The latest imagery update has now arrived on Google Maps, and with it comes this rather sad image of a beached Sperm Whale on the island of Hjelmsøya, which is off the coast of the extreme north of Norway.

According to gyrrus, who found the image of the whale:

it probably drifted onshore already dead … and was removed by the Norwegian Coast Guard a week or two after this image was taken.

This isn’t the only example of a dead whale found in Google’s imagery – all the way back in February 2006 we posted this image of a bleeding whale on a beach in South Africa.

We also previously featured a couple of pods of very-much-alive whales, as well as a roundup of some of the best fake whales across the globe.

Thanks to gyrrus.

A star fort or trace italienne is a type of military fortification first introduced in Italy around the mid-fifteenth century. Traditional medieval castles, towers and ring forts had proved extremely vulnerable to increasingly mobile cannons, and star forts were introduced specifically to better defend against them.

The tiny Italian town of Palmanova was founded in 1593, and using all the military innovations of the 16th century was built in the shape of nine-pointed star. You can still see quite clearly how the shape of the ramparts allows the points of the star to defend each other. Originally a moat surrounded the town (which partially remains today), and three heavily guarded gates (1, 2, 3) were the only way in.

<br/> Palmanova, Italy (Wikipedia)

Cannons were most effective when they were fired perpendicular to the walls of the building under attack, and the star shaped design meant that to best position their weapons, attacking forces would have enter the space between the points of the star – where they would be fired on from both sides!

The judicious use of moats could further thwart the attacking forces, as demonstrated superbly here at Naarden, Netherlands.

<br/> Naarden, Netherlands (Wikipedia)

By the late seventeenth-century star forts reached the pinnacle of their development, as shown by this complicated example in Bourtange, Netherlands, which has been fully restored to how it would have been in 1742. Here we can see that the design provides defence in depth, with tiers of ramparts that an attacker would have had to overcome to be in with a chance of taking the fort.

<br/> Bourtange, Netherlands (Wikipedia)

This ingenious design quickly became the gold standard for defensive forts, and went on to spread across Europe and the Americas:

<br/> Fort Manoel, Malta (Wikipedia)

<br/> Fort McHenry, Maryland (Wikipedia)

<br/> Fort Jay (Wikipedia) and Fort Ticonderoga (Wikipedia), New York

<br/> Castillo de San Marcos, Florida (Wikipedia)

The design even reached South Africa, where today the Castle of Good Hope can be seen right in the middle of the city! It used to be on the coast, but land reclamation allowed the city to expand around it.

<br/> Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, South Africa (Wikipedia)

In the nineteenth century the development of the exploding shell changed the nature of defensive fortifications forever, and the star fort soon became utterly obsolete. Which is why several are today used for completely different purposes – like this example in Slovakia where they now spend their time trying to keep people inside rather than out.

<br/> Leopoldov Prison, Slovakia (Wikipedia)

And finally, what is probably the world’s most famous star fort isn’t actually known for being a star fort at all – as Fort Wood is today the distinctive star-shaped pedestal underneath New York’s Statue of Liberty.

<br/> Fort Wood, New York (Wikipedia)

We’ve previously featured just one star fort several star forts, including Kastellet in Copenhagen, Citadel Hill in Canada, and the aforementioned Fort McHenry in Maryland. If that’s not enough, there’s a whole page about them at Wikipedia too.

Thanks to Dan W, Manuel Hewitt, RB, tom schuring, Stefano Bertolo and Federico Cretti.

I wonder what kind of animal left these tracks on these salt flats in South Africa? Are there any animal trackers out there who can identify the creatures responsible?

Part of the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, this particular image also features some slightly more identifiable tracks, but not left by an animal I suspect…

See our top-rated post of all time – Google Sightseeing Safari – for lots of animals that were still there when the photographs were taken!

Thanks to lepadekor.

This small rocky outcrop off the coast of South Africa is Seal Island, which is named for the thousands of Cape Fur Seals that occupy it, and famous for the unique marine drama that unfolds here.

At various times of the year the island’s waters are home to a number of Great White Sharks that very much enjoy dining on the island’s seal population. In fact, the sharks regularly launch themselves vertically out of the water to attack the seals – a behaviour that may be unique to this one place. This is such a common occurrence that you can simply pay $210 US dollars to go and watch the sharks have the seals for breakfast. In mid-air.

This breathtaking behaviour featured in the BBC’s stunning Planet Earth tv series, as well as the Discovery Channel’s Air Jaws programmes. If you haven’t seen one of these shows, make sure you watch this truly incredible clip of the sharks in action on YouTube.

Thanks to Michael.

There have been many creatures found on Google Earth, but the most impressive ones are mostly there as part of the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, which brought us thousands of super-high-resolution aerial photographs of Africa. So to highlight the best, today we’re going on Google Sightseeing Safari!

Let’s start with the basics: many of the animals we can see in Africa are of course working animals, like this large flock of sheep, these forlorn looking donkeys, and an absolute plethora of cows, goats, camels, and people filling up at a well.

We can do much better than this though – out in the wild, things start to get a lot more exciting.

Firstly we can see a small group of Gazelles caught mid-leap in the desert of Chad, and there’s obviously been a few passing this way – look how many hoof-prints they’ve left in the sand! Also caught leaping (but through a river), are a large group of Red Lechewe in Zambia.

Again in Chad, but out on the savannah this time, we find this wonderful image of a small family of Elephants huddling together to protect their young. Presumably from the terrifying machine flying overhead…

Out on the plain in Mozambique we can see a portion of what must have been a fairly enormous herd of Buffalo, again presumably fleeing from the plane above them.

Thanks to the exceptional resolution of these images, the animals don’t have to be as big as the 1.7 metre high African Buffalo to be spotted. In a swamp in Mali, there’s a great image of a Giant Stork flapping lazily around. Just to the south there’s actually one perched in a mangrove, and lots of other birds have been caught on the wing elsewhere in Mali.

Not all the birds found are own their own though – on the coast of Mozambique there’s a stunning image of a huge flock of Pink Flamingos taking off (perhaps they were startled by this small boat to the north?).

To Zambia now, where we can see some lovely chubby little baby hippos and even better, in Tanzania we can see a pod of hundreds of hippos wallowing in the mud, which is a truly incredible sight.

Here’s another shot of the same hippos in the mud¹, but this time we can more clearly see that’s there’s actually a dead hippo lying on the bank, being feasted on by vultures.

Hippos tend to share their pools and rivers with other creatures – particularly crocodiles, and nearby to yet another pod of hippos we can see the unmistakable silhouette of a crocodile just under the water. Next to the first hippos we found, there’s another crocodile, just chilling out on the bank.

Finally, although not being the kind of animals you’d traditionally expect to see while on safari, these images of seals on the coast of Namibia are too good not to include!

And here ends the great Google Sightseeing Safari. Of course this is only the beginning as there are more than 500 Megaflyover images to explore in Google Earth! Reggie98 at the Keyhole foums has been categorizing all of the animals to be found in them.

To see all the Megaflyover images, open “Gallery” in the Layers sub-panel (bottom-left) and enable the National Geographic Layer. You’ll see little red aircraft symbols appearing all over Africa, and each of these will take you to a hi-res shot of the area. Also, here’s a link to download a kml file which details many of the hundreds of undocumented images that form part of this enormous and stunning collection.

Thanks to all of the people at the Keyhole forums who helped me find these fascinating images! For more background on the project, visit the official Megaflyover and National Geographic pages.