zooillogix
Posts by this author
August 13, 2009
I recently came across the Russian nesting doll art of Irina Troitskaya and thought I would share. Also called matryoshka, matreshka, or "those things are freaking awesome" in Russian, nesting dolls are a traditional artform from the town of Semyonov, where the land was terrible for farming, but…
August 5, 2009
While we usually bring you hard-hitting, fact-based (like pleather is leather-based) news, sometimes we stumble across something that is simply news to us. In this case, it's the existence of what appears to be a cross between a colorful sea slug and a shrew called a Lowland Streaked Tenrec (…
July 28, 2009
AKA - a boy and his coffee on geek safari
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
July 20, 2009
In this groundbreaking film, a greater Egyptian jerboa hangs out in a kitchen to a tune from Dragon Quest 3. Set expectations to "low."
Thanks to Adam Bedient for the important tip
July 16, 2009
In the Midwest they have a game called "cornhole" which involves throwing bean bags into holes in boards. Growing up on the East Coast, cornhole had a completely different meaning, but living in Chitown for three years now, I am doing my best to blend in.
As a patron of the arts, I recently had a…
July 16, 2009
Whether you call them Little Penguins or Fairy Penguins, the name rightfully suggests that this species is not the most formidable of their flightless family. In fact, standing at about only 16" high, they are the smallest of all penguins. Therefore it might not be surprising that they are picked…
July 13, 2009
If millipedes were not adorable enough on their own, they are often teeming with special little mites. The millipede and the mites typically have a symbiotic relationship wherein the millipede provides the mites with a home and the mites provide an extra layer of terror in the event that an…
July 13, 2009
Many of you have asked... what's up with Zooillogix? Over a month between posts... Rambling, incoherent responses to inquiries from the Royal Society... Dark bags underneath our eyes... Hair loss and tooth decay... Some of you might have thought it was drugs. Well you were right. It took Jane…
May 19, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
Does the sinking feeling of knowing you could have gotten what you wanted had you made better choices in life sound familiar? Like how if in college, had you gotten a real degree, set goals for yourself, and not tried to buy friendships with your credit card, you could…
May 6, 2009
I cannot train my dog Mathman not to pee on the damned carpet but New England Aquarium's senior trainer, cryptically known simply as "Erin", can teach a lobster to score higher on the GRE than me.
As some readers of this blog may know, I have long been concerned with growing Lobster / Human…
May 4, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
Researchers at Cambridge University have debunked the long standing myth that freshwater algae can't dance. Volvox, while sounding like a herpes medication for mad scientists, is a spherical algae organism made up of only about 1,000 cells. They get their swerve from…
April 23, 2009
Festo is officially my new favorite company, supplanting Gama-Go even with their squid wallets. With a seemingly limitless budget to create non-commercially viable robots, Festo is run by Morgan Freeman, who now goes exclusively by the moniker Lucius Fox.
As if flying death jellyfish weren't enough…
April 22, 2009
by Katie the lowly intern
Just when you started to feel comforted by the surge of popular culture embracing cephalopods on TV, apparel and porn, scientists spoon out a dose of brutal reality. Researchers from University of Melbourne, University of Brussels and Museum Victoria have revealed…
April 19, 2009
New giftuses from Zooillogix readers and friends and, I must say, they are freakin outstanding. First and foremost, a long long overdue thank you to Liz of Surplus Cats who sent a Pittsburgh Zoo shot glass so long ago Ben hadn't even had his "operation" yet. It's an instant classic if I do say so…
April 14, 2009
Dude
Kingsford Goes to the Beach - video powered by Metacafe
via CMYKaboom!
April 14, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
As a kid, I was always interested in bioluminescence:
So I can't really pass up the chance to post about beings that can produce their own light. Marine biologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have been playing around with bioluminescent…
April 8, 2009
Last fall many of you donated via Donor's Choose to one of three school science projects selected by Zooillogix for their direct impact of bringing creepy crawlies into the classroom. Today we have our first thank you from Ms. Daisy C's class in Brooklyn.
In this undated picture, kids in Ms. C's…
April 7, 2009
I bought a parakeet at a back alley Chinatown apothecary last week. Against the wise but curmudgeonly old shopkeeper's advice, I fed Felicia after midnight and she turned into this:
I believe it's a Barred Eagle-Owl. It ate Mathman.
April 6, 2009
I have had this picture for a while just waiting for groundbreaking news about Bat-eared foxes. Well it never came but I can't just stare at the little guys any longer and not post them.
Photo credit Floridapfe of South Korea's Everland Zoo
They aren't babies and therefore not ZooBorn's fodder,…
April 2, 2009
by Katie the Lowly Intern
You might recall this gentle soul who got her face gnawed off by a chimp in February. I won't even begin to sift through the big ball of bizarre that story is, but it does lead to an interesting discussion concerning exactly where apes get enough strength to go around…
April 1, 2009
I cannot train my dog Mathman not to poop in the house, but an aquarist named Lindsay at the New England Aquarium has a Lumpfish named Blondie to do tricks (no flaming hoops yet).
Note that this is not an April Fool's joke. If it were, Blondie would also be performing Under the Sea in its entirety…
March 31, 2009
In the 1930s, Australian ecologists shortsightedly introduced the Cane Toad, a species indigenous to South America, to their isolated continent to eat agricultural pests. This famously proved to be a complete disaster with the toxic toads running rampant and native species poisoning themselves when…
March 26, 2009
It might not seem like the an 8 inch long leopard slug could put on an amazing sex show. After all, they can be real slimeballs. But actually, these hermaphroditic gastropod mollusks' sexual behavior is quite... well... beautiful.
video link:
The foreplay for the fertilization, which consists…
March 24, 2009
Siamese Crocodiles
Courtesy of Zooillogix reader extraordinaire, Zellychan.
March 20, 2009
For the last few months, a killer stalked the streets of Cornwall... or more specifically, the water of Cornwall, and even more specifically, the living reefs exhibit at Newquay's Blue Reef Aquarium. Day after day, aquarists would return to the award winning exhibit, only to find once healthy coral…
March 19, 2009
As boneless, gelatinous bags, octopuses rarely find themselves preserved as fossils but just this week it was announced in the journal Palaeontology that three new 95,000,000 year old octopus fossils have been discovered. These are the oldest on record. So what does an octopus fossil look like?…