Injecting a Little Colour

This is pretty Darned cool!

Via:The Daily Mail

Through mixing coloured sugar solution with a paraffin base (in order to allow the drops to retain their shape), Scientist Dr Babu managed to change colour of some ants in his back garden, owing to the translucent nature of the ants abdomens, apparently the ants had a preference for lighter colours favouring yellow and green over darker red and blue...
thank god he's not wasting his time on curing cancer...

The Evolution of Baking

But as i don't have a my own television and so have to plug my atiquated games console into my brothers, who hibernates like some form or tundra dwelling organism, thus limiting the time i can spend wasting enriching my life through the joys of gaming, I have had to diversify in my recreational activities, yes the pub has been one such thing, but as my accomplice has since had a run in with a frozen puddle and has subsequently damaged his elbow   , which has been set in such a way in which reduces his ability to sleep (although now he has a green arm) i have had to search for another outlet.
And so i bake, I bake obscene amounts of biscuits, after a much needed trip to the local specialist kitchen shop, I had all I needed...

A dinosaur cookie cutter!
and so the much awaited veloceraptor biscuits were born...

the first batch i made... well i went a bit mental with the icing, but hey thats what us artist's call experimentation and i was having a metaphorical whale of a time!

but my next batch, i went for the minimalist approach, eyes are all they needed, well that and claws, with this arsenal of bakery induced evolution, these corony inducing treats would be ready to take on the all manner of prey, eventually taking their rightful place at the top of the food chain ...
and so they were born..

 Yeah they may look cute, but they can rip apart a bourbon  in 20 seconds, I've revolutionised the cookie hierarchy, teatime will NEVER be the same again !

If You Go Down to The woods Today...

The girl came down on Sunday and we ate vast amounts of Chinese, bakery products, and overpriced milkshakes (as is the fashion at the moment), but our main even was going into the woods and having a bit of a forage, because at the heart of it all, we are both nature bods... 

our main haul was these little fella's...

 Chestnuts :D these things remind me of my childhood where me and my Grandad used to collect them and eat them all :D Omnomnomnom:D so we stashed up on these , so we can cook them up and add them to salads, and maybe cous cous? i don't really know I'll probably just end up eating them all :D

But chestnuts were not the only highlight, we found loads of cool fungi...

and these,

and my personal favourite....

It's funny how my favourite looking one is the one that screams 'DEATH TO ALL!', and yet we all have that urge, niggling at the back of our heads what it tastes like... burning. Probably.

I would love to know if the others were edible tho, but I cant seem to find a decent resource online that looks reliable enough to use...

OH WELL!

I asked anna but she Didn't have a clue...

Things I Find at Work Pt. 3 Nature Addition!

Today I have been Gardening and so we have nature making an appearance :D YAY! My favourite :D
My first Find was this chappy,

and would you believe it? another bloody Toad! 22 years its taken me to see an example of Bufo bufo and in the space of a month I find 2! And s/he's Miniature! Really laid back just chilled out on my hand whilst i took a picture:D AWESOME!

Next on my list is this Badman Magpie checking out his reflection in car windows...

he was making the most awsfull racket ever, and i managed to sneak a little closer

I find magpies get a bad press (my mum despises the things - especially the bald one in the garden, despite me trying to convince her its a monk), I on the other hand admire Corvid's(magpies, crows, ravens ect) despite the plural for crows being a 'murder of crows', I admire their intellect, and the amazing self awareness they (can) exhibit, despite the lack of cortical structures within the brain (these are linked with self awareness and Theory of mind in mammals). I would totally own a Corvid.

Now for some invert's (Yes)

Found these guys when i was digging up the flower beds, they are without a shadow of a doubt beetle larvae but i have no idea what species at all, my first thought was some sort of chafer beetle (think may bugs) but the colouring just isn't right (chafers have white bodies and orange heads) they look nice tho :D

The last think i found was that nature is stronger than metal after hitting a tree root...

 I was down a Tool... well thats it for today :D

Bramble: Bain of my Life

It's happened by letting some invertebrates into my house i have inadvertently released the addiction within, i want to buy more, breed more, convert a shed, get some more species and use obscene amounts of scientific names. This has been catalysed through the conversations with fellow bug lovers both within my social circles and at the AES show on sat ...
One thing I had to do today was collect bramble for the leafies. I had forgot how crap that was.
You end up getting cold, turned into a walking freak of a pincushion and look as perverted as humanly possible without actually doing anything perverted.
In the process of going into the woods cutting bramble and putting it into my bag, i have in essence become an escaped tenant of B... then you have to wash the stuff then put it in the cage and remove the old stuff, which in the process of dying has become as hard and brittle as weathered glass with a hint of malice, waiting to stab my unsuspecting digits at the earliest opportunity. Even when wearing rubberised gloves, somehow covert spines manage to locate any available loose seams and shoot to kill. often i take my gloves off to find there are more thorns inside the glove then there were on the out side... i mean seriously...did i put them on inside out or something.
Bramble is the main reason that i have never kept obscene amounts of stick insects (its the cheapest universal food around), I'd rather have hoards of escaped crickets then a handful of biological nails in my hand, that's for sure!
To make my ongoing battle aaginst the dreaded blackberry traps, i have been gardening at work, and guess what lurks in the bushes? BRAMBLES! like enraged rabid squirrels it strikes...

Bramble: The silent killer