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You know how canaries were historically brought into coal mines, because if the mine was full of carbon monoxide the canary would die first and the miners would be able to escape before they died too?

I just found the greatest thing.

This is a canary resuscitator.

When the miners notice the canary getting sick with carbon monoxide poisoning, they can close that circular hatch so no more gas gets into the canary cage, and open the valve on that oxygen tank to keep the canary breathing. In other words, they made a spacesuit for birds.

By immediately giving the canary access to clean air, the miners can save it from the poison. The bird lives. To be clear, this is not for economic purposes, this was specifically created because the miners felt bad and wanted to save the bird.

Isn’t that just the perfect demonstration of what humans are like? We started sacrificing small creatures to save ourselves, and then felt bad and spent our valuable resources on saving the critters too. Because yeah the canary was the only way to test for CO, but it’s a living creature too, dammit!

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via

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How traditional pitchforks were made.

It took 6 years starting from orienting branches

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“My mom adopted a cat that brings her slippers to her every morning. I didn’t believe her until she got it on camera finally”

(Source)

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finally a parisian we can all love and trust

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Amazing

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Not me sitting in a lawn chair with a flashlight and a hockey stick chasing away raccoons from the baby kitten underneath our deck who refuses to come out! Been trying to trap this kitten for 2 days. We were in bed and then I heard a SCREAM so now I’m on the kitten night watch. Chasing away raccoons. I’ve seen the same one six times now in the last 2.5 hours

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They really should teach people how to cook in school.

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IS THIS REALLY HOW PUFFER FISH BONES LOOK LIKE ?!

yup! with one caveat- that's what the skeleton of an INFLATED pufferfush looks like!

let's backtrack real quick- if you've ever seen one at an aquarium, you might have noticed that pufferfish seem kind of... stiff.

unlike a regular fish, they don't bend at ALL in the middle and have to get around by just wiggling their oversized fins super hard, like a man who's been duct-taped to an office chair scooting around with his feet!

NO GETTING UP ALLOWED, BRIAN.

BUT ANYWAY their stiff movement and weird spiky skeleton are definitely connected, no bones about it!

no apologies for this.

if you take a good hard look at the skeleton in the first pic, you'll notice that the spiky bones aren't actually connected- they just sit under the pufferfish's skin like caltrops and expand to spread themselves apart and point outward when the pufferfish inflates!

so when the pufferfish ISN'T inflated, these bones actually layer over each other to form a very stiff armor consisting of multiple layers of bone spikes, which. is not very flexible. but it does prevent some random eel from just wandering up and stuffing them in its mouth, you have to admit!

so tldr: pufferfish skeletons are really cool, but they had to take a HUGE movement penalty to get it!

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Jetski on a reflective lake | source

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give me booboo wheel... i must have booboo wheel i simply must!

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The head stabilization skills of the American Kestrel let them stay focused on prey while in motion.

Credit: Talons and Teeth