Classic sirens have not always been the beautiful half women and half fish beings. The first descriptions characterized them half woman half bird, and they were daughters of Achelous, the Greek spirit-god of the homonymous river, or god Phorcys, and of the nymph Calliope according to some versions or of some muses according to others. … Read more
Part of every journey is always the end, and that is what we are going to present in this last article about our stay in Ireland. Do you want to know what was the Great Famine and the indelible mark it left on Irish people since then? Would you like to travel with us through … Read more
Bradypus tridactylus, the pale-throated sloth, belongs to the supraorder Edentata, just like the armadillo and the anteater. Ground speed: 2.44m/min (0.105km/h), although it increases slightly when climbing trees using its 3 long claws, reaching 4.57m/min (0.272km/h). Its neck has a great mobility, it can turn it almost 360º. It almost never descends to the ground, … Read more
General Sherman (Sequoiadendron giganteum) This is how this sequoia is known, considered to be the living being with the most biomass on Earth, since it is the tree with the greatest net volume: 1620 m3. It weighs more than 2000 tons and the perimeter of the trunk is about 31m. But it is not the … Read more
Although one of the passions of the human being is to decipher the unknown, it is not less certain that when we are for the first time face to face with it we tend to recede. There is a certain fear of the unknown that can manifest itself in the form of superstitions. This has … Read more
During our stay in the beautiful Ireland we made a brief stop in the capital of Northern Ireland. It was really necessary. Belfast doesn’t just ooze history everywhere. The city itself is a flowing emotion. Every corner and every street is home to numerous voices that are confused through the centuries. They are voices intermingled … Read more
Did you know that the world’s densest forest of Spanish junipers is in Spain? Specifically in the medieval Soria town of Calatañazor. This Natural Reserve is home to 150-210 Spanish junipers (Juniperus thurifera) per hectare, which are also considered to be the highest in the world (some are over 15 metres high). Spanish junipers have … Read more
Hummingbirds are a family of birds (Trochilidae) composed by many species. The size of the hummingbirds varies depending on the species: the smallest weighs about 2.2 grams and the largest about 20 g. They feed on flowers’ nectar (they are important pollinators) and small insects. They have a very large heart beating at more than … Read more
Even if we don’t realize, mysterious events and enigmas surround us constantly. So much so that mysteries have inspired all sorts of issues that we see or experience on a daily basis, and whose enigmatic foundation we do not know. Such is the case, for example, with the flag of the European Union. On the … Read more
This time we weren’t going to explore the Republic of Ireland, we were going to change territory… and nation. Our destination was Northern Ireland, which belongs to the British crown and which, like everything on the Emerald Isle, also possesses that inherent magic typical of legendary lands. The next day we got up early. We … Read more
This type of displacement basically consists of “floating” in the air through silk threads. That is, the air pushes the silk thread and the spider will hang from it in the air. The spider is usually placed in an elevated area, aims the opisthosoma (“abdomen”) upward and expels the thread… A timely blast of air … Read more
The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was a secret Pentagon program that lasted 5 years, from 2007 to 2012. With a budget of 22 million dollars, its objective was to identify unidentified aircraft that could be a threat to U.S. National Security. We know about it because his director, Luis Elizondo, leaked information in … Read more
Females can be fertilized by several males because the sperm share space once inside the female. As a result, different types of adaptations have appeared to ensure the reproductive success of males. Two types of adaptations can be distinguished: 1. TO ACHIEVE A PREFERENTIAL USE OF SPERM. The best known case is that of some … Read more
Great minds of the 21st century such as Elon Musk or Stephen Hawking have already warned of the potential dangers of an Artificial Intelligence out of control. We may be on the verge of the first signs. The non-profit company OpenAI, responsible for the development and creation of AI beneficial to humanity, has decided to … Read more
Courtship is defined as specific behavioural patterns that induce sexual receptivity, i.e. it facilitates recognition between species and also serves as a mechanism to prevent mating between different species. It can be done by visual, tactile and/or chemical stimulation. A curious mechanism is that of some species of butterflies, called “puddling“, which consists of the … Read more
Since our school years we have been bombarded by an infinity of data that we accept without saying a word. For example, we have always been told that Guernica, a masterpiece of Cubism, illustrates the horror experienced during the bombing of the Basque town of the same name on 26 April 1937 in the context … Read more
Asian hornet, raccoon, water hyacinth, red swamp crayfish, red-eared slider, monk parakeet, fountain grass, red palm weevil, wels catfish, Xyllela fastidiosa… They are all names of organisms that increasingly dominate the headlines of the major media in various countries. They are a real problem in many ways. The environment, the economy and the health system … Read more
They do not present sexual dirmorphism (differences between males and females) in size neither in dentition, only in coloration in the first two genera of the 4 existing ones: Nomascus, Hoolock, Hylobates and Symphalangus. The intermembral index (length of upper extremities/lower ext*100) is the highest of all primates: 127-147. They are the only apes with … Read more
Dr. Thomas A. Sebeok, of the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies at Indiana University, never imagined the request the Ohio Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation would make to him: to build a language system to warn people of 10000 years in the future of the places where potentially hazardous nuclear waste is buried. The … Read more
Today, the existence of our evolutionary companions, the Neanderthals, seems irrefutable to us. However, when their remains began to emerge, the scientific community categorically refused to recognize they were facing a new species. In 1856, some quarry workers found a set of bones inside the Feldhofer cave, located in Neander valley (where the name of … Read more