A. Kachmar

Orchid mantises, as the name suggests, look a lot like orchid flowers. The insects trade the drab colors and sharp angles of their cousins for bright floral shades and a rounder, softer shape, giving them an uncanny resemblance to delicate petals. When Western scientists first encountered them in Southeast Asia in the late 18th century, more a few mistook them for carnivorous plants at first glance. 

Naturalists soon began describing the insect as an aggressive mimic that uses its floral disguise to hide among orchids and devour bugs that come to pollinate them. Over the last 200 years, this idea has become enshrined as fact in textbooks and nature documentaries. There’s one hitch, though—there’s little to no evidence that it’s true. 

The bug was and still is rare, and with few specimens to study, 18th and 19th century scientists based their conclusions on just a handful of observations and accounts from travelers. Whether or not the mantis actually mimics flowers and which flower it bases its supposed disguise on are questions that haven’t been experimentally tested until now, and a series of recent studies suggests that we’ve had the mantis’ M.O. pretty wrong this whole time. 

The naturalists of yore had at least one thing right. In 2013, Australian biologists (including Marie Herberstein, who has done lots of cool work on animal liars) confirmed that the orchid mantis really does mimic flowers to attract prey, and it’s the first animal known to do that. But a pair of follow-up studies by the same researchers show that the mantis’ hunting strategy doesn’t quite work the way we thought it did. 

For one thing, the mantises don’t need to hide among flowers for their mimicry to work, and they can attract prey just fine on their own. In one study, the researchers found that the mantises don’t have a preference for hunting near flowers or on plain green leaves, and that their hunting success doesn’t differ between the two spots. Being near flowers isn’t necessary to grab a meal, but it does benefit a mantis because abundant flowers mean there will be more prey around. 

The real surprise, though, is that the orchid mantis doesn’t look much like an orchid to anyone but us. In a second study, the team used what scientists know about animals’ visual systems to compare the mantis’ shape and color to different flowers from the perspective of different prey bugs and predatory birds. While early accounts of the orchid mantis often compared it to a handful of plant species that grow in the same forests, the study found that from the point of view of the animals that it’s trying to fool, the mantis doesn’t resemble an orchid or any other specific flower. Instead, it has a generalized “flower-like” appearance that isn’t a perfect mimic of a single species, but a close approximation of several different ones. This might be embarrassing for generations of scientists who thought they knew a thing or two about orchid mantises, but it works out alright for the bugs, the researchers say, because it allows them to fool a wider range of prey and its own predators. 

Here's a freebie fact: mental_floss has an Instagram! You can get mind-blowing facts directly on your feed just by following us. Want a taste of what you're missing? Check out these 46 facts directly from our account.

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Even though water slides combine the essential and the unavoidable—water and gravity—our species' survival does not hinge on these fixtures of summertime amusement. This hasn't stopped humankind from exploring and perfecting the form, as a perusal through the U.S. patent office's extensive list of water slide patent applications will show.

Within these applications exists a surprising subset of American art: drawings of men, women, and children enjoying water slides. These haunting depictions are so evocative, they deserve to be isolated from the inventions they were created to accompany.

Here are thirteen terrifying examples.

1. The Ecstasy is Tattooed on His Face

Patent Number: US 5213547 A

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: The euphoric gentleman pictured above is enjoying the "Method and Apparatus for Improved Water Rides by Water Injection and Flume Design." This patent is for a nozzle (or series of nozzles) that shoots water in order to push water slide riders at a higher velocity. Clearly it's working: this man has achieved nirvana.

2. Gleefully Sacrificing Oneself To the Shark Gods

Patent Number: US 20100137068 A1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: This is a diagram of a "Water slide With Three-Dimensional Visual Effects." The invention requires that the slider wear a pair of "three dimensional goggles" in order to fully achieve the desired effect of maritime catastrophe.

3. Flush The Featureless Creature. End Its Misery

Patent Number: US 6354955 B1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: This is a "water slide bowl," and it's about to swallow that blank slate of a man whole. Who hasn't had this nightmare before?

4. No One Can Hear Your Screams—The Water Park Feeds On Fear

Patent Number: US 6375578 B1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: The men in this illustration are dueling on the "Two-way Interactive Water Slide," which allows riders to trigger sensors that spray onlookers, who then return the favor with hoses from their adjacent stations. You see, water parks are twisted playpens of rage. The man on the left is clearly in pain, and his torturer's lack of mercy is frightening. This is a wet and wild version of the Milgram experiment.

5. This is What True Love Looks Like

Patent Number: US 4196900 A

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: This is a "simplified support construction" for water slides, sturdy enough to support Brad and his girlfriend Debbie. They've been dating for two years and still manage to keep things fresh thanks to their local water park.

6. No Matter How Many Times He Uses The Slide, He Can Never Get Clean

Patent Number: US 5839964 A

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: This "Water Toy Release Mechanism" works like the ol' bucket over the door trick, except it drenches you in perpetuity thanks to a garden hose attachment and self-righting trough. The child in the illustration cares not for historical droughts, and he wastes gallons of potable water for fun. He has never been happier.

