fractalotl

[fractalotl]

Treehole antlion, Cymothales sp., Myrmeleontidae

Photographed in Mabira Forest, Uganda by Frank Deschandol

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

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Opalized 80 million years old Ammonite measuring 2 ft. in diameter, discovered near Alberta, Canada

source:

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I had this idea for a looping animation in which a single dot has a pretty long loop, but the animation as a whole is much shorter. Because of the repetition this animation is only 1 second long!

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found this abandoned quilt top while cleaning and had to finish it up finally. screen printed and sewn last semester and finally quilted and bound yesterday. using holographic foils to emulate the glassy appearance of diatoms under the microscope, i sewed a log cabin pattern as a playful nod to the idea that diatoms live in tiny glass houses.

Glass Cabin, 2023, 40x42in, pieced cotton with textile foil screenprints, polyester batting, gifted fabric backing

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holy SHIT please read the whole thread and many more of these images right here, this artist put together an updated Opabinia reconstruction where every single one of these minute details (except coloration, obviously) are fully sourced making this most likely the first depiction factoring in 100% of current knowledge about it. Even I didn’t know it had little feet like a velvet worm and could have walked around on them! I never knew exactly how the trunk is oriented or how many “teeth” it is! I especially didn’t know the mouth was that weird! And I kind of assumed this since it’s a lobopod and all, but the whole animal was soft and squishy except for the eyes and the teeth. It did not have armor plates or a jointed exoskeleton like a lot of people portray. This also means all five of the eyes would have been able to bend and look around independently! The eye structure in fossils also indicates that they would have PSEUDOPUPILS! That’s the pupil-like dot in the eyes of insects like mantises!

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anemones seen here using specialized body growths called acrorhagi to attack each other during an argument in the intertidal zone.

Anthopluera xanthogrammica San Mateo county CA, Aug. 2015 / T3i /

[fractalotl]

Still in awe that more than zero people in the world believe corals are just inanimate mineral formations, or that sea anemones are plants, or that sea urchins are just stationary objects, or that so many people didn’t know that every single seashell in the world comes from the death of its original owner and isn’t “molted” or “shed” from live snails. People deserve to know marine invertebrates as well as they do so many other animals :(

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Evoking Organic Growth, Toru Kurokawa’s Ceramic Sculptures Stretch and Swell into Abstract Forms

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Perfect standing wave on a computer-controlled wave pool

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Morphing Particle Rafts

A layer of tiny glass beads sitting atop a pool of castor oil becomes a morphing surface in this video. Applying an electric field creates enough electrostatic force to draw the interface upward against the power of both gravity and surface tension.  (Image and video credit: K. Sun et al.) Read the full article

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thinking about the northern stargazer ♥

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(source)

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Here’s something cute

When lockdown happened in the UK it happened very suddenly. At the law firm I work at, our office building emptied overnight when everyone was told to work from home. No time to clear our desks, no time to bring office plants home.

Fast forward three and a half months - everyone assumes that their plants are dead.

But then! An email goes round! It’s turns out that one of our security guards is a florist, and -

-the security team has moved EVERY SINGLE PLANT from all 12 FLOORS of our office building into the cafeteria. It’s been turned into a temporary greenhouse. Cacti and succulents and spider plants and terrariums and potted ferns

AND! Each plant has been INDIVIDUALLY LABELLED by hand with post-it notes with name and desk location so the plants can go home after lockdown ends

To give some indication of the scale of the endeavour:

If you zoom into the centre right photo you can see one of our security team happily waving

The plants are being taken care of tenderly. They get sun and water and are spending happy times with other plant friends

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