Vancouver Aquarium: two sea otters float around, napping, holding hands. SO CUTE!

Berlin Zoo is delighted at the birth of Knut, the first polar bear to be born in the animal park in over 30 years. The cub spent his first 44 days in an incubator after being rejected by his mother. Now he's being raised on a bottle.

The polar bears in Berlin Zoo may be having trouble getting to sleep as unseasonably warm weather interferes with their hibernation schedule, but one little bear is just happy to be alive.
Knut was born on Dec. 5, 2006, the first polar bear cub to be born in Berlin Zoo in 30 years, but was rejected by his mother, the 20-year-old polar bear Tosca. His twin brother died four days after the birth.

Little Knut spent the first 44 days of his life in an incubator. Thanks to the loving care of the zoo staff, he prospered and now has "a good chance of survival," according to his keeper Thomas Dörflein. The dedicated Dörflein has slept in the zoo since the birth of the bear in order to provide round-the-clock care to the cub, and feeds Knut milk six times a day with a bottle.
Knut weighed only 810 grams (1.8 pounds) when he was born but now tips the scales at 3.9 kilograms (8.6 pounds). He still has a long way to go though -- adult male polar bears can weigh up to 800 kilograms.

Eager zoo visitors will have to wait to see the zoo's newest addition, however. The stress of being shown to the public would be too much for the little polar bear at the moment, a zoo spokeswoman said.

And here is a video of this cute little thing:

This is the first polar bear which was born in Berlin Zoo after 30 years!
Knut is a twin, but his brother died 4 days after birth.

This amazing video is filmed by Deborah and Jonathan Smith. I'll quote here their words:
"We filmed the video when we were on honeymoon at Ulusaba private game reserve in the Kruger national park in South Africa on 11th February 2006.


It's very rare for humans to see an elephant birth in the wild - they will normally do this out of sight. We searched the net and found a researcher spent many months following a herd of elephant in a reserve north of Ulusaba and saw a birth through night vision goggles from a distance of many hundreds of yards. This elephant herd didn't seem to mind us being just a few feet away in our Land Rover. We thought we would share this amazing experience with all of you.

Baby elephants stay in the womb for around 22 months and are quite large when they are born. They are able to walk within an hour from birth - necessary with so many predators in the bush. We didn't capture his first steps as the elephants started getting agitated and we felt they didn't want us there any more; but we did go back in the morning and see him trotting behind his mother.
The whole sequence actually took a bit more than half an hour from the herd greeting to a new baby elephant arriving in the world. These are just the edited highlights of the amazing experience we had."

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska -- The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake

For more Aurora pictures and video click here and here.

Don't you know that bear is a WILD animal.

Poor thing, here is warmer :) ->

'There are only two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle.' Albert Einstein

I love this kangaroo! :)

Click on picture to view it in hi resolution.

Amazing pictures!

The book these came from said some of the paint jobs cost $15,000 and had to be repeated every 3 months as the cat's hair grows out. Must be nice to have $60,000 a year just to keep your cat painted!

But I must say that I feel sorry for these cats.

Pamukkale is one of the extraordinary natural wonders of Turkey.

The great attraction is the white immensity of the cliff with sculptured basins full of water and congealed waterfalls; they seem done of snow, cloud, cotton.

The scientific explanation is the hot thermal places that lie under the mount provoke the calcium carbonate spill, that makes the forms as solid as travertino marble.

One can bath there; the Turks call this place PAMUKKALE, which means "Castle of Cotton".

It is a protecting landscape that fascinates, as the action of the mineral waters that contains calcium oxides left fantastic marks in the structures.

The resultant effect is spectacular: the waters spill on a series of steps, forming solid cascades and pools.

As much the cascades of calcium carbonate as the water change color in accordance with changes of the solar light that illuminates them, and the effect is surprising.

At times white, others blue, or green or other colors. The spectacle is flaring.

The continuous dynamics of the erosion and the transformation of the natural landscape result in an unusual environment.

PAMUKKALE is one of the most unique phenomena in nature.

Volcano is thought to derive from Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn originates from Vulcan, the name of a god of fire in Roman mythology. The study of volcanoes is called volcanology, sometimes spelled vulcanology.
The Roman name for the island Vulcano has contributed the word for volcano in most modern European languages.

A volcano is an opening (or rupture) in the Earth's surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash and gases to escape from deep below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time.

Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates pull apart or are coming together. A mid-oceanic ridge, like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by "divergent tectonic plates" pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by "convergent tectonic plates" coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching of the Earth's crust and where the crust grows thin (called "non-hotspot intraplate volcanism"), such as in the African Rift Valley, the European Rhine Graben with its Eifel volcanoes, the Wells Gray-Clearwater Volcanic Field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America.

