animals
omnibrain | December 4, 2007I love science blogs but you know... I really get sick of the acronym filled science talk, the obnoxious politics, and of course the religion sometimes. I just discovered a great new blog that has all the natural curiosity of a science blog but non of the crap. It is wonderfully written by a non-scientist in a 'what I did today' format (which for the first time ever I like!)
The Daily Coyote chronicles, through pictures and stories, the life of Shreve Stockton, her cat, and her coyote friend. Here's the scoop from her:
Charlie is a wild-born coyote who was unexpectedly delivered to my…
omnibrain | November 28, 2007Just because animals doing human things are funny I give you an elephant throwing darts:
-via Neatorama-
grrlscientist | November 14, 2007tags: the world's most deadly animal, streaming video
Do you know what the world's most deadly animal (for humans) is? The grizzly bear? Or wolves? Or maybe the humble hippopotamus? There is a streaming video below the fold that answers this question. [1:58]
The females of most mosquito species suck blood (hematophagy) from warm-blooded animals. This has made mosquitoes one of the most deadly vectors known to man, killing millions of people over thousands of years and continuing to kill millions per year through the spread of diseases.
voltagegate | November 9, 2007I had to do it. With the red panda (Ailurus fulgens) at the top of my favorite animals list, I had to know exactly how many folks share enough interest in the firefox to name their toon after its genus name.
So how many Ailuruses are there out there? Seven on the North American servers and three on the European; appropriately, six of them are druids (cat/bear forms). The highest level (and she's leveled in the past few days, so is active) is a 68 feral druid who must have just recently snagged her Staff of Beasts from the Ring of Blood quest series in Nagrand.
If you've kept up with TVG,…
omnibrain | November 2, 2007Animal rights activists are horrible. I don't like the idea of belittling peoples opinions and treating them like crap but sometimes they really deserve it. Check out this hilarious video of a really stupid animal rights supporter who's ridiculous opinions are used against him to scare the crap out of him.
On a more serious note... head over to The Denialism Blog for the disturbing story of an attack on a scientist by animal rights activists.
voltagegate | November 1, 2007Today we'll start this little experiment with one of the toons that gave me the idea (the other is a secret as of yet!), Empidonax from Ravencrest. Emp is spec'd holy with almost two dozen points discipline as well, presumably for mana sustainability in raids like Karazhan.
There are only two Empidonax's on all 200 of WoW's North American servers, none on the European servers. The other Empidonax is a level 10 Druid on Arathor.
IRL (in real life) the genus Empidonax, meaning "mosquito king" in Latin, collects a group of "tyrant flycatchers" from the family Tyrannidae. Our representative of…
voltagegate | October 31, 2007In March of this year, to the amusement of my friends, my brother convinced me to start playing World of Warcraft (WoW) with him. Since I left the Baltimore/Washington DC area four years ago, I've only had a few chances to see him per year, mostly on holidays or on vacation, and he pitched it to me as a way for us to interact weekly without having to travel. The two of us grew up casually playing video games together, starting with Combat on the Atari 2600, so naturally the idea was immediately appealing. I bought the software, registered and hopped on his server. We've been playing ever…
omnibrain | October 8, 2007Just because Chimps are Funny:
And no bitching about my use of the word monkey! Via Neatorama
tqa | October 5, 2007
Last week, I had a picture of a live spider for you to identify. Most of the guesses came quickly, and were absolutely correct - the spider in the picture was a Spiny-Backed Orbweaver. This week's arthropod might be a little more challenging.
The picture below features a pinned museum specimen, and was taken through a light microscope at about 40x magnification. The edge of a quarter appears in the photo for scale. The species in question is unique to the island of Hawaii, and is found on the wetter slopes of the younger volcanoes.
Good luck. I'll post either the answer (if someone…
sb admin | October 5, 2007
Via The Center for Narcolepsy at Stanford School of Medicine], this video explains:
Various narcoleptic episodes in dogs. Sporadic cases of narcolepsy in dogs is due to hypocretin peptide deficiency while the familial form is due to mutations in one of the two hypocretin receptor genes (hcrtr2). Various dogs are shown here in a clip narrated by Dr. Emmanuel Mignot.
Or for the tabloid take, watch Skeeter the Narcoleptic Poodle from Inside Edition. "Skeeter's troubles staying awake are heartbreaking..."
Visit the Sleep Foundation to learn more.
voltagegate | October 3, 2007I've been reading up on this critter for the past few days, ever since I pulled out some old mammal texts I had sitting on the shelf. I got sucked in and thought I would share a bit of what I've read.
The volcano rabbit, Romerolagus diazi, is found on the slopes of only four volcanoes in Mexico, south of Mexico city. These four - Pelado, Iztacohuat, Tlaloc and Popocatepetl - are part of the transvolcanic belt (TVB; also called the trans-Mexican volcanic or transverse neovolvanic belt), a biogeographic zone in the center of the country that exhibits a high level of endemism; in other words,…
tqa | September 28, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some pictures of some large spiders and asked for help in identifying one of them. Jerry Cates of Bugs In The News got back to me quite quickly, and identified the mystery spider as Nephila clavipes - the same species as the other ones shown in that post.
I took some more spider pictures this week. I've identified the species. Can you? The pictures are below the fold, along with some information about the size and where it was spotted. I'll post my identification on Monday.
The spider in these two pictures was a little less than an inch long (approx 3/4"-7…
voltagegate | September 28, 2007I've been tagged!
It's cool, it's about animals and I've only got an hour to blog this morning before work, so let's do it.
An interesting animal I had
All of the animals I've made friends with over the years have been a bit weird in their own way, I suppose. When you get the chance to get to know something with such a different brain, you're bound to be surprised by its behavior.
About five years ago, I took my friend's tarantula under my care since he had been "joking" about letting it go in his suburban backyard. Tarantella is a Chilean rose-haired tarantula, fairly commonplace as far as…
voltagegate | September 26, 2007
Bora has linked the final scientific paper by Steve Irwin on crocodilians (what else?) over on his blog, and I just finished giving it a good read over coffee. A brief review below the fold.
The experiment was thrillingly simple. Three estuarine giants of the species C. porosus were captured at certain abundant spots in Queensland, transported to new locations by helicopter and net sling and released. Irwin and his colleagues tracked their movements back to the capture spot via satellite (the first time satellite telemetry was used in a published study on crocs).
They seemed confused, if…
voltagegate | September 26, 2007WWF is running their latest holiday animal adoption campaign, and have some interesting critters up for adoption just in time for Halloween, including the hellbender, octopus and of course, the vampire bat. Cute idea, and I love the teasers, but... THERE'S NO CANDY IN THE BAG???
Guess I'll have to stuff that little orange bag full of Endangered Species Chocolate myself.
voltagegate | September 24, 2007Here's a clip from Wild America illustrating the incredible agility of the lynx and the snowshoe, predator and prey. The full documentary about the Canada lynx is below the fold. It's not the greatest quality, but the footage does the animals justice.
voltagegate | September 19, 2007
Coyote population densities are much lower in areas where their territory overlaps with wolves, according to a study done by the