11/4/2005: Angry owl
 

http://cellar.org/2005/owl.jpg

xoB finds this beaut at Weather Underground. The official cap:

When I was photographing this 5 month old long earred owl named Nemo, he was startled by an unusual sound. As a natural response, he immediately puffed up to a very large size in order to scare off the perpetrator. It is rare to experience this kind of reaction in an owl. Nemo went back to normal size when he discovered that the threat wasn't real.

This is, of course, why puffer fish are commonly referred to as "the owls of the deep".

I've got one of those suckers hanging from my rearview mirror.. hurts like no other when it falls on my hand while i'm shifting. :meanface:

Nature's defense mechanisms are always something to behold.

add a chuckwalla to the mix
http://biol1.bio.nagoya-u.ac.jp:8001...huckwalla.JPEG

What is this, the pic association thread? :)

Ha -- that's awesome! Now I want to drop by one of the Florida Tourist-Cheese shops and get one of the puffer fish hanging lamps they sell. There is nothing as pleasant as a decorative fixture that is made up of a fish with a lightbulb stuff inside.

Nope.

Sorry! I started it.

An image so vivid, you can almost hear the frightened sailor hissing to scare off the unseen attacker.

following the theme...

Weather Underground? Like the terrorist group, that blew themselves up because they were smoking cigarettes before trying to bomb Merryl-Lynch ?

:lol:

Still, I wouldn't want to run into one of those things in a dark alley... Or maybe a forest of some sort... :worried:

On a close-up view, you can see an angry male owl. But further back, the face changes expression and even genders! If you squint, blink, or defocus, an angry male owl should substitute for the face of a neutral female owl.

This impressive illusion created by Dr. Aude Oliva and Dr. Philippe Schyns, illustrates the ability of the visual system to separate information coming from different spatial frequency channels. In the image, high Spatial Frequencies (HSF) represent a male owl, w69, 243-ith an angry facial expression, mixed with the low spatial frequency information from the face of a happy female owl.

Get a real job.