BeWowed

The Bonsai in the picture is a 3.5 mt (10 feet) Ficus retusa linn that's over 1000 years old. It is also known as the Crespi Ficus, because it is exhibited at the entrance of the Crespi Bonsai Museum in Milan, Italy. The owner of this museum, Luigi Crespi, fought for decades for this unique Bonsai tree, and finally got ownership in 1986.

This tree was carefully crafted by the Chinese masters, and once it got to Italy it was properly taken care of by a man called Shotaro Kawahara, a Bonsai master from Japan who carefully pruned the tree to maintain its shape.

Though there were negotiations between China and Italy about the ownership of this Ficus Bonsai tree, Italy managed to keep its prized Bonsai beauty!

Photographer: Alberto Ghizzi Panizza

Polydactyly or polydactylism (from Greek πολύς (polys) 'many', and δάκτυλος (daktylos) 'finger'), also known as hyperdactyly, is an anomaly in humans and animals resulting in supernumerary fingers and/or toes.

The armor now resides at a museum called the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. The museum consists of collected artifacts and the private art of the Menil family.

What a typhoon looks like from space (Typhoon Trami, 2018).

Credit: ISS, ESA/NASA-A.Gerst

I knew they were smart. I didn't know they were this strong.

Bibendum commonly referred to in English as the Michelin Man is the official mascot of the Michelin tire company. A humanoid figure consisting of stacked white tires, it was introduced at the Lyon Exhibition of 1894 where the Michelin brothers had a stand. He is one of the world's oldest trademarks still in active use. The slogan Nunc est bibendum ("Now is the time to drink") is taken from Horace's Odes. He is also referred to as Bib or Bibelobis.

While attending the Universal and Colonial Exposition in Lyon in 1894, Édouard and André Michelin noticed a stack of tires that suggested to Édouard the figure of a man without arms. Four years later, André met French cartoonist Marius Rossillon, popularly known as O'Galop, who showed him a rejected image he had created for a Munich brewery a large, regal figure holding a huge glass of beer and quoting Horace's phrase Nunc est bibendum. André immediately suggested replacing the man with a figure made from tires, and O'Galop adapted the earlier image into Michelin's symbol.

The 1898 poster showed him offering the toast Nunc est bibendum to his scrawny Brand X competitors with a glass full of road hazards, with the title and tag C'est à dire : À votre santé. Le pneu Michelin boit l'obstacle. The character's glass is filled with nails and broken glass, implying that Michelin tires will easily take on road hazards.

Bibendum's shape has changed over the years. O'Galop's logo was based on bicycle tires, wore pince-nez glasses with lanyard, and smoked a cigar. By the 1960s, Bibendum was shown running, often rolling a tyre as well, and no longer smoked. In 1998, his 100th anniversary, a slimmed-down version of him (sans glasses) was adopted. reflecting the lower-profile, smaller tires of modern cars. A computer-animated version of Bibendum has appeared in American television ads, with a pet puppy similar in appearance to him.

In September 2021 A Russian photographer (Dmitry Kokh) captured a fascinating series of photos showing polar bears that took over the abandoned buildings of a meteorological station on an island between Russia and Alaska. The island is located in the Chukchi Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean.

The osprey (Pandion haliaetus), also called sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk, is a diurnal, fish-eating bird of prey with a cosmopolitan range. It is a large raptor, reaching more than 60 cm (24 in) in length and 180 cm (71 in) across the wings. It is brown on the upperparts and predominantly greyish on the head and underparts.

The genus name Pandion derives from Pandíōn Πανδίων, the mythical Greek king of Athens and grandfather of Theseus, Pandion II. The species name haliaetus comes from Greek ἁλιάετος haliáetos "sea-eagle".

The osprey tolerates a wide variety of habitats, nesting in any location near a body of water providing an adequate food supply. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, although in South America it occurs only as a non-breeding migrant.

As its other common names suggest, the osprey's diet consists almost exclusively of fish. It possesses specialised physical characteristics and unique behaviour in hunting its prey. Its unique characteristics classify it in its own taxonomic genus, Pandion, and family, Pandionidae.

The osprey has several adaptations that suit its piscivorous lifestyle:

• reversible outer toes
• sharp spicules on the underside of the toes
• closable nostrils to keep out water during dives
• backward-facing scales on the talons which act as barbs to help hold its catch
• dense plumage which is oily and prevents its feathers from getting waterlogged.

The peacock "tail", is known as a train, consisting not of tail quill feathers, but highly elongated upper tail coverts. These feathers are marked with eyespots, best seen when a peacock fans his tail. The peacock tail produces colours by thin-film interference.

These tail feathers, or coverts, spread out in a distinctive train that is more than 60 percent of the bird’s total body length and boast colorful eye markings of blue, gold, red, and other hues.

The large train is used in mating rituals and courtship displays. It can be arched into a magnificent fan that reaches across the bird's back and touches the ground on either side.

Photographer Prasenjeet Yadav was taking pictures in the Western Ghats in 2015 when he captured this breathtaking shot!

When you think of top ocean predators, you probably think of sharks. That’s wrong!

Originally orcas, which are the largest members of the dolphin family, where called killer of whales. Then the name transformed into killer whales, leading to people to believe that they belong to the whale family... Well they actually eat whales and sharks as well!

The armadillo girdled lizard (Ouroborus cataphractus), also commonly known as the armadillo lizard, the armadillo spiny-tailed lizard, and the golden-armadillo lizard, is a species of lizard in the family Cordylidae.

The species is endemic to desert areas along the western coast of South Africa. It can be a light brown to dark brown in coloration. The underbelly is yellow with a blackish pattern, especially under the chin. Its size can range from 7.5 to 9 cm (3.0 to 3.5 in) in snout-vent length (SVL). It may grow to a maximum size of 20 cm (8 in) SVL.

A blazar is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet (a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light) directed towards an observer.

Blazars are powerful sources of emission across the electromagnetic spectrum and are observed to be sources of high-energy gamma ray photons.

Blazars are highly variable sources, often undergoing rapid and dramatic fluctuations in brightness on short timescales (hours to days).

In 2009, a team of astronomers using the Swift spacecraft used the luminosity of S5 0014+81 to measure the mass of its super-massive black hole. They found it to be about 10,000 times more massive than the black hole at the center of our galaxy, or equivalent to 40 billion solar masses

I would probably break my ankles if I tried that!

Arkys lancearius, the triangular spider, is an Australian spider belonging to the family Arkyidae. It is an ambush hunter, commonly found resting on leaves and ferns or hanging from just a few threads of silk.

The front two pairs of legs are large, suited for grabbing small insects, while the rear pairs of legs are much smaller.

The body length of males is about 5.5 millimetres (0.22 in), while that of females are around 8 millimetres (0.31 in).

Body colour varies from yellow or orange to red with pale jewel-like markings on the heart shaped abdomen.

Egg sacs are produced in January or February and are a deep pinkish cream colour. They are usually around 8 mm in diameter and are covered in lighter coloured threads. Each sac contains about 70 eggs, each 0.7 mm in diameter