“Dr. Mohamed Babu of Mysore, South India, noticed something strange about the ants scurrying around on the floor of his kitchen: after drinking some spilled milk, their abdomens turned white. Realizing the insects’ bodies were transparent, he got an idea for a stunning set of photographs.
Mixing different varieties of food coloring along with sugar, water and a waxy base, he set out small droplets of liquid on a white plastic sheet outside in his garden and let the ants do the rest.
‘As the ant’s abdomen is semi-transparent, the ants gain the colors as they sip the liquid,’ he said.
Striving to get the best possible photos, Babu ran into an unexpected problem: too many ants. ‘I really toiled to get a photo. The crowd always used to become unmanageable within a few minutes and while I managed my camera with my right hand, my left hand was busy removing the extra ants.’ After a number of repeated attempts, he finally got the photos he was looking for.
‘Curiously, the ants preferred light colors—yellow and green. The darker green and blue drops had no takers, until there was no space around the preferred yellow and green drops.’ Some of the ants even wandered between the colors, creating unique mixtures of different hues inside their own stomachs.”
Time LordImmortal JellyfishJust 5 millimetres wide, the tiny Turritopsis dohrnii has discovered how to cheat death. More commonly known as the immortal jellyfish, it has been silently invading oceans all over the world with its ever-increasing population—due to the fact it can age backwards. The jellyfish’s reproduction cycle involves the meeting of free-floating sperm and eggs, which then settle on a hard surface and form a blob-like polyp, which slowly matures. Most mature jellyfish species die soon after reproducing, but the Turritopsis is able to transform from back into a polyp and restart life anew, inverting their ‘umbrella’ and absorbing their tentacles. This can only be done in an emergency such as starvation, physical damage, or temperature or salinity change, but the cycle can be repeated indefinitely, rendering the Turritopsis immortal. Remarkably, their cells are completely transformed in the process. Biologist Stefano Piraino thinks that they’re able to “switch off some genes and switch on [others], reactivating genetic programs that were used in earlier stages of the life cycle.” However, researchers have dismissed ideas that the species could hold the key to anti-aging drugs—and maybe that’s for the best. If the Turritopsis can spread this rapidly through the world’s oceans, then I don’t think immortality would very healthy for humans.
Read about the implications on National Geographic
(via sciencesoup:)
This morning my parents took me to breakfast (technically brunch??) at my favourite dim sum place and these were the cutest wait staff ever
The guy was so tall and lanky and redheaded and he couldn’t pronounce anything for sh*t and
the girl was so fun and bouncy and I mean literally she skipped through the restaurant with her cart full of sweets. It was a really good start to the day
OH MY GOSH I LOVE IT WHEN YOU FIND STORYBOOK CHARACTERS IN REAL LIFE
