Label: Cool Photo

March 8, 2011

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" was taken at the opening of the Grand Aquarium in Hong Kong’s Ocean Park. Although it looks as though these tiny fish are about to become lunch for the humongous Grey Nurse Shark swimming behind them, these fish actually work as a team.

The small fish are pilot fish, and they eat fish lice, little crabs, and blood sucking worms that live on the skin of the shark. The pilot fish suck on the shark’s skin and keep it clean, and in exchange, the shark doesn’t eat them. This is also a smart way for the pilot fish to avoid other predators, because most of their enemies are careful to stay away from sharks.

 There have even been reports of smaller pilot fish swimming into a shark’s mouth a cleaning away bits of food caught between its teeth…..like living dental floss!

Photo courtesy of MSNBC.com’s “Animal Tracks”

March 1, 2011

It is Tuesday, so it must be time for…........TA DA! Cool Photo of the Week!

This 6-month-old panda cub was born in captivity, and now it is being taught how to live in the wild. Researchers at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong National Nature Reserve in China are moving the cub to the second phase of its training, where it will live at a higher altitude and encounter rugged living conditions.

So what is with the Halloween costumes, you might ask? The Chinese researchers believe that if the pandas are going to be successfully reintroduced into the wild, they must never have any contact with humans. So, they are dressed like grown up pandas! 

I wonder how they disguise their human smell?!

Photo courtesy MSNBC.com "The Week in Pictures"

February 22, 2011

Have you ever heard of a fog bow? A fog bow is similar to a rainbow, but it happens on foggy days. Like a rainbow, the fog bow is caused by sun passing through water, but the water droplets that cause fog are so small (less than 2/100 inch), the fog bow has very little color. Fog bows are sometimes called "white rainbows" or "cloudbows". Sailors call them "sea-dogs."

Check here every Tuesday for Seymour Simon’s "Cool Photo of the Week"!

Photo Credit: Mila Zinkova

February 8, 2011

Can you think of animals with webbed feet that act as paddles in the water? Pond and underwater frogs have them; so do ducks and other waterfowl. How about dogs? Dogs that are bred to work in the water - such as Newfoundland, Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Portuguese Water Dog, Field Spaniel, and German Wirehaired Pointer - all have webbed feet.  Little known fact, but absolutely true.

Photo: Senior Airman Julianne Showalter

February 4, 2011

Kids all across America have had plenty of snow days this winter, with a series record-setting snowstorms that started back in December. Today, even kids from Texas to the Carolinas are having a snow day.

It sounds like a good time to settle in, make yourself a cup of cocoa, and browse Seymour’s online Science Dictionary. You can start with the entry for SNOWFLAKE!

January 25, 2011

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" is actually a microphotograph (photographs of very tiny things that can only be seen through a microscrope).

You are looking directly into the face of a Southern Hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea). These large (up to 3-inchs long), brightly colored dragonflies are often found near ponds or rivers, where they breed. They also travel quite widely - you may see one in your garden - and they seem to be curious, often flying close to you and hovering.

Can you spot the dragonfly’s eyes are in this picture? The eyes are actually the two biggest things in this photograph - the two large, grayish ovals below the yellow are the dragonfly’s compound eyes. These two main eyes actually contain up to 30,000 (that’s right, thirty-thousand!) tinier eyes, which turn the dragonfly into a born predator. These eyes are like balls, and allow the dragonfly to spot movement all around it, so much so that it has 360-degree vision! This helps the dragonfly sense even the tiniest movement, so that it can feed on insects in the air all around it.

Photo Credit: André Karwath/Wikimedia

January 21, 2011

Ever wonder how the hammerhead shark can see where it’s going when its eyes are on the sides of its head? Marine biologist Dr. Michelle McComb of Florida Atlantic University has been studying hammerheads and she found that these strange-looking creatures have incredibly good binocular vision. “Binocular vision” simply means that you use both of your eyes at the same time and see one image. We humans have good binocular vision, too, at least straight in front of us. But hammerheads, with their widely spaced eyes, have clear binocular vision above, below and even behind themselves! That is very useful when your diet depends on catching fast-moving prey, and it is probably why the species evolved in this way.

Ironically, the only place that hammerheads don’t have great vision is straight in front of them. However, they have nostrils near each of their eyes, and Dr. McComb says they use “enhanced stereo smell” to make up for that blind spot.

Image: SharkDiving.us

January 19, 2011

Photographer Bence Máté describes the scene in today’s Cool Animal Photo of the Week: "I was photographing hummingbirds when I heard the sharp, alarming noise of the birds reacting to the presence of a predator. Sixty feet away from me this green-crowned brilliant (also known as Heliodoxa jacula, a type of hummingbird) was fearlessly attacking a small viper."

Máté took this photograph in Costa Rica, where about 50 of the 338 known species of hummingbirds, as well as tree-dwelling vipers, live in the tropical foliage.

This amazing image is a winner in Nature’s Best Photography magazine’s 2010 Best Photography contest. You can see more great nature photography on their website.

January 11, 2011

Is there a glass of milk sitting on the table as you read this over breakfast? Bet you didn’t know that the production of milk is one of the big offenders in the creation of damaging greenhouse gases.  How are dairy farmers are working to improve this situation? By reducing cow burps!

That’s right. Half of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with each gallon of milk take the form of methane gas, which is released both when cows burp and when they produce manure (that is, when they poop). And it’s not just a problem here. A British study found that methane emissions from gassy cows are responsible for 4% of the U.K.‘s total greenhouse gas emissions. A 2006 United Nations study found that cows produce a staggering 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions — more than planes, trains and automobiles combined.

Can burping cows really be responsible for all this? When cows digest their food, stomach bacteria produce methane, an ozone-forming gas considered 23 times worse than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. "A lot of people think this gas is coming from the rear end," explains Nancy Hirshberg of Stoneyfield Farms in Highgate, Vt. "Ninety-five percent is actually from the front end, from the burps." Stoneyfield Farms is one of the many dairy producers who are working to develop new kinds of feeds that will help cows digest their food better, as well as constructing machines called methane digesters, which convert the bad methane gas to usable biogas.

Some families have one meat-free and dairy-free meal every week to help this problem of burping cows!

January 4, 2011

OK, so I know we usually only highlight one special science or nature photo each week. But, this is such a spectacular sight, we just have to show you.

People in Europe and the Middle East were treated to a partial solar eclipse when the sun rose this morning. Because the moon was covering 85% of the sun, the sun rose as a crescent. This is not something that you see everyday!

This photo was taken by Peter Rosen in Stockholm, Sweden. There are many more amazing images at SpaceWeather.com.

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