A gecko guest joined Bonnie Marsh for dessert during her Hawaiian vacation. It scampered down from the resaturant wall, licked the plate, then ran off. Marsh, 66, got into digital photography three years ago—but has taken pictures since first picking up a Brownie at age 12.
Gypsum is relatively soft—as minerals go—and its sheetlike layers can be peeled with a fingernail or damaged by a clumsy kick. But for cavers climbing in a web of crystals, there is still the risk of a painful fall. Clusters of younger crystals along the walls and floor are angular and jagged, their edges as sharp as broken glass.
David Liittschwager photographed more than 600 individuals, not counting the tens of thousands of shrimplike hatchlings and other plankton drifting through the cube one moonless night. Biocode researchers are conducting DNA sequencing on the collection, part of a larger effort to assign unique identifies to each species.
Twenty motors animate a cutting-edge bionic arm that mimics a flesh-and-blood limb with unprecedented accuracy. Users control it via nerve impulses. It even has sensors that register touch.
In Kallang Riverside Park swirls of color trace the flight paths of remote-controlled kites equipped with LED lights. Members of the Singapore Night Flyer Kite Club meet here to enjoy the unique aircraft, which were invented in 2000 by native Michael Lim. "This is some kind of new nightlife," he says, "much healthier than computer games."
Bleached by high water temperatures, this bubble-tipped anemone is largely devoid of the algae that provide color as well as energy from photosynthesis. Though stressed, it will likely survive and continue to serve its clownfish.
Premnas biaculeatus (spine-cheek clownfish); Entacmaea quadricolor; Papua New Guinea
Mantled in winter white, 9,176-foot-tall Mount Ruapehu (foreground) reigns over Tongariro National Park. Conical Ngauruhoe and broad Tongariro beyond shed their snow cover when summer comes, but the cold lock on Ruapehu never breaks, making Crater Lake one of the most active volcanic crater lakes perpetually surrounded by snow and ice in the world.
Famous for its bone-crushing jaws, a Nile crocodile also dominates with the help of powerful legs, which allow it to strike quickly and pull down adult wildebeests.
Unrivaled predator, leopard-size T. carnifex stalked open forest and shrubland in search of prey, which probably included newly arrived humans. The continent's largest mammalian carnivore, weighing up to 350 pounds and up to 30 inches tall at the shoulder, this hunter likely thrived as an ambush artist. Bursting from undergrowth, it could throttle much larger game, grasping its prey with dagger-sharp thumb claws and finishing it off with its large front teeth.
Flowers bloom again on women reviving the distinctive Shanghai dress called the qipao. Under the influence of Western fashion in pre-Communist China, what had long been a baggy, modest dress evolved into this form-hugging sheath. After 1949, the qipao was banned, and proletarian drab prevailed. With Shanghai's revival, nostalgia for the city's stylish past has brought the blossoms back.
Looking like a lemon torte on a plate of petals, a lotus blooms in a Maryland garden pool. The chartreuse circle, three inches in diameter, is dotted with 23 seed holders and ringed by immature pollen sacs.
137963
Unrivaled predator, leopard-size T. carnifex stalked open forest and shrubland in search of prey, which probably included newly arrived humans. The continent's largest mammalian carnivore, wei ...
138087
Flowers bloom again on women reviving the distinctive Shanghai dress called the qipao. Under the influence of Western fashion in pre-Communist China, what had long been a baggy, modest dress e ...
This juvenile eyed the camera curiously as the Canyon pack ranged along a power-line corridor near Yellowstone's Norris Geyser Basin. The wolf has been demonized, defeated, and defended by humans. It must now renegotiate its place in a changed habitat.