Zooillogix

FYI

Category: bat

Andrew just sent me come footage he shot of Benny this past weekend:

Posted by Katie Thompson at 11:45 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Happy Belated Mole Day!

Category: Naked Mole-Rats • cancer • genetic modifications

While I believe this bit of news has been well circulated this week, I wanted to give it the Zooillogix bump. Plus, I can only assume Zooillogix readers look to our blog for the latest breaking news... thus it would be a great disservice to all 25 of them to leave this unreported. University of Rochester biologists think they've figured out why the beloved naked mole rat continues to live their entire 30 year moley lifespans without ever having a tumor. That's right. No researcher has ever discovered evidence of cancer in these beauts.
The biologists claim that the naked mole rats express a certain gene that prevents cells from reproducing when the cells become crowded, thereby stopping would-be tumors in their tracks. I say we need only to triple these genes, making the mole rats cancer free for 90 years, then replace our own genes with that of the naked mole rats. Duh.
It seems that other small, but long lived rodents, like some species squirrels and some marmots, have little to no evidence of cancer, too. But researchers such as Vera Gorbunova from U. of Rochester still aren't sure exactly what kinds of anti-cancer going-ons are present in each one of the species.

The images below are for mature audiences only.
Perhaps now they should look into pale, wrinkly, bald skin and blindness immunity genes.

Posted by Katie Thompson at 11:43 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Fruit Bats Join Short List of Creatures Who Dig Fellatio!

Category: bat • fruit bat

Oral sex is a rarity in the animal kingdom with just a handful of species (humans, bonobos) who participate in the act. Well, move over high-functioning primates because there's a new, high-fellating mammal on the bj circuit, the short-nosed fruit bat. Yeah, we get it, "short-nosed..." We seriously can't make this stuff up.

Random Fact #265: Due to the terms of his Federal plea bargain, Andrew is actually not allowed to watch this video!

Apparently, according to the paper recently published in PLoS ONE, about 70% of female short-nosed fruit bats engage in oral sex with their partners. Furthermore, "a positive relationship exists between the length of time that the female licked the male's penis during copulation and the duration of copulation." This may indicate that females who engage in fellatio may be, in fact, improving the likelihood of fertilization.

Just to recap the findings: All females, of any species, who engage in fellatio increase their genetic fitness. That will be all, thank you.

P.S. NVDH in da house.
P.P.S. We cannot WAIT to use Google Analytics to see what combination of words people entered into Google that led them to this post!

Posted by Benny Bleiman at 6:08 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Sir, a Bloodbelly Comb has decloaked and is firing on the Zooillogix!

Category: bioluminescence • jellyfish

Beautiful and fascinating footage of a Bloodbelly Comb (not a jellyfish, but similarly gelatinous, like my brother) from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's remote operated vehicle. The laser light show comes from tiny transparent, hair-like cilia combined with trace amounts of LSD that will forever remain in your spine.

I could point out that it appears Deep Sea News ran this a few days ago, but we're not talking to them anymore since they went all "academic" on us... I bet they don't even have any shirts with wolves on them.

Posted by ableiman at 11:37 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Most Extreme Animal Shirts

Category:

Straight from Katie and Andrew's closets we bring you this Mountain Dew-soaked photographic essay.

An explosive herbivore bursts forth from your chest

So many, many more below the fold...

Read on »

Posted by ableiman at 3:06 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The Latest Addition to the Rat-cademy

Category: rats

Meet Hobbie-J, not your average Long Evans rat:

(photo from Medical College of Georgia)

Behind that unassuming beady eye lurks the smartest rat-brain ever engineered.
You see, Hobbie-J is what scientists Dr. Joe Tsien and Dr. Xiaohua Cao call a "transgenic rat." Her dramatically increased intelligence is the result of genetic tinkering. By over-expressing little Hobbie-J's NR2B gene (a gene partially responsible for learning and memorizing), she was able to remember the solution to mazes and games many times longer than her un-transgenic rat friends. She has also begun frequenting her local coffee shop where she enjoys conversations that compare the Bible and Roman mythology.

The NR2B gene is the neuron gatekeeper. It regulates the amount of time brain cells can communicate with one another. When the gene is over-expressed, the gateway stays open a hundred or so milliseconds longer. Apparently, that's enough time to have a dramatic effect on memory and learning. Researchers hope that this will lead to more successful treatments for memory-related diseases such as Alzheimer's. The findings and implications are pretty amazing.

Perhaps this means the rat world will finally start to appreciate inner beauty and intelligence instead of their current obsession with body image and fashion:

Patricia consumed only water and rice cakes for weeks before this shoot.

Posted by Katie Thompson at 10:56 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Zoologist Gets Shagged By Endangered Parrot

Category:

One of the world's few flightless parrots, the Kakapo is endemic to New Zealand and is notable for having parrot sex with this guy's head.

This is basically Benny's dream date. Thanks to reader Heather H. for sending along.

Posted by ableiman at 5:11 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Vegetarian Spider Lives By Its Own Rules

Category: spider

In a surprise discovery, scientists have discovered the first known mostly vegetarian spider in the jungle mountains of Costa Rica and Mexico. The Bagheera kiplingi was observed feasting not on flies or gnats but on the buds of the acacia plant. Science has known about the Bagheera kiplingi since the late 1800's when naturalists collected dead specimens of them. This is the first time, however, that its behavior was logged.

Um, excuse me. There isn't any gelatin in this plant bud, is there?

Christopher Meehan of University of Arizona in Tucson studied the spiders (while at Villanova), also noting that they had to constantly keep a watchful eye out for the ant species that share the acacia habitat. The ants aggressively protect the plant from intruders in exchange for food and housing, and the spiders must hop from thorn to thorn to avoid them.

"It is utterly surreal," Meehan said to National Geographic, "to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant."

It is also important to note that the spider does occasionally fall off the wagon and eat ant larvae.

Posted by Benny Bleiman at 6:54 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Toilet Training of the Shrew

Category: defecation • mountain shrew • shrew

I've often pondered how wonderful the world would be if the kitchen and bathroom served the same purpose. It looks like the mountain shrew of Malaysian Borneo has already reached that promised land.

Their diet mainly consists of the nectar that lines the underside of pitcher plant leaves. When dinner is done, the shrew simply takes care of business by defecating into the pitcher part of the pitcher plants. The circle is complete when the plant (normally thought to feed on insects and other carnivorosities) absorbs the nitrogen rich nuggets of love.
Oh, and I forgot one last thing: the shrews also visit the same pitcher plants over and over again, marking them as their own by rubbing their shrewy genitals on the rim of the plants.

Somehow this reminds me of my childhood growing up in Alabama.

As always, the Japanese are really close:

***On a side note, an important cautionary tale has been added to the end of my last post.

Posted by Katie Thompson at 1:07 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks