Calilasseia, we've noticed that there are bird lovers in the forum, we live at the foot hills of the beautiful Dandenong Ranges in victoria Australia and have some lovely birds around,the King parrots are particularly beautiful, and it's lovely to hear the Kookaburras laughing .
lisa

Sorry about the delay in replying, been up to my neck in JavaScript programming.

When my brother John was alive (emigrated to Australia in 1967, settled in Brisdane, then became a roadtrain driver and in his time, saw pretty much everything Australia has to offer), he told me about the fun aspects of living there, such as having Cockatoos and Rosellas at your bird table. Trouble being that although they're gorgeous to look at, they make an apocalyptic din when they gather in numbers. John used to joke that if you had Rosellas turning up at your bird table, you never needed to buy an alarm clock.

Thanks to him, I learned why 'Galah' has been co-opted into Australian slang to describe someone who can't stop talking.

Then of course there are Emus. Which provide a hilarious piece of history. Namely, that the Australian Army went to war against Emus in the 1920s ... and lost.

Though if you want to see truly outlandish birds, you have to travel north to Papua New Guinea, and check out the Birds of Paradise. One of which makes a noise like a video game flying saucer when it's in the mood for baby making.

Voltaic pile was the original term used to describe an electrical battery. Derived from the fact that the first working prototype was produced by Alessandro Volta, the Italian scientist after whom the Volt is named.

This term finds usage in the pharmaceutical industry, as in "me-too drugs". Namely, drugs that are manufactured in order to escape patents applicable to an original, upon which the derivatives are modelled closely enough to have the same effect, but with sufficient chemical differences to warrant their own patents. Usually, the term is applied disparagingly to variations on a theme, that do not provide sufficient extra benefit over the original to warrant effort being expended upon them, but which are produced in order to try and grab market share from the original. The canonical examples are tranquillisers that don't exhibit measurable additional potency or efficacy over an original, but which are made in order to cash in on a lucrative market.

The only possible way I can enter this thread and keep my image intact, is to point out that Dildo is a small town in Newfoundland ...

Oh, and here's the part of Highway 80 where the road sign pointing to the town appears, as found on Google Maps ...

Meanwhile, I've been pointed at something very strange from the world of invertebrate zoology. Take a look at this beast. A sea slug that's shaped like a fish, swims like a fish, and glows in the dark. Don't think the Generic name is going to feature in the Chi word list any time soon though ...

EDIT: oh look, someone's now pointed me at Sea Bunnies. yes, these are real.

I encounter labium fairly frequently in entomology. It's part of the external mouthparts of numerous insects. Though I suspect it's more usually thought of as the singular of labia outside the world of invertebrate zoology.

Here's a Peruvian cracker - in more ways than one!

That's Hamadryas velutina. An especially resplendent member of the Genus.

Hello birdy 😀

That's one of the advantages of having become familiar with taxonomy. I'm able to home in on likely Family ID pretty quickly, and frequently home in on Genus quickly as well in the case of familiar taxonomic groups. I recently had a butterfly photo handed to me, which I was told was taken in Peru, and the photographer thought he'd encountered a Swallowtail of some sort, because the bindings had tails. However, no Swallowtail I have seen in the literature has a wing pattern remotely like his photo, and other morphological details told me it was actually a member of the Nymphalidae, the Family containing Commas, Red Admirals and the like. Sure enough, I homed in on it in due course - it was Marpesia crethon, a known member of the Peruvian fauna, and one of the Daggerwings, which do indeed resemble Swallowtails. You can see a decent quality image of this species here.