The best photos from National Geographic July 2010.

King Penguins

Photograph by David Schultz , My Shot

Strikingly colored, an adult king penguin stands out in a sea of chicks on South Georgia Island.

(This photo was submitted to My Shot.)

Baboon, Bronx Zoo

Photograph by Richard Conde, My Shot

A baboon in the Bronx Zoo, New York

(This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot.)

Stretching Tiger, India

Photograph by Michel Zoghzoghi, Your Shot

A tiger stretches its powerful form on a branch in Bandhavgarh National Park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

(This photo was submitted to Your Shot.)

Bowerbird, Australia

Photograph by Tim Laman, National Geographic

The gunk on the beak of this satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus minor) is plant matter, which he mashed up to paint his bower's inner sanctum in a rain forest in Queensland, Australia. The pulp adds a hint of color and perhaps flavor: Females sometimes take a taste during the male's display.

Black-Headed Gull, England

Photograph by Christopher Hoyle, Your Shot

I was taking pictures of the scenery near Lake Windermere in the U.K. This black-headed gull was flying straight at me. It was oblivious to the camera for a while but then put the brakes on and flared its wings before it hit me in the lens. That intense look must be the last thing many small creatures see.

(This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot.)

Tokay Gecko

Photograph by Erin Yard, Your Shot

A Tokay gecko hangs upside down in its terrarium at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot.)

Grizzly Bear

Photograph by Carol Bock, My Shot

A wet grizzly takes a break and dries off on a log.

(This photo was submitted to My Shot.)

Frog, New Guinea

Photograph by Tim Laman, National Geographic

Hylarana aurata, found in the Foja Mountains of New Guinea, one of the remotest and most difficult to reach places on Earth.

Lion’s Mane Jellyfish

Photograph by Paul Nicklen, National Geographic

A lion's mane jellyfish nestled in a kelp frond.

Cheetahs, Kenya

Photograph by Mauro Mozzarelli, My Shot

Most wild cheetahs are found in eastern and southwestern Africa. Perhaps only 12,000 of these big cats remain, and those are under pressure as the wide-open grasslands they favor are disappearing at the hands of human settlers.

(This photo was submitted to My Shot.)

Explore an unparalleled treasury of iconic images and groundbreaking photography in National Geographic Image Collection, 2010 People's Voice Webby Award Winner.

The best photos July 2010.

The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world.

Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history.

The National Geographic Society’s logo is a yellow portraitframe - rectangular in shape - which appears on the margins surrounding the front covers of its magazines.

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clicking the image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook

Read More

The volcano or Paricutin is the youngest volcano in the world and appears in some versions of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

Parícutin (or Volcán de Parícutin, also accented Paricutín) is a cinder cone volcano in the Mexican state of Michoacán, close to a lava-covered village of the same name. It appears on many versions of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Paricutín is part of the Michoacán-Guanajuato Volcanic Field, which covers much of west central Mexico.

The volcano began as a fissure in a cornfield owned by a P'urhépecha farmer, Dionisio Pulido on February 20, 1943. Pulido, his wife, and their son all witnessed the initial eruption of ash and stones first-hand as they plowed the field. The volcano grew quickly, reaching five stories tall in just a week, and it could be seen from afar in a month. Much of the volcano's growth occurred during its first year, while it was still in the explosive pyroclastic phase. Nearby villages Paricutín (after which the volcano was named) and San Juan Parangaricutiro were both buried in lava and ash; the residents relocated to vacant land nearby.

At the end of this phase, after roughly one year, the volcano had grown 336 meters (1,102.36 ft) tall. For the next eight years the volcano would continue erupting, although this was dominated by relatively quiet eruptions of lava that would scorch the surrounding 25 km² (9.65 mi²) of land.

The volcano's activity would slowly decline during this period until the last six months of the eruption, during which violent and explosive activity was frequent. In 1952 the eruption ended and Parícutin went quiet, attaining a final height of 424 meters (1,391.08 ft) above the cornfield from which it was born. The volcano has been quiet since. Like most cinder cones, Parícutin is believed to be a monogenetic volcano, which means that now that it has finished erupting, it will never erupt again. Any new eruptions in a monogenetic volcanic field erupt in a new location.

