkeys didn't really like having a stranger tend to them, and they made their displeasure known by chattering. They settle down pretty quickly, though. My favorite part was when an experienced worker ran through the park with a cart loaded with sweet potatoes. The monkeys chased after him and picked up the sweet potatoes as the fell off the cart.
I went to a monkey park near Kyoto with my family in 2010. Here's a video:
I don't know what this veterinary hospital at Colorado State University does to incite such glee, but this dog, Endo, is jumping really high with excitement. Like above-the-counter high, causing the receptionist to break out in laughter. And the dog doesn't quit, with 45 good jumps in a row.
I'm surprised the record company hasn't filed a takedown notice and confiscated the bird for being an illegal recording of "Another One Bites the Dust."
These baby aliens, er, emus are hatching at the same time – a "simultaneous breakout," as the person behind the camera calls it. I only wish she would have kept the camera rolling until these babies made their full appearance.
Here are what the emus look like after three days. Same batch, but different emus that hatched two days later:
