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Have a Happy Thought:   Baby sea turtles are adorable! (Karliux_/iStock/Getty Images)   An interesting fact is that the sex of the turtle is determined by the temperature of the sand their egg incubates in. Hotter sand = more likely to be female on hatching As in, sea turtles are not genetically determined to be male or female. (Nature is weird and awesome !)   Now, because of climate change and increasing temperatures in common turtle ‘hatcheries’ in Florida, we’re finding that more and more of the hatching turtles are female. Like, 99% of the hatched turtles tested this year. Many researchers are not yet worried since sea turtles don’t exactly use a one-male-to-one-female breeding strategy. But a species can only go so long with fewer and fewer of a required-for-procreation gender…   So this is one more bit of evidence of the unintended consequences of the way we have arranged modern society.   In completely un related news: loca...

Have a Happy Thought:  Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water… at least in your regular togs/swimsuit/wetsuit Turns out you’ll need to work a lot harder to get into the ‘best dressed’ category when competing with creatures from the deep. You could go for white (as long as it’s between Memorial Day and Labor Day in the US), but it’s hard to beat the ‘Casper’ octopod, seen here slowly crawling across a basalt outcrop. Image: Deep Discoverer ROV team, NOAA OFFICE OF OCEAN EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH, HOHONU MOANA 2016   If you’re going for something flashy, then you’ll have to contend with the scaly-foot snail (Chrysomallon squamiferum), also known as a sea pangolin. It literally takes iron out of the water coming from hydrothermal vents, and converts it into a suit of scaled armour. Image: Dr Chong Chen/IUCN   And if you decide to go for colourful, you’re out of luck if a female blanket octopus (Tremoctopus violaceus) decides to show up. Sh...

Have a Happy Thought:    Remember last week’s albatross with the amazing hair ? Turns out that humans have loved mullets for a long time, too. Like, not just since the 1980s. How long ago do you think it was?     No, further back than that.     Keep going…     The first known record in literature of a mullet was in Homer’s Iliad, which was written/compiled/told sometime in the late 700s BCE. That’s… 2700 years ago. You see, there’s a group of warriors called the Abantes, and apparently they were the original business-in-the-front-party-in-the-back devotees. Here’s the quote: “The sprinting Abantes followed, their forelocks cropped, hair grown long at the back” (II.632-3). Homer. Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles and with an Introduction by Bernard Knox. Penguin, 1990.   But you’re here for cool photos, so you get double the facts this week!   Scientists researching fossils in the Burgess Shale...