Galleries

The mobile ani­mal MRI [Mag­net­ic Res­o­nance Imag­ing] unit scours the coun­try­side look­ing for the most beau­ti­ful exam­ples of cows, pigs, chick­ens and oth­er live­stock. Once locat­ed, the crea­ture is scanned from head to toe, cre­at­ing accu­rate cross-sec­tion­al images of its inner organs. The most inter­est­ing and aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing exam­ples of anato­my are used as tem­plates to cre­ate moulds for the in-vit­ro meat (we wouldn’t choose to eat the same old bor­ing parts that we eat today). The result is a sat­is­fy­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed and authen­tic form of food. (via Dress­ing the Meat of Tomor­row < James King)

(via Fal­con­er Cafe in Mita­ka, Japan with Roll with Jen)

Cat cafes are a famil­iar phe­nom­e­non for those keep­ing track of Japan’s many quirks. But this fal­con­er cafe takes intra-species frat­er­niza­tion to a whole new level.

(Orig­i­nal­ly found via Chris Heathcote.)

Design stu­dio Super­flux has made edi­ble christ­mas cards using some­thing called fruit leather. Most are mod­eled after ani­mals of var­i­ous kinds. 

(via Lim­it­ed Edi­tion Edi­ble Christ­mas Cards | super­flux)

The final ball, which will pro­duced by repli­cat­ing the same tech­niques used to cre­ate arti­fi­cial human organs, encour­ages us to con­sid­er the role life sci­ences will have in our dai­ly lives today and in the future. It is also a ref­er­ence to the col­lid­ing worlds of human enhance­ment, the bio-tech­nol­o­gy indus­try and the glob­al cap­i­tal­iza­tion of sport, which have become high­ly con­test­ed areas.

(via About Pigs Blad­der Foot­ball)

When it was tak­en, the pho­to would have been a fun­ny and unusu­al pic­ture of three ter­ri­fied girls and a doofy-look­ing stingray. Today, the pho­to can be labelled a pho­to­bomb, which implies a nar­ra­tive of sur­rep­ti­tious sab­o­tage, con­nects the stingray to a whole tribe of obnox­ious pranksters, and makes the ray look like his smile might con­tain a hint of frat-boy­ish dis­so­lu­tion. We’ve come so far.

(via The Stingray Pho­to­bomb Explained : The New York­er)

(via col­or­ful pigeons amongst a flock of grey at the venice bien­nale)

Artists mess­ing with ani­mals – it seems like a nev­er end­ing theme. The com­men­tary in this blog post is worth brows­ing through. Julian Char­riere and Julius von Bis­mar­ck have died pigeons in Venice so that peo­ple don’t con­sid­er them fly­ing rats anymore…

The blog post notes they’ve paint­ed these ani­mals with­out harm­ing them. Some of the com­menters say paint­ing these ani­mals is harm­ful in itself. Rea­sons giv­en include: cam­ou­flage and pro­cre­ation. Oth­er com­menters are offend­ed by artists seek­ing fame by exploit­ing these ani­mals. I find the image strik­ing and would like to learn more about the actu­al process the artists uses to achieve this effect. I’m also curi­ous about the sci­en­tif­ic basis for some of the claims made by those com­menters tak­ing offense.

(via BBC News — Fish play video game in new behav­iour study)

Not an actu­al game but a sim­u­la­tion — nonethe­less inter­est­ing. Sci­en­tist study preda­to­ry behav­ior in fish using com­put­er-con­trolled col­ored dots. They use the word “immer­sive”. I won­der if the pun was intended.