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Red tide is an estuarine or marine algal bloom [a relatively rapid increase in the population of (usually) phytoplankton algae in an aquatic system] and is caused by a species of dinoflagellates, often present in sufficient numbers (thousands or millions of cells per milliliter) to turn the water red or brown.

Coastal water pollution produced by humans and systematic increase in sea water temperature appear to be causal factors in red tides.

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Scoop up a bucket of seawater (or swallow a mouthful) and this is what you get: a bizarre menagerie of plants and animals, some of them known to us, others a complete mystery.

This extraordinary photograph shows a random splash of seawater, magnified 25 times. The Earth's open seas are home to countless tiny animals and plants that are known collectively as plankton.

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A couple from Montana were out riding on the range, he with his rifle and she (fortunately) with her camera. Their dogs always followed them, but on this occasion a Mountain Lion decided that he wanted to stalk the dogs (you'll see the dogs in the background watching). Very, very bad decision...

The hunter got off the mule with his rifle and decided to shoot in the air to scare away the lion, but before he could get off a shot the lion charged in and decided he wanted a piece of those dogs. With that, the mule took off and decided he wanted a piece of that lion. That's when all hell broke loose... for the lion.

As the lion approached the dogs the mule snatched him up by the tail and started whirling him around. Banging its head on the ground on every pass. Then he dropped it, stomped on it and held it to the ground by the throat. The mule then got down on his knees and bit the thing all over a couple of dozen times to make sure it was dead, than whipped it into the air again, walked back over to the couple (that were stunned in silence) and stood there ready to continue his ride... as if nothing had just happened. Fortunately even though the hunter didn't get off a shot, his wife got off these 4.

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Western sections of the Great Wall of China are being reduced to "mounds of dirt" by sandstorms and may disappear entirely in 20 years, a report said Wednesday.

The reasons for the deterioration are entirely manmade, the official Xinhua News Agency said, pointing to destructive farming methods in the 1950s that desertified areas of northern China, causing sandstorms.

Frequent storms have not only eroded the mud, but also cracked the wall and caused it to collapse or break down.

One of the most threatened sections of the wall runs through Minqin county in Gansu province along the ancient Silk Road trade route. Unlike the better-known stone and brick sections around Beijing, the wall in Gansu is made of less-resilient packed earth that easily erodes.

More than 25 miles of wall in Minqin have disappeared in the past 20 years, Xinhua said.

Lookout towers have vanished and the wall's height has been worn down from 16 feet to less than seven feet.

Tourism, neglect and sometimes willful destruction by developers have also taken their toll on the wall, designed to defend against foreign invaders. The earliest sections date back more than 20 centuries and its total length has been estimated at 3,000 to 4,000 miles.

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