Volcanism is a common part of the Mexican landscape. Parícutin is merely the youngest of more than 1,400 volcanic vents that exist in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and North America. The volcano is unique in the fact that its formation was witnessed from its very inception. Three people died as a result of lightning strikes caused by the eruptions, but no deaths were attributed to the lava or asphyxiation.

Shots of the volcano during its active phase were included in 20th Century Fox's film Captain from Castile, released in 1947.

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clicking the image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook

Read More

The Physalis looks like a jellyfish but is actually a colony of organisms. tentacles that reach ten meters.

The Portuguese Man o' War (Physalia physalis), also known as the bluebottle, man-of-war, or the Portuguese man of war, is a jelly-like, marine invertebrate of the family Physaliidae.

The common name comes from a Portuguese war ship type of the 15th and 16th century, the man-of-war or caravel (in Portuguese, Caravela), which had triangular sails similar in outline to the bladder of the Portuguese Man o' War.

While the Portuguese Man o' War resembles a jellyfish, it is in fact a siphonophore – a colony of four kinds of minute, highly modified individuals, which are specialized polyps and medusoids. Each such zooid in these pelagic colonial hydroids or hydrozoans has a high degree of specialization and, although structurally similar to other solitary animals, are all attached to each other and physiologically integrated rather than living independently.

Such zooids are specialized to such an extent that they lack the structures associated with other functions and are therefore dependent for survival on the others to do what the particular zooid cannot do by itself.

A similar group of animals are the chondrophores, which are specialised hydroids that float at the surface of the open ocean.

The Portuguese Man o' War is infamous for having a painful sting, and for swarming in many hundreds.

Habitat and location.

The Portuguese Man o' War lives at the surface of the ocean, with its float above the water, serving as a sail, and the rest of the organism hanging below the surface. It has no means of propulsion, but is moved by a combination of winds, currents, and tides.

It is found in open ocean in all of the world's warm water seas but most commonly in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the northern Atlantic Gulf Stream. Strong onshore winds may drive them into bays or on beaches.

Physalia physalis is found in tropical Atlantic waters and occasionally as far north as the Bay of Fundy and the Hebrides and also the Mediterranean Sea. P. utriculus (La Martiniere), commonly known as the bluebottle, occurs in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

They are reported abundantly off the Karachi coast in Pakistan, particularly at the Sandspit and Hawkes Bay beaches during the months of June, July and August, and are also common in the ocean off parts of Australia and New Zealand. During these months, they are also found to come ashore in the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) after rain, where they are known as agua(s) mala(s) by local Mexicans.

They are known to come ashore all along the northern Gulf of Mexico and both east and west coasts of Florida as well as around the Hawaiian Islands. They are also frequently found along the east coast of South Africa, on the KwaZulu-Natal beaches (particularly if the wind has been blowing steadily on shore for a number of hours) and on the Cape South Coast (Bettie's bay to Gans bay), also driven by onshore winds during winter storms. The Portuguese Man o' War has also been spotted in the Mediterranean sea, after first being spotted off the coast of Spain, later in Corsica.

In the summer of 2009, Pembrokeshire County Council warned bathers in its waters that the organisms had been sighted in Welsh waters.

In Ireland, there were dozens of confirmed sightings (in 2009-2010), from Termonfeckin in Co Louth to Ballymoney in Co Wexford.

There is also an abundance of Portuguese Men o' War in the waters of Costa Rica. Congregations of them can be found in the March and April months.

They are also found in Guyana, South America. They wash up on the seashore during certain months of the year.

It is rare for only a single Portuguese Man o' War to be found; the discovery of one usually indicates the presence of many as they are usually congregated by currents and winds into groups of thousands.

Attitudes to the presence of the Portuguese Man o' War vary around the world. Given their sting however, they must always be treated with caution, and the discovery of a number of blue bottles washed up on the beach might lead to the closure of a whole beach.

In 2010, sightings of the bluebottle were recorded around the small island of Malta in the Mediterranean.

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clicking the image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook

Read More