Soft-Shelled Cantor’s Giant Turtle

Our weekly collaboration with Cellar Image of the Day brings us the image of this strange animal: a rare soft-shelled turtle called Cantor’s giant turtle.

A 24-pound female Cantor’s giant turtle — known for its rubbery skin and jaws powerful enough to crush bone — was captured and released by researchers in March, U.S.-based Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund said in a statement. …

The species can grow up to 6 feet in length and weigh more than 110 pounds. It was last spotted by scientists in the Cambodian wild in 2003. It also was found in small numbers in Laos, but appears to have disappeared from Vietnam and Thailand.

The turtle has a rubbery skin with ribs fused together to form a protective layer over its internal organs. It protects itself from predators by spending 95 percent of its life hidden in sand or mud with only its eyes and nose showing.

French Spiderman at Abu Dhabi

He lived in ABU DHABI (the skyscraper capital city of UAE...and the richest emirate of the GULF) for several years. I know ADIA is a tall building right on the Corniche)

Feb 23, 2007: French climber Alain Robert , aka the French Spiderman took on Abu Dhabi `s tallest building in front of a crowd numbering the tens of thousands without any safety mechanisms in place. Alain Robert completed the climb in only 20 minutes!!!!!

The audience cringed and cheered in fear and amazement as Robert scaled the 185 meters of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority building.

Alain Robert has also climbed the Sears Tower in Chicago, Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Eiffel Tower in Paris and Empire State Building in New York City.

World's Largest Digging Machine

This is the largest digging machine (or trencher or rotating shovel) in the world. It was built by Krupp and is shown here crossing a road in Germany on the way to its destination, an open air coal mine. Although at the mine the treads are unnecessary, it was cheaper to make the machine self-propelled than to try and move it with conventional hauling equipment. Some factoids:

* The machine is 95 meters high and 215 meters long (almost 2.5 football fields in length)
* Weight is 45,500 tons (that's equivalent to a bumper to bumper line of jeeps 80 miles long)
* It took 5 years to design and manufacture at a cost of $100 million
* Maximum digging speed is 10 meters per minute
* Can move more than 76,000 cubic meters of coal, rock,and earth per day