The Eastern coral snake is considered to have the most lethal venom of any snake in North America. It’s a neurotoxin that paralyses its victim, causing death by asphyxiation or cardiac arrest. However, due to the snake’s small and curved fangs, the snake can only inflict its poison by a chewing motion. Since the snakes are not very aggressive, that means that fatal coral snake bites are almost completely unheard of. So unheard of, in fact, that the only company in the U.S. that makes coral snake antivenom has ceased production of it, and any remaining stock is fast reaching its expiry date. There hasn’t been a human death in the United States caused by a coral snake since 1967, so it’s probably a pretty safe bet, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the first guy in forty-odd years to get bitten and need it.
I spent some time over the weekend reformatting old posts from before I converted this blog to WordPress, and one of the posts I recovered was this one from just about three years ago that linked to a guy who had rigged up a little digital camera that he put on a collar around his cat’s neck. The camera took pictures at regular intervals, and then, when the cat came home, the guy could retrieve the camera and download the images. Sadly, that website is long gone, but this morning I ran across this new product called “Eyenimal”, which is basically the same concept, except now it’s a video camera that will take POV video of whatever your cat or dog is doing. And sure enough, here’s a sample:
They want €99 plus shipping (from France, apparently), so I don’t think I’ll run right out and buy one, but I *still* think it would be interesting to see where Harry goes on his outdoor travels, especially with video.
Via MetaFilter comes this link to a vast website from the British Film Institute dedicated to a century of wildlife and nature filmmaking called WildFilmHistory.org. The site has dozens of nature films available to watch, going all the way back to what is considered to be the “first” nature film, footage of crashing surf against a seawall in Dover, England filmed in 1895 right up to this award-winning film from 2003 about the African ecosystem called “The Elephant, The Emperor, and The Butterfly Tree”. Americans might be a little disappointed not to see more familiar material from American nature documentaries, but the breadth and depth of nature films from the BBC is awe-inspiring. Lots and lots of great stuff to explore on this site.
The British newspaper The Independent reports that stocks of North Sea cod are beginning to make a comeback due to strict conservation and fishing rules. While the amount of reproductive stock is still only about a third of what marine biologists believe to be necessary to consider the fishery “recovered”, it is encouraging that the population is on the uptick, although the newspaper’s exhortation to go out and eat more cod is probably counterproductive to the whole process. Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, things continue to look bad for the Atlantic cod fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.
If you ever wondered why mountain goats have such immense horns, wonder no more:
