daily-nature-facts

[daily-nature-facts]

this bird is SO goddamn loud!

the white bellbird (Procnias albus) is considered the loudest bird in the world, reaching up to 125 decibels.

this is loud enough to cause serious pain and hearing damage to humans, but when making mating calls they do it RIGHT next to the females. that cannot feel great!

source: Audubon

image source: Renan Betzel on eBird (be glad i didn't include a video. it's earsplitting)

[daily-nature-facts]

these snakes are ALL 'one of the girls'!

Brahminy blind snakes (Indotyphlops braminus) are a tiny fossorial (burrowing) species of snake native to south Asia, and they look like blunt shoelaces. so, what's so interesting about them?

every single Brahminy blind snake ever found has been female. this means that they reproduce via parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction rare in vertebrates. basically, mama blindsnakes lay eggs that hatch into clones of themselves!

not only that, but these snakes are triploid; they have three copies of each set of DNA! this is pretty weird, and super interesting given their reproductive strategy.

sources: Florida Museum, biodiversitylibrary.org

image source: incidental naturalist

[daily-nature-facts]

whales are hooved mammals!

whales are grouped in order Artiodactyla (sometimes called Cetartiodactyla), comprised of even-toed ungulates (hooved mammals).

why are they 'hooved' if they have no legs? well, evolution!

whales and other cetaceans evolved from some very small deer-like ungulates (note that 'evolved from' is a simplified term for a complex process). the ancestors of whales spent a lot of time near the water, and overtime traded their tiny hooves for paddling feet and tails.

by looking at the skeletons of these predecessors, taxonomists have determined that they did, in fact, share traits with artiodactylans, and at some point they fell into that group.

in the words of Clint Laidlaw, you can't evolve out of a clade, so the blue whale remains cousin to the whitetail!

source: Berkeley

image source: Wikimedia Commons

[daily-nature-facts]

these parasites have some really weird sex...

parasitic insects in order Strepsiptera, commonly called twist-wing flies, have some super extreme sexual dimorphism and an even more extreme way of mating.

the specimen on the left is a male, and the specimen on the right is a female. what??????

females are born with legs, but once they locate a host insect they ditch those and hunker down between the segments of its abdomen. their heads protrude, but all the soft parts are safe inside the bug. they will stay like this their whole lives.

males, on the other hand, become something that looks a lot more like what you would expect of a fly. their mouthparts are close to useless, and as adults they exist only to mate.

upon finding an insect being parasitized by females, the males will mate with them. however, since most female twist-wing flies don't have genital openings, and they don't move from their host...

he inseminates her via a stab to the brood pouch! this is a process known as hypodermic insemination, and it happens in more bugs than you'd think. it'd suck to be a twist-wing mom!

(that's not even the last of the weird things about this order, but i can't cover them all here. check out the sources for more strange strepsipterans!)

source used for post facts: Royal Entomological Society (their logo is a male twist-wing fly apparently, so you know they're serious!)

other fun-fact-having sources (in order of easiness to understand): Amateur Entomologists' Society, NC State, Oxford Academic

image source: Beani et al.

[daily-nature-facts]

pufferfish make crop circles too!

well... kind of. they're sand.

male pufferfish in genus Torquigener are the artists behind these elaborate "underwater crop circles", which can get up to 2 meters (7 feet) across. the fish who make them are only about 12 centimeters (5 inches) themselves!

the reason? reproduction. female pufferfish use these circles as nests, laying her eggs right in the center for the male to fertilize.

the structure of the nest directs finer sand and fresh water towards the eggs to improve chances of hatching, so it's important that the male gets it just right!

source: BBC Science Focus Magazine, Live Science

image source: Kawase et al.

[daily-nature-facts]

this fish has legs!

sea robins, or gurnards (family Triglidae), are some of the strangest fish out there.

the "legs" in question are actually modified pectoral fins, complete with separate bones, nerves, and specialized pectoral muscles to move them.

sea robins are benthic, meaning that they live primarily on the ocean floor, so these legs are for scuttling. it's theorized that these legs can even "taste" around for prey!

and that's not even mentioning their beautifully colored fins!

source: ScienceDirect

image source: Anik Grearson, Erik Riesch

[daily-nature-facts]

this is the rarest gull in the world!

the lava gull, or gaviota de lava (Leucophaeus fuliginosis) is endemic to the Galapagos islands, with only ~600 individuals in the wild. it is considered Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List, though the population is stable.

if you're in the Galapagos, keep an eye out for these amazing birds, especially if you're a tourist-- you'll likely never see them again!

source: Galapagos Conservation Trust

image source: Shaun Robson on eBird

[daily-nature-facts]

this bug shoots vinegar!

vinegaroons, or tailed whip scorpions (order Uropygi) have the ability to spray acetic acid from their abdomens!

this is a defensive maneuver, so if you encounter one in its habitat of the southern U.S. and Mexico, don't bother it unless you like vinegar in your eyes!

luckily, the spray is not dangerous to humans beyond possibly causing some irritation. for its actual prey, which tends to be smaller bugs such as crickets, it prefers to use its large front pincers.

vinegaroons are also often kept as pets by invertebrate enthusiasts!

source: National Geographic

image source: Joel Sartore

[daily-nature-facts]

this snake has tentacles!

the tentacled snake (Erpaton tentaculatum) is one of a kind!

it sports a short pair of tentacles on the tip of its nose, which are extremely nerve-dense and are theorized to sense the movements of its prey.

