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What you never knew about flies 😄Using high-resolution, high-speed digital imaging of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogast...
04/06/2025

What you never knew about flies 😄

Using high-resolution, high-speed digital imaging of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) faced with a looming swatter, the secret to a fly's evasive maneuvering has been discovered. Long before the fly leaps, its tiny brain calculates the location of the impending threat, comes up with an escape plan, and places its legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way in the opposite direction. All this action occurs about 100 milliseconds after the fly first spots the swatter.





If you look close at the Sun with a translucent glass you might just spot it.A "black spot" on the sun is called a sunsp...
21/02/2025

If you look close at the Sun with a translucent glass you might just spot it.

A "black spot" on the sun is called a sunspot; it's a cooler area on the sun's surface that appears dark because of concentrated magnetic fields which prevent as much heat from reaching the surface, although it's still extremely hot compared to Earth standards.

Music is not only able to affect your mood. Listening to particularly happy or sad music can even change how we perceive...
23/01/2025

Music is not only able to affect your mood. Listening to particularly happy or sad music can even change how we perceive the world, according to researchers from the University of Groningen.

Music and mood are closely interrelated. Listening to a sad or happy song on the radio can make you feel sad or happy. However, such mood changes not only affect how you feel but also change your perception. For example, people will recognize happy faces if they are feeling happy themselves.

A study by researcher Jacob Jolij and student Maaike Meurs of the Psychology Department of the University of Groningen showed that music has an even more dramatic effect on perception: even if there is nothing to see, people sometimes still see happy faces when they are listening to happy music and sad faces when they are listening to sad music.

Owls can’t move their eyeballs. That’s because owls don’t have eyeballs at all. Instead, their eyes are shaped like tube...
23/01/2025

Owls can’t move their eyeballs. That’s because owls don’t have eyeballs at all. Instead, their eyes are shaped like tubes, held rigidly in place by bones called sclerotic rings. (Human eye sockets, which hold spherical eyes, do not have sclerotic rings.)

Because owls can’t roll their eyes around the way we do, they have to move their entire head to get a good look around. They frequently twist their head and “bob and weave” to expand their field of view. Owls can turn their necks about 270° in either direction and 90° up-and-down, without moving their shoulders!

Although owls can’t move their eyes, many other adaptations help these raptors spot prey. Owl eyes are huge! An owl’s eyes can account for up to 3% of its entire body weight. (Eyes account for about .0003% of a human’s body weight.) There is one drawback to their large eyes. Owls are very farsighted. They can’t focus on objects that are too close. Instead, sensitive whisker-like bristles around their beaks help owls detect objects at close range.

Owls have “eyeshine.” Eyeshine is a result of an animal’s tapetum lucidum, a layer of tissue behind the retina that reflects visible light. This reflection dramatically increases the light available to the animal’s photoreceptors and gives it superior night vision.

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