Image of the day- Capybara

Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful.

Image of the day today is a Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) by Vigilance Prime. (this image has a GNU creative commons license -details [here])

The world's largest rodent, the Capybara is a herbivorous South American creature that can grow to 1.3 metres(over 4 feet) in length, and weigh up to 65 kg (just over 10 Stone).

Floating Giraffes

Picture of the day-Giraffa camelopardalis,2010, taken atChester Zoo.

Hi. Welcome (back) to Weirdbeautiful. Today, I wanted to share this link-
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/giraffe_flotation_dynamics.php to a great blog post by Darren Naish. His post is all about a research paper he produced with Don Henderson called 'Predicting the buoyancy, equilibrium and potential swimming ability of giraffes by computational analysis'; the title says it all, really. Anyway, Darren Naish's post is a great read and certainly fits in the "weird" category of this blog. You can find the full paper in The Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Thanks to Dolev R. for the tip-off to this link.

Image of the day- Hedgehog by Rebecca English

Good Morning! Welcome to Weirdbeuatiful.
This lovely image is by a school-friend of mine: Rebecca English. (c) R. English, 2010. All rights reserved.
It seems very appropriate to Spring for some reason.

Image of the day- Dormouse by Arno Laurent

Garden Dormouse, Eliomys quercinus. Image by Arno Laurent. Reproduced in accordance with the image's Creative Commons 3.0 licence. Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eliomys_quercinus01.jpg - see this website for more licence details.


My own recent news is that my latest interview- a piece with Darren Mann (the Assistant Curator of the entomology department of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History)has been published- in Practical Reptile Keeping magazine, as usual and should be on the shelves in newsagents in the UK any day now. Darren is a world expert on cockroaches and dung beetles, so his interview is predictably entertaining. You can find details of local stockists of the magazine (within the UK) and of international subscriptions [here]

Image of the day- Ladybird (Ladybug)

Continuing with the theme of insects covered in dew, image of the day today is this stunning photo by Jens Kolk of a ladybird (aka "ladybug") covered in dew-

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2omVNp/www.naturfotografen-forum.de/o30241-hier%2Bdas%2Bzweite%2BND

thanks to Stumbleupon.com

Image of the day- Bird of Paradise flower

Today's picture is a "Bird-of-paradise flower", Strelitzia reginae
, which is a South African plant also called a "crane flower" or just "Strelitzia"
Image by "Plane 777" - source and copyright details -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMG_8679.jpg

Images of the Day

Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.
Todays images are a series of photographs of outer space from the Science Section of The New York Times -
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/01/04/science/010510_BOOK_index.html?ref=science

Image of the day- Okapi

Image (c) Victoria Neblik, 2009. All rights reserved.

Today's image-of-the-day is one of my favourite animals. The okapi is really a "forest giraffe" of sorts. So shy that it eluded science and was considered a myth until 1920, the okapi is in the unhappy predicament of inhabiting war/conflict-torn parts of Central Africa- specifically,the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It would be lovely if reservations for it could be created, but it seems impossible in the current climate.

This image is one of many in the forthcoming book "Weirdbeautiful"- for advance notice of the book's release, e mail neblik@yahoo.co.uk with "weirdbeautiful book" in the subject line.

Image of the day- the natural world down a microscope

Links to two image-series today- both courtessy of The Sun newspaper. The first is a beautiful series of images of living organisms and natural phenomena (baby starfish, soap bubles, snail eggs, a fly larva and several others). You can find the article here-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2819061/Pictures-from-under-the-microscope.html

most of the images are in a gallery linked from that article.

The second image series is an article and a further succession of 6 images of planet Mars-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2807544/Pictures-of-Mars-reveal-astonishing-beauty.html

Link/Image of the Day- Lily Pads

Today's first link/image is this arresting image of lily pads on the National Geographic website-
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/

It has been a while since I linked to anything by Eduardo Izquerido, but today's second image/link-of-the day is to this stunning picture from his flickr photostream-

http://www.flickr.com/photos/odreiuqzide/4286790584/in/photostream/

(the other picture by Eduardo that was featured on weirdbeautiful was this picture of ice from the air- http://victorianeblik.blogspot.com/2009/09/ice.html last September)

Image of the day- Nature "red in tooth and claw"

Hello. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful. Today's image is a striking photo of tigers feeding in Northern China-

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2810635/Big-cats-look-roar-ly-hungry.html

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."- Martin Luther (1483-1586)

(Image, Apple Blossom, (c) V Neblik, 2008, taken from the forthcoming book "Weirdbeautiful". All rights reserved). Quote with thanks to brainyquote.com

Image of the day-Fennec Foxes

Fennec Foxes, Vulpes zerda Photograph by Umberto Salvagnin.

You can see other images by Umberto Salvagnin on his flickr photostream, here- http://www.flickr.com/photos/34745138@N00
The image above was taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fennec_Foxes.jpg , where it has a Creative Commons 2.0 licence.

Link of the day- Loch Morlich

Image/link of the day today is this lovely photo of Lake Morlich in the Cairngorn Mountains, Scotland in the snow-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2BJSkM/www.flickr.com/photos/freeskiing/4230226411/sizes/o/

thanks to Stumbleupon.com for bringing it to my attention.
The photographer is "freeskiing"- you can see the rest of his flickr photostream here-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2BJSkM/www.flickr.com/photos/freeskiing/4230226411/sizes/o/

Image of the day

Two male apes....
(c) V. Neblik, 2009

Usually, when taking pictures of captive animals, the glass/bars/cage mars the photograph- in this case, it makes it...

The ape on the left lives in Antwerp Zoo, the ape (man) on the right (a zoo visitor) was standing behind me and to my right.

I've spent an interesting morning working through my photograph archives for the first of the Weridbeautiful postcard books, which is where I found this image. Finally seeing your (one's) ideas take shape into an end-product, as I am doing at the moment, is a wonderful feeling.

Image of the day

(c) V. Neblik, 2009