Thoughts on interesting nature
How many times have we heard someone say "Wow, nature is so amazing!"
Here we will briefly look at a few little droplets in this vast ocean of magnificence...
UPDATED! There are a lot of references to dragons throughout history, but are dragons real? These creatures are probably based on real, living dinosaurs that are described correctly, or they have been described with the combined features of several dinosaurs, or they may be based on a real dinosaur with additional exaggerations. Written evidence from Europe and China…
Insect fossils look very much the same as modern living insects. Why is that?
Insect fossils appear not to have changed over millions of years.
How come, for example the cockroach…
Where two different things cannot survive without each other.
Ficus macrophylla, commonly known as the Moreton Bay Fig, comes from Australia and has an obligate mutualism with fig wasps.
This means that the figs are only pollinated by fig wasps, and fig wasps can only reproduce in fig flowers…
Animals seem to give birth to their young quickly and in a relative easy manner – it’s only a painful child-birth when things go wrong. But for human mothers why is childbirth so painful? Women have had to endure pain at child-birth throughout history. Why do human mothers have to suffer so much more than female animals?…
A first class navigator.
The young of the American Golden Plover fly 3000 miles from Alaska across the Pacific ocean to the island of Hawaii – without their parents to guide them!
Is that by designed, or trial and error…
A fish that knows the Tide Tables:
The Grunion fish of Californian beaches lays it’s eggs on land at high-tide on a full moon night, so that they get exactly the right interval of two weeks to incubate in the sand before the next extra high tide…
Evolution needs millions of years to get things right – if reproduction is not right the species dies out after one generation.
How did sexual intercourse evolve?…
In years gone by, stars were the only means of pathfinding at night; no hobby – a necessity. Stargazing tips: The most useful star in the Northern Hemisphere is No.8 on the diagram, Polaris – the Pole Star; always at the same position in the sky, exactly North and constant. It is not a bright star but easily found…
How did spiders get to have 5 or so different kinds of web silk? Here are the different types of spider webs, but not every spider would have all of these different silks: Drag-line silk to form…
In all the stories describing the beginning of the earth there has not been such an emphasis put on the importance of Earth’s atmosphere as in Genesis. It is only recently in history that we have come to realise just how important it is…
The tailor-bird of India sews leaves together to form a nest.
Designed, or trial and error? …
The amazingly ‘clever’ Bees.
How did bees learn to shape their cells with perfect mathematical accuracy, how did they learn to communicate…
The Robber Crab climbs coconut trees with it’s big claws, then hammers a hole through the coconut’s ‘eye’ and then scoops out the contents with set of small claws specially adapted for the task.
The right tools for the job!…
