50 Years of Exploration – Space exploration, that is. This infographic appeared in National Geographic and it’s very, very cool as a representation of where we’ve been in our own neighborhood and just how many times.
Vegetarian Spider is first of its kind: This sounded pretty cool to me, but what do I know, I’m just a geologist. I sent it to my friend David, who is in school to become a biology teacher. His response was: “Oh my god, this is huge! Spiders taxonomically speaking were partly isolated based on their predatory natures. To find a spider that isn’t a predator…that’s impressive. I wonder if they’ve done genetic sequencing yet, and if so where it fits in the heiarchy.”
So yes, apparently this is even cooler than I thought. A vegetarian spider. And not just that, a vegetarian spider that (maybe) chemically pretends to be an acacia ant so that the real ants leave it to eat its salad unmolested.
Hooray, evolution! The diversity of life never ceases to amaze me.