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Nature

The Imagination at Work

Long before they saw animals from faraway places, European artists imagined what they might look like, from tales they heard from others. Vincze Miklós writes about the art of the unfamiliar — See, How Europeans Imagined Exotic Animals Centuries Ago, Based on Hearsay.

Great Lakes Almost Completely Frozen

NOAA/NASA Yesterday March 4, the Great Lakes hit 91 percent ice cover, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. That’s the most ice since the record of 94.7 percent was set in 1973, the lab said in a statement. Via Almost Completely Frozen, Great Lakes Near Record @ LiveScience.

Honey Bee Swarm

Embedded below is a film about a honey bee swarm. Sometimes bees are a metaphor for human pursuits (e.g., of social cooperation, collectivization, etc.), but that’s not my point here. The film is simply interesting to me as a documentary about animal life. Enjoy.

What Might Mars Have Been Like?

NASA scientists have tried to imagine how that planet might have looked when it once had flowing water (as they believe it did): In a dramatic new video out of the NASA Goddard Conceptual Image Lab, animators conceive of what Mars may have looked like when its atmosphere and surface temperature allowed for water. The…