Much has been reported about the Nile perch in the past years, though little in his favor. In fact, this large, African native near-top level predator that is, though facing grave competition from Asian pangasius and farmed white cod, still one of the most important food fishes today in the shelves of European supermarkets (peaking in the years 2004 and 2005 with a total export value of over 150 million dollars, Nile perch exports have continuously dropped ever since, from 52,800 metric tons in 2007 to an all-time low of 32, 000 metric tons past year) frequently serves as a negative example for the impact of human meddling with ecosystems (see also Darwin's Nightmare).

Bugs and beetles have not exactly ranged among humans' darling species in the past, but they might as well become the heros of tomorrow, a new microelectromechanical technology developed at the U.S. University of Michigan suggests. Equipped with minute microphones, cameras, and/or gas sensors, the insects could soon scout hazardous environments like collapsed buildings or contaminated zones and so facilitate search and rescue operations.

There are a couple of species that have included humans in their diets and do prey ocassionally upon them such as tigers, leopards, lions, and crocodilians, but also large constricting snakes, bears, wolves, sharks, among others. The most notorious man-eaters maybe are the Bengali tigers, though India's number one man-eater in history allegedly was the Champawat Tigress that had originally come from Nepal and killed a total of 436 people (200 in Nepal and 236 in India) before she could be hunted down and killed in 1911.

Everybody knows Cheeta, the beer drinking and cigarette smoking Hollywood chimp superstar who allegedly stared alongside Johnny Weissmueller in the famous Tarzan&Jane Movies of the sixties (it turned out however that there were numerous Cheetas and that the one that celebrated his supposedly 77th birthday a couple of years ago in his animal sanctuary home in Palm Springs never played a role in even one of the numerous movies he has been connected with), but what about Nim Chimsky, a male chimpanzee that partook in a long-term animal language acquisition st

The Deep Sea is a territory widely unknown yet famous for its fancy faunal community, a crowd of mesmerizingly bizarre, often alien-looking creatures that seem to compete in singularity and strangeness. There is the firefly squid that produces dumbfounding lightshows, its mysterious cousin, the Colossal Squid that can grow up to an estimated size of 14 meters and is the largest invertebrate on earth, there are anglerfish and lanternfish, flappy-eared dumbo-octopuses, and all sorts of cnydarians floating through the dark in wait for prey.

Local myth had it for the past years that a giant man-eating monster looms in the depths of the Great Kali river that follows the Indian-Nepali border. A row of mysterious drownings initiated investigations eventually leading to the assumption that giant goonch catfish were responsible for the killings.

Sexual mimicry is not an unusual phenomenon in the animal world. In a number of species, males frequently exhibit female sexual behavior, either to evade conflicts with rivaling males or to enjoy benefits that would otherwise be reserved for the female population. An example often cited to illustrate the case is the garter snake. Peculiarly, male garter snakes have often been found to mimic their female counterparts only during the first two days after emerging from hibernation.

Dragonflies, one of the two suborders that are joined in Odonata, have been the subject of myths and legends for centuries and in some places you will still hear shrill stories about them, lingering from the old days, that they bite, sting, bring bad luck, sew your lips and eyes shut, or enter your ears and penetrate your brain. Their folk names indicate the ambiguous reputation they have come to enjoy specifically in Europe over time: variably they are called Devil's needle, Darner, Serpent Doctor, dubbed finger cutter, horse killer, ear stick, and eye pisser.

All of us are acquainted with the phenomenon of bioluminescence and most have seen it, one way or the other, with their own eyes, be it glowing plankton on the sea or a swarm of fire flies. Bioluminescence is relatively rare in land dwellers (some insects such as fireflies, earthworms, and glowing fungi build the exception) but could be called standard in ocean inhabitants. There are, in fact, many places in the open oceans where bioluminescence does occur in 80 to 90% of all organisms; it is used to find food, attract a mate, lure prey, camouflage, or fight off predators.