“Complaints of bees flying out of an apartment’s duct work led to a frightening discovery Monday in Virginia: An 8-foot-long hive was in the living room ceiling, including 100 pounds of raw honey.”
A pest control company in Richmond, Virginia claims to haves removed an 8-foot-long beehive from someone’s apartment. Read the rest
Twenty-five experts have issued a warning about the potentially cataclysmic consequences of the rapidly shrinking insect population, reports The Guardian.
In a two-part article for Biological Conservation, the scientists wrote: “The current [insect] extinction crisis is deeply worrisome. Yet, what we know is only the tip of the iceberg.We know enough to act immediately. Solutions are now available – we must act upon them.”
From The Guardian:
The researchers said solutions were available and must be implemented immediately. These range from bigger nature reserves and a crackdown on harmful pesticides to individual action such as not mowing the lawn and leaving dead wood in gardens. They also said invertebrates must no longer be neglected by conservation efforts, which tend to focus on mammals and birds.
Photo by Neenu Vimalkumar on Unsplash Read the rest
After a video of a woman luring deer into her home went viral, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is reminding humans -- yet again -- to please, please, just leave deer and all other wildlife alone.
Do not feed the animals.
Do not post videos of yourself feeding wild animals in your home. Read the rest
“I mean, just see the flash of him rolling over me and in a straight line, and he was gone,” the deer-trampled gentleman told WSOC-TV. Read the rest
Antarctica's hottest temperature ever was recorded this past Thursday: 65 degrees Fahrenheit, or 18.3 degrees Celsius.
That is not good.
Not good at all. Read the rest
And you thought you felt full. Check out this female tsetse fly push out a larva fat with its momma's milk. From Deep Look:
Read the restMammalian moms aren’t the only ones to deliver babies and feed them milk. Tsetse flies, the insects best known for transmitting sleeping sickness, do it too.
(UC Davis medical entomologist Geoff Attardo) is trying to understand in detail the unusual way in which these flies reproduce in order to find new ways to combat the disease, which has a crippling effect on a huge swath of Africa.
When it’s time to give birth, a female tsetse fly takes less than a minute to push out a squiggly yellowish larva almost as big as itself...
“There’s too much coming out of it to be able to fit inside,” (Attardo) recalled thinking. “The fact that they can do it eight times in their lifetime is kind of amazing to me.”
In the first couple of days of this time-lapse video, we see flies laying eggs on a dead fish. On the third day, maggots erupt and begin to eat the fish, paying special attention to the eye socket. At this time-frame, and without being able to smell the fish, it's not as gross as you might think.
Image: YouTube
In Vermont, a moose got stuck on an active railroad bridge, and state fish and wildlife officials managed to remove the moose and relocate it to the wilderness with minimal injuries. Read the rest
Say goodbye to America's wetlands and streams. Say hello to new rivers of pollution, and parking lots where cattails, frogs, and minnows once were. Read the rest
An Alaska family's home surveillance camera recorded a most remarkable video of a moose trapping a man inside the family shed. Read the rest
These are just a small sample of Michael Schlegel's glorious photographs of trees in Fanal, the laurisilva forest of Madeira, Portugal. The otherworldly images reassure me with their quiet calm.
(via Kottke) Read the rest
Fish farmers on Canada's Vancouver Island spotted an eagle in the clutches of a giant Pacific octopus. Realizing the eagle would soon drown, the men freed the raptor from the cephalopod's tentacles and set it free.
“He deprived the poor octopus of a good meal,” University of Lethbridge octopus expert Jennifer Mather joked to The Guardian. “They’re quite wide in their prey choice. If something is on the surface of the water, and the octopus is close to the surface of the water, it’s food.”
In Northern California, sheriff's deputies helped a large bear get out of a locked trash bin, which the bear somehow managed to get stuck inside while dumpster diving for dinner. Read the rest
Vegetation is overtaking the Fukushima exclusion zone, eight years after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. Read the rest
A reptile breeder in the SF Bay Area says he'd just finished giving a talk and was packing up in the parking lot when thieves stole one of his duffel bags containing four live snakes. Read the rest
