A science, technology, engineering or math word defined and explained every day.
- BROWSE WORDS BY TOPIC
MAP OF VISITORS WORLDWIDE
-
Why Are So Many Deep Sea Creatures Red?
Red light does not reach ocean depths, so deep-sea animals that are red actually...
-
Happy Mother’s Day!
Here’s a great photo of UCLA’s Anna Fisher: the first mother in space.
-
Giant Asian Mantis (Hierodula patellifera)
by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr.
Pu’er, Yunnan, China
See more Chinese praying... -
every 17 years these cicadas come out of the ground, by the billions, along the east coast of the u.s. they are due any day now.
they have sex for...
-
Been sketching things - will reupload over at dA eventually with better editing of two pages. It’s nearly finals; I’m lazy.
Cicadas are cool.
Even the ‘easy’ etymologies can be complicated: there is a family of birds native to the southern regions of Africa known as the musophagidae, or banana eaters. Word purists will tell you that proper word formation won’t mix Latin and Greek roots, but in this case, well, it’s even more complicated. Musa is a Late Latinization of the Arabic mauz (موز), which was introduced to European sensibilities in book form with the publication of the 11th century Arabic encyclopedia The Canon of Medicine, which was translated to Latin. The -phagous suffix comes from the Greek word meaning eater of, from phagein meaning to eat, literally to have a share of food. Turacos (such as the one pictured) are medium sized colorful birds-although they have been placed with cuckoo birds in the Cuculiformes order, recent research has lead away from this, and they may be reassigned to a different order.
Image of a Guinea Turaco, aka Green Turaco (Tauraco persa),South Africa, by Ian Wilson.
