Today's selection -- from Where The Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg. Charles Elton, Georgyi Frantsevitch Gause, Nelson G. Hairston, Frederick E. Smith, and Lawrence B. Slobodkin expanded our understanding of the world’s ecology:
"In 1927, his mind straining at the seams from three summers at Spitsbergen, Elton sat down at his desk and released the floodgates. In a ninety-day burst of creative fervor he wrote a two-hundred-page book, published simply as Animal Ecology. Eighty years later, the elegant little volume remains a standard on reading lists and bookshelves of students and professors of ecology.
"In clear bold tones and basic English, Animal Ecology frames the questions, and a good many of the answers, that still occupy the major discussions of modem science. Gems of Elton's prescience can be found on nearly every page of Animal Ecology. But one could start by flipping to chapter 5, 'The Animal Community,' and immediately find the essence of Elton's ecological perspective. There at the head of the page it is laid out in three Chinese proverbs:
'The large fish eat the small fish; the small fish eat the water insects; the water insects eat plants and mud.'
'Large fowl cannot eat small grain.'
'One hill cannot shelter two tigers.'
"This was Elton's way of introducing several of the most important concepts in the field of community ecology. It is a chapter that begins with Elton studiously watching an anthill and finishes with a lion killing zebras. And in between those poles, he boils down the whole of animal society to a word, food:
Animals are not always struggling for existence, but when they do begin, they spend the greater part of their lives eating ... Food is the burning question in animal society, and the whole structure and activities of the community are dependent upon questions of food-supply.
"Elton's Animal Ecology draws heavily on his apprenticeship in Spitsbergen. He had ultimately discovered order in the freewheeling Arctic assemblage, and it had come to his mind in familiar shapes and constructions. He saw the sun's energy linked to the greenery of tundra plants to the feathers of ptarmigan to the muscle of Arctic fox. It was simple enough: Plants eat sunlight, herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores, 'and so on,' he wrote, 'until we reach an animal which has no enemies.' life was linked in chains of food.
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| Charles Sutherland Elton |
"One could find a welter of such chains, even in the skeleton crew of species that epitomized Spitsbergen. Here Elton included a hand-drawn sketch. In what otherwise resembles the electrical diagram of a circuit board, Elton's lines and arrows run this way and that, connecting boxes labeled guillemots and protozoa, dung. spider, plants, worms, geese, purple sandpiper and ptarmigan, mites, moss, seals, polar bear, more dung, more arrows, all arrows eventually leading to the Arctic fox.
"The chains are intertwined, crisscrossing and connecting, forming what Elton had come to think of as a 'food-cycle,' what his descendants today call a food web. Elton, in his fascination with numbers, started adding them to that web: Roughly how many plants and plankton at this end of the chain, how many foxes and bears at that end? With the numbers, his web had gained a third dimension, and its shape now took the form of a pyramid.
"Elton's pyramid is a narrowing progression in this community of life, founded on a broad, numerous base of plants and photosynthetic plankton-harvesters of the sun's energy, primary producers of food. From there it steps up to a substantially more narrow layer of herbivorous animals cropping their share from below, and so on up to yet a smaller tier of carnivores feeding on the plant-eaters. Perched loftily at the apex are the biggest, rarest, topmost predators, those capable of eating all, and typically eaten by none. In the prolific plains of the Serengeti, that predator would be the African lion; in the stingy tundra of Spitsbergen, that predator happens to be a scrappy little fox, 'the apex of the whole terrestrial ecological pyramid in the Arctic.' Elton's geometric perspective on life would soon become one of the tenets of ecology, and to this day is known as the Eltonian pyramid.
"Animal Ecology is where the food chains that Elton realized in the guano gardens of Spitsbergen, where the pyramid of numbers he saw spreading beneath the Arctic fox, are set down as principles for all life on Earth.
"Along the way, Elton also discussed the importance of body size with regard to the act of eating and being eaten -- stating again the obvious observation whose importance had somehow escaped so many before him. 'There are very definite limits, both upper and lower, to the size of food which a carnivorous animal can eat ... Spiders do not catch elephants in their webs, nor do water scorpions prey on geese.' He also gave new life and meaning to the word 'niche,' through his own definition: An animal's 'place in the biotic environment, its relations to food and enemies.'
