Discovery Science 🧬

Iguanofall in Florida: Thousands of reptiles suddenly fell asleep, filling the entire city. What happened? Frost and sunshine, a wonderful day! Palm trees gently rustle their leaves, freshly fallen snow lies all around, and thousands of iguanas lie motionless under the snow - beauty! Welcome to Florida on January 31, 2026, which has transformed from beautiful sunny tropics into a living surrealist painting in just one day. It was on this day that a particularly powerful Arctic cold front reached the tropical regions of the United States and brought there subzero temperatures with snow and freezing rain for the first time in 15 years. Considering how unprepared local residents are for the cold, we can say that people escaped with little blood. Several hypothermia and car accidents, paralyzed traffic and burst pipes - that’s all the problems. The animal world had it much worse, because a significant part of it consists of cold-blooded animals. And they very poorly tolerate temperatures below 10°C. First, a strong drowsiness rolls over them, then their muscles stiffen and reptiles and amphibians fall into a stupor. And yet, many of them managed to navigate correctly. Alligators and frogs hid in the water that had not had time to cool, toads and lizards dived into the forest floor and cooled down there, in relative safety. But the iguanas could not escape. When the frost hit, they were all on the trees, and so, when their muscles became stiff, the animals began to crumble to the ground, like overripe fruit. And they fell by the thousands. To save the lives of the cold-stunned lizards, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission issued a special temporary order allowing anyone to remove iguanas from the wild and take them to special centers deployed throughout the region. But this was done not to save the freezing animals, but to euthanize them. The fact is that green iguanas in Florida are an invasive and extremely dangerous species that cause enormous damage to local farms and wildlife. Therefore, the state government got involved and decided to take advantage of the moment to destroy them. The “harvest” of iguanas collected in this way turned out to be extremely rich; local residents reported that they collected 50-100 iguanas per hour. On the second day of the disaster, the commission reported 5,195 iguanas euthanized. Fortunately for the iguanas, the frost in Florida lasted only until February 4, and now it is stable at +15°C. By local standards, this is still freezing, but the life of the iguanas is no longer in danger, and they can calmly restore the thinned population. While people are still counting losses from the snow disaster. Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

White Spider Crab: In Australia, even the flowers want to kill you. Poisonous flower dweller In principle, Australia is not such a dangerous country for life. Just inspect your clothes before you put them on, check your bed for uninvited critters, and scan the area around you while you're walking. Oh, and I almost forgot - don’t smell the white and yellow flowers, poisonous chameleon spiders live on them! By the standards of other Australian creepy crawlies, white spider crabs look surprisingly normal. Well, yes, they know how and love to walk sideways, just like real crabs, but it’s even cute. Otherwise, they are spiders like spiders. Moderately small, no more than 3 centimeters in length, white and yellow animals sit on flowers and wait for pollinating insects - this is unprecedented, here and in Russia there are plenty of them. But the first impression is deceptive, we don’t have such spiders, and that makes me happy. Each white spider crab has glands with a powerful paralyzing venom that can almost instantly paralyze a butterfly or bee of comparable size to a spider. And although a person is somewhat larger than a butterfly, a spider bite can give him nausea, dizziness and swelling at the site of the bite for the next couple of hours. This is not fatal at all, but, you see, it’s not very pleasant. At the same time, it is quite difficult to detect the spider, because it is a bit of a chameleon. Yes, the white spider crab is indeed born white, but in the future the color of its integument directly depends on which flower the arachnid is registered on. After all, the cells of its body are able to produce yellow pigments and will continue to produce them until the color of the spider’s exoskeleton is equal to the color of the flower. And if the spider, by the will of fate, moves to a white flower, the skin cells will quickly break down the excess pigment, and it will again become almost invisible. Thanks to its adaptive camouflage, the paralysis spider has spread throughout eastern Australia. And he especially fell in love with the cities and suburbs, where generous and kind people massively planted yellow and white flowers in huge quantities. Which, however, does not prevent him from biting the hand that feeds him from time to time, much to the displeasure of these very people. Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

Selection of cool photos number 8: 1. Ophiura head of the Gorgon. A relative of starfish. A creepy echinoderm with hundreds of small tentacles. 2. Black malacost. A deep-sea predator with a forward-firing mouth. 3. Dwarf elephants of Borneo. Almost 2 times smaller than Indian elephants, they rarely weigh more than 2 tons. 4. Grolar. Hybrid of polar and brown bear. Such individuals are becoming more common due to the fact that warming forces bears from different climate zones to intersect more often. 5. Bumblebee Hive! 6. A bunch of fish stuck in the whale shark’s mouth. I hope she's okay... 7. Nest of social weavers. These African birds live in huge colonies and often completely take over trees or human buildings. 8. Gaur. A wild and powerful cow from the jungles of India. Record holders for weight among artiodactyls. They can gain 1500 kg, which is much more than even bison. 9. A kind bird thinks that her son is simply overweight, but this is an arrogant cuckoo nest parasite. 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

r the most clumsy mating among mammals or not. And one more joke. Due to the fact that the giraffe is often the highest point in the savannah, every year 1-2 cases are recorded that they are simply knocked down by lightning during a thunderstorm. - - - - - We have a huge group, which is 11 years old and there are many zoologists who write tons of text every day from the field in which they are specialists. Due to VK’s failed policy towards authors, all this, unfortunately, rests only on rare advertising and your support. You can support the stability of our nervous system with a minimum subscription of 100 rubles per month. You can request support directly through the button in this post. Thank you! 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

Giraffe: Daily Hell. Consequences of a long neck A giraffe is not just a cow at maximum speed, but a complexly structured big thing, whose entire body is designed not to die from its own main feature - growth. The life of a giraffe is difficult and dangerous, starting from birth. After 15 long months of languishing in his mother’s belly, the baby is thrown into this cruel world from a height of 2 meters. Falling from a height at birth does look dramatic, but it is a normal process - the fall helps break the umbilical cord and stimulates the first breath. Cubs are adapted to this. But for an adult giraffe, life in Africa is not all sugar. A giraffe cannot hide from a predator in the open spaces of the savannah. That's why animals don't sleep. At all. The only thing the poor guys can afford is a ten-minute nap so that, if anything happens, they can immediately scurry away (photo 2). There may be several such smoke breaks, but, of course, this cannot be called a full-fledged sleep. During watering, the spotted one is also vulnerable. Despite the length of its neck, the giraffe is not able to reach the ground. Therefore, the animal has to learn the basics of ballerina art - stretching and plasticity (photo 3). While the unfortunate giraffe is standing in a crouch at the watering hole, stretched out on the twine, his enemies threaten him from behind. Therefore, our hero can not drink for weeks. But if the African cow has already reached the water, then minus 38 liters from the river is like from a bush. And so that the giraffe does not suddenly pass out during a watering hole due to pressure drop in the head, nature endowed the animal with a 12-kilogram heart. It pumps up to 60 liters per minute. As a bonus, there is blood that is several times thicker than ours. In order to survive in such harsh conditions, giraffes gather in herds. True, zoologists still do not understand by what concepts their families live. In groups you can find individuals of different varieties: old people, young people, men, women. Fights in such herds are not uncommon. Older individuals regularly give the young animals a beating as a preventive measure. During the mating season, the fighting becomes much tougher. The main weapon in ritual battles... giraffe heads. Having twisted their heads properly (luckily their necks allow them), the fighters hit each other with their horns, which no longer seem so harmless (photo 4). Fights do not end with lethal results. But in the literal sense, a giraffe can still overwhelm an opponent by writing it properly into the jug. The failed fighter passes out, receives a concussion and moral humiliation until the start of the next mating season. The winner gets a jackpot of females and urine therapy. No, this is not grandma's way of healing wounds. Since giraffes do not have passports to prove their age and egg cycle, they have to do such crazy things. By tasting the lady's urine, guys determine whether she is ready fo

sen their possessions in their youth, eagles defend their lands for decades! The elderly bird carries out border patrol not alone, but together with his other half. Eagles are monogamous birds; they choose a mate once and for life. And the old bird has so many hunting techniques that he is definitely not in danger of starving to death! So this parable of yours is bullshit from a biological point of view, albeit with a moral one! Author: Egor Churakov Editor: Elizaveta Isaeva 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

At the age of 40, the eagle breaks its beak and tears out all its feathers. Is this story true? There is a legend that gives you goosebumps. The Legend of the Old Eagle. By the age of forty, a powerful bird turns into a helpless creature. The feathers become too heavy to fly, the beak is too long to grasp prey, and the claws are too large to perch on branches. Only a painful rebirth saves the poor fellow from agony. A proud eagle goes to the mountains. He smashes his beak on rocks, crushes his claws into dust, and rips feathers from his chest. He waits 150 days and soars into the sky, finding himself again, like a phoenix! A beautiful parable. But still curious, how true is this inspiring description of the brutal overcoming of the midlife crisis? Spoiler: 0%. Nothing. Not a single word of the parable corresponds to reality. The gag begins with the very first lines of the legend. From the age of the bird. Do you know what an eagle looks like at the age of forty? Like a pile of bones crumbling to dust! The retirement age for the symbol of democracy is within 20-30 years, which means that he simply will not live to reach the age in the parable. What about the claws and beak? They probably grow throughout their lives, and this can become a problem. Yes, but under certain conditions. Lock the bird in a room with soft walls and feed it exclusively puree from a spoon. In this case, the beak and claws will actually grow so large that they will begin to interfere with the bird. Birds' claws and beaks are made of keratin, a tissue similar to our nails. In the wild, the whole world is a file for birds. The rock on which the golden eagle perched, the pine branch supporting the eagle, the bones of the swallowed victim, a convenient stone, as if specially created to clean the beak on it. The corneas grow constantly just to keep up with this constant abrasion. The plumage of birds also does not become heavier over time, because it changes regularly. Molting occurs once a year. But don’t expect to find an eagle as naked as a plucked chicken in the wilderness. The whole process happens gradually. First, some feathers fall out and grow back, then others. To lose all clothing and the ability to fly is tantamount to voluntary death. Here we gradually approach the thesis about 150 days. You see, no known flying bird can live for 5 months without food. Flight is an extremely energy-consuming thing. It takes a lot of calories to lift a carcass off the ground. That’s why the body of flying birds works like a stove—if you forget to add wood on time, it will cool down. To be fair, large birds of prey need less food than, for example, sparrows. Those need reinforcements every half hour. Large birds are able to survive without food for up to two weeks thanks to their fat reserves. But not longer! What do old eagles really do? Live your best life! The bird of prey, wise from experience, has its own territory. No one will risk crossing it: having cho