And from the Poetry in Science department, this highly inspiring image:

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

00:01 20 December 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzie



The moth uses its barbed proboscis (close-up below) to penetrate the eyelid of sleeping birds and drink tears (A close-up of the moth's proboscis reveals its barbed tip (Image: Roland Hilgartner / Mamisolo Raoilison)A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.

Roland Hilgartner at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen, Germany, and Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, witnessed the apparently unique sight in the island state's Kirindy forest.

Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the moths. Birds can fly away.