"The Chinese may have offered the original inklings on animal ecology, but it was Elton who built a pyramid out of them. With his niches, his food chains, his pyramids, Elton gave his fellow ecologists homework assignments for the coming century.
"It was easy enough to see, with the help of Elton's timely reminder, that life was stacked in a pyramid of numbers. But what controlled those numbers? 'What prevents the animals from completely destroying the vegetable and possibly other parts of the landscape,' asked Elton. 'That is, what preserves the balance of numbers among them (uneasy balance though it may be)?'
In the 1930s, a Russian microbiologist named Georgyi Frantsevitch Gause took a cut at answering Elton's question. Gause's Spitsbergen was a test tube containing competing species of hungry microbes. In a series of experiments set down in his landmark text, The Struggle for Existence, he fed his captive microbes a broth of bacteria and scrutinized their lethal contests.
"Gause's more famous experiments involved two kinds of Paramecium, one superior competitor invariably eating the other's lunch to the loser's ultimate demise. In a less celebrated set of tests, Gause turned his attention 'to an entirely new group of phenomena of the struggle for existence, that of one species being directly devoured by another.' This time Gause pitted predator and prey in the same tube, caging a harmless, bacteria-sucking Paramecium against a relentless protozoan predator called Didinium. An insatiable little monster shaped like a bloated tick, Didinium wielded a poisonous dart for a nose, firing paralyzing toxins into any Paramecium it bumped into. Thus captured, the prey was then devoured whole.
"The first meetings of the two were predictably brutish and short, the sequence proceeding as such: Peace-loving Paramecium, with no place to run nor hide, gets quickly devoured by the predator Didinium. Gorging to its heart's content, Didinium soon finds itself alone and hungry, and perishes.
"Then in steps Gause, playing God, to level the odds. He adds some sediment to the bottom of the test tube -- a refuge, a place for Paramecium to hide. Didinium, however, knows no other strategy. Seeking and destroying every last Paramecium it finds, the savage microbe again eats its way to oblivion. But this time a few lucky Paramecium have remained hidden. With the coast clear, they emerge, and soon the world is crazy again with Paramecium.
"Gause adds one more twist. Every couple of days, he adds a new Didinium to the mix. An immigrant. And with that, the little glass microcosm begins producing beautiful numbers. Logged on a line chart, the populations begin tracing sinuous, oscillating waves, prey leading predator through rise and fall, rise and fall, the eternal waves of a predator-prey equilibrium.
"It was a beautifully naked, if admittedly clinical, demonstration of the finely and tenuously balanced skills of predator and prey, teetering so delicately on environmental fulcrums. But inevitably, it was the prey in charge, Paramecium leading Didinium around by its deadly nose.
"The world according to Gause was a competitive place. And it was governed from the bottom up. The sun shone, the plants grew, animals ate the plants, other animals ate the plant-eaters, one trophic level to the next, all the way to the tip of Elton's pyramid. The world was in a steady-state equilibrium. It all made perfect sense.
"Until a phenomenon called HSS came along.
"In 1960, three eminent scientists from the zoology department of the University of Michigan -- Nelson G. Hairston, Frederick E. Smith, and Lawrence B. Slobodkin -- wrote a soon-to-be-infamous paper called 'Community Structure, Population Control, and Competition,' a five-page theoretical rumination published in the American Naturalist. The paper was cited and debated so heavily that its authors were thereafter known more simply as HSS. Their proposal earned a nickname of its own: The green world hypothesis.
"HSS reasoned that the terrestrial world is green -- meaning that it is largely covered in plants -- because herbivores are kept from eating it all. And what kept those herbivores from turning the green world to dust, suggested HSS, were predators.
"The green world of HSS presented a decidedly different take on how nature worked. The venerable bottom-up perspective had Elton's pyramid progressing smoothly and stepwise from bottom to top, every higher layer inexorably dictated by the lower. HSS, with their hypothetical predators exerting such influence from the top, were fiddling with that sacred pyramid, adding great weight to its peak. In defense of their hypothesis, they cited commonly known plagues of rodents and the outbreaks of insects, apparently following the destruction of their predators. They also raised the legend of the Kaibab.
"The Kaibab legend was the classic and controversial tale of predators having the final word. In the 1920s, on the Kaibab Plateau north of the Grand Canyon, the deer population, by all accounts, exploded. And then, the story goes, as the last edible twig was browsed, the population predictably crashed. There was mass starvation, and there were people there to witness it. There was outrage and blame.
"The standard explanation, one that has since had a long and potholed ride in the ecology textbooks, pinned the deer's irruption on government trappers, who had cleared the plateau of its wolves and mountain lions. The herd's ultimate demise was therefore triggered by a lack of predators.
"HSS used the Kaibab to bolster their case that competition, by itself, fell short of answering ecology's seminal questions on the limits of populations. The phenomenon of predation was now a factor to be heeded. It was a bold hypothesis, abundantly praised and reviled. But what it most fundamentally lacked -- as everyone including Hairston, Smith, and Slobodkin would admit -- was proof."
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| author: William Stolzenberg | |||
| title: Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators |
The Mongol Invasion of Kyiv Started The Divergence of Russian and Ukrainian Identity
Kyiv was destroyed —Moscow filled the power vacuum.
As Ukraine is being invaded by Russia, the world holds its breath as Russian president Vladimir Putin is labeled a war criminal by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Russia expected a quick victory and takeover of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The city is being bombed by Russian artillery and rockets, killing many civilians and destroying neighborhoods within the city.
However, Ukrainian resistance is resolute. President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia and Putin of “a war of annihilation.”
This is not the first time Kyiv has been invaded. The most prominent example is when the Nazis invaded Ukraine in 1941 and took over the city in three days. According to historian David Stahel, the city was reduced to “rubble and ashes” by air raids.
Russian troops tried to protect the city, but the resistance was futile — 665,000 Russian soldiers were taken as prisoners of war. Jews and other minorities within the city were massacred.
Hitler saw the German takeover of Kyiv as “the biggest battle in the history of the world,” and felt sure it was only a matter of time before the Nazis took over the Soviet Union. However, like most invasions of Russia, the invasion ended terribly for Hitler.
Throughout history, Kyiv has been attacked by global superpowers from the west and the east. Its strategic and cultural significance has always made it a target in the context of overarching geopolitical conflicts.
But no invasion of Kyiv was worst than when the Mongols sacked the city in 1240.
The invasion killed 96% of the population and left the city severely weakened as an ecclesiastical center for Christianity.
It has important implications even today, most importantly leading to the differentiation between Russian and Ukrainian identities which is being battled in today’s wars.
Before the Mongol invasion, Moscow was an obscure city of Kievan Rus which had no cultural or religious significance. After the invasion, Moscow became the most powerful city in the region and home to a Tsarist Empire, while Kyiv languished as a political possession of different empires.
This is the story of how the Mongol invasion of Kyiv started the divergence between Russian and Ukrainian identity and language.
The history of Kyiv before the Mongol invasions
According to Slavic legend, the name “Kyiv” comes from a story of three brothers, Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv, who established the city with their sister Lybid. The city was named after Kyi, a Slavic tribal leader, and Kyiv is translated as “Kyi’s place.”
Historian Michael Hamm says prior to Kyivan Rus, not much is known about Kyiv and the Slavic people who occupied the settlement.
Hamm notes Kyiv was conquered in 882 by Oleg of Novgorod, who was part of a biking tribe known as the Varangians. Oleg was a relative of Rurik, the founder of Kievan Rus’, whose descendants would go on to rule the city for almost four centuries.
The Varangians became more Slavic as time went on. Eventually, in the 10th century, most of Kievan Rus’ converted to Orthodox Christianity and maintained strong relationships with Rome.
In particular, Kyiv prospered as the capital of Kyivan Rus, from the 9th century to the 12th century. Many famous monasteries and cathedrals were built during this time, including the Cathedral of St. Sophia. During this period of prosperity, Kyiv had to constantly fight off nomadic steppe people to the south but was able to successfully fend off these attacks.
Jaroslaw Pelenski of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute points to the 1169 sack of Kyiv as a turning point for the city, and Kyivan Rus as a whole. Kyiv had been undergoing succession crises between competing princes of the Varangian dynasty, in a messy process that strongly weakened the city.
Prince Andrew Bogolyubsky, later known as King Andrew I, sacked the city for three days, plundered artwork in the city, destroyed much of the city, then left, seeing no benefit in settling down in Kyiv. Instead, Bogolyubsky set up a new capital at Vladimir.
According to historian Karl Baedeker, a couple of years later, in 1171, prince Svyetoslav Vsevolodovitch sacked the city. In 1203, prince Rurik Rostislavich also sacked the city.
Derek Davison, the author of history newsletter Foreign Exchanges, says the 1240 Mongol sack of Kyiv was the end of Kyivan Rus, but the reality was the city had been weakening long before then. The balance of power was shifting from Kyiv during the succession crisis between princes, and decentralization of power from Kyiv towards cities like Vladimir.
Also, once the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, Kyiv lost a crucial trading partner and put the city in a steep decline. Another crusade invaded the “pagans” of the Baltic region, which was on the northwest border of Kievan Rus’. Davison emphasizes all these dynamics and events led to Kyiv’s collapse at the hands of the Mongols as much as the Mongol invasion itself.
But few in the city could have been prepared for the sheer brutality of the Mongol invasion.
The Mongol invasion
Since Kyiv is pretty far west of Mongolia, it was not the first nor the last city the Mongols invaded. Genghis Khan died in 1227, but by that time, their conquests were well known.
Around that time, the Mongol Empire had conquered the Khwarezmian Empire in the Middle East, the Xi Xia Empire in northwest China, much of Russia, and China itself. The Mongols ruled everything from the China Sea in the east to the Caspian Sea in the west.
One of Genghis Khan’s sons, Ogedei Khan, took over the empire. But two generals, Jebe and Subutai, were involved in much of the Mongol invasions of Russia. They had raided as far west as Moscow and Novgorod. as well as Crimea. Their army of 20,000 people defeated armies much greater, including in the Battle of Kalka River in 1223.
But Subutai and Jebe left because they did not have resources for conquest. Until 1235, the Mongols did not return to Eastern Europe.
But this time, they did return for conquest. They learned the siege tactics of Chinese and Islamic cities and became skilled at siege and urban warfare.
In The Secret History of the Mongols, the legendary literary history of the Mongol Empire, the author wrote Subutai had “gone to war against the city of Kyiv” but failed to take it because he “had run into great resistance there.” This initial advance had eventually stopped at Kyiv.
As a result, Subutai needed reinforcements: Ogedei sent his nephew, Batu Khan and his army.
The second invasion of Eastern Europe in the late 1230s made short work of most Russian cities. This time, no city in Eastern Europe stood a chance at the already formidable Mongol foes, who were now well-versed in siege warfare.
The massacre of Kyiv
The Mongols had already destroyed Ryazan in northeast Kyivan Rus, then Vladimir and Kozelsk, two big cities to the west of Ryazan. The prize of Kyiv was seen as the ultimate prize for the Mongols, and Möngke, a general in Batu Khan’s army, did not want to raze Kyiv to the ground because it was so beautiful.
Möngke apparently sent ambassadors to negotiate the surrender of Kyiv. However, a warlord named Dmytro, in charge of defending Kyiv, killed the envoys. This was an unforgivable sin — in one notable case when the Shah of a city called Otrar killed three Mongolian diplomats, Genghis Khan invaded the Shah’s empires and massacred entire cities.
Diplomats had a sacred status. To the Mongols, anyone who killed a diplomat needed to be sent a message.
Kyiv was sent this message. The Mongols sacked the city worse than any prince had beforehand.
According to Alexander Maiorov at The Slavonic and East European Review, the Mongols started bombarding the city on November 28, 1240. They set up catapults near the city gates and besieged the city for several days. On December 6, the Mongols breached the walls of the city.
Of the 50,000 population of Kyiv, only about 2,000 people survived. Almost the entire city was burned down and only six buildings were left standing. Ironically, despite Dmytro killing the Mongol ambassadors, Batu Khan’s forces chose to spare him due to how valiantly he fought.
The Mongols kept invading Eastern Europe, pushing into Poland and Hungary. They also invaded Austria and Bulgaria.
However, in 1241, the invasion stopped suddenly. Ogedei Khan died, leading to a succession crisis for the Mongols. Batu Khan’s forces promptly returned to Mongolia, sparing Western Europe from a Mongol invasion. The Golden Horde would rule much of the territory for hundreds of years, but Batu and Guyuk, a son of Ogedei Khan, engaged in a succession crisis that would greatly weaken the Mongol Empire.
Takeaways
Conclusions of “Kyiv has been through worse” or something like “at least Putin isn’t destroying the city like the Mongols” are tone-deaf in the context of current events.
Today, Kyiv and Ukraine are much better equipped for a foreign invasion from a superpower.
But we can date back to the Mongolian invasion of Kyiv to the shift of power from Kyiv to Moscow in the region. Prior to the Mongolian invasion, the East Slavic people were all part of Kyivan Rus. After, however, three separate nations evolved: Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.
Before the Mongols invaded Kievan Rus, Moscow was an obscure, new city. Afterward, however, Moscow led the forefront of resistance against the Mongols. Moscow began to grow more powerful than other cities in the region, eventually defeating the Mongols in crucial battles. Since Kyiv was an important religious center, after its destruction, the Russian Orthodox Church moved its headquarters to Vladimir. In 1327, it moved to Moscow, boosting its prominence.
For a long time, Moscow allied with the Mongols and helped put down invasions of neighboring cities. One Russian prince, Ivan I, was named Grand Prince. Moscow eventually defeated the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, gaining its independence.
But the city became the capital of Russia and the capital of the later Tsardom the country was famous for.
Russia and Ukraine may have once been part of the same nation, but the countries grew apart after the Mongol invasion. Kyiv was decimated, and Moscow rose to power, which has contributed to the power imbalance between Ukraine and Russia even today.
Moscow became powerful due to allegiances with the Mongols and the collapse of neighboring powerful cities, like Kyiv. The Russian Orthodox Church moved to Moscow due to the Mongol invasion, and we can argue this chain of events was the origin of present-day tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Kyiv took a very long time to recover — after all, losing 96% of your population and having your city razed to the ground does that to you. Kyiv would be subject to being conquered by several bigger powers over the new several centuries.
First, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania conquered the city in 1362, followed by Crimea in the 15th century and Poland in the 16th century. Crimean Tatars sacked the city twice in the 15th century. According to Hamm, one Venetian traveler said Kyiv was “plain and poor” in 1474, with a population much lower than Lviv.
Russia and Ukraine diverged following the Mongol invasion, but Russia takes claim over Ukraine now as it fears the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO.
But despite Russia and Ukraine attributing their origins to Kyivan Rus, Russia laying claim to Ukraine is incredibly dubious since the two countries diverged so much. Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus developed different languages and national identities.
According to one CBS correspondent, it would be like Vikings claiming ownership of France and England because of the role they played in founding those countries. Russia and Ukraine were tied together under Tsarist rule from the 17th century to the 19th century. But Ukrainian nationalism was too strong for the Tsars, leading to the banning of the Ukrainian language in the 19th century.
Western Ukraine especially never came under Russian Tsarist rule and was ruled by Poland or Austria, which respected the Ukrainian language and identity. Cities like Lviv today have a strong Ukrainian identity, and following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine, like Belarus, Finland, and Poland, tried to break free from Russia.
The fact remains Ukraine has its own unique language and national identity arising from the invasion of the Mongols. Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, has a much longer history than Russia’s capital, Moscow.
To acknowledge Ukraine’s own identity and language separate from Russia’s is a political act.
But it is a correct classification to make because it’s true.
Our world is filled with captivating things and views.
Here is a collection of 15 photographs of rarely seen things – from unusual-looking creatures and objects to some of nature's weird wonders.1. A transparent fish also called the Sea Salp.
Sea Salps are one of the most remarkable creatures of Earth. This barrel-shaped fish has a gelatinous body and feeds on phytoplankton (marine algae). Sea Salps are not just unique because of their transparent bodies. They are rare creatures that exist both as individuals and part of a larger organism.2. These aren't broken shards of glass. This is a frozen Lake Michigan.
Ice formation on Lake Michigan usually begins in January and reaches its peak in late February or early March. During the peak winter season, temperatures sometimes reach -30°C (-23°F), resulting in ice shelves forming on the lake.3. Baikal Dzen formation on Lake Baikal.
Lake Baikal is located in the Russian region of Siberia. This freshwater lake is witness to the most unique phenomena known as the Baikal Zen. It happens when stones brought by the wind to the ice of the lake are warmed and the day sun melts the ice under them. This causes the rock to remain balanced on a pedestal of thin ice.4. A Bashkir Curly Horse.
The origin of this fascinating horse is a mystery. The Bashkir Curly is known to be a calm breed of horse with a mild temperament. Its other characteristics include a thick bone, strong, round hooves, intelligence, and exceptional memory. What makes it stand out from other breeds of horses, however, is its distinctive curly coat.5. The extremely rare Albino Buck, also called the 'White Deer'.Sightings of albino deer are very uncommon and they are considered as mystical ghosts of the woods because of their fairytale-like appearance. The chances of an albino deer being born are only 1 in 20,000, as the recessive gene that causes albinism in whitetail deer is extremely rare. The stories of these unusual animals have been a part of several ancient Native American legends and folklore.
6. No, these aren't street craters. They are dinosaur footprints in France.
These giant footprints belong to a large sauropod dinosaur and were discovered in Plagne, France. These extraordinary traces of the now-extinct dinosaur were found by geologists and biologists from the Société Des Naturalistes d'Oyonnax (SDNO). The footprints measure almost 155 meters in length and are more than 145 million years old.7. Ever seen a music typewriter?
Better known as The Keaton Music Typewriter, this instrument was first patented in 1936 by Robert H. Keaton from San Francisco, California. The typewriter was promoted in the 1950s and sold for around $225. The machine made it easier to produce music copies in large quantities for publishers, educators, and other musicians. The distinct circular look of the typewriter made it very popular in its time.8. A 500 kg dinosaur bone found in France.
A giant 500 kilogram (1102.31 pounds) dinosaur thigh bone was uncovered by scientists in south-western France at an excavation site in 2019. The femur is two meters (6.6 ft) long and is believed to have belonged to a sauropod. This plant-eating dinosaur was found in the late Jurassic era and was one of the largest land animals that ever existed.9. That's not a ball. It is a single living cell.
While this may be hard to believe, the picture above is of a living cell. Known as Valonia ventricosa, or "bubble algae", this species of algae is one of the largest single-celled organisms in the world. They are found in oceans, and their color mostly varies from grass green to dark green.10. This is how an ant's face looks like under an electron microscope.
At first glance, this picture appears rather eerie as the antennae holes of the ant look more like eyes. The image was captured using Electron microscopy (EM), which is a technique for getting high-resolution images of much higher magnification than a normal light microscope. It is used in biomedical research to examine the in-depth structure of biological materials along with various other objects.11. The very rare Blue Java Banana, which is said to taste like ice-cream.
While facts about this amazing fruit may appear to be a hoax, they are indeed completely true. Blue Java bananas have a taste and creamy texture that is similar to vanilla ice cream. Apart from their unique taste, these bananas stand out because of the bright blue color of their peel. These delicious fruits are widely grown in Southeast Asia and relished as a dessert.12. This is a leaf, right? Wrong! It is actually a Sea Slug.
This is a solar-powered sea slug, or Elysia chlorotica, and looks like a leaf. It can grow to more than 2 inches long and possess an exceptional ability to steal algal plastids (also known as chloroplast robbery), stop feeding thereafter and survive off the photosynthesis from the algae for the next six to eight months. They are found in shallow waters along the east coast of North America.13.Here's a look at grains of sand when magnified 100 to 300 times.
Sand appears the same to all of us. However, Gary Greenberg, a scientist from Hawaii, has shown through these images that when magnified by a hundred-fold or more, each grain of sand exhibits its distinct characteristic. Using high-definition 3D lenses that he invented, Dr. Greenberg took these pictures "to show people how ordinary things are truly extraordinary when you look from a new point of view". Bear in mind that sand compositions vary depending on where they are from.14. A "Split Lobster", which is half male and half female.
No, this is not a photoshopped image. This is a split-colored lobster that has a condition known as gynandromorphy. This means it is half male, half female. In this particular specimen's case, the blue side is the female one and the brown side is the male one. Amazingly, this rare genetic variation happens in only about 1 out of every 50 million lobsters.15. This is not a painting, but a view of the sun via a UV Lens by NASA.
At first glance, the picture above appears to be a painting. However, this is actually a series of unusual eruptions from the outermost atmosphere of the Sun that was captured by a team of astronomers using NASA's three Sun-gazing spacecraft in 2013. According to the team, a series of fast puffs, that took place over a period of three days, forced the slow ejection of an enormous burst of plasma from the sun's atmosphere