greeneye81

Scientists have used a high-speed camera to film hummingbirds' aerial acrobatics at 1000 frames per second. They can see, frame by frame, how neither wind nor rain stop these tiniest of birds from fueling up. How do hummingbirds eat? With spring in full bloom, hummingbirds can be spotted flitting from flower to flower and lapping up the sugary nectar inside. These tiniest of birds have the highest metabolism of any warm-blooded animal, requiring them to consume their own body weight in nectar each day to survive. By comparison, if a 150-pound human had the metabolism of a hummingbird, he or she would need to consume the caloric equivalent of more than 300 hamburgers a day. But it's not just an extreme appetite that sets hummingbirds apart from other birds. These avian acrobats are the only birds that can fly sideways, backwards and hover for long stretches of time. In fact, hovering is essential to hummingbirds' survival since they have to keep their long, thin beaks as steady as a surgeon's scalpel while probing flowers for nectar. How do Hummingbirds fly? Hummingbirds don't just hover to feed when the weather is nice. They have to keep hovering and feeding even if it's windy or raining, a remarkable feat considering most of these birds weigh less than a nickel.

Plenty of animals build their homes in oak trees. But some very teeny, tricky wasps make the tree do all the work. “What nerve!” you might say. What… gall! And you’d be right. The wasps are called gall-inducers. And each miniature mansion that the trees build for the wasps' larvae is weirder and more flamboyant than the next. If you’ve ever spent a Summer or Fall around oak trees - such as the stalwart Valley Oak - Quercus lobata, or the stately Blue Oak, Quercus douglasii - you may be familiar with the large, vaguely fruity-looking objects clinging to the branches and leaves. Commonly called oak apples, these growths are the last thing you’d want to put in your mouth. They are intensely bitter, loaded with tannin compounds - the same compounds that in modest amounts give red wine its pleasant dryness, and tea its refreshing earthy tang.That said, the oak apple’s powerful astringency has been prized for millennia. Tanning leather, making ink or dye, and cleaning wounds have been but a few of the gall’s historical uses.

If an outdoors, socially-distanced gathering is part of your Thanksgiving plans, beware of uninvited guests. I don’t mean friendly neighbors who might invite themselves to a piece of pie.I’m talking about flies. Buzzing around curiously, they’ll help themselves to whatever food you leave unattended. As they walk all around they could spread hundreds of types of bacteria they carry on their legs. So you try sneaking up on one and it skedaddles. Why, oh why, is it so hard to swat a fly?

There's something buried in the Arctic soil that could have a huge effect on the future of our planet's climate. Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have descended on Barrow, Alaska to study permafrost -- soil that remains frozen throughout the seasons, often for thousands of years. They're interested in permafrost because it has the potential to release an enormous amount of greenhouse gases in a short amount of time if rising temperatures cause the permafrost to thaw.

A kissing bug gorges on your blood. Then it poops on you. And that poop might contain the parasite that causes Chagas disease, which can be deadly. Without knowing it, millions of people have gotten the parasite in Latin America, where these insects live in many rural homes. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the saliva of some kissing bugs in the U.S. can give you a dangerous allergic reaction.

It’s a hairworm — also known as a horsehair worm or Gordian worm. Good news: It isn’t interested in infecting or attacking humans. But if you had happened on the puddle a few hours earlier, you might have witnessed a gruesome spectacle

"Unique Mushroom" The cage fungus looks and smells like decaying meat — on purpose. Its goopy lattice gives off a rotten odor that attracts flies, which help spread its spores far and wide.

This video shows the life of pygmy seahorse.