"An egg case or egg capsule, colloquially known as a mermaid's purse or devil's purse, is a casing that surrounds the fertilized eggs of some sharks, skates, and chimaeras." from Wikipedia.

"'Octopuses,' writes philosopher Godfrey-Smith, 'are a separate experiment in the evolution of the mind.' And that, he feels, is what makes the study of the octopus mind so philosophically interesting." from Orion Magazine.

"...Amblypygids are also known as whip spiders and tailless whip scorpions..." from Wikipedia.

"Welwitschia..., which is considered a living fossil, is named after the Austrian botanist Friedrich Welwitsch who discovered it in 1859." from Wikipedia.

"Jōmon Sugi is a large cryptomeria tree located on Yakushima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Japan. It is the oldest and largest of nearly 2,000-year-old-growth cryptomeria trees on the island and is estimated to be between 2,170 and 7,200 years old." from Wikipedia.

Nanowires growing from bacteria might link up distant chemical reactions in sediments. from Nature News.

Human genome at ten. The more biologists look, the more complexity there seems to be. Erika Check Hayden asks if there's a way to make life simpler. from Nature News.

"So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success." from The Atlantic.

over 30 different organisms ranging from trees to predatory fungus to ancient bacteria.

"You see how complicated ecology really is." from NPR.

Photomicrography Competition. Small World is regarded as the leading forum for showcasing the beauty and complexity of life as seen through the light microscope.

Wild Sanctuary is home to the largest private archive of natural sound.

Over 30,000 still images and video, as well as local information about changing biodiversity, have been uploaded to the Encyclopedia of Life via new tools that let the public contribute as never before to a global online science collaboration of unprecedented scale.

"We all know, I think, that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable."

sLowlife offers a journey into altered perceptions—a window into the world of plants. It accelerates the time-scale of plants into our own frame of reference, speeding up their everyday lives to a pace that resonates with our own.

Off-planet, “green” lifestyles aren’t just fashionable, they’re required. Any eventual residents of a lunar base or Martian habitat will almost certainly be vegetarians, and thrift will be crucial for survival. “You must strive to recycle virtually every atom of everything that you’ve brought with you,” Dixon says. “And the technology required to achieve that is exactly what we need here on Earth to reduce our environmental imprint and create more sustainable ecosystems, all so we can manage to survive here a bit longer than we otherwise might.”

layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria.

nanofiber scaffolds seeded with patient-derived stem cells could repair ravaged joints.

the oldest single living organisms. from wikipedia.

using sound as a metric to look at ecosystem dynamics. from wired.

the mysterious powers of smell. from nyt.

precursors to math.

epigenetics rewrites the rules of disease, heredity, and identity.

universal presence of BPA has raised concerns.

nature's grand experiment with moral animals.

V.S. Ramachandran talks neuroscience.