Traviès’ Animal Illustrations

Available as a free download from Melanie CTG Publishing.

Africa on the Fly

Clay-lined pools: "a salt-making site at the village of Teguidda-n-Tessoumt in arid northern Niger."

Jaws | Flickr

Jaws: "I showed this photo to my wife, and she immediately thought it was a photo of a painting or drawing. Nope. I was walking around Shinjukugoyen (park) and there's this bridge that goes over some water. In that water are a bunch of these fish. It just happened that this one was coming right towards the surface and I aimed down and took one shot. And this is what I got."

Katzen

Der Naturfreund in abwechselnden und interessanten Darstellungen aus der gemahlten Welt für wißbegierige Kinder (Berlin): "for inquisitive children"

Glamorous killing machine

Suren Manvelyan

Canoe Plants

The Canoe Plants of Ancient Hawaii: "tracks the path of various important plants carried in voyaging canoes crisscrossing Oceania, and finally to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii."

Species of the day

Natural History Museum: "365 days, 365 species.

We are publishing a fact file on a different species every day during 2010 to celebrate the UN's international Year of Biodiversity.

Each species we explore has been chosen and written about by a Museum scientist. All the information, images, facts and stories contained within the species files has also been provided by them."

British Lichen

Parasites: "These are often recorded and studied by lichenologists since they are frequently found when looking for lichens."

Zebra Finch Songs

Williams, H. (1997) Zebra Finch Song Archive: "The birds whose songs are available on this archive trace their ancestry to a single pair."

Corrosive fluid discharge

Bombardier beetle: "A bombardier beetle produces and stores two reactant chemical compounds hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide in separate reservoirs in the rear tip of its abdomen. When threatened, the beetle contracts muscles that force the two reactants through valved tubes into a mixing chamber containing water and a mixture of catalytic enzymes. When combined, the reactants undergo a violent exothermic chemical reaction raising the temperature to near the boiling point of water. The corresponding pressure buildup forces the entrance valves from the reactant storage chambers to close, thus protecting the beetle's internal organs. The boiling, foul-smelling liquid partially becomes a gas (flash evaporation) and is expelled through an outlet valve into the atmosphere with a loud popping sound."

Solenodon hunt

BBC News: Close encounter with a bizarre beast: "It looks like a cross between an ant-eater, a shrew and a rat - it is the only mammal in the world that can inject venom through its teeth."

Internal Sounds of Bugs

Listen to the Haunting Internal Sounds of Bugs: Discovery News - For the first time, scientists have just recorded sounds emanating from inside living insects, such as flies, mosquitoes and ladybugs. [via]

Olm

ARKive: a unique collection of thousands of videos, images and fact-files illustrating the world's species… gathering together the very best films and photographs of the world's species into one centralised digital library.

BushBlitz

BushBlitz is the world's first continental scale survey - a three year multimillion dollar partnership to document the plants and animals in hundreds of properties across Australia’s National Reserve System.

Centipedes of Australia

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) site. Key orders - information, distribution, description, pictures and references.

Strandbeest

Theo Jansen: "Since 1990 I have been occupied creating new forms of life.

Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. I make skeletons that are able to walk on the wind, so they don’t have to eat.

Over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives."