Back in the early days of the internet, much of the talk was about what a powerful learning tool it was. And, well, it definitely is a good learning tool, but just what you’ll learn has gotten much more complicated.
We’re just going to keep things simple and light here, as much as possible, however. Learning should be fun, and there’s fascinating stuff all around us to learn from, that doesn’t necessarily have all that internet baggage, too.
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This person must have trouble filling out “eye color” on official forms.
I count at least four distinct colors here, and that’s just one of their eyes. Heterochromia can do some interesting things, apparently.
What’s hiding underneath the surface of a rock?
Sometimes you get gray and boring, sometimes you get a shiny hard-boiled egg. That’s opals for you.
Something else you might not expect to be hiding below the surface: all that room beneath a public garbage can.
Which makes sense when you think about it — how often would they have to empty those things if they only held as much room as you can see?
Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t nearly as horrifying as it appears.
This is just how wax figures get prepared for shipping. But it’s certainly understandable to do a double-take.
Blue tangs are see-through when they’re young.
It’s a great help to them to be able to fade into the background to avoid predators, but they grow out of it when they mature.
The color wheel on your ceiling — sort of.
The light bulbs in the fixture are primary colors: red, green, and blue. On the ceiling, the lights have mixed, creating the process colors for printing: cyan, magenta, and yellow.
This ring expands into an astronomical sphere.
It’s called an armillary sphere ring , a navigational tool you could wear on your finger. The craziest part is that these were popular up to 500 years ago.
In Sweden, there’s a treehouse with some excellent camouflage.
The exterior is covered in mirrors, making it pretty much the ultimate way to escape into nature.
This pink water hasn’t been dyed in the sink — it’s coming out of the tap like that.
Some homeowners in Ohio were treated to this odd phenomenon when too much sodium permanganate was dumped into the water at a water treatment plant.
Sometimes, the fossil record is a reminder of how lucky we are.
Just imagine having to fight with Titanoboa here, the prehistoric snake believed to weigh up to 2,500 pounds, for a morsel of food.
And then there’s this thing.
It really gives you an appreciation of the size of a woolly mammoth when you see someone holding one of their molars in their hand.
This plant hasn’t been sculpted or pruned to look like this.
Trachyandra tortilis, which is native to South Africa, just grows all wavy and curly like this.
Now, this plant clearly has been pruned and sculpted.
But that hasn’t held this little bonsai apple tree back — it went ahead and grew a full-size apple anyway.
Seeing a dust storm blow in like this really makes you appreciate the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
Of course, this is Texas in 2019, and it was followed by rain, which must have made plenty of mud.
This just goes to illustrate how single-minded sharks are.
I mean, they’re definitely to be respected as apex predators, but they’re clearly not on the same level of intelligence as dolphins.
So, that’s some incredibly localized fog.
It has to be rare to see such a perfectly formed fog dome, and it likely wouldn’t last very long, either.
There are such things as curly-haired pigs.
The Mangalica or Mangalista pig comes from Hungary, and it grows a coat much like a sheep does.
This is how the grass gets cut around all the tombstones in a cemetery.
That must have been all kinds of time-consuming before this device came along.
The fruit of the Jabuticab tree grows on the trunk instead of the branches.
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The trees are common in parts of Brazil where the grape-like fruit is enjoyed fresh from the trees. Since they have a short shelf-life after harvesting, it’s common to make the fruit into jams or other preserves.
So it turns out that tree kangaroos aren’t just a thing that exists, but they’re also super cute.
They’re close cousins to the kangaroos we ‘re familiar with, but are smaller and live in the forests of Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Sadly, they are very endangered due to loss of habitat.
Sometimes, you have to think outside of the trash can.
This is actually pretty brilliant. Imagine all that plastic waste inside having been strewn around the sand instead.
No wonder angler fish need a pretty light to attract their prey.
Because otherwise there’s no way anything would be dumb enough to swim close to one. I’ll admit, I’d also pictured them as much smaller.
The guy still dressed up on the dive plane must have drawn the short straw.
He’s on “shark duty” while the rest of his crew mates on the USS Marshal get to enjoy the water.
You may think that a pic of gravel and pebbles isn’t very interesting.
Except that it’s gravel and pebbles on the surface of Mars.
You don’t usually think of icebergs chilling so close to land.
This pic was taken in Port Rexton, Newfoundland and if the scale compared to the buildings down’t surprise you, imagine how much is hidden under the water behind them.
Many Londoners wondered if the end was nigh after seeing this odd sky formation above them.
It sure does look like a portal has opened up, doesn’t it? Experts say it’s just asperitas clouds, which are actually a fairly recent addition to cloud lore, only having been officially recognized by the World Meteorological Organization in 2015.
There is a certain time of year where you may be lucky enough to see the “firefall” in Yosemite.
It’s only possible in February, and the weather and amount of snow melt affects it. Some years, the conditions are never perfect, but when they are, it’s spectacular.
There is something incredibly satisfying, yet totally unnerving about this.
It’s a near-perfect sphere made of entirely smooth, flat rocks. Imagine the amount of work it took to put together!
Researchers found this 30,000-year-old cave lion cub remarkably well preserved in the Siberian permafrost.
It’s so well preserved, in fact, that even the muscles and internal organs are intact .
