Amazed at the discovery of this millipede species.

From LiveScience

A pale, thread-like creature found lurking in a California cave is a brand-new species of millipede.

The stringy arthropod has 414 legs and four “penises,” limbs that were converted over evolutionary time into structures that transfer sperm. Only a single specimen of the new species has been found, a male, so researchers don’t know what the females look like.

The millipede hails from a marble cavern called Lange Cave in Sequoia National Park. Researchers launched a major survey of caves in Sequoia and nearby Kings Canyon National Park that lasted from 2002 to 2004, with smaller follow-up excursions running from 2006 to 2009. During one of those excursions in October 2006, cave biologist Jean Krejca, now of Zara Environmental in Texas, discovered a skinny little millipede about 0.8 inches (20 millimeters) long. Krejca sent the specimen for analysis to millipede specialists Paul Marek of Virginia Tech and William Shear of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. [Gallery: Extreme Close-Ups of the New Millipede]

Learned about the fascinating animal called Okapi today.

From Wiki:

The okapi (/oʊˈkɑːpiː/; Okapia johnstoni) is agiraffid artiodactyl mammal native to the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. Although the okapi bears striped markings reminiscent of zebras, it is most closely related to the giraffe. The okapi and the giraffe are the only living members of the family Giraffidae.

Here’s a nice little video from National Geographic about it:

I am currently reading India: A History by John Keay, and was rather surprised to learn that the name Cambodia has Sanskrit roots.

From Wiki:

The name of Cambodia in the Khmer language is “Kampuchea” (Khmer: ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា; Preah Reachanachâk Kampuchea), which derives from Sanskrit Kambujadeśa (कम्बोजदेश; “land of Kambuja“). It is not unique to the modern kingdom of Cambodia: the same name (i.e. Kamboj/Kambuja) is also found in Burmese and Thai chronicles referring to regions within those kingdoms. In the Indian chronicles the Kambuja were a barbarian (in the sense of non-Indian) people in the area of modern Afghanistan. “The application to Southeast Asia has no ethnic content and does not imply any migration of peoples from the original Kambuja; the most likely explanation is that, when Indian traders and Brahmins came into contact with local populations some two thousand years ago, they gave them the names of regions which, in their view, were similarly marginal and remote: the peoples of Southeast Asia, like the barbarian Kamboja, had no castes, did not observe proper food prohibitions and had different rules for marriage.”^[1] An origin-myth recorded in theBaksei Chamkrong inscription, dated AD 947, derives Kambuja from Svayambhuva Kamboj, a legendary Indian sage who reached the Indochina peninsula and married a naga princess named Mera, thus uniting the Indian and local races. In this story Kambuja derives from Kambu+ja, and means “descendants of Kambu.”^[2]

Interesting theory to discuss over a couple of beers 🙂

Excerpt: 

Human hands are shorter and boxier than our ape relatives, and our thumbs are proportionally longer in relation to the other fingers. This gives us the unique ability to not only manipulate tools with fine precision, but also form a fist. We’re the only animals that can.

We are the only animals with fists.

“Human-like hand proportions appear in the fossil record at the same time our ancestors started walking upright 4 million to 5 million years ago,” Carriersaid in a press release in 2012. Although the most commonly accepted theory is that we stood upright and developed opposable thumbs so we could use tools, “[a]n alternative possible explanation is that we stood up on two legs and evolved these hand proportions to beat each other,” said Carrier.

The trouble is, it’s damn near impossible to determine whether our opposable thumbs evolved first and then we figured out how to make an effective fist, or whether our hands evolved for the express purpose of fighting.