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Page through the hundreds of photos in this remarkable Flickr pool, and you start to get the feeling that many of the Earth's smallest beasties just want to get a good look at their human neighbors. Image after image reveals insect, mammal, reptile, and bird in an inquisitive position, griping some person's index finger and gazing intently at the enormous creature that has hoisted it upwards. Big-eyed hamsters, bigger-eyed moths, and five (count 'em, five) red eyed tree frogs all appear to say, "Just let me take you in!" In some cases, though, the wee ones are too new or too busy to peek at their many-fingered photographer. And, of course, not everyone likes being handled in such a manner. We wouldn't want to meet this guy in a dark alley. Many of the insect portraits are worth special notice for their amazing Technicolor dream coats. These moths, ladybugs, and worms come dressed to the nines.

They say everything looks better from a distance, but here's proof that it's not always true. While no one's itching to get close to the mosquito, when it's magnified a couple of thousand times, the notorious pest begins to look almost...beautiful. With this site, you can zoom in on the detailed anatomy of a black ant or fruit fly, simulate the use of a scanning electron microscope to magnify a bee's eye or a carpet beetle (up to 4000x), discover the 12 Most Wanted bugs (like our old pals the cockroach or the cat flea), and browse "over 1500 micrographs of scientific, biological, and medical subjects photographed with light and electron microscopes." So if you don't know an ant's, er, rear end from its abdomen...don't worry, you will.

Every master artist needs a showcase. So, the Institute for the Promotion of the Less than One Millimeter proudly presents Mother Nature's most overlooked works of art -- previously visible only through a microscope -- now enlarged and reproduced for your viewing pleasure. Not to be outdone by upstarts like da Vinci and Dali, nature's handiwork is a testament to natural selection and eons of technical fine-tuning. Notice the intricacy and elegance found in her freshwater collection, rife complexity in the Diatom Depot, whimsy in the Ciliate Center, and festiveness Water Flea Circus. Over in the saltwater collection, we see an explosion of texture in the Radiolaria Lounge. This enigmatic microfossil shows she can be cryptic as well. The fascinating egg chamber reveals gestating ideas, while the algae exhibit blatantly displays her full range of talent and emotion.