You just can’t get any cooler than giant hornets that can kill yaks.

The giant Asian hornet (Vespa mandarinia) has earned the nickname “yak killer” from local villagers. At nearly 2 inches long, they’re the world’s largest hornets. Victims describe their quarter-inch-long stingers as feeling like a hot nail. The stinger delivers a lethal venom that dissolves human tissue, and, as the name implies, can kill a yak.

This hornet was just one of several new and/or endangered species reported on by scientists from Conservation International and Disney’s Animal Kingdom (yes, Disney). The joint team spent two months exploring and documenting several remote regions of Tibet.

Think before you drink …water. We bought 2 cases of Fruit2O (flavored water) last weekend at Sams Club and we already have a big pile of plastic in our garage. Makes me really ask myself: “Why don’t I just reuse these bottles and drink regular tap water?”. Here’s a choice quote:

“Branding and bottling of water where there already exists a wholesome and safe supply of drinking water cannot be seen as a sustainable use of natural resources…”

And for those of you who believe we need to reduce our oil dependence:

“Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year.”

Here’s a neat little experiment (that we accidently did this week): skip putting the trash out for pickup and see how much “stuff” you actually throw away on a weekly basis. It’s probably going to be a sizable pile. Now imagine each neighbor has the same garbage pile (add more for those with kids), then multiply by all the neighborhoods in the city, then multiply by all the cities in the state, then all the states in the country, and finally all the countries in the world. That’s how much garbage is created each week.