Gila monster skull

Not bumpy skin.  Bumpy skull.

You learn something every day.  Via.

The mystery of the "cotton" in the window frame - updated x4

The arrival of September at our latitude marks the time when windows closed all summer can be opened to admit cool night air.  As I opened the window on our guest room, I was startled to see a wad of cotton-like material tumble from the upper window frame (above, placed on the concrete driveway for imaging).

My initial anxiety was that some sort of insulation was coming loose, but the original location of the material (photo below) ruled out that possibility.

My attention was now drawn to the contents of the mass, which to my initial dismay revealed an insect pupa and a number of living larvae:

After searching several combinations of key words in Google Images, I found one entry that matched my experience.  The brief explanation there was that the mass was the creation of a solitary bee.

Now I did feel bad, because my wife and I are great fans of solitary bees.  But armed with that clue, it didn't take long to track down the answer:

Anthidium manicatum, commonly called the European wool carder bee, is a species of bee in the family Megachilidae, the leaf-cutter bees or mason bees.

They get the name 'carder' from their behaviour of scraping hair from leaves such as lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina)... They scrape the hairs from the leaves and carry them back to their nests bundled beneath their bodies. There it is used as a lining for their nest cavities.  Females tend to build their nests at high locations.

I don't know whether the larvae in the photo are bee-related or parasites.

Reposted from 2016 because this week I was wandering through the "gardening" section of our local Target store and found this:

The shelf tag erroneously said "butterfly house."  The label on the product was slightly less inaccurate with "insect house."  It is in fact a structure designed for solitary bees.  There are online instructions for making these as a DIY project, but this one was nicely made and inexpensive.  I'll hang it from a shepherd's crook near ground level in our garden and hope to see some of the tubes getting filled as the summer progresses.

Here is a photo of an equivalent bee-condo viewed in cross-section:

This one was made by drilling holes in a wood block (presumably with a removable flap so the curious home scientist could inspect the process and the season progressed).

If I remember, I'll try to post followup photos in the summer and autumn.

Updated May 2018 to show the bee "condo" installed in our back garden -

Helpful hint:  A "shepherd's hook" (used for hanging flower baskets, bird feeders etc), when purchased from a home decor or gardening store can be somewhat pricey.  I went instead to our local farm supply store and picked up the "pigtail" post shown in the photo (used on farms for stringing electric fences around fields) for about $2.  An added advantage is the little S-shaped part at the bottom which grips the post for stepping it into the ground and digs into the ground to provide 2-point stability for the post.

Updated again:

Well, back to the drawing board.   After a week of drenching rains, the "bee condo" was in multiple pieces.  I don't think I can blame raccoons, because there was no honey or larvae in it yet.  Wind might have banged it around a bit, judging from the current position, but I rather suspect this was assembled using water-soluble glue.

It was cheap.  You  get what you pay for.

Fortunately I have several rolls of duct tape in the garage.

June 2019: Reposted for the fourth time to add new information.

I was able to duct tape that contraption back together and it has survived a year of biblical rains and 25-below-zero temps.  Not sure how much it's being utilized; I should do a survey of it later this summer.

But this week I saw a post at Neatorama with new information about backyard bee houses, citing a Gizmodo article entitled "Your Cheap-Ass Bee House is probably Killing the Bees" -

The most prevalent problem with bee houses is that when they’re not cared for properly, they can become breeding grounds for pests, mold, fungus, and disease...

Pollen mites are one of the biggest threats to the habitability of bee houses located in humid environments or built of materials like bamboo that don’t dry easily. “If there’s no way for moisture to dissipate from the nest then the mites take over,” Purrington said...

Packing a bunch of [normally solitary] species together into one box is not only ecologically weird, it can make them targets, Mader said. “The cheek-to-cheek occupancy of bee houses helps predators (woodpeckers for example), parasites (including wasps, mites, and others), and diseases find a dense host-bee population to exploit.”..

... it’s bad for bees when a house is tied loosely to a tree or a post with a string rather than tightly secured in place... “The bees can’t land if it’s flapping around in the wind,” he said of mason bees. “They’re terrible at landing.”

