- Posts tagged Biology
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Eyes from around the animal kingdom
A Gallery of Beastly Orbs
Howdy folks. How've y'all been keepin'? Me? Very busy. Apologize for being so out-of-touch, and while I'd love to tell you that the issues that have kept me away have subsided, they persist.
So to beg forgiveness, today I'll offer you a small gallery of eyeballs from across the animal kingdom. I've been collecting these images to post as Facebook 'Cover' photos, changing them once a day. I featured everything from owls to elephants to sheep to leaf tailed chameleons; see if you can figure out which is which.
Artforms of Nature
I'll fall back on the work excuse, and leave it at that. However I wanted to whip a little content at you fine people, lest you go find some other blog written by a fat know-it-all. Can't have that.
Although I have to be brief with the words today, I'm compensating by offering a whole heap of pictures. These are illustrations from Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature), a lithographic book by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Originally published in sets up until 1904, it came with about 100 illustrations based on his sketches.
Under the Microscope - Part 2
Sorry for the recent lack of content folks. As is my usual excuse, blame work. I'm knee deep in a huge project right now, which I can only tell you is a cool one; something I'll share with everybody just as soon as I'm able.
In the meantime, the nice folks at Cambridge University (or at least the curator of their Vimeo channel) were nice enough to forward me two new links to videos in the series I profiled last week. At the time I posted about Under the Microscope, I wasn't sure if the series had been discontinued, so that now that I know otherwise I thought I'd pass them on to y'all.
Under the Microscope
No more talk about God this morning folks. Instead a very quick post about a video series that I just discovered from Cambridge University. 'Under the Microscope' is a collection of images taken, you guessed it, under a microscope, and then accompanied by explanatory narration. I found them fascinating. They're all very short, so you can run through the entire series (below) rather quickly.
Growing on graves: The spooky story of Lichen
If you read this post carefully you'll witness a blogger desperately trying to unify two completely different subjects, those being Halloween and science. You'll then notice an attempt to trick the audiences interested in each of those subjects into believing that this post was written specifically for them. What can I say...whenever I'm being sneaky, I like to be honest about it.
Yesterday morning I had a creative meeting with a director in the downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Cabbagetown, and as fortune would have it, I arrived early. So, with about half an hour to kill I jotted over to the area's famous Necropolis Cemetery, and started shooting reference stills for some of the tombstones I've been working on.
What's that you ask? Tombstones?
Life Under Russia's White Sea
Underwater Photography
by Alexander Semenov
Alexander Semenov is a diver who works for the White Sea Biological Station in Russia. As part of his job of collecting underwater specimens and bringing them back to the station, he'd routinely photograph them under the lights of the lab. However, he found his photos lacking, and soon discovered that nothing could beat capturing these creatures in their natural habitat.
As a result, Alexander had to teach himself underwater photography.
The Machinery Inside Your Guts
Der Mensch als Industriepalast
by Henning Lederer
You probably recognize the image above. It's from Fritz Kahn's 1927 poster called Der Mensch als Industriepalast [Man as Industrial Palace], and it's a pretty ingenious way to visualize the machinery of life. You can see a high resolution version of the original image here. The first time motion artist Henning Lederer saw the poster he was so inspired that he immediately began planning an animation.
Extreme Closeups of Human Eyes
Your Beautiful Eyes
by Suren Manvelyan
Chop off my legs and cut out my tongue. Take my hands, my hearing, and my sense of smell; just please, please leave me my eyes.
I remember thinking that when I was young. Seriously. Other than the fear that I might grow old without ever finding out what was under a brassiere,* nothing scared me more than the prospect of losing my sight. Yup, that's the kind of frightened little wuss bag that I was. I remember how anytime a car would zoom by me on a gravel road I'd raise my hand to deflect stray rocks that I was sure were headed straight towards my corneas. I've also always had this irrational fear that one day I'll accidentally wound my own eyeball with a paper-cut.
Oceans on the Internet
via oneocean.cbc.ca
'One Ocean', David Suzuki's documentary series that I worked on recently for CBC, has a great web resource attached to it.
One Ocean Online is a dynamic and multifaceted website where you can watch the documentaries themselves, as well as additional content. There's lots of interactive things to see and do as well.
If you have kids who are interested in the oceans and the environment, or if you're interested yourself, have a look.
