You know, I get the old saying that ignorance is bliss. Honestly, there are more than a few things that I’ve learned over the years that I’d be happy to forget if I ever could.
But that said, I always like to err on the side of having more knowledge, not less. Even if ignorance is bliss, what you don’t know could definitely hurt you. So hey, why not cram a little more into your head? You never know when it might come in handy.
Researchers spotted octopuses punching fish.
Amazingly, the researchers observed octopuses lashing out at the fish both when it would benefit them to do so, and when there was no real reason to.
So it’s not 100% clear why octopuses will take a swing.
Serving looks, but there’s less to this Eurasian owl than meets the eye.
Looks like a pretty large and in charge bird, doesn’t it? And yet it only weighs a mere eight pounds, which is less than my cats. Mind you, it’s still a lean, mean, mouse-eating machine.
The ancients knew their stuff.
Even though they didn’t have anything approaching our level of sophisticated tools, the Stone Age humans who built this tomb on an island in Brittany made it so sunlight would only reach the furthest extremes of the interior on the day of the winter solstice.
Not too shabby!
This is the color of the universe.
No, it’s not as inky black as you’d think just looking up at the night sky.
If you combine all the light and all the dark in the universe, it averages out to this light beige color, known as ” cosmic latte .”
There is a picnic area in Tahoe National Forest named after the Donner Party.
And if you know anything at all about the Donner Party, you know that naming a picnic area after them shows a particularly dark sense of humor.
If you don’t, well, please understand that it’s an awfully unappetizing true story of desperate times calling for some disturbingly desperate measures.
Astronaut Scott Kelly managed to sneak a gorilla costume on board the ISS.
Not only did it somehow go undetected, but he managed to put the costume on before anybody found it. Just enjoy the sight of a man in a gorilla costume floating around in zer0-G, why not.
Two pics of the exact same shirt.
It hasn’t been washed in any kind of chemicals between the pics, either, or spent weeks in the sun or something. It’s just different lighting.
This isn’t wax from a honeycomb.
It’s just scoop of coconut oil that has formed little hexagonal columns. Most likely, it’s the result of some temperature changes while in transit, possibly including freezing and thawing.
You could be forgiven for thinking this is a close-up of a bowling ball or something like that.
But it’s actually an image of the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s many moons, with the planet itself in the background.
NASA’s Cassini probe captured this image back in 2015. The ridges were formed by water ice crust being pushed around by tidal expansion and contraction.
There is a species of fox that only lives in Calfornia’s Channel Islands.
The fittingly named island fox only lives on six of the eight islands, and the foxes of each of those islands is considered its own subspecies.
Island foxes are also some of the smallest in the world — about the size of a house cat — and because they have no natural predators, they’re not nocturnal.
Notes of hope, indeed.
Amid unimaginable conditions, Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz were so determined to keep making music that they wrote out compositions like this one, using charcoal from medications to write it on toilet paper.
Amazingly, some of the compositions still survive, and they have been performed .
Any port in the sunlight.
These sea lions have taken advantage of a large ship at anchor and found themselves a makeshift beach to sun themselves on.
And considering the hull is metal, it should be much warmer for them than their more typical rocks.
A chance encounter
The internet remembers, which means that the guy on the right has been immortalized thanks to a highly unlikely encounter.
While out for a hike in remote France, he met the Google Street View cameraman. Now, the guy can be seen on Google Earth.
Orange isn’t the hindrance for tigers you’d expect it to be.
It’s really a stand-out color, isn’t it? So you’d think it would be an odd color for one of the most effective predators in the world to sport, right?
Well, what works in their favor is that their prey, like deer and boars, can’t see the orange — they’re colorblind so they see the image on the left, where the tiger is more blended in.
Got some weird weather.
This chain link fence shows why there’s a weather phenomenon called freezing fog.
Because the metal of the chain link is such a good conductor, ice can build up in these little spikes when freezing fog forms.
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Safety first!
Snowy countries have difficulty keeping road markings clear for drivers, but you don’t need to wait for a good plowing or warm snap to see this crosswalk because it’s being projected onto the road.
You are what you eat.
And for these silkworms, they are a variety of colors because they ate dyed mulberry leaves.
Not only did their bodies change colors based on what they had consumed, but the colors of silk they created were different as well.
There’s a reason for that little diamond.
It’s a sort of anti-theft measure. Basically, it will appear on the tag after the garment has been washed, indicating to a store that it’s not good for a return.
Pretty and perilous.
In mid December 2020, parts of Japan were absolutely slammed with snow — some received upwards of 7 feet of the white stuff over two days.
It was a seriously troubling situation but it also provided some opportunities for good pics, like this one.
