The Remipede...

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today, I just want to post a couple of links to articles on "the remipede". I think I've said before that, as a zoologist, I never know whether to be ashamed of my ignorance each time I learn of a new speices, or astounded at the world and the evolutionary process that genereated all these creatures. Weird animal of the day is the "Remipede": a cave-dwelling relative of the crab, lobster and woodlouse. In the case of this bizarre creature, it was at least fairly recently discovered- in fact the "Speleonectes" species discussed in this article has only been known to mankind for around a year, as the article explains-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824115813.htm

Coincidentally, this odd little beings also feature in this month's National Geographic magazine, in the feature on diving in the Bahamas' "Blue Holes", where they are described as "living fossil[s] nearly unchanged for 300 million years". Interestingly, these weird troglodytic predators have venomous fangs, which they use to kill their prey (mostly other crustaceans, such as shrimps).

More information on the remipede can be found here-
http://whyfiles.org/2010/remipede/
and
here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remipedia

Image of the day- waterfall- art or science?

I don't know whether to post this image link as a work of nature-art or
an arty record of the natural world....

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2bZRdL/photography.nationalgeographic.com/wallpaper/photography/photos/best-pod-april-09/porcupine-mountains-gowtham/

what do you think?
The picture is of a river tumbling over rocks in The Porcupine Mountains Waterfall, Michigan by Gowtham Shankara.

Link of the day- Baby Elephant

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful
Today's link-of-the day-
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2OnZHE/www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/wallpaper/animals/photos/baby-animals/baby-asian-elephant/

- is a very endearing picture of a baby elephant among tall grass: available as computer wallpaper from National Geographic.
Thanks to Stumbleupon.com for the tip-off

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)