The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

Showing posts with label Forests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forests. Show all posts

REWILD Our Planet - An AR Experience

8:33 AM  , , , , ,  

From now to 02 June 2019, ArtScience Museum visitors will be able to explore the forests of Borneo or dive deep into the coastal seas of Southeast Asia with REWILD Our Planet, Singapore’s first Social Augmented Reality (AR) experience jointly developed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Google, Netflix, ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands and PHORIA. The sensorial experience connects people to nature and one another through immersive storytelling that blends cutting-edge AR technology with stunning 4K video footage from Our Planet, a new Netflix original documentary series voiced by world-renowned naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, that launches today.


“Global wildlife populations have declined by 60 percent in the last 40 years due to unsustainable human activity, which impacts the very natural systems that our survival depends on. We need to not just stop, but reverse, the loss of nature. Bringing the challenges and solutions to life through REWILD Our Planet will help people around the world understand that they have a shared responsibility to act and protect nature. The powerful message conveyed dovetails with a unique opportunity to call for urgent action to protect the one place we call home, sending the clear message that it is no longer acceptable to continue to destroy our environment.”
--- Kim Stengert, Chief, Strategic Communications and External Relations, WWF-Singapore ---

Unlike these children living near the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia where the environmental impact of their everyday daily lifestyle are immediately visible to them, most of our children today live in the cities and are far removed from the impact that their consumption habits can create...


REWILD Our Planet is built around four natural landscapes representing the last wilderness places on Earth:
  1. Forests of Borneo and India
  2. Oceans of Asia
  3. Grasslands of Mongolia
  4. Frozen worlds of the Arctic


Combining spectacular IMAX-style projections with spatial soundscapes and AR, the experience unfolds through the lens of the Google Pixel 3, where groups of participants can work together to build natural landscapes in 3D. They will unlock global weather patterns and magical animal encounters, ending with a deeper understanding of shared solutions and a meaningful pledge to act and help bring nature back.

Where there is no visual with the naked eye, a globe appears out of the blue when the phone is pointed in the right direction. The story of our planet ensues...

To vote, all you have to do is to walk towards the habitat of your choice. The sum total of all the votes will then be totalled on the screen to select the most highly-voted habitat...

Want to play your part to REWILD? Walk around the grid with your phone over the fields burnt for crops and palm oil. Magically, your every step will create a lush green undergrowth...

Watch it happen in these videos...

“REWILD Our Planet showcases how AR has the power to build bridges between people and the places they love. This evocative experience emphasises the connection between human beings and our environment. It generates a sense of presence and interactivity for every individual user. Building this exhibition with Netflix and Google and combining it with compassion-driven narrative from WWF demonstrates how emerging XR technologies will transform the social impact sector for good.”
--- Trent Clews-de Castella, CEO of PHORIA ---


REWILD Our Planet is located at the Inspiration Gallery at Level 4 of the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Open daily from 1000-1900 hours, admission is free. 


For more information, visit:

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Prunus Trail - Stunning Coloured Water

3:07 AM  , , ,  

MacRitchie Reservoir
Central, Singapore
January 2015
 
Merlion Wayfarer went to MacRitchie Reservoir recently. And it felt like a step into the forest wonderland of Jiuzhaigou Fairyland.

From afar, you can see the copper of the water
gradually darkening into a Persian Green and the deep of Prussian Blue...

 
A close-up at the reservoir banks...

In some parts, it was a milky green...
 
During this same visit, it was also troubling to see teenagers fishing at the reservoir edge, and on the boardwalks.


The white threads of abandoned fishing lines can be seen entangled in the moss and hydrilla...

A single red-eared terrapin there, balancing on a pile of leaves, unmoving..

It's only when its head is tilted that you see a fishing line with the hook in its mouth...
 
Merlion Wayfarer hopes illegal and inconsiderate fishing acts like these can be stopped to prevent even more damage and hurt to the wildlife in our nature reserves.
 
A column of white moths on a leaf with a powdery surface. It looks like they were caught in a web. Until you see a few of them flying off, leaving a green patch where they previously were...
 
Apparently, a symbiotic relationship exists between the moths and the ants...
 
 
A bronze coloured ant wanders about, foraging for food...

 
A plethora of orb-weavers abound...
 
St Andrew's Cross...
 
A Tetragnathidae (Long-Jawed Orb Weaver)...
 
Some other discoveries including a caterpillar, an open termite tunnel,
a feeding grasshopper and a fly with inverted legs....
 

 
The rays of the setting sun on a cloudy sky...

 

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Marang Trail - The Magic Of Spiders At Night

3:02 PM  , , , , , , ,  

Marang Trail
South, Singapore
February 2015

Ant Mimicking Spiders (Myrmarachne)


This Myrmarachne Spider avoids being eaten by predators by appearing like an ant rather than a spider. This defense is two-way: Ants are not as palatable as spiders to most general predators, and spider-specialized predators might not recognize these spiders as food.


