Animals
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Horseshoe crabs have weird, bright blue blood
Horseshoe crabs have bright blue blood. They are like aliens. (Does this one not look like a dead alien?) Nature, you are weird. Robert Krulwich explains why the crabs’ blood is so beautifully blue: Their blood kind of sloshes around in their bodies carrying oxygen to various organs, as our blood does. Our blood is […]
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Help name this ridiculous baby seal
When this seal pup arrived at the New England Aquarium, he was orphaned, underweight, and blind in one eye, and his unusual mottled coat wasn’t thick enough to keep him warm. Now he’s getting healthy and adorable (you can see him playing with a toy and kicking himself in the head like an itchy dog […]
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The top 10 new species of 2011, including a walking cactus and Spongebob Squarepants
The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University has convened a committee of scientists to determine the 10 best newly discovered species of 2011, and some of them are doozies. Even the monkey, which by all rights should be the cute one, is a noseless Voldemortian horror — and that’s not even to […]
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Critical List: Keystone XL could raise gas prices; Italy earthquake threatens cheese
Counter to everything Republicans say, building the Keystone XL could raise gas prices. Please, parents, don’t buy your children trendy pets in imitation of popular book characters. In England, hundreds of Harry Potter-inspired pet owls are being dropped off at animal shelters after their owners realized that they’re expensive to care for and don’t actually […]
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Here is a dog riding a bike (all by himself!)
And here is my face right now: 8O
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We’ve lost 30 to 70 percent of our wildlife since 1970
We love wildlife! We love watching it in high definition on our TV screens while David Attenborough says something droll to ease the trauma of looking at a whale penis. (SO FLEXIBLE.) But apparently we don’t love it so much that we’re dedicated to keeping it around. A new report [PDF] from the World Wildlife Fund […]
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Puppy rescued after escaping hawk and falling from sky
"When God drops a puppy from the sky, you keep it."
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Elephants hold vigil for human friend
In case you needed another reason to care about wildlife, here's one: If you devote your life to elephants, they might come to your funeral.