Kingdom Plantae - Man Eating Plants

In celebration of Halloween I thought I would present to you all the mysterious world of Cryptobotany. Now I'm sure you all know who Cryptozoologists are, the people who scour the world looking for Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Jersey Devil, the Skunkman, the Chupacabra, Dragons, Unicorns, and the epitomized Loch Ness Monster and kin. Cryptobotanists on the other hand look far and wide searching for the legendary plants of nightmares, most notably the elusive man eating plant that people have talked about but never seen. (Besides that there isn't a whole lot of other stuff they're looking for).

Of course no one has ever seen such a cryptid, hence why it is still considered a cryptid, but the hunt remains. The closest thing found to a man eating plant is a large pitcher plant found in Borneo, that can only grow to a size of a little over a foot. This works for some small mammals, but even a baby would be able to walk, or crawl, away from the fight. The most notable man-eating trees have emerged from stories in Madagascar, where there is still much unexplored terrain, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia. While it is highly likely that no such tree, plant, or shrub shall be discovered, the idea of its existence helps stir up ideas for fictional monsters.


UPDATE: It has come to my attention that perhaps the only reason why they have never been discovered is because anyone who ventured near was eaten. It's a possibility but highly unlikely and we'll stick with the theory that this is just the Nessie of Kingdom Plantae.

Astrologia - I've Got a Golden Record

Wow, sorry for not updating this in forever, but it has been super busy here and I never get a chance to write a decent article. But nevertheless here is the first Astrologia article. Now if you're wondering, it article was originally entitled Astronomia, which is Spanish for Astronomy, but now that I'm studying Latin I've decided to switch the title. Oh, and the original article was written in both Spanish and English, but I'm just going to stick with English for now.

So I just attended a lecture on the search for extraterestrial life and it was extrememly cool. Now, it wasn't about Roswell, alien encounters, and little people on Mars, but rather how we are going about searching for life and what could happen once we find it. One of the real interesting little subjects of the lecture was about the golden records that were placed aboard the Voyager spacecrafts. Voyager I and II, which were launched in 1977, are currently heading towards the boundary between our solar system and the rest of the galaxy. What you need to keep in mind however is that our solar system is BIG, and they have a ways to go before they leave the heliosphere. Carl Sagan, a big time name in astronomy proposed to add two gold plated records to the probes in the event of extraterrestrial life finding them.

These records, which have instructions on how to play them (see image), will be able to last for a billion years out in space. This is a good thing because normal records, compact discs, and other means of storage would decay long before they made the multi-million year journey to another star system. The gold plating keeps it intact, and with the addition of a uranium coating, the 'aliens' should be able to determine the age of record. The discs included images of various stuff here, both nature and humanity, along with a bunch of songs from a variety of different eras and countries, greetings in 55 languages, sounds commonly heard on Earth (i.e. cars, whales, rain), a couple printed messages, and an hour of recorded brainwaves.

Now remember, this is all assuming that sometime in the vast future other beings, not necessarily those that we model in the typical bipedal human form, but anything out there. Perhaps life does exist out there that doesn't need water. Perhaps life exists that isn't carbon based but rather boron based. Perhaps what we see as normal is about as odd to them as the creatures of the deep. Or perhaps, we are alone in the universe. A fluke a nature. A mistake. But we will continue our search and perhaps one day a probe will wander into our galaxy with a golden record filled with the sights and sounds of an ancient alien civilization.

Amazing Animals - Deep Sea Roly Poly

Wow, yeah it has been awhile since my last post. That's because it has been so busy here that I just haven't had time to really work on any topics. This means that if you have something you want to write about just go ahead and submit it, any length. But alas I finally brought back one of the classic articles featured in the original [rq} - Amazing Animals. Though today's is on Bathynomus giganteus, which is essentially one a giant version of those pill pugs, a.k.a. roly-polys'.

Known as Giant Isopods, these creatures live two thousand feet below the waves at the ocean floor. In a similar fashion to their terrestrial counterparts, will curl up into a ball when threatened. Their protective shell acts like an armor suit and is pretty strong. Growing to be up to sixteen inches in length, they can barely fit into your hand as opposed to on your fingertip. Because they live at such depths in the deep abyss, they don't have a lot of options as to what to eat. Their primary diet consists of the 'marine snow' which is basically whatever falls from the upper levels of the ocean. This is mainly made up of dead animal parts, such as krill, but anything that has any nutritional value, they'll eat. Their mouths are specifically designed to take whatever they can find and shred it to bite sized pieces. Oh, and they will occasionally hunt for smaller invertebrates that also live on the sea floor.