the largest frog that ever lived

Known as the devil frog, (Beelzebufo ampinga), these amphibians grow up to 41cm and 4.5kg and are the largest frogs that ever lived on earth.They lived on the island of Madagascar during the Late Cretaceous, about 65 to 70 million years ago. They are believed to have lived around the age of dinosaurs, and are already extinct.

The name Beelzebufo ampinga, taken from Beelzebub, which means devil in Greek and Bufo, meaning frog in Latin. Ampinga means the shield to show a glimpse of his characteristics resemble armor.

These frogs are known to be agressive and ill-tempered, who will not hesitate to snap with fierce at anything that passes by. Devil frogs had very wide mouths with strong jaws and also prey on mammals, lizards, smaller frogs and even baby dinosaurs.

What our brain does when we're sound asleep

Our brain when we're asleep, calculates what to remember and forget, which results in sharper and clearer thinking.

It consolidates all of our memories, so that we can ensure that important information to be remembered will be retrieved later on.

"The sleeping brain isn't stupid—it doesn't just consolidate everything you put into it, but calculates what to remember and what to forget," said study leaderJessica Payne, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Research has shown that people usually remember things that has left the most emotional impact on them. For example, if people were to witness a car accident or banana leaves in the background, they are most likely to remember the car accident.

Rather than preserving scenes in their entirety, the brain apparently restructures scenes to remember only their most emotional and perhaps most important elements while allowing less emotional details to deteriorate.

reference: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101201-sleep-memories-health-brain-science/

Leopards

Leopards are graceful and powerful big cats closely related to lions, tigers, and jaguars. Being part of the cat family, leopards are also the shrewdest. Leopards are very strong climbers, and are capable of killing prey larger than itself. They live in sub-Saharan Africa, northeast Africa, Central Asia, India, and China. However, many of their populations are endangered, especially outside of Africa.

(pic of a northern chinese leopard)


Leopards are usually very comfortable in trees that it often hauls its kill into the branches. What made leopards able to successfully launch their kills are their coats of fur, which helps them to camoflauge in the trees and surroundings.


references: http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/leopard
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/leopard/