For mimicry to work optimally, though, spiders must inhabit places with plenty of ants. Not the easiest task, since ants eat spiders. And the poor vision of ants helps. Because these ant-mimicking spiders do not smell like spiders, nor do they smell like ants. In fact, they do no smell like anything at all - They are stealth spiders!

Another one spotted hiding in a curved leaf strung together by its web - See the intricate outlay of threads just to hold the leaf together?
 

Pale Spitting Spider (Scytodes pallida)

The Pale Spitting Spider (Scytodes pallida) has a unique habit of spitting a glue-like and possibly toxic substance at its prey to render them immobile prior to envenomation. Behavioural studies demonstrate that the spider regulates its spit expenditure when offered prey of variable sizes and struggling intensities. 


Moving about on a plant with leaves devoured by grasshoppers into artistic patches, this Sac Spider spreads its long legs over the gaps to balance itself...
 

Though it is produced in venom glands in the chelicerae, the fluid contains both venom and spider silk in liquid form. The venom-impregnated silk not only immobilizes prey such as Silverfish by tying it down, but has a venomous effect as well. In high-speed moving pictures, the spiders can be observed swaying from side to side as they "spit", catching the prey in a crisscrossed "Z" pattern. It is crisscrossed because each of the chelicerae emits half of the pattern. The spider usually strikes from a distance of 10–20 mm and the whole attack sequence is over in a little under 1/700th of a second. After making the capture, the spider will typically bite the prey with venomous effect, and wrap it in the normal spider fashion with silk from the spinnerets.

  

Orb Weavers (Araneidae)

The typical orb-weaver spiders (family Araneidae) are the most common group of builders of spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, fields and forests. Their common name is taken from the round shape of this typical web, and the taxon was formerly also referred to as the Orbiculariae. However, orb-webs are also produced by members of other families.




Orb-weaving spiders make their webs at night time and usually take them down in the morning. They eat the silk, leaving only the base line to rebuild on. Constructing the web uses a lot of the spider's energy due to the large amount of protein required, in the form of silk and after a time the silk will lose its stickiness and becomes inefficient at capturing prey. Eating their web is a way for the spider to recoup some of the energy used in spinning. The silk proteins are thus "recycled".

An orb-weaver with some web debris and an egg pod on its web...


An  Argiope versicolor (Multi-coloured St Andrew's Cross Spider) flexing itself on its web without its trademark "X"...

A male Argyrodes flavescens (Red Silver Spider) on its own web for once...

Comb-Footed Spiders (Theridiid) are entelegyne (have a genital plate in the female) araneomorph ecribellate (use sticky capture silk instead of woolly silk) spiders that often build tangle space webs and have a comb of serrated bristles (setae) on the tarsus of the fourth leg.

The large golden orb-weavers (Nephilidae) and the long-jawed orb weavers (Tetragnathidae) were formerly included in the Araneidae; they are indeed closely related to them, being part of superfamily Araneoidea. Their webs are similar to those of the typical orb-weavers, but tend to be less sophisticated and often have an irregular instead of a neat spiral arrangement of the prey-capturing threads.


Members of the species Tetragnatha are stick-like spiders with long legs and well-developed jaws. They build delicate orb-webs with open hubs. The webs are suspended horizontally or in an inclined plane. The male jaws are particularly elongated and are equipped with a spur each. These are instrumental in locking the jaws of the female during mating.


Like many species of the superfamily Araneoidea, Nephila Spiders have striped legs specialized for weaving (where their tips point inward, rather than outward as is the case with many wandering spiders). Their contrast of dark brown/black and green/yellow allows warning and repelling of potential predators to whom their venom might be of little danger.

A Nephila Spider with its freshly-caught dinner...

Golden orb-weavers reach sizes of 4.8–5.1 cm (1.5–2 in) in females, not including legspan, with males being usually 2/3 smaller (less than 2.5 cm, 1 in). They are also the oldest surviving genus of spiders, with a fossilized specimen known from 165 million years ago.

The intricate layout of colours with patches, stripes and spots...

Neoscona punctigera (Ghost Spider)

The last time that Merlion Wayfarer spotted this was in 2012, among the long grass in Punggol. At that time, it was evening, and the spider was dormant. (See "Ghost Spider - Happy Halloween!")

(File Photo)

This time round, it was refreshing to note how active it is at night. Awaken from its daytime slumber, this Ghost Spider was moving about. With its flexible joints, one gets the impression that it is sorting out how not to stumble over its own legs.


Waving its long legs about to increase the perception of its body size - A sign of aggression... 


Sources

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