bleimanb
Posts by this author
October 21, 2008
Two black-footed ferret kits have been born at the Smithsonian National Zoo after their mothers were artificially inseminated by decade-old frozen sperm. The kits' fathers, deceased now for seven and eight years respectively, had provided sperm in 1997 and 1998 as a part of the Smithsonian's…
October 15, 2008
Embedded video from CNN Video
(If this doesn't work for you in Chrome, try IE or something)
October 14, 2008
These shots are stills from a new National Geographic Documentary airing this month called "Extraordinary Animals in the Womb".
You quiero dar puntandas una pierna...Chihuahau fetus
Peter Chinn the show's producer used a mixture of endoscopic cameras, ultrasound imaging and computer modeling to…
October 10, 2008
Researchers have been dispatched to the Great Kali river in India to study whether a form of giant catfish called goonches have taken to preying on humans. The Indians traditionally burn their dead in the river, which, according to local lore, has led in two ways to the fish attacking humans: #1 -…
October 6, 2008
Scientists in England working with an international conservation group have compiled a sample list which will be used much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average to track the overall status of endangered and threatened species in the world.
Andrew and I should never have sunk our life savings into…
October 2, 2008
When elephants become separated from their group they can use their keen senses of smell and sight to locate their brethren, OR they can use the Earth like a giant telephone and call their herd with rumble vocalizations. A new study by Katherine Leighty and a team from the...wait for it....wait for…
September 30, 2008
First ever footage of dolphins trying to save one of their own. Warning: Sad ending!
September 25, 2008
Just a friendly reminder that Zooillogix, Gene Expression, Deep Sea News, Adventures in Ethics and Science, and Thoughts from Kansas are throwing the biggest, most fun, blowout bonanza ever put together tomorrow night!***
The party starts at 9pm sharp at Tonic, the bar owned by yours truly on…
September 24, 2008
Just when we thought that Dirty Jerse had hit rock bottom, its rivers and forests have become overrun with a slimy, invasive species of eel that can live for months during droughts and change sex if necessary in order to keep reproducing. The Asian swamp eels were found recently in Silver Lake (…
September 18, 2008
Subterranean...blind...predatory...smokin' hot AILF! These are all adjectives that you could use to describe a newly discovered ant from the Amazon rainforest. Dubbed the Martialis heureka or "Ant from Mars" (not kidding), the sightless creature lives inside the soil and presumably hunts prey with…
September 16, 2008
While Andrew wows you with such exciting facts as What Kind of Hay to Feed an Oryx from the AZA, I thought I'd cover some actual bizarre zoological news this week. A group of ichthyologists have recently made a startling discovery, one that was literally glowing right before their eyes.
This…
September 10, 2008
Readers, Friends, Enemies, Members of the Press!
My mildly authoritarian brother and I would like to remind you of the life-changing event we're throwing on Friday, September 26th, in San Francisco at Tonic. The party starts at 9pm and goes until ?. (That's right ladies, you read me correctly, it…
September 3, 2008
A paper by the University of Basel's Zoological Institute to be published in the upcoming issue of the journal, Animal Behavior, reveals the complex relationship that baby bugs - nymphs and larvae - have with their parents.
When young tree hoppers feel threatened they will shake the leaves and…
September 2, 2008
From a surprisingly informative article in today's Telegraph.
August 28, 2008
After a recent heat wave in China's Sichuan province, local cats sprouted strange appendages resembling wings, as reported in the Bill Moyer's Journal of England, the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail claims to have spoken with genetic experts (i.e. Nigel in the mail room) who said that these growths come…
August 26, 2008
For centuries local villagers who lived around what is now Komodo National Park in Indonesia fed slaughtered animals to their neighbors, giant Komodo dragons. The locals believe that the dragons are the reincarnation of their ancestors and townsfolk, and would leave offerings of dead meat at the…
August 22, 2008
Rumor has it that New Zealand's colossal squid is a refined killing machine, hunting down prey at lightening speed deep in the murky Antarctic depths. Turns out rumor may be wrong. Scientists working on the largest ever whole specimen of colossal squid have made some curious discoveries. Far from…
August 19, 2008
A German researcher has proven that a species other than a mammal is capable of recognizing its own reflection: the magpie. In order to test this theory, Chancellor Helmut Prior of the Goethe University stuck stickers on a group of hand-reared magpies in places that the magpies could only see in a…
August 15, 2008
Scientists have turned to elephant seals to collect data on the changing climate of Antarctica, one of the areas most sensitive to climate change. Previously, the scientists had what they called a "blind spot" under the sea ice, particularly in understanding how quickly sea ice forms during the…
August 11, 2008
Researchers at the New England Aquarium have stepped into a totally new method of studying Atlantic's threatened population of right whales - collecting and analyzing floating feces to test the population's health!
I didn't know whales ate corn!
Right whales got their name because they were the "…
August 6, 2008
Henry the Tuatara has recently knocked up one of his mates, Mildred, who's only 70-80 (scaaaandal!), in their museum enclosure/retirement complex at the Southland Museum on New Zealand's South Island. The couple now have a stack of 12 eggs.
Ladies, a little known fact about Henry...My dentures…
August 5, 2008
Australian snubfin dolphins. They don't look so ugly to us, but then again, Andrew and I are hideous to behold ourselves.
August 4, 2008
A husband and wife scientist team in England has devised a titillating means of identifying oncoming illnesses in patients by using a bioluminescent mollusk called a piddock. Dr. Jan Knight and Dr. Robert Knight have already started using their method on the English Olympic sailing team to help…
July 29, 2008
The pentailed treeshrew has recently been identified by scientists as the "biggest drunk" in the animal kingdom. Frank Wiens of the Department of Animal Physiology at the University of Bayreuth in Germany smelled the distinct odor of booze in the Segari Melintang Forest Reserve in Western Malaysia…
July 28, 2008
A new exhibit at New York's Museum of Sex seeks to expose the hidden sex lives of animals, and some of its themes may be shocking to prudes. As the exhibit shows (graphically), animals engage in diverse, unconventional acts of sex, and sex plays a much larger role in many animal societies than…
July 28, 2008
Apologies for overloading cute on you all. These baby lemurs were recently born at Folly Farm Zoo in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
July 22, 2008
Discovery.com recently reported two instances of animals manipulating sound to master their environments.
Cuckoos are known for tricking birds into rearing their chicks: They lay their eggs in another species' nest and, once hatched, the baby cuckoos push out the eggs and/or chicks of the host…
July 21, 2008
What is the Ghost Slug?
by the Museum of Wales
"Unlike most slugs, the Ghost Slug is carnivorous, killing earthworms at night with powerful, blade-like teeth, sucking them in like spaghetti. It is also unusual in having no eyes (it is probably blind) and is almost completely white. It spends most…
July 17, 2008
Brits of all shapes and sizes have been spitting out mouth fulls of tea and shepherd's pie at the announcement that a strange unidentified insect seems to be running rampant across England, including London.
The black and red bug resembles the Arocatus roeselii, a rare central European insect,…
July 9, 2008
Every year tens of thousands of golden rays, also known as cow nosed rays, make a biannual migration between Western Florida and the Yucatan Peninsula. They are known to school in groups of 10,000 or more during their exodus. These shots were snapped off the coast of Mexico by Sandra Critelli, an…