Tag: nature

Jellyfish

Posted on by philipdodson

I didn’t intend to blog about jellyfish, I just happened to draw one with pastels today at Art Club, then only having a short time slot before going out to celebrate my daughter’s 16th birthday, I was unusually stuck for something to say for today’s blog and feeling under pressure.

So here are some interesting facts about jellyfish and there is a great deal more:

They don’t have brains, just nerve nets.

There are over 10,000 species of jellyfish compared to just one human species.

Some of them can glow in the dark.

They can clone themselves.

They start life as a static polyp and then go on to move as we know them.

Not all of them have tentacles.

Lastly, some have been known to eat peanut butter, not sure who or why this was discovered. Perhaps Sunpat were looking for a new market.

Ok, so maybe jellyfish isn’t your thing or you knew all of this already.

We live in an amazing world, populated by some amazing life forms.

How often do we stop to find out anything about them? How often do we spend any time in the natural world?

There is a world all around us, don’t miss it.

Finely balanced ecosystems 

Posted on by philipdodson


I watched a video yesterday about the amazing effects that had occurred due to the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. How, not having wolves there for so long had led to a complete imbalance that was destroying vegetation due to no predators for the deer, which in turn meant less trees, less birds, less beavers and so on.

Within 6 years of their re-introduction there were quiet stunning effects, the deer stayed out of certain areas so that the habitation came back in everything.

As humans we do not realise our impact that our decisions have on the natural habitat that we are a part of and this is a great success story, but there are many more disastourous stories.

The interesting thing too, we have our own ecosystems and we are even less tuned into them than the natural ones, well maybe the same, as few are tuned into the natural ones either.

So, cuting back on sleep, or starting eating something new, or changing exercise or a whole variety of different things can seem tiny or of little importance, but over time they will lead to much bigger changes.

Just one extra biscuit a day could lead to diabetes in 5 years, walking less each week could lead to obesity in a few years and so on. 

We have an ecosystem that needs respecting and finely balancing.

Life is made up of small things that amount to giant leaps over time. However, smaller things are harder to spot and easier not to focus on.