since tentacled snakes are fully aquatic, they've learned to use a very specific hunting maneuver in order to take advantage of fish instincts. essentially, they feign a movement in one direction and strike in the other. check out the sources for a more in-depth explanation!

sources: The Smithsonian, Vanderbilt University, Current Biology

image source: Kenneth Catania

[daily-nature-facts]

this fish is the most venomous in the world!

stonefish (genus Synanceia) have thirteen spines on their backs, through which they have the capacity to inject an extremely potent toxin.

if you have the unlucky pleasure of stepping on one, you will experience horrible pain, swelling, convulsions, paralysis, respiratory failure, and in extreme cases, death. yes, this fish has killed people (though it usually doesn't).

it's hard to avoid via sight, though, because they are magnificent at camouflage-- stonefish are ambush predators, so they need to be hidden! they've even got the texture down.

your best bet for not getting stung is to do the "stingray shuffle" when in stonefish range. instead of picking up your feet and stepping as you normally would, drag them through the sand to give any critters a heads-up. as the name implies, this can also help you avoid stepping on a stingray!

source: oceanconservancy.org

image source: taken at a Prague aquarium by Karelj on Wikipedia

[daily-nature-facts]

this fish produces "milk"!

well, it's not really milk. discus fish (genus Symphysodon) produce a nutrient-rich mucus that their babies eat off their skin, as shown here!

they always produce this mucus, but when they have babies, its protein levels dramatically increase. also, apparently it's orange. these fish are silly!

source: Science Daily

image source: Nature Picture Library

[daily-nature-facts]

some parasites parasitize other parasites!

hyperparasitism is the evolutionary strategy of an organism parasitizing another parasite!

it's evolved separately in lots of taxa, but one of my sources focused on the parasites of parasitic wasps in genus Aphidius. funnily enough, their parasites are also parasitic wasps (genuses Dendrocerus and Alloxysta).

when the wasps lay their eggs on or inside aphids, their hyperparasites will in turn lay their eggs near or in the eggs of the initial parasite, killing it before it can properly parasitize its aphid host.

interestingly, an instance of hyper-hyperparasitism has been observed, in which a hyperparasite itself got a parasite. i only read the abstract because the rest of this study was in Russian, but this is a little bit insane, i think.

source: University of Vermont, the abstract of a study from PubMed, and the Russian study i linked

[daily-nature-facts]

horses have "best friends"!

"best friends" is in quotes here because that's a human concept, but horses can bond closely with other horses in a similar way to us!

in the wild, horse herds have a certain hierarchy, as most social animals do, but horses have been found to have special relationships with certain individuals.

often, this happens between horses of the same color, but any number of factors could influence a horse's decision to make "friends" with another.

source: thehorse.com

image source: horseimage on twitter (i don't know the original source, but the caption spoke to me on a deep level. sorry, horse photographer at the olympics for Team GB!)

[daily-nature-facts]

woodpeckers' brains are built not to concuss them!

for a while, the general consensus among scientists was that woodpeckers had a "cushion" built into their skull in order to protect their brains from the frequent and rapid whiplash they endure.

however, that idea had its flaws! if their skulls absorbed the energy of all that pecking, they'd have to peck harder for the same amount of work, thereby negating the cushion.

what we eventually decided on was that the woodpeckers's brains were just short-- too short for the impact to affect them in any seriously negative way.

they're built for fast pecking and no life-threatening head injuries. we're not, though, so let's not copy them!

source: Physics Today

didn't feel like an image today because my laptop's dying. love you guys!

[daily-nature-facts]

these snakes can bite without opening their mouths!

snakes in genus Atractaspis, also called burrowing asps, mole vipers, and stiletto snakes, are broadly fossorial and native to South Africa.

what's interesting is that their fangs are extremely mobile. these snakes cannot be handled with the typically used approach of a firm grip behind the head-- they will actually protrude one of their fangs from their mouths and stab backwards at the unfortunate handler!

while their venom is generally not considered deadly, it is extremely cytotoxic and often extremely painful! many victims end up losing a finger. don't screw with stiletto snakes!

source: Sci News

image source: African Snakebite Institute (WARNING ! this page shows an image of the aftermath from a bite and it's gross)

[daily-nature-facts]

milkweed is toxic to pretty much all mammals, but it is vital to bugs!

milkweed (Asclepias sp.) sap contains cardenolides, which are toxins that affect the heart. it can be toxic and even fatal to mammals.

however, some species of bugs, such as the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and the milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus) depend upon its existence to survive!

monarch caterpillars literally cannot eat anything other than milkweed or they'll die.

planting milkweed is good for these guys, and luckily most mammals will not even try to eat it-- it tastes awful to them. if you live in its native range, think about giving milkweed a spot in your garden!

source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

image source: Tom Koerner, USFWS (yes i did use an image from the article, what are you going to do about it. also, yes, hummingbirds can safely drink the nectar)

[daily-nature-facts]

scorpions, mantids, and stick insects have an aquatic counterpart!

Nepidae, a family commonly called water scorpions, contains two genuses: Ranatra and Nepa.

while Ranatra water scorpions resemble stick insects and mantids, Nepa water scorpions look a lot like actual scorpions-- or, if you're familiar with entomology, they look like giant water bugs (Belostomatidae).

they are completely harmless to humans; their "tails" are not stingers, but instead siphons to help them breathe underwater! very cool!

also, while they prefer other aquatic bugs, some of these guys can eat small fish and tadpoles using their forelegs! i'm so proud of them :-}

source: wildlifetrusts.org, University of Maine

image source: user metrioptera (Nepa apiculata) and user margarethe brummermann (Ranatra sp.) on BugGuide.net