The story of the Mega Shark
Filed under Animals, Entertainment, Science, Visual Graphics & Images
Well this post actually relates to a B-rated movie called Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. It’s so hilariously anti-physics so many people were once involved in discussing about it.
The interesting part: the Mega Shark takes down a commercial jetliner that is cruising over the middle of the ocean.
So Taubman over at Stivo made this Infographic alongside his post. Quite interesting, worth the time reading (including the critical comments from readers).
Tags: Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus
Magnificent Movies and their Mega Monsters
Filed under Animals, Entertainment, Visual Graphics & Images
True.
Magnificent movies are somewhat always related to stories of mega monsters. Here’s a compilation, originally done by Wired, on some of the greatest Hollywood flicks featuring some of the great monsters on screen.
Mighty Joe Young
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
It Came From Beneath the Sea
Godzilla
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Cloverfield
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Tags: mega monsters, monster movies, monsters
Dinosaur Extinction Cause Confirmed: Space Impact
An international panel of experts has strongly endorsed evidence that a space impact was behind the mass extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs.
They reached the consensus after conducting the most wide-ranging analysis yet of the evidence. Writing in Science journal, they rule out alternative theories such as large-scale volcanism.
A panel of 41 international experts reviewed 20 years’ worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction, around 65 million years ago.
The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth. Their review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid or comet smashing into Earth at Chicxulub on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
When the 10km-15km space rock struck the Yucatan, the explosive energy released was equivalent to 100 trillion tonnes of TNT – over a billion times more explosive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The huge crater that remains from the event is some 180km in diameter and surrounded by a circular fault about 240km in diameter.
Extracted from BBC
Tags: dinosaur extinction
67 Million-Year-Old Snake Fossil Found Eating Baby Dinosaurs
Scientists have found a 67 million-year-old fossil of a snake coiled around dinosaur eggs and a hatchling. This is the first evidence of snakes eating dinosaurs.
“It’s a stunning, once-in-a-lifetime find,” said paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve caught one of the rarest moments in the fossil record, which is prey and predator, together.”
Geologist Dhanajay Mohabey of the Indian Geological Survey first unearthed the fossil 26 years ago in a rocky, limestone outcropping in the northwestern Indian village of Dholi Dungri. He thought all the bones at the site were those of dinosaur hatchlings.
The newly discovered species of snake, Sanajeh indicus, measures about 11.5 feet long. The hatchlings, part of a group called titanosaurs, measured about a foot and a half long. Titanosaurs were the largest animal to ever walk on land, with adults that could reach up to 100 feet long.
Unlike modern snakes, S. indicus lacked jaw joints that allowed it to open its mouth incredibly wide, so it relied on its large overall body size to prey on the fledgling dinosaurs. Luckily for the snake, the titanosaur hatchlings had soft skeletons that “may have been somewhat collapsible, so you can fold their ribs up a bit and get them in your mouth,” Wilson said.
Cool eh?
Source: Wired
Tags: snake eats dinosaur, snake fossil
Smart lil Octopus
Filed under Animals, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
An octopus and its coconut-carrying antics have surprised scientists.
This underwater footage above reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters.
An Ape has More Facebook Fans than Any of Us!
Have you always wanted to get famous and have thousands of Facebook fans? Well, I’m not asking you to become an ape or something, but I’m just asking you to give up, because you (and I) will never get even close this pretty little ape called Nonja; who apparently has over 63,749 Facebook fans (at the time of posting this) and still growing!
She’s a 33-years old orangutan, the secret of Nonja Internet’s fame is a purpose-modified Samsung ST 1000 digital camera that is able to upload pictures to Facebook automatically. Of course, Nonja doesn’t exactly care how many fans she has over there or the angle of her shots. She only cares for the raisins that pop out every time she presses the shutter button!
Source: CNet via Lowyat.net
Half-inch Jellyfish Nearly Kills a Man!
A 29-year-man, wearing a full-body “stinger suit,” was stung on the face by an Irukandji jellyfish while diving from a yacht off the coast of Australia. These jellyfish can kill a person in minutes, really.
He was taken back to the island, where a rescue team rushed to his aid. “The crew said he was shivering and in shock and in a great deal of pain,” Miss Hansen said. The man, from Brisbane, was in serious condition on Friday at Mackay Base Hospital in Mackay.
Just so you know, this jellyfish’s sting can lead to “Irukandji syndrome,” a set of symptoms that includes shooting pains in the muscles and chest, vomiting, restlessness and anxiety. Some symptoms can last for more than a week, and the syndrome can occasionally lead to a rapid rise in blood pressure and heart failure.
In 2002, two tourists were killed in separate incidents after being stung by the tiny creatures off northeast Australia – the first recorded Irukandji fatalities. But because the jellyfish leave almost no mark on their victims, scientists believe they are responsible for many deaths that were attributed as drownings or heart attacks, said Lisa Gershwin, a marine biologist who has spent 11 years studying the animals.
Image from Wikimedia
Source: Telegraph
Driving a Leopard Around, Would you?
Filed under Animals, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
This video is kind of interesting. Don’t expect some action or whatsoever, it’s just a mobile-phone captured video showing a leopard having a nice ride in the owner’s Audi TT. Like what Autoblog said, perhaps a Mercury Cougar would have been more appropriate? Or maybe a Jaguar? 
I also picked up 2 funny lines from the comments section:
One which says, “Leopard in Audi…driver must be a Mac user. ;p“
And another one which says, “As a Mac user he should update to Snow Leopard.“
LOL
Want to Live Green? Get Rid of your Dog!
Filed under Animals, Environment, World
They tell us not to drive Hummers. They tell us to disconnect our cell phone chargers, once our cell phones are juiced. They tell us to switch off our laptops, burn candles rather than electric light, and sail boats rather than fly planes.
And now they’ve gone beyond that, asking us to get rid of our “man’s best friend”.
New Scientist apparently reports that our pets (particularly referring to dogs) are equivalent to the ‘eco-friendliness’ of that Northwest Airlines flight that forgot to land in Minneapolis and just kept on going to Wisconsin, if you know all these places on the world/US map correctly.
The Stockholm Environment Institute at York, UK, the one behind the research, believes that a cat has almost the same carbon footprint as a VW Golf, which is quite good already, whereas 4.6-liter Toyota Land Cruiser has an eco-footprint that is less than half that of a medium-size dog! Atrocious as may sound, probably true counting in all the amount of meat and cereal that dogs chow, the wastes they produce, and many more (same argument once raised with cows).
Feel guilty and want to go lower? Well you can’t escape still. Should you own two hamsters, that is the eco-footprint equivalent of your plasma TV and a goldfish; that amounts to having two cell phones.
It seems to everyone, therefore, that you have some harsh choices to make in order to save our world.
Cnet asks a very good question on this: “Your goldfish or your family plan? Your hamsters or, at the very least, the plasma in your bedroom? Your dog or your Audi?”
Cats Manipulate Humans with Purrrr
Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a “soliciting purr” to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.
Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a “cry”, with a similar frequency to a human baby’s.
The team said cats have “tapped into” a human bias – producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore. Apparently, as the team goes, when an animal vocalises, the vocal folds (or cords) held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds. But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds – stimulating them to vibrate.
Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.
How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry!
Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cat’s cry and the cry of a human baby – a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.
So, the next time you wake up early in the morning to an annoying form or purr; you know what your buddy wants!
Source: BBC via Twitter (ugendran)
