For These Plants, No Victim is Too Small
The tropical plant Genlisea is a tiny, homely rosette of simple green leaves. If you dig up its roots, you will find what look like an unremarkable bunch long, pale underground roots.
The Artful Amoeba
A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
Two-Billion-Year-Old Fossils Reveal Strange and Puzzling Forms
To a human, two billion years is an unfathomable interval. But that, a team of European, Gabonese, and American scientists now say, is how long ago a recently discovered hoard of fossils suggests Earth’s first big life evolved — large enough to see with the naked eye, and in a spectrum of forms that tease [...]..
Ocean Giants (Actual Size)
Just how big is a giant squid? Not quite as big, perhaps, as you might think. This fabulous new graphic from the Deep Sea News crew and several other scientists represents *a lot* of research to find out the true largest sizes of 25 ocean creatures of giant repute...
Deepest Fish Features Angel Wings, Tentacles and Amazing Ability to Perform Under Pressure
There comes a depth at which even fish struggle to survive the titanic pressure. But that depth is only found at the few places on Earth that lie below 27,600 feet of water, where the weight of the water warps piscine proteins and crushes cells...
Wonderful Things: Ferns Eject Their Spores with Medieval-Style Catapults
Author's note: This is the latest post in the Wonderful Things series. You can read more about this series here. One of the more under-appreciated and ingenious machines evolved by plants is the cavitation catapult of leptosporangiate ferns...
A Sweet Seahorse Tale From Fantastic New Web Series “Deep Look”
Today I have a small biology present for you courtesy of a new series of short videos produced by PBS Digital Studios and KQED San Francisco.
Bacterial Motors Come in a Dizzying Array of Models
Bacteria propel themselves with corkscrew tails anchored in rotary motors. That may seem surprisingly mechanical for a microbe, but it is a system that has been wildly popular and conserved across billions of years of evolution...
Parasitic Trypanosomes Contain Nature’s Only Chain Mail DNA
The organisms that cause us untold suffering can also be astounding works of art, sculpted by evolution into elegant, deadly packages. Such is the case for the trypanosomes, the protists I discussed last time as the source of Chagas Disease, but which also cause sleeping sickness in Africa...
Americans May Be More at Risk from Deadly Heart Parasite Than Realized
The kissing bug may have the most misleadingly cute name in entomology. It bites, rather than smooches, its victims around the mouth or face.
The Giant Transparent Ribbons of Eel Larvae
Author's note: This is the latest post in the Wonderful Things series. You can read more about this series here. It is startling how different the larvae of fish can be from the adults that produced them, as I wrote in a blog post a few months ago...
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