How Beavers Helped to Build America

Beaver ponds additionally help to remove carbon and nitrogen from water. When carbon combines with chlorine — used in many water treatment facilities — it can result in cancer-causing chemicals, she said, so beavers can help to keep drinking water safe.

“What beavers do is create environments for storing carbon and processing nitrogen,” Baron said. The latter, in particular, provides a “very important ecosystem service, because reactive nitrogen flowing down rivers is what causes eutrophication, hypoxia and dead zones in many of the world’s estuaries (such as at Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico),” she said.

Source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/beavers-land-111228.htm

Feces, spit, venom, hair…what other nasty substance could an animal use against an attacker or rival? Blood. From the eyes. Several species of horned lizard can squirt a stream of blood up to two meters (6 feet) from the corners of its eyes. The blood has a noxious taste to mammals. To spray the blood, the lizard restricts blood flowing out of its head. The pressure build-up causes tiny vessels to rupture around the eyelids and squirt blood. In the American Southwest, where many of the horned lizard species live, they are some times called “horny toads.” They are, in fact, not toads nor particularly endowed with horns. Only the two spikes on the lizards’ heads are true horns, since they contain bone centers. The rest of the spikes are modified scales.

Room 237, Wikimedia Commons

Source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/photos-animals-that-take-aim-at-each-other-130116.htm

In captivity, llamas are more likely to spit at humans if the animals have become too accustomed to humans. If the llama thinks of humans as part of its herd, it is more likely to use spit to teach the upstart humans their place in the social order. Spitting can also be a sign of distress. The consistency of the llama’s spit can be a sign of how stressed out the llama is. Saliva spit is generally just a warning that worse spit will soon follow. Food spit contains whatever the llama happened to be chowing on at the time and is most frequently used to defend food sources from rivals. A seriously agitated llama will spit green, foul-smelling material from further back in its three-chambered stomach.

Photo source: http://true-wildlife.blogspot.com/2010/11/llama.html

Text source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/photos-animals-that-take-aim-at-each-other-130116.htm

Rape has become endemic in South Africa, so a medical technician named Sonette Ehlers developed a product that immediately gathered national attention there. Ehlers had never forgotten a rape victim telling her forlornly, “If only I had teeth down there.”

Some time afterward, a man came into the hospital where Ehlers works in excruciating pain because his penis was stuck in his pants zipper.

Ehlers merged those images and came up with a product she called Rapex. It resembles a tube, with barbs inside. The woman inserts it like a tampon, with an applicator, and any man who tries to rape the woman impales himself on the barbs and must go to an emergency room to have the Rapex removed.

When critics complained that it was a medieval punishment, Ehlers replied tersely, “A medieval device for a medieval deed.” 

- Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof

(via itsjustaurlwhatever)

This plant is called “makahiya”; in Tagalog, ‘hiya’ means shy.

Upon being touched, this plant’s leaves immediately fold up together as if the plant is shy (hence its name).

(Source: jaidefinichon, via starsaremymuse)