The smallest orchid in the world (above) - only 2 mm across! (Thanks for the heads-up, Laura!)
Cassette-tape skeletons at Designboom.
Via Wired Science: Mini microbe portraits from the Micropolitan Museum
Dude - there are spiny, venomous catfish? Who knew?
Finally, an interview I did recently with Ava at Paw-Talk.
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That's fucking tiny!
About the catfish venom, thing; I used to work for a seafood company and one of the things done by the fisherman when they were injured by a yellow catfish dorsal spine (just the dorsal spines, not the pectoral ones) (Pylodictis olivaris) was to scrape some of the mucus from the belly and rub it on the wound. I don't know why, but they said it made it burn less.
Granted, it's anecdotal, but it would be interesting to look into any neutralizing components present in the other secretions.
Interesting anecdote. Venomous animals always co-evolve various mechanisms of resistance to the toxins in their own venoms. For example, the voltage-gated sodium channels of pufferfish have evolved amino acid mutations that render them resistant to blockade by tetrodotoxin (the lethal toxin in pufferfish venom).