7. "My God, It's Full of Stars"

Patent Number: US 20090111592 A1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: This person is traveling through the "Amusement Slide with Lighting Effect," and he or she is so happy, he or she has reverted to his or her most elemental form. A return to the womb, if you will.

8. It Craves Velocity; It Can Sense You

Patent Number: US 20140135137 A1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?:The faceless creature is careening through a "Water Ride Attraction Incorporating Rider Skill." He can control his raft and maneuver around the slide to trigger sensors that transmit data to the handheld devices of nearby millennials:

The faceless man is like a king to them.

9. Those Brave Enough to Traverse the Lane May Claim the Bowling Pins

Patent Number: US 5101752 A

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: This illustration depicts a girl gracefully riding a body board. If she looks locked in deep concentration, it's because this isn't your average body board; it "conforms to the contours of a user's body having a generally frustoconical perimeter that circumscribes at least two chambers that are connected for pivoting movement with respect to one another."

10. Marxist Theory: Let the Machine Absorb You

Patent Number: US 1648196 A

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: The image above is from a very early water slide patent, filed in 1925. "While I am aware that slides are used by bathers and swimmers," inventor Gabriel E. Rohmer writes, "no apparatus has come to my attention which as a constant stream of water spraying the slide surface of the apparatus." We may have Mr. Rohmer to thank not only for water slides, but for water slide patent illustrations as well.

11. He Likes it Here. It Feels Safe

Patent Number: US 20060252563 A1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: The "Water Slide Audio Visual Entertainment System," in which the above child is sitting, is a rather complicated invention. To confuse things even further, please look at this out-of-context image from the same patent application:

12. He's Been Doing This All Day. The Neighbors Are Concerned

Patent Number: US 6361445 B1

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: The design for this waterslide may be simple, but the man shown using it contains multitudes.

13. Walking is Hard, Sliding is Easy

Patent Number: US 3923301 A

What Exactly Is Going On Here?: A man with double-jointed ankles is taking a serene cruise down a waterslide built directly into a hill. The entire scene is rather beautiful—this should be hanging in a museum.

The unique thing about the moonfish isn’t the fact that it's as big as a car tire or comically round. It’s its blood. The opah, or moonfish, is the first species of fish identified by scientists that’s warm-blooded. 

While tuna and some sharks can temporarily retain a bit of heat in the muscles they use for swimming [PDF], their bodies aren't fully warm-blooded. By contrast, the camera-shy and relatively little-studied opah keeps its whole body, especially its brain, at temperatures higher than its surrounding environment, as researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California discovered. This, they write in the journal Science, makes the opah “distinctively specialized to exploit cold, deeper waters” up to 1300 feet below the surface. 

Blood vessels carrying warm blood from the fish’s heart are located directly next to those that carry cold blood in the gills, forming a counter-current heat exchange that works kind of like a car radiator. The warm blood from the fish’s core helps warm up the cool blood that has been closer to the cold water in the gills (where it absorbs oxygen).  

This makes the big fish a fearsome predator. Thanks to the warm blood flowing throughout its body, it likely has better eye and brain function than its cold-blooded counterparts. While most other fish in cold environments move relatively sluggishly, the moonfish is active and agile, with more muscle power and stamina to chase down its deep-water prey. 

On a scale of one to mundane, relighting a candle with a match sits just a little higher than watching paint dry. But as with almost anything, film a candle at 2000 frames per second, and things get much more interesting — and weird.

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Of all the fish in the world, only a few have the capacity to maintain warmth in specific parts of their bodies. But as new research reveals, the deepwater opah has the unprecedented ability to circulate heated blood throughout its entire body, making it the only known fully warm-blooded fish.

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Robots are poised to revolutionize surgery, as demonstrated by this astounding—and even touching—promotional video showcasing the da Vinci Surgical System as it sutures a damaged grape.

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On a recent episode of Through the Wormhole, host Morgan Freeman explains how cats have evolved over the years and how, unlike other animals, they largely domesticated themselves into the wonderful creatures they currently are.

Nature uses essentially the same genetic recipe to turn wild animals into domestic creatures, but did ancient man attempt to domesticate a wild cat or did these animals do it themselves?

reddit user bakesnorlax snapped a picture of a staircase at their school campus featuring helpful lanes separating walkers, runners, and texters. Though bakesnorlax only refers to the school as “UVU” in other postings to the thread, reddit user Imbasaur indicates that the picture is from the student wellness center at Utah Valley University.

image via bakesnorlax

via reddit

My Garbage Cat Wakes Me Up At 3AM Every Day is a simple video game by Will Herring where the player romps around as a cat and tries to wake up their owner by knocking stuff over. The game was inspired by Herring’s own “garbage” cat that wakes him up on the regular.

GIF via Will Herring

via Kill Screen

The Japanese House Reinvented by Philip Jodidio
Monacelli Press, 2015
Hardcover, 288 pages



In the introduction to Philip Jodidio's new book highlighting fifty recent Japanese houses, the author mentions that Japan and the United States share a preference for single-family houses over apartments. While not a surprising statement, the similarities end there, since each country's geography, culture, economics and other factors have created widely divergent contemporary designs. Japan, in particular, is full of houses that scream "Japan," most of them found in the tight confines of Tokyo, like the project gracing the cover (Atelier Tekuoto's "Monoclinic"). But, as Jodidio's selection of houses shows, there is more to single-family residential architecture in Japan that idiosyncratic vertical houses in tight confines, even as some of those are found in these pages.

