Scribal Terror

Bacterial art

Yes, that's Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais's Ophelia reproduced in E. coli by artist Jo Wonder. Via Bioephemera

Fun fact

According to an article in Science magazine, which I just ran across while combing browsing the internet for information about deadly poisons entomology:

The millipede Pachydesmus crassicutis (Wood) secretes a mixture of benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide when it is disturbed. (Science 26 October 1962)

Indeed, there are times when I wouldn't mind having the ability to secrete a mixture of benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide when I'm disturbed either.

The story of bird's nest soup

The binturong or bearcat

My alma mater, the University of Cincinnati, has a peculiar team animal called a bearcat. I had always believed this to be an imaginary creature. Then, many years later, Wikipedia came along and I looked it up. The bearcat is FOR REAL, he is related to the civet, and his other name is binturong. Doesn't he have a fine, fluffy tail? Hoorah for the bearcats! I wonder if they poop coffee beans.

 

Now I really must look up that imaginary creature called an Illini.

The Vanilla Orchid

Vanilla is a flavoring derived from orchids of the genus Vanilla native to Mexico. . . . Originally cultivated by Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés is credited with introducing both the spice and chocolate to Europe in the 1520s. Attempts to cultivate the vanilla plant outside Mexico and Central America proved futile because of the symbiotic relationship between the tlilxochitl vine that produced the vanilla orchid and the local species of Melipona bee; it wasn't until 1837 that Belgian botanist Charles François Antoine Morren discovered this fact and pioneered a method of artificially pollinating the plant. Unfortunately, the method proved financially unworkable and was not deployed commercially. In 1841, a 12-year-old French-owned slave by the name of Edmond Albius, who lived on Île Bourbon, discovered the plant could be hand pollinated, allowing global cultivation of the plant. --Wikipedia

Need a new rose pruner?

A storm petrel pittering

I think this is what Patrick O'Brian means when he refers to storm petrels "pittering" on the waves.

Shagged by a rare parrot

Wallabies on drugs

Quote from testimony on security issues for  (legal) opium fields in Australia:

"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Mouse eats leopard's lunch

Leopard looks on, mildly nonplussed.