WWF has more fun facts about snow leopards. Davis, Li and Murphy (2010) “Supermatrix and species tree methods resolve phylogenetic relationships within the big cats, Panthera (Carnivora: Felidae)” looks at several earlier works on big cat phylogeny and discusses some issues with them, mainly that…

Some large parrotfish species can poop up to 405 kg of sand each year. Although estimates vary, it’s clear that they can produce a lot of sand. Perry et. al (2015) found that up to 85 % of new sand on a beach in the…

Leaf sheep (Costasiella kuroshimae) is a species of small sea slugs that can perform photosynthesis. Not many animals can do that. They are also adorable. You should watch this youtube video of leaf sheep crawling about and / or read more about them on wikipedia,…

Other animals achieve the same result by tilting their heads, but these owls have this built in. Read more in https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2010.1145 which references Knudsen and Konishi (1978.”A neural map of auditory space in the owl” for some of its owl-related information. PS. This mouse escaped,…

This was originally the front page of my master thesis (at least after the university mandated official front page). The full thesis is available here: https://nmbu.brage.unit.no/nmbu-xmlui/handle/11250/2678490 It’s in norwegian, so it might be hard to understand. Sorry about that. But I can confirm that cows…

Carnivorous plants are really interesting and much more wide spread than most people realize. The exact number of species varies, but most put the number at around 500. You can read more about them here: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Carnivorous_plant or in Adamec (1997) “Mineral nutrition of carnivorous plants:…

These snails have a very complex venom that is among the most deadly venoms for humans, rivaling several of the most venomous snakes. However, scientists have also started exploring potential medicinal uses for various parts of the venom. Dutertre et. al. writes more about that…