By Abby Diamond

Total bad-ass.

Just a tree trunk, floating around a lake for 100 years.

Scientists from the California Academy of Sciences are on a project to take highly detailed digital images of every one of approximately 12,000 ant species known to science. Now THAT is job security.

I can see the Munsters or Addams Family growing these in their garden.

"I've found that melt water has everything to do with how glaciers change, move and create points of entry. As I've learned more about how water erodes, shapes and works the ice (as it does everything else on the planet, given enough time), I've learned where to look to find caves."

Now that's recycling!

There’s a jungle inside Vietnam’s mammoth cavern. A skyscraper could fit too. And the end is out of sight.

Amazing photographs of snakes like you've never seen before

Flaming Farts of Fire are Fantastic.

Robert Scott's ill-fated trip to Antarctica and Ernest Shackleton's attempt to cross it are great tales of human endurance. Here we present photos taken by their on-board photographers, Herbert Ponting and Frank Hurley, presented in the book The Heart of the Great Alone.

Thomas Shahan takes excellent macro photos of bugs. Check out his stream.

The Navajo call it ‘the place where water runs through rocks’ and that is literally true. One of the most unearthly places on the planet, take a look at the astounding Antelope Canyon.<br />
The peculiar formation of a slot canyon can make for an eerie experience and certainly the Antelope Canyon, on the lands of the LeChee people of the Navajo Nation is one of the stranger places you might choose to visit if your budget doesn’t quite run to a space shuttle. The shuttle, though, never lands on alien planets – you can get the experience for very little here on the third rock from the sun. And it is the sun that makes this canyon extra special.

A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.

Wow. I think I might be really scared of Tigers now. A truly fearsome Tiger attack.

These strange alien structures are among the seeds and pollen conserved at the Kew Millennium Seed Bank. Seeds from more than 10% of the world's flowering plants – around 30,000 species – have been collected in the decade since the bank was established.

Some great photos.

The Wave is a red-rock stunner on the border of Arizona and Utah, made of 190-million-year-old sand dunes that have turned to rock. L.A. Times photographer Spencer Weiner captured the swirling drama of this little-known formation that's accessible only on foot via a three-mile hike and highly regulated. (To apply for a permit, go to the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona Web page.)

This guy literally has hummingbirds eating out of the palm of his hand. Amazing video footage.

Paula Hayes makes some very nice terrariums, with some fantastic photos to show it off. I'm now itching to try and get a bottle and shove some stuff in there with the kids, see what happens.

Not so much fancy in terms of glass shape, but fancy in terms of what's inside. Brilliant lighting and growth make for stunning underwater landscapes.

Ralph Cooksey-Talbott is a landscape photographer who studied under Ansel Adams in Yosemite in the 1970's. Cooksey is currently doing vertical panoramic photography that is reminiscent in composition to monumental Asian landscape ink-on-silk paintings. He calls them Vertoramas and I think they are exceptionally beautiful. Besides selling prints, Cooksey provides many of his images as free desktop pictures.

This worm has the oddest form of movement I've seen. It's like a sea cucumber, yet not. Oddly disgusting, and intriguing at the same time.

These platforms are brilliant. Scary, thrilling and gorgeous. I'd go on them in a heartbeat. I think the one I'd like to see the most would be Aurland Lookout in Norway, but they are all just fantastic. Why we don't have more thrill inducing types of views like this I don't know.

These are some of the strangest, creepiest, crawliest endangered creatures on the planet. The Giant Coconut Crab is still, in my book, the creepiest thing on the planet.

WOW. This is really amazing, in a creepy way. What a freaky looking squid.

Gorgeous photos of these weird sea creatures.

Yeah, that's not bad. I'd go there, probably be pretty OK.

Oh my God. A Spider is eating that bird. *shudder*

Very nice nature photographs.

Gorgeous collection of pictures of the Sun, as done by The Big Picture.

There really isn't much else like a frozen waterfall. Just odd and wonderful at the same time.