...it’s a good idea to cover the houses with metal netting to keep the birds out, as woodpeckers and bluejays find bee houses to be great restaurants.

You learn something every day.

"I got those beetles out of the tree for you, boss"

A pileated woodpecker at work.  Image cropped for size from the original.

Cat hair and dryer lint

Based on something I read somewhere, I decided to repurpose an empty suet feeder by stuffing it with wads of dryer lint and cat fur (harvested humanely with a comb).

Yesterday I was rewarded by seeing a hummingbird hovering at the dangling feeder, pulling some fibers out, dropping them, then selecting some others that she flew away with.

I don't know which she chose; the contents of the feeder are poked in at random (I should probably arrange it with one offering on the left, the other on the right).  Does anyone know from experience which she preferred?

Addendum:  A tip of the blogging hat to reader Wild Birds Unlimited Mid-Michigan for commenting that dryer lint is not recommended as material to offer birds for nesting.

When the weatherman says "scattered showers"

Photo incidentally revealing the location of Joe Btfsplk's home.

Visible birdsong

Photo credit: Михаил Калинин

This is not a fish

It's a nudibranch (sea slug) that has evolved a flattened morphology in order to hunt in a pelagic rather than benthic environment.  Details at Deep Sea News.

Circumhorizontal arc

The Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sometimes known as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc lies parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds are present. Furthermore, the numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are quite unusual to see.

You think this is funny?

Photos of Great White Sharks, viewed "upside down" from underneath.

Three-banded armadillo

The word means "little armoured one" in Spanish.  Image via.

Biologic needles

Scanning electron microscope images of a viper’s fang, the fang of a spider, and the stinger of a scorpion (b, c, d).  On the far left for comparison is a modern hypodermic needle.  Via.

Port Jackson shark

The teeth of the Port Jackson shark are one of its most distinguishable feature. Unlike other sharks, its teeth are different in the front and back. The front teeth are small, sharp and pointed, while the back teeth are flat and blunt. These teeth function to hold and break, then crush and grind the shells of the mollusks and echinoderms upon which this species feeds...

Port Jackson sharks have the ability to eat and breathe at the same time. This ability is unusual for sharks which mostly need to swim with their mouths open to force water over the gills. The Port Jackson shark can pump water into the first enlarged gill slit and out through the other four gill slits. By pumping water across the gills, the shark does not need to move to breathe. It can lie on the bottom for long periods of time...

It also does not pose any danger to humans. In October 2011 a man was 'bitten' by a Port Jackson shark at Elwood Beach near Melbourne. The bite did not pierce the skin and the man was able to swim away while the shark was latched on to his calf.

Image via

Fried egg jellyfish

Or Phacellophora camtschatica, if that's easier to remember.  Image via.

Copper scorpion

Found in an Arizona mine; photographed at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.  Photo cropped for size from the original.

Human brain (left). Dolphin brain (right).

Note the impressive folding of the gyri and sulci that increase the surface gray matter, and look at that awesome cerebellum.

As some of you have pointed out, "the two halves aren't connected." In reality, they are connected, but the corpus callosum is very thin. Dolphins do that thing called unihemispheric slow‐wave sleep, and are able to remain vigilant even with only one hemisphere awake. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans during this type of sleep show that there's also lateralization in cerebellar activity. However, the fact that dolphins can remain vigilant even with one hemisphere asleep implies that there is no extreme lateralization of function that would cause severe impairment.

One of the theorized reasons why "the cerebellum is massive" is because dolphins rely so heavily on auditory input. In both humans and dolphins, the cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements such as posture, balance, coordination, and speech, but in dolphins the sensorimotor information is much more heavily influenced by auditory input. In directing echolocation trains and responding to this information, the dolphin must adjust its body quickly and precisely according to echolocation signals, and the corresponding lobules are much larger in dolphins than in humans.

Via

Worldwide slaughter of pangolins - updated

From a report at The Guardian:

The true scale of the slaughter of pangolins in Africa has been revealed by new research showing that millions of the scaly mammals are being hunted and killed.

Pangolins were already known to be the world’s most trafficked wild mammal, with at least a million being traded in the last decade to supply the demand for its meat and scales in Asian markets. Populations of Asian pangolins have been decimated, leaving the creatures highly endangered and sharply shifting the focus of exploitation to Africa’s four species...

