Pictures are great at telling stories, but they seldom tell the whole story. That’s especially true when something weird is going on, or when seemingly very little is happening in the pic. Context is important!
So, here are some pics where context makes a significant difference.
The bugs all over this cup haven’t ruined anybody’s picnic.
Although it looks like they’ve claimed someone’s cup of noodles as their own, it’s actually that someone’s cup of preying mantis eggs has hatched.
Apparently, the preying mantises are intended to deal with a pincher bug problem.
Yes, this is a bear taste-test.
An agricultural engineer set up a Winnie the Pooh style test to see if there was a particular kind of honey that bears prefer. This one showed a decided preference, through multiple double-blind trials, for anzer honey, a terribly expensive Turkish variety.
There is indeed a boat in the middle of this city – sort of.
We’re looking down at Hong Kong, and that boat is really a boat-shaped shopping center built to commemorate the dry dock that once stood there.
More than just a pretty face in a pretty landscape.
This is an Andean mountain cat , and they’re sadly both rare and endangered, with an estimated 2,500 of them left in the wild.
You could be forgiven for thinking someone assembled a big pile of shiny scrap metal.
But it’s a naturally-occurring mineral deposit known as stibnite – the largest known single specimen weighed in at about 1,000 pounds.
These ants aren’t being sprayed, they’re doing the spraying.
That’s right, some ants can squirt acid at their enemies. The acid in question, formic acid , has some industrial uses such as in the production of leather and as a preservative and antibacterial agent in livestock feed.
The more you know, eh?
You’d think this would be an ultra modern office or maybe a concert venue, but nope, it’s a subway station.
It’s one of the latest additions to Moscow’s ridiculously beautiful subway stations . Who knew?
They don’t do it like that anymore.
But back in the ’70s, car frame construction allowed the Chevy Vega to be transported vertically, like this, which must have been a big money saver.
This, folks, is supposed to be a lemon.
Well, it was picked off a lemon tree, anyway, and turned yellow shortly after this pic was taken. I guess if you’re making lemonade, what they look like doesn’t matter too much.
Life doesn’t always just find a way; sometimes it pushes everything else around.
Like the way this tree refuses to care whether it’s growing into, out of, around or through a wall. Spotted in Auckland, New Zealand, it definitely brings to mind the power of the Ents from Lord of the Rings , doesn’t it?
Good planning?
You can see through the windows that these apartments all have their TVs located on the same wall, because they’re all watching at the same time. Makes you think that the apartment’s designer planned it like that.
You could say this ladybug is clean, because it’s clearly spotless.
Some varieties of ladybug, such as the Asian lady beetle, can come without spots, so it’s entirely possible this is how it’s supposed to look. But it’s still odd to see.
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These stick insects, on the other hand, don’t really have a way they’re supposed to look.
They typically live in and around lichen, so they can camouflage themselves to look like lichen, which the one on the left is currently doing.
Not just a well-timed pic.
This bird didn’t photobomb someone’s pic of the neighborhood – it set off their doorbell camera. Honestly, it did a great job of it, too.
This stadium looks like any other stadium, but it has a cool location.
It’s in Brazil and the line marking the halfway point on the field happens to line up with the Equator. So, when soccer teams switch ends halfway through the match, they’re also switching hemispheres.
You’d never know it was there, but this washing machine has a code hidden on the front of it.
The owner said they only saw it because they were checking to see if the cat had peed outside the litter box.
But it’s there for technicians, so they don’t have to pull the machine out from the wall to get some much needed info, and the machine doesn’t have to have an unsightly sticker on the front displaying that info.
This Monster Energy tile represents a donation to a library.
It might not tie in with the extreme-ness of Monster’s branding, but they have a distribution center in this city, and so it’s nice to see them supporting their community.
This delivery man in China is up to the large task on his back.
But he has an exoskeleton that helps him bear his load and deliver as much as possible on foot. That would be handy!
“The crystals growing in my century egg,” apparently aren’t supposed to be there.
Century eggs are a Chinese delicacy made by preserving a duck, quail, or chicken egg in a solution of clay and salt, and might also include ash, quicklime, or rice hulls.
The process can take weeks or even months, so it would be a huge disappointment if these crystals ruined it.
This painting is not actually holding a pitchfork.
It’s an optical illusion gimmick at a restaurant in upstate New York, but it works, doesn’t it? I thought there was a real hand poking through the painting at first, too.
