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The sand is the trap
Transcript
An antlion larva waits at the bottom of a sandy pit.
An ant steps onto the loose slope.
As it scrambles, the grains slip beneath its feet.
The antlion flicks sand upward, helping trigger more slides.
The prey slips toward the jaws below.
A tiny hunter uses a whole slope as its trap.
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The microscopic animal that makes its own bricks
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- A builder in a drop of water.
This tiny rotifer makes the pieces of its own home.
- The current brings the material.
Beating cilia sweep tiny particles toward its head.
- A pellet takes shape.
A small cup near the head gathers and shapes the material.
- One more piece of the wall.
The rotifer bends and adds the pellet to its tube.
- A home, built pellet by pellet.
The finished tube shelters a living animal almost too small to see.
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The hooks holding a feather together
Transcript
Each branch carries smaller branches called barbules.
Tiny hooks link neighbouring barbules.
Pull them apart, and the vane opens.
Stroke them back together, and the hooks reconnect.
Preening helps a bird restore that smooth surface.
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The captain and the sea serpent
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The captain took a harpoon. Ahead of his boat, something long and sinuous seemed to move through the sea. It even appeared to have a head and a mane. This is a story Philip Henry Gosse reproduced in The Romance of Natural History. The encounter was reported in February, eighteen forty-nine, after Captain Herriman sailed from the Cape of Good Hope. From his ship, the object looked twenty-five or thirty feet long. Herriman called over his chief officer and several passengers. They agreed: it looked like a sea serpent. Herriman had already read about a famous sighting in the same region. Now, he thought, he might be looking at the same kind of creature. But the ship was becalmed. He had a boat lowered, took a small party with him, and went to look. Up close, the monster became an immense piece of seaweed. The root mass had looked like a head. The current and the lingering swell had supplied its lifelike motion. According to the account, Herriman admitted that without that closer inspection, he would have remained convinced. The story ends with a captain changing his mind. The sea had offered a shape. An earlier story had supplied the monster. A closer look gave him something better: an answer.
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Air-dry pottery kits for a creative night in
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The pond disappeared. The fish stayed.
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- The pond disappeared.
The fish stayed. Meet an African lungfish.
- Water runs out.
The lungfish burrows into the soft mud.
- A cocoon forms.
A coating of mucus dries around its body.
- Life slows down.
Inside its cocoon, the lungfish breathes air and waits.
- Then the rain returns.
The ground floods. The lungfish emerges and swims again.
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The sea serpent that became seaweed
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- A sea serpent. Or so it seemed.
In 1849, Captain Herriman spotted a long, strange shape off the Cape of Good Hope.
- They all saw a monster.
The chief officer and passengers agreed. Herriman had read of another sighting in these waters.
- He went closer.
With the ship becalmed, Herriman took a boat and a harpoon to investigate.
- The monster was seaweed.
A tangled root mass looked like a head. The current and swell made the long strands seem alive.
- A closer look changed his mind.
Without the boat trip, Herriman said he would have remained convinced. The sighting survived—as a lesson in checking.
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The lip that catches prey
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A young dragonfly hunts underwater, long before it ever takes to the air.
Beneath its head, a long lower lip folds back into a compact mask.
When prey comes close, the hinged lip shoots forward.
Graspers at the tip catch the prey.
Then the lip pulls it back to the mouth.
This old illustration shows the hunter below the water and the winged adult above.
The dragonfly you see over a pond began life hunting underneath it.
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The flower with a delay
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An early purple orchid fastens two pollen packets to a visiting insect.
At first, they stand upright, pointing away from where they need to land.
Then the stalks bend forward.
Once bent, the packets can brush against the next flower’s pollen-receiving surface.
The delay helps the insect leave one plant before the pollen is ready.
This nineteenth-century illustration shows both positions.
The flower sends a package that changes position on the journey.
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The mammal whose eggs were doubted
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- A mammal. With eggs.
Platypuses lay eggs. But an 1883 natural-history book still suggested their young were born alive.
- The reports were already there.
The book recorded Indigenous reports of eggs, then doubted them.
- 1884: egg-laying confirmed.
William Caldwell’s collecting work depended on Wakkawakka people’s knowledge and help.
- Knowledge came before acceptance.
The platypus story is also about whose observations were believed.
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