Fans of Awsomeness Behold the Pseudoscorpion

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I found one of these guys in my lamp the other day. After getting some magnification on the little fella I knew I was looking at an arachnid. It had claws like a scorpion, but no scorpion tail, and it was spinning a bit of silk like a spider. A little searching on the internet gave me the name of this creature. It's a pseudoscorpion, and everything about it is great. Pseudoscorpions live all over the US, but you may never see them because their maximum size is about 2 centimeters. Psuedoscorpions live entirely on a diet of things I hate, like flea larvae, carpet mites, clothing moth larvae and small flies, which is the first cool thing I discovered about them. They grab these pests with their venomous claws and devour them. Yes, I said "venomous claws." The pseudoscorpion is a very efficient creature. Where a scorpion has to grab its prey and then try to sting with its tail, the pseudoscorpion has its venom conveniently located in the claws. Pretty clever, eh? (BTW, they can't actually bite humans. Just very small things.) Another great thing about pseudoscorpions: though wingless they get around by air travel. How? They hitch a ride on a winged insect, like this:

The best part of this is that the pseudoscorpion might even be able to eat her mode of transportation once she gets where she's going. 

Suffice it to say I have a new favorite arachnid. 

Giant Moths Hatch at Butterfly Sanctuary

With their stunning colours and 12in wingspan they're not the sort of insect you could ignore.

And now not just one but nine of the world's largest moths have hatched at a butterfly sanctuary in Gloucestershire.

The giant Atlas moths emerged from their chrysalises at Berkeley Castle Butterfly House.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1307182/Stand-aside-behe-moths-insect-world-arrived.html#ixzz0z3gebz45


Oddly, we found something only slightly smaller than this in Texas quite recently. 

Astronomy For Monday: Witch Head Nebula

Intense light streams from Rigel (bright star at right) across 40 light years of space to illuminate the Witch Head Nebula, then reflects another 775 light years to reach us. This nebula is very dim and is just barely above sky glow at a clear dark site. South is up in this image.
Rigel is B8 supergiant star with an absolute visual magnitude 40,000 times that of our Sun. Its surface temperature is 11,000 K.