Finally, volcanoes can be caused by "mantle plumes", so-called "hotspots"; these hotspots can occur far from plate boundaries, such as the Hawaiian Islands. Interestingly, hotspot volcanoes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, especially on rocky planets and moons.

The most common perception of a volcano is of a conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater in its top. This describes just one of many types of volcano and the features of volcanoes are much more complicated. The structure and behavior of volcanoes depends on a number of factors. Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than a summit crater, whereas others present landscape features such as massive plateaus. Vents that issue volcanic material (lava, which is what magma is called once it has broken the surface, and ash) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can be located anywhere on the landform. Other types of volcanoes include cryovolcanos (or ice volcanoes), particularly on some moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune; and mud volcanoes, which are formations often not associated with known magmatic activity. Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes, except when a mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano.

Lava texture

Two types of lava are named according to the surface texture: 'A'a (pronounced IPA [?a?a]) and pāhoehoe (pronounced [paːhoeːhoeː]), both words having Hawaiian origins. 'A'a is characterized by a rough, clinkery surface and is what most viscous and hot lava flows look like. However, even basaltic or mafic flows can be erupted as 'a'a flows, particularly if the eruption rate is high and the slope is steep. Pāhoehoe is characterized by its smooth and often ropey or wrinkly surface and is generally formed from more fluid lava flows. Usually, only mafic flows will erupt as pāhoehoe, since they often erupt at higher temperatures or have the proper chemical make-up to allow them to flow at a higher fluidity.

Lava composition

Another way of classifying volcanoes is by the composition of material erupted (lava), since this affects the shape of the volcano. Lava can be broadly classified into 4 different compositions (Cas & Wright, 1987):

- If the erupted magma contains a high percentage (>63%) of silica, the lava is called felsic.

-- Felsic lavas (or rhyolites) tend to be highly viscous (not very fluid) and are erupted as domes or short, stubby flows. Viscous lavas tend to form stratovolcanoes or lava domes. Lassen Peak in California is an example of a volcano formed from felsic lava and is actually a large lava dome.

-- Because siliceous magmas are so viscous, they tend to trap volatiles (gases) that are present, which cause the magma to erupt catastrophically, eventually forming stratovolcanoes. Pyroclastic flows (ignimbrites) are highly hazardous products of such volcanoes, since they are composed of molten volcanic ash too heavy to go up into the atmosphere, so they hug the volcano's slopes and travel far from their vents during large eruptions. Temperatures as high as 1,200 °C are known to occur in pyroclastic flows, which will incinerate everything flammable in their path and thick layers of hot pyroclastic flow deposits can be laid down, often up to many meters thick. Alaska's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, formed by the eruption of Novarupta near Katmai in 1912, is an example of a thick pyroclastic flow or ignimbrite deposit. Volcanic ash that is light enough to be erupted high into the Earth's atmosphere may travel many kilometres before it falls back to ground as a tuff.

- If the erupted magma contains 52-63% silica, the lava is of intermediate composition.

-- These "andesitic" volcanoes generally only occur above subduction zones (e.g. Mount Merapi in Indonesia).

- If the erupted magma contains <52%>45% silica, the lava is called mafic (because it contains higher percentages of magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe)) or basaltic. These lavas are usually much less viscous than rhyolitic lavas, depending on their eruption temperature; they also tend to be hotter than felsic lavas. Mafic lavas occur in a wide range of settings:

-- At mid-ocean ridges, where two oceanic plates are pulling apart, basaltic lava erupts as pillows to fill the gap;

-- Shield volcanoes (e.g. the Hawaiian Islands, including Mauna Loa and Kilauea), on both oceanic and continental crust;
-- As continental flood basalts.

- Some erupted magmas contain <=45% silica and produce lava called ultramafic. Ultramafic flows, also known as komatiites, are very rare; indeed, very few have been erupted at the Earth's surface since the Proterozoic, when the planet's heat flow was higher. They are (or were) the hottest lavas, and probably more fluid than common mafic lavas.

A popular way of classifying magmatic volcanoes goes by their frequency of eruption, with those that erupt regularly called active, those that have erupted in historical times but are now quiet called dormant, and those that have not erupted in historical times called extinct. However, these popular classifications—extinct in particular—are practically meaningless to scientists. They use classifications which refer to a particular volcano's formative and eruptive processes and resulting shapes, which was explained above.

