Nature facts

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Anyone like nature facts?

Ophiocoma wendtii a brittle star has arms are covered in crystalline lenses connected to nerve bundles believed to be light sensitive. In other words their skin is a compound eye.

The portia jumping spiders are thought to be the smallest organisms know to exhibit forethought in their hunting. The can scan the environment around it prey very slowly building up a spatial map. Then go away and come back execute the route and hour or so later, all the way through even when the when the pray is out of sight. Remarkably they only have an estimated 600,000 neurons in it brain (a honey bee has around 1 million), and their eyes only have between 10,000-100,000 receptors (compared to 100 million in the human eye). This is why it takes them a while to build up a picture because they are scanning a little bit at a time. They also manic their preys prey by strumming on the web (they hunt other spiders). This is not remarkable in because other spider do this, except they are adaptable and can change tactics and learn from experience, where as other spiders only do this is a pre programmed mechanical way.

The highest living snake lives in Tibet. The Tibetan Hot Spring Snake lives in thermal springs that protect it from the cold up to 4400m above sea level.

Please continue. It can be about any life form not just animals.

Not so detailed, but something I learned yesterday--egrets and herons are closely related and, generally speaking, the white species are called egrets and the darker species are called herons. The big exception (in North America, anyway) is that the Great Blue Heron has a pure white form (same species) and it is still called a heron. Yesterday I saw the Great Blue Heron, the Green Heron, the Great Egret, and the Snowy Egret at a local lake.

Cool yes I saw (white) egret quite a bit in when I lived in Jamaica.

Most male sea birds don't have a penis, so sperm is transferred by a "cloacal kiss" where sperm is actively drawn in by the female and stored in the tubules and stays until she is ready to release the eggs to be fertilizes. As the sperm is actively drawn in by the female, rather passively in birds with a species with penises, these females have greater control over whose sperm fertilizes the eggs than otherwise.

I like ducks as you can see by my avatar. There are lot of interesting stuff to do with ducks, but here is something simple but fundamental. The distinction between ducks, geese, and swans is pretty loose. There isn’t really a distinction at all it is more a question of that labels that people attached, which start to break down (become illogical/arbitrary) once you get beyond the common the common species that people tend to associate as being ducks, geese and swans.

Nearly all domesticated ducks are descended from mallard. The others being Muscovy and a few sparse hybrids, which are often sterile. Domesticated duck breeds can bare very little resemblance to their wild relatives. I prefer wild duck but my favourite domesticated duck is the Indian runner duck with their extraordinary upright carriage

http://www.arrickdesign.com/runningduck ... rducks.jpg

The come from Indonesia/Malaysia area originally. It might be that the vegetation there lends itself to a more upright position. As you can see breed come in different colours and patterns.