Zoology

Bowerbird

The most notable characteristic of bowerbirds is their extraordinarily complex courtship and mating behaviour, where males build a bower to attract mates. There are two main types of bowers. One clade of bowerbirds build so-called maypole bowers that are constructed by placing sticks around a sapling. The other major bower-building clade builds an avenue type bower made of two walls of vertically placed sticks. In and around the bower the male places a variety of brightly colored objects he has collected. These objects — usually different among each species — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass. The males spend hours arranging this collection.

Pacific Blackdragon

Female blackdragons are about 61 cm long and have fang-like teeth and a long chin whisker. The males are small, about 8 cm in length, and brownish in color. They have no teeth, no chin barbel and no stomach. Unable to eat, the male lives only long enough to mate.

Upside-down catfish

As its name implies, the upside-down catfish will swim upside down. One theory accounts for this unusual behavior as a feeding strategy. In the wild, it often grazes on the underside of submerged branches and logs, and swimming upside down makes these areas more accessible.

Pfeilstorch

A Pfeilstorch (German for "arrow stork") is a stork which is injured by an arrow while wintering in Africa, and then returns to Europe with the arrow stuck in its body. This Pfeilstorch was crucial in understanding the migration of European birds. Before migration was understood, people had no other explanation for the sudden annual disappearance of birds like the White Stork and Barn Swallow. To date, around 25 Pfeilstörche have been documented.

Porpita porpita

This Blue Button Jellyfish, or porpita porpita, at Enoshima Aquarium is not actually a jellyfish. It’s a hydroid made up of individual zooids that float together at the water’s surface and each function differently: some eat, some reproduce, some defend.

Vicuna

The Altiplano is a cold, harsh habitat, ranging from about 12,000-18,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains of South America. At this elevation, there are no trees to block strong winds, and very little rain, though nightly fog and dew provide water. The land is covered with low, tough shrubs and hardy grasses, neither of which provides places to hide. This inhospitable area is home to a species of animal with the finest fiber in the world: the vicuna. During the height of the Incan empire, the animals were plentiful and numbered approximately 2 million. Their fleece was so valuable vicuna fabric currently sells for $1,800 to $3,000 per yard) that only royalty could wear garments made from it.

Ulisse Aldrovandi

Ulisse Aldrovandi was an Italian naturalist, the moving force behind Bologna's botanical garden, one of the first in Europe. Carl Linnaeus and the comte de Buffon reckoned him the father of natural history studies.

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime