"M-owl-iryn Monroe" Is this anything?

The ears of the Superb Owl🦉are exceptional: they're INTENTIONALLY ASYMMETRICAL to allow for not only left-right discrimination, but also "up-down" sound orientation. This ability lets them accurately & quickly find the scurrying mouse under the leaf mold.

Ornithology 101: Owl life stages 🦉

How do owls get such exceptional low-light vision? First, they don't have round 'eyeballs', they have tubular eyes fixed in place with 'sclerotic rings', so they can't rotate them, which is why they seem to constantly have a piercing stare.

The Oriental bay owl (Phodilus badius) is found in high altitude jungles across Southeast Asia. They're small, less than a foot long (29 cm), with even shorter, rounded wings that let them rapidly maneuver in dense forest & jungle, hunting small mammals, insects and lizards. (📷: JJ Harrison)

Not all owls say "who". The saw-whet owl may have gotten its name from the resemblance of its call to a saw being sharpened on a whet-stone. Seems like a better name than "3rd-grade-recorder-practice owl."

Let's meet one of the earliest fossil owls, Berruornis orbisantiqui. The name means "old-world bird from Mont Berru (France)". It was ENORMOUS, with wing-span up to 1.5 m (5 ft), but I need to bend your brain a little. See, the earliest owls VERY NEARLY OVERLAP with dinosaurs like T. rex.

Like many animals that can fly, the #SuperbOwl has gyro-stabilized neck movements to allow it to maintain focus on prey in flight. They're not unique in this, but they are superb! This little guy is in a rescue for head trauma from a car strike. You can see the pupils don't match (anisocoria).

Um... excuse me? I'm. In. The. Bath.

Happy #SuperbOwl Sunday!

Happy #SuperbOwl 🦉 Sunday to all who celebrate.

Let's get some #SuperbOwl content going with a great question: When did owls become the /superb/ night-time hunters that we see today? They're seemingly built around a nocturnal predator lifestyle: stealthy, agile flight; giant light-gathering eyes; superior auditory precision.

They're removing any informational signs from Big Bend National Park that are in Spanish & English or talk about cooperation with Mexico. They want to ensure Spanish-speakers can't learn about nature at a national park on the US/Mexico border. One originally conceived as a Peace Park with Mexico.

Me: What are these rings in the grass? Mycologist: Fungus for sure Veterinarian: Could be from dog pee tho RFK Jr: Portals between our world and the fairy realm. A sign of high-vibration energy requiring respect, often used for connecting with nature and increasing intuition.

Let's talk about the time that an 18 YEAR OLD invented the COLOR MAUVE (I am not kidding) and completely revolutionized textiles, fashion & eventually cancer diagnosis. The teenager was William Henry Perkin, a bit of a prodigy, who at 15 began studying with August Wilhelm von Hofmann at ICL.

This is the future that (Texas) liberals want: taxpayer-funded goats clearing invasives from public parks & restoring the health of native prairie.

The term for this movement is "galumphing," and the seal can still move at up to 6-8 mph. In "true seals", the hip is fused to the pelvis. In sea lions, there's still some mobility in the hip joint, but limited by the mass of 'body wall' around it.

These ultra-fine structures shown at 30X magnification are the reason why geckos can adhere to most surfaces, using Van der Waals force. The power of hairy lizard toes! (🔬: Power & Syred, SciencePhotoLibrary)

Let's talk about Ernest Everett Just, a cell biologist who unraveled the mysteries of fertilization in spite of the obstacles he faced as an African-American. Just's story weaves together good, rigorous science with racism & tragedy. He was born in 1883 in seaside Charleston, South Carolina.

The Plate-billed Mountain Toucan will be your overlord this week, sitting smugly at the equator where the groundhog has no sway. 🪶

Hip, hop, hurray! We are thrilled to welcome our very first Endangered Huon tree kangaroo joey! 🧡 This male joey was born late July 2025 to first-time parents Pearl and Tristan. Learn more: https://denverzoo.org/zootales/baby-bulletin-dzca-welcomes-endangered-huon-tree-kangaroo-joey/

This male mail-carrier is wearing mail. "Mail" (letters & such) is from Old French 'male' which meant bag or satchel. It entered Middle English as "male" but acquired the connotation of "bag of letters/correspondence".

Take a guess at what you're looking at here. Clue: This is an SEM image at about 375X magnification. (Power and Syred, Science Photo Library)

Exploring the origins of the tomato require I tell you the story of SOUTH AMERICAN PIMPS. Not the kind with feathers in their hats... I'm talking about Solanum pimpinellifolium, the 'currant tomato' or 'pimp'. They grow wild in the Andean regions of Ecuador & Peru.

Meanwhile, some microbe looking at all the molecular hydrogen...

1859 was a momentous year: The Comstock Lode discovered in Nevada. Edwin Drake drilled 1st US oil well in Titusville, PA. The Suez Canal begins construction. Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published. And the Sun exploded. Let's talk about the Carrington Event of 1–2 September 1859.

These 'gender reveals' are getting out of control! Let's talk about why this bolete mushroom is changing color on exposure to air. I can't be certain of the species, but there are a number of "bluing boletes" including Gyroporus cyanescens. Some are edible, others at least mildly toxic.

There’s a lot of crap that has flowed into the harbour from recent rain, but my little Stingray friend is back and happily enjoying feeding in the shallows near our place this morning. It’s so darn cute. (excuse the stupid leaf blowers in the background)

Take a minute to really absorb the scale of what you're seeing. This is 'Cueva de los Cristales', the Cave of the Crystals, near the city of Naica in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The crystals are selenite, a type of gypsum. They formed over the last 1 million years. (📷: Javier Trueba, MSF)

NIH doesn’t do studies? 👀

The idiom "turn a blind eye" is traditionally traced to a specific event. British Admiral Horatio Nelson lost sight in one eye in battle at the capture of Corsica in 1794. During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, knowing orders to withdraw had been given by the flagship under Sir Hyde Parker....

The following isn't 'doomerism', but it will sound like that at first. I want to talk about MAGA/Trump supporters, the Epstein files & a model of human behavior called "cultural cognition." Cultural cognition says that no-one interprets facts & evidence neutrally. They filter them through VALUES.

Someone outside the US: So, let me get this straight. The groundhog... Me: Is clairvoyant, yes

Professor Al Manac reveals the weather prediction of Bee Cave Bob (Texas' answer to Punxsutawney Phil) this morning: A few more weeks of winter, in Texas anyway. Bee Cave is a little town to the west of Austin, TX, named ~1870 for wild bee colonies in nearby limestone caves. (📷: KVUE)

Whenever I see "Kid Rock" trending, I want to share that Robert James Ritchie was raised on a 6 acre estate with tennis courts, private stables, two garages holding 5 cars, a jacuzzi, apple orchard and 5,600 sq ft home. "Trailer park" is a persona, a character he plays.

The taxonomic family Caprellidae contains 400+ species. They're sometimes called skeleton or ghost shrimps. Here's what a male Caprella mutica looks like. Trying NOT to imagine these as 9 foot tall and with a craving for human flesh. The swarm of tiny ones is terrifying enough.

This is one of my favorite optical illusions, because even when you know specifically HOW IT WORKS, it's still hard to make your brain believe it. The image below is real-world video, but you're being tricked into believing it's an elaborate miniature by the DIORAMA EFFECT. Let's talk about it.

It's Groundhog Day... again.

Be honest: if you were just hearing about the Grammys for the first time, you'd assume it was an award show for grandmothers, right? "And the Grammy for 'Best Pie, Fruit Division' goes to..."

I took this photo in Florida a couple of years ago and you have no idea how badly I kick myself for not taking video.

As you watch this time-lapse of a storm rolling over Pondicherry, India by Karthik Easvur, you may spot a sort of rolling wave called an ARCUS or SHELF cloud. It forms as the storm's downdraft, along the leading edge of the moving storm, forces warmer, moist surface air up unto a horizontal 'roll'.

We must FIND Elsa & she must be STOPPED. It looks like this branch is growing a long white beard in this time-lapse video by Mathew Nichols. But what's really happening was a mystery only solved in 2015. You're looking at "hair ice", produced by a fungus called "Exidiopsis effusa."

TIL! The little orange organ the caterpillar is displaying is an 'osmeterium'. It has dual defense functions: - it resembles a snake tongue just enough to scare birds, reptiles. - it's covered in 'repugnant' chemicals that deter or even kill certain insects. To humans, it can smell like pineapple?

he can't keep getting away with this

I read this morning about the 'Conflict of the Orders' in Rome 3rd to 5th century BCE, which amounted to a battle of wills between plebians & patricians. The most powerful weapon for securing their rights was the 'Secessio plebis', a general strike where all the plebians would leave the city...

Maybe you've seen naval ships from WWI or early WWII that look like they were painted by Pablo Picasso. This is "Dazzle Camouflage," but the name is misleading, because these zebra-inspired exteriors, each unique, aren't about making a dazzle ship harder to see. So why the Beetlejuice paint job?

It's hard to grasp how large this grouper is until you see it in comparison to the ship's toilet on the left. This appears to be an Atlantic goliath grouper or 'itajara' (Epinephelus itajara). They can reach 800 lbs (350 kg) & 8 feet long (2.5 m) Let's talk about these gentle giants.

"Outlaw" originally had a meaning separate from "criminal." It meant "outside the protections of the law". Marking someone an outlaw meant they could be killed without consequence, death sentence by mob justice, a 1-man Purge. Let's talk about 'Homo sacer' & 'Caput lupinum' (🧑‍🎨: James Woolford)

Take two nails & connect them to an open electrical circuit. Stick a deli pickle between them, creating an ionic bridge that closes the circuit. You get the glowing pickle experiment: you're seeing sodium ions in the pickle brine being excited & emitting yellow light at ~589 nm.

Louisiana snow-chains 😁