One of the numerous US-Japan differences in single-family houses is size, with those in the United States averaging around 2,600 square feet, exactly double Japan's average of 1,300 square feet. It's not surprising to find numerous houses in this book that are under that average, many with three digits rather than four. But there are a surprising number of large houses, from a 2,000-square-foot house in Osaka designed by Tadao Ando to a 13,475-square-foot (nope, that's not a typo) house in Tokyo designed by ARTechnic Architecture. Before you start thinking that I'm gung-ho for Japanese houses being as big as American ones (I'm not), it is interesting to see how large houses in Japans are designed.


[Shigeru Ban: Villa in Sengokuhara]

One house that can serve as an example is Shigeru Ban's 4,875-square-foot Villa in Sengokuhara, which is like a letter P in plan with squared-off, metal-clad walls on the exterior and rounded glass walls facing the interior courtyard. It's definitely not a house that could be pulled off in expensive Tokyo, much less Kyoto or Osaka; the rural setting in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, is ideal for the extra-large house. Even though the house is large on square footage (the site area is nearly 20,000 square feet, or almost half an acre), the "rooms" that ring the courtyard are well-scaled, thanks to the narrow width of the plan. Instead of Great Rooms, as many bloated US houses like to incorporate, the grandness of the design comes from the openness of the rooms through sliding glass walls to the courtyard at its center. (As a point of contrast, Jodidio includes Ban's Yakushima Takatsuka Lodge, a small lodge of only 355 square feet.)



Two other large houses in the book suit my fancy, but for what they do with their size, not simply for being large. TNA Architects' Gate Villa, like Ban's Villa in Sengokuhara, is large (4,080 square feet), but its outdoor space is about three times as large. The house is based on a 23-foot-square grid – 4 modules by 5 modules – but only 7 of the 20 modules in the grid are used for enclosed space; the other 13 are open spaces that range from one module to six contiguous modules. The other house is Mount Fuji Architects Studio's Shore House, smaller at 3,210 square feet, which has a roof terrace for outdoor space but makes a double-height space lined with open shelves the main feature. Perhaps it's just the bookworm in me salivating, but that house is just one of the many marvelous designs found in this book, all thoroughly Japanese but more varied that what we've come to expect from the plethora of books on the island's contemporary houses.

Multi-port USB chargers come in an almost unlimited variety of styles and colors, but this is the first time I’ve seen chargers made from actual pipe fittings. Pipe Works offers a unique collection of USB chargers, lamps and furniture that have been built using casted pipe fittings. These chargers have a cool industrial vibe and feature from two to eight USB ports and splash proof rubber plugs that protect the USB ports when they are not in use. Prices for the USB chargers range from ฿1,900.00 up to ฿4,800.00. Converting Thai Bhat currency to US dollars makes the price $57.71 for a two port charger up to $143.26 for the eight port charger. Note that they also charge sales tax and shipping. When I did a test order, the shipping for one to four items ended up being a flat $46.34, while the sales tax was a few dollars more depending on the items. When it’s all said and done, the prices for these unique USB chargers are pretty spendy. But they certainly do look cool. For more info or to order, visit Pipe Works.

Filed in categories: Cables, Batteries and Chargers, News

Tagged: USB charger

Go industrial with these USB chargers from Pipe Works originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on May 18, 2015 at 12:00 pm.

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Glass artist Kiva Ford draws from his vast experience in scientific glassblowing to create perfect miniatures of wine glasses, beakers, and ribbon-striped vases, some scarcely an inch tall. A member of the American Scientific Glassblowers Society, Kiva creates instruments for scientists who require one-of-a-kind designs for various experiments. The same techniques and tools used for scientific equipment also apply to his artistic practice including the miniature works you see here, as well as larger sculptures, and ornate drinkware.

This week Kiva will be doing several demonstrations of both artistic and scientific glassblowing at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York as part of GlassFest. You can also purchase many of his miniatures on Etsy, or follow on Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions, Art is a Way, thnx Rachel!)

salon:

Student confronts Jeb Bush on George W’s legacy of unrest in the Middle East

Dogs Who Fail At Being Dogs

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMhw5MFYU0s)

actjustly:

This is too accurate.

Earn it, Procastinator Patch

inkandcayenne:

otterlybesotted:

missisanfi:

Cute Pallas’s kittens

my favorite part about these cats is they can look like this

but also like this

and this

and this

and this

and this

and this

A good umbrella should keep you dry during a downpour, but the practical accessory hasn't seen much improvement since its inception. The designers of Kazbrella patiently developed their product, focusing...

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Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Here’s a video of a catheter, placed in a femoral artery, going up to a person’s eye. Again, oh my god.

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Inspired by a dream about mantises, photographer and photographer Zana Briski created Reverence, an exhibit featuring photos, film, and music devoted to better understanding and appreciating these insects.

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(via gifsboom)