The unprecedented 2010 flooding in Pakistan resulted in more than a fifth of the country becoming submerged. As a result, millions of spiders climbed into trees to escape the rising floodwaters. The water took so long to recede that all the vegetation became covered in a thick mass of webbing.
On the bright side, these areas have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitos than would normally be present in areas with so much stagnant water.
Dominic Ehrler, 65, a retired investor, befriended a goose that began following him around Echo Park ten months ago and she now meets him every day at 8 a.m.
He said: “When she first started following me around like a dog I got goose bumps,” Ehrler said. “David Foster, one of the parks people here, finally introduced me to her. He said, ‘You know you’re being stalked! Her name is Maria.’”
Maria greets Ehrler when he rides his bright red motor scooter down the hill from his Figueroa Terrace condo and then she leads him around the lake as Ehrler pulls out a bag of tortillas retrieved from a store trash bin and feeds the park’s other geese.
Ehrler said Maria is very protective and will peck and bite at strangers who come too close to him. He said their daily encounters end with him riding off on his scooter and her following closely in the air until he circles back to the park and delays her with a fence.
Ehrler said he will follow Maria if the city follows through on plans to relocate her and the park’s other geese while Echo Park is renovated.
“They’re supposed to collect the birds and truck them to another lake. I plan to follow her there, because when you have a friend like this you don’t want to lose her,” he said.
Males and females of several monkey species urinate into their hands and then vigorously rub the fluid into their fur. Historically, scientists have posed various theories to explain this behavior, ranging from regulating body temperature to communicating aggression. Now, brain images of female capuchin monkeys have revealed that male urine sends sexual signals.
In an absolutely incredibly feat of engineering, Libya has tapped into an aquifer to change its topography – turning sand into soil. The 26-year, $20 billion project is nearly finished.
The ocean currents in the North Pacific form a swirling vortex of water that collects all the trash thrown into the Ocean off the US West Coast. This has resulted in a huge floating pile of garbage in the middle of the ocean, as big as Texas.
41 year old paleoseismologist Masanobu Shishikura was expecting the recent tsunami in Japan. His studies of ancient earth layers persuaded him that every 450 to 800 years, colliding plates in the Pacific have triggered waves that devastated areas around Sendai, in Miyagi Prefecture, as well as in Fukushima Prefecture. He belives this will occur again in the relatively near future.
Volcanologists Dario Tedesco and Ken Sims descended deep into Nyiragongo, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, located in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tadesco and Sims hope to gather data that could help predict an eruption, which would completely devestate the surrounding area with a population of one million.
Yesterday it was announced that 19 patients in Alabama hospitals were infected with serratia marcescens bacteria after being administered contaminated intravenous fluid. Nine of these patients have died.
It's Interesting 