A total ban on the international trade in any pangolin species was passed by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species in September. But Ingram said the enforcement of both international and national laws had to be increased to prevent African pangolins following their Asian cousins on the path to extinction.

The demand in Asia for pangolin meat and scales as delicacies and supposed medicinal uses is a major factor in cross-border trade but a significant proportion of African pangolins are eaten locally. Ingram said that measures are also needed to develop alternative livelihoods for African hunters of pangolin...

More from Wikipedia:

The pangolin trade is centuries old. An early known example is in 1820, when Francis Rawdon, 1st Marquis of Hastinges and East India Company Governor General in Bengal, presented King George III with a coat and helmet made with the scales of Manis crassicaudata [low-res photo at the link]. The gifts are now stored in the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

The pangolins are boiled to remove the scales, which are then dried and roasted, then sold based on claims that they can stimulate lactation, help to drain pus, and relieve skin diseases or palsy. As of 2015, pangolin scales were covered under some health insurance plans in Vietnam.

The scales can cost more than $3,000/kg on the black market.

GIF of a pandolin.

Reposted from 2017 to show this image of a shipping container with the remains of 36,000 poached critically-endangered pangolins:

They sailed into a Singapore inspection port by shipping container, the vessel marked “frozen beef” and bound for Vietnam. Inside, customs officials found the sacks, packed and piled from floor to ceiling. They overflowed with the product of a wildlife smuggling operation so vast, yet so niche, it had conservationists worried about the extinction of an animal that most people haven’t even heard of yet...

Restaurants buy pangolin meat, which is considered a delicacy, an off-menu item that a well-heeled customer might order when trying to impress. Those seeking the new cure-all buy the scales, which are used in traditional medicine to treat everything from rheumatism to cancer, even though there is no known science that supports their remedial properties. And the fashion industry has shown interest in the skin, its diamond pattern making for an attractive leather design. It’s scale-to-tail consumption.

More information at the Washington Post (whence the embedded photo, credit Getty Images, cropped for size)

Commonly called the "Picasso bug"

Sphaerocoris annulus, common names Picasso Bug or Zulu Hud Bug, is a species of shield-backed bugs belonging to the family Scutelleridae. The basic color is green, with eleven ring-shaped spots on the elytra. The colors and the design of these bugs represent a warning to predators.

Image via

The leg of Argentinosaurus

To estimate the gait and speed of Argentinosaurus, the study performed a musculoskeletal analysis combined with computer simulations. Similar analyses have previously been conducted on hominids, terror birds, and other dinosaurs. To conduct the analysis, the team had to create a digital skeleton of the animal in question, estimate the muscles and their properties, and estimate the weight and how it's distributed. Then using computer simulation and genetic algorithms, which could be optimised for metabolic energy cost or speed, the digital Argentinosaurus learns to walk. The study estimated that their 83 tonne sauropod model was mechanically competent at a top speed of 2 m/s (5 mph) but was approaching a functional limit

Photo via.

The "journey north" has begun

You can follow the monarch migration and many other signs of spring (songbirds, frogs, leafing out) for this year and previous years in the maps at Journey North.

The amazing feet of a gecko

Geckos can stick to surfaces because their bulbous toes are covered in hundreds of tiny microscopic hairs called setae. Each seta splits off into hundreds of even smaller bristles called spatulae. Scientists already knew that the tufts of tiny hairs get so close to the contours in walls and ceilings that the van der Waals force kicks in. This type of physical bond happens when electrons from the gecko hair molecules and electrons from the wall molecules interact with each other and create an electromagnetic attraction...

A gecko by definition is not sticky — he has to do something to make himself sticky," study lead author Alex Greaney, a professor of engineering at Oregon State University in Corvallis, told Live Science. "It's this incredible synergy of the flexibility, angle and extensibility of the hairs that makes it possible."

Greaney and a team of researchers created a mathematical model that shows how the setae angle and the forces that act on a gecko as it climbs interact to create a delicate but powerful sticking system.

Additional explanation at LiveScience.  Photo via.