There is no real consensus among volcanologists on how to define an "active" volcano. The lifespan of a volcano can vary from months to several million years, making such a distinction sometimes meaningless when compared to the lifespans of humans or even civilizations. For example, many of Earth's volcanoes have erupted dozens of times in the past few thousand years but are not currently showing signs of eruption. Given the long lifespan of such volcanoes, they are very active. By our lifespans, however, they are not. Complicating the definition are volcanoes that become restless (producing earthquakes, venting gasses, or other non-eruptive activities) but do not actually erupt.




Scientists usually consider a volcano active if it is currently erupting or showing signs of unrest, such as unusual earthquake activity or significant new gas emissions. Many scientists also consider a volcano active if it has erupted in historic time. It is important to note that the span of recorded history differs from region to region; in the Mediterranean, recorded history reaches back more than 3,000 years but in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, it reaches back less than 300 years, and in Hawaii, little more than 200 years. The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program's definition of 'active' is having erupted within the last 10,000 years.

Dormant volcanoes are those that are not currently active (as defined above), but could become restless or erupt again. Confusion however, can arise because many volcanoes which scientists consider to be active are referred to as dormant by laypersons or in the media.

Extinct volcanoes are those that scientists consider unlikely to erupt again. Whether a volcano is truly extinct is often difficult to determine. Since "supervolcano" calderas can have eruptive lifespans sometimes measured in millions of years, a caldera that has not produced an eruption in tens of thousands of years is likely to be considered dormant instead of extinct.

For example, the Yellowstone Caldera in Yellowstone National Park is at least 2 million years old and hasn't erupted violently for approximately 640,000 years, although there has been some minor activity relatively recently, with hydrothermal eruptions less than 10,000 years ago and lava flows about 70,000 years ago. For this reason, scientists do not consider the Yellowstone Caldera extinct. In fact, because the caldera has frequent earthquakes, a very active geothermal system (i.e., the entirety of the geothermal activity found in Yellowstone National Park), and rapid rates of ground uplift, many scientists consider it to be an active volcano.

Crazy deer attacks man.

A bird whose discovery in India in 1867 was also the last recorded sighting of the species has been found again in Thailand, a conservation group said Tuesday.
The large-billed reed-warbler was found anew at a wastewater treatment plant on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand, said Birdlife International, an umbrella agency for worldwide conservation agencies.

Philip Round, an ornithologist at Mahidol University in Bangkok, caught one of the birds nearly a year ago on March 27, 2006, triggering scientific debate.

Researchers were uncertain about whether the reed-warbler, which lives in wetlands, was actually its own species or a genetic anomaly, since the last sighting occurred when it was discovered in India's Sutlej Valley 139 years ago.

"Although reed-warblers are generally drab and look very similar, one of the birds I caught that morning struck me as very odd," Round said in a written statement, noting that the bird's long beak and short wings grabbed his attention.
"Then, it dawned on me. I was probably holding a large-billed reed-warbler," he said. "I was dumbstruck."

Round sent DNA samples and photographs to Staffan Bensch of Sweden's Lund University, who had previously examined the Indian specimen. Bensch agreed that Round's bird was a reed-warbler and the animal represented a legitimate species.

Another specimen surfaced six months after Round's find, in a drawer in the collection of the Natural History Museum at Tring, England. The bird was part of a collection of reed-warblers gathered in India during the 19th century.

Bensch later used DNA to confirm the museum's sample, caught in 1869 in Uttar Pradesh, India, was part of the same species.

A gibbon goes out of its way to bother two tiger cubs. Soooo Cool!

A scene you will probably never get to see in person.

This is the sunset at the North Pole with a Moon at its closest point.

Blinding Saturn

March 1, 2007

Surely one of the most gorgeous sights the solar system has to offer, Saturn sits enveloped by the full splendor of its stately rings. Taking in the rings in their entirety was the focus of this particular imaging sequence. Therefore, the camera exposure times were just right to capture the dark-side of its rings, but longer than that required to properly expose the globe of sunlit Saturn. Consequently, the sunlit half of the planet is overexposed.

Between the blinding light of day and the dark of night, there is a strip of twilight on the globe where colorful details in the atmosphere can be seen. Bright clouds dot the bluish-grey northern polar region here. In the south, the planet's night side glows golden in reflected light from the rings' sunlit face.

Saturn's shadow stretches completely across the rings in this view, taken on Jan. 19, 2007, in contrast to what Cassini saw when it arrived in 2004 (see Frigid Ringworld).

The view is a mosaic of 36 images -- that is, 12 separate sets of red, green and blue images -- taken over the course of about 2.5 hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 40 degrees above the ring plane.
The images in this natural-color view were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.23 million kilometers (764,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 70 kilometers (44 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute