Amsterdam-based artist Cedric Laquieze (previously featured here) recently completed a fascinating new series of his exquisite taxidermy Fairies. These delicate sculptures are primarily composed of parts from many different insect species, but if you look closely you’ll notice bones, seeds and even a few scorpion parts as well.

Visit Cedric Laquieze’s blog for many additional images and to check out some of his other enchanting creations.

[via Cedric Laquieze]

For a long time, people thought zebras evolved stripes as a sort of communal camouflage. (A lion sees a big swath of stripes and gets a bad headache trying to isolate a target).

Then, a research group came out with a new theory: the stripes help repel bloodsucking flies.

And now, an even newer theory! The stripes are part of an air conditioning system. Researchers looked for a relationship between stripe patterns throughout Africa (turns out it varies a lot) and 26 environmental variables. What did they find?

Zebras in hotter regions have more defined stripes. Here’s the logic: dark stripes heat up faster, white stripes heat up slower —> that creates areas of different temperature —> that creates little convection currents (remember how wind happnes?) —> that helps the animals cool. 

An interesting idea - I’m looking forward to the responses from the camouflage and biting fly people.

Photo: Kow Loon

Figure: Brenda Larison, et al.

Cosmopolitan: Get That Life  How I became a museum’s Chief Curiosity Correspondent

Did you ever think Cosmo would run an image of dermestid beetles nibbling on a goose carcass? 

WELL, THEY DID. 

I can’t describe how proud I am that such a popular magazine typically focused on fashion and sex tips is also incorporating scientists into their features because fashion and sex tips and gross anatomy are not at all mutually exclusive. 

We are rebranding feminism and empowerment one major media publication at a time. 

Thank you, world. 

Power struggle by Remo Savisaar

“NEW” PIECES THAT ARE AT LEAST 5YRS OVERDUE: One thing that it is frustrating to me as an artist that has really held back my creativity is my lack of income for the supplies I’ve wanted. I don’t have another job to fund my “art hobby”, this is it. Otherwise the jewelry I’d make would reach a whole other level. These Natural Relics will be in my Bonelust Etsy shop soon so stay tuned. I’m really excited to finally be able to make them! (at http://bonelust.etsy.com)

Some Scorpions Turn the Light Out

by Joseph Bennington-Castro

As if their venom-injecting tails and crushing pincers weren’t frightening enough, scorpions have long been known to glow blue-green under ultraviolet (UV) light. But just as the arachnids’ claw size and venom potency vary from species to species, so does their ability to fluoresce, with some species lacking the ability altogether, new research shows.

Arachnologist Wilson Lourenço of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris initially sought to test the fluorescing capabilities of four recently discovered, cave-dwelling scorpion species (one of which is shown above, left). To his surprise, his test subjects didn’t prove to be noteworthy, but the species he compared them with—the soil-loving Chaerilus telnovi—apparently doesn’t glow under UV light (seen above, right).

Further tests showed that other species from the Chaerilidae family also don’t fluoresce, no matter their habitat, suggesting their inability to glow isn’t an ecological adaptation, Lourenço reports in the current issue of the journal Comptes Rendus Biologies . Nobody knows for sure why scorpions glow; the new discovery may help scientists finally illuminate this eerie phenomenon.

(via: Science NOW)                            

(images: Wilson R. Lourenço/Comptes Rendus Biologies/Elsevier Inc.)

Bender, Batman, and Spongebob come together for one documentary, I Know That Voice.

14-billion-years-later:

gazzelle: