bleimanb

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March 26, 2008
In keeping with our nautically themed posts (perhaps a teaser for April's upcoming "Carnival of the Blue," hosted by none other than yours truly the Fabulous Flying Bleiman Brothers), we bring you this story: Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Wood's Hole are attempting to…
March 26, 2008
France's National Museum of Natural History displayed its prize centerpiece today for an exhibit on biodiversity, a plastinated, 21+ foot-long, giant squid named Wheke. The squid was hauled in by a fisherman in New Zealand in 2001 and was plastinated in Italy by a company called VisDocta Research…
March 25, 2008
A student at Aberdeen University in the U.K. is engaged in a groundbreaking study to see if we might be able to monitor the behavior of sharks in order to predict the weather. When Hurricane Gabrielle arrived in Florida in 2001, shark researchers noticed that young black tipped sharks (who…
March 24, 2008
A totally normal British couple has made headlines by wearing sweaters, knitted out of the hair of their deceased pet dogs. Beth and Brian Willis have made two sweaters, one out of Kara, a Samoyed, and the other from Penny, a Swedish Lapphund. I can't decide which one is hotter. Says Mrs Willis…
March 18, 2008
A new exhibition of nature drawings, paintings and renderings has just opened at Buckingham Palace. The event focuses around four artists and a collector (Leonardo da Vinci, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Alexander Marshal, Maria Sibylla Merian and Mark Catesby) who lived from the mid 15th century to the…
March 12, 2008
Aptly named by whoever started this viral email... Hmmm...what's that moose up to? The images below the fold are morally reprehensible, even by moose standards. Special thanks to Alan "B.A. Baracus" Bleiman for forwarding this along to us...
March 12, 2008
A Japanese research vessel bonanza. Note that there is no sound on this vid so as not to wake the whales...
March 12, 2008
A mother and baby pygmy sperm whale in New Zealand appeared disoriented this week, repeatedly stranding themselves on a sandbar off of Mahia Beach. After multiple attempts by the locals to guide the whales back to sea failed, the human rescuers were starting to get worried. All of a sudden, a well…
March 11, 2008
Almost a year ago we posted the Dramatic Chipmunk. Turns out he's got a cousin...
March 10, 2008
Definitive proof of a wolverine living in California has emerged for the first time since the 1920's. Kate Moriarty, a graduate student at Oregon State University was hoping to snap a picture of an American marten in Tahoe National Forest, but instead she captured this image of a wolverine. Her…
March 7, 2008
After over 100 hedgehogs were killed by murderous McFlurry containers in Germany, the powerful German hedgehog lobby sprang into action. In perhaps the first example of hedgehog irony, the creatures were entering the cups, getting stuck, and then dying by starvation inside a McFlurry container.…
March 5, 2008
A new study by American and German scientists, published in the Physical Review Letters, has shed light on a classic zoological mystery: how do snakes hear? For quite a while, researchers did not believe that snakes could hear, until tests performed in the 1970's proved otherwise. Still, those…
March 4, 2008
This six-legged octopus- the first ever known to science -was hauled in from a catch off of the coast of Wales. His lack of two limbs appear to be the result of a birth defect not an insurgent IED. The hexapus has been named "Henry" and now resides at the Blackpool Sea Life Centre in Northwest…
March 3, 2008
The smartest person in England has bred a new kind of pet pig, one that fits in the palm of your hand! Chris Murray's Pennywell Miniature pigs recently gave birth to eight piglets at his farm in Devon. According to this article on abcnews.com, Murray wanted a kind of pig "that children can enjoy…
March 3, 2008
When Andrew and I were five and six years old, we used to sit on the old, dusty couch in our living room and try to memorize a 1,300 page, illustrated animal encyclopedia. Not in our wildest dreams would we have imagined anything like the Encylopedia of Life. With 30,000 entries up so far and a…
March 3, 2008
As long as we're on the subject of fascinating interviews, we thought our readers might be interested to see this conversation with one of the world's leading experts on anteaters. Expert On Anteaters Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters Special thanks to Danno Robinson for forwarding this video…
February 22, 2008
Props to Lydia Robinson for sending us this link...
February 19, 2008
Check out this footage from a recent international expedition called the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census. Their mission is part of an effort to take stock of all the life in the world's ocean, but these creatures were filmed in the Antarctic Ocean (Southern Ocean). The bulbous, plantlike…
February 19, 2008
We've all heard that goldfish only have a three second memory and thus it's ok to eat them, live, while your'e inebriated and in Pittsburgh. Well, a 15-year old student in Southern Australia has turned that assumption on its head by proving goldfish have much more powerful memories than previously…
February 14, 2008
Anyone who knows Andrew and me is aware that we have a deep love of only two things in this godforsaken world, animals and beer. Now, some genius Englishman has combined the two with a scallop-infused beer!!! Mmmm...bi-valvo-licious! Scallop Stout has been created by a brewery named Shepherd…
February 6, 2008
Scientists in Malaysia have strapped high-tech backpacks onto flying lemurs, humans' closest cousins, to help understand the aerodynamics of how these nifty little creatures glide through the air. The flying lemurs aren't actually lemurs, so from now on we're going to refer to them by their mother'…
February 6, 2008
Those scoundrels at Deep Sea News narrowly beat us to this story. But the video is spectacular! Click here to watch it, and read their much-better-informed-than-ours-would-have-been description.
February 5, 2008
Scientists have discovered two new species of animal recently, one in Tanzania and the other in Nepal. Though the researchers had spotted the giant, cat-sized shrew (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) as far back as 2005 in Tanzania, they have now identified it as a new kind of giant sengi. The findings…
February 5, 2008
These pictures were taken by the Predator while hunting at the London Zoo. Turns out the Predator's actual name is Steve Lowe! There's an article about it in the Telegraph. The images show how different animals use their fur and feathers to regulate their body heat. More below the fold...
January 28, 2008
Great video of cooped up dolphins blowing underwater bubble rings to pass the time. Before we get all out of sorts that this is some sort of compulsive, depressive behavior from being locked up, note that this been observed in the wild as well. I just can't help but look at that and wish that I…
January 23, 2008
We know this story has been covered by everyone from LiveScience to Perez Hilton, but we thought we'd do our part as well to promote awareness. Chinese giant salamander....very tasty. An initiative known as EDGE (Excited Dachshunds Grinding with the Elderly) has released its list of unique and…
January 18, 2008
Just when Andrew and I decided once and for all that ants couldn't get any more delicious looking, along comes a new parasitic roundworm that turns our whole world on its head! The newly discovered nematode enters the ants when they eat bird droppings and causes their abdomens to resemble ripe,…
January 17, 2008
You'd have to be mentally deficient to believe Japan's claims that their hunting of 900 whales is being done for "research" purposes. But how far should people go to stop the slaughter? The Australian government has condemned the killing. People have waged protests. But it seems nothing can stop…
January 15, 2008
Any snail enthusiast knows that their favorite creatures' shells follow certain stead-fast rules: They are cone shaped, right handed, and spiral on a single axis logarithmically. Well, let me just tell you what a shock it was to the snail community when scientists recently discovered the…
January 11, 2008
Louis, an 18 month old, giant Pacific octopus at the Newquay's Blue Reef Aquarium in the U.K. has a new best friend: a Mr. Potato Head doll. In this article on bbc.com, Matt Slater of the aquarium, talks about Louis' love affair with the little plastic man (NOTE: This quote is a lot more powerful…