No Place Like Home

A lake in Turkey went biblical: it turned blood red. But fear not, says Danny Gallagher, it happens every summer!

“The apocalypse isn't coming to fruition…(Toz Golu lake) turns bright red due to an interesting anomaly that occurs every summer.”

(In case you’re curious, it happens because as the lake dries up in summers, the salt level increases; the rising salt level kills off the plankton that eat the algae; and the uncontrolled algae have this color changing ability).

Nature red in tooth and claw, said Lord Tennyson. Just how red it can be was exemplified by a recent discovery of how the boa constrictor (a snake) kills its prey. It was thought that they squeeze the life out of their prey (literally), i.e., they squeeze and squeeze until the prey suffocates. Turns out the modus operandi is even more lethal:

“Death by suffocation is nightmarish enough, but boa constrictors do something even more sinister: They cut off your blood supply…Many animals (humans included) can survive a surprisingly long time without breathing. But—as boas have cleverly discovered through evolution — not so much without a heartbeat.”

If all that this talk of apocalypse and gruesome death made you sick of this planet, you might be happy to know that NASA found “the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star”. Perhaps we should shift there and leave all this behind us, you wonder.

Then again, remember how we humans are. As Alex Balk says, you can be sure how plenty of other humans must be reacting to this discovery:

“EARTH 2.0! Looks like I’m done recycling!”

Not that we’ll do any better with that new planet (even if we got there). Balk again:

“NASA Discovers New Earth For Us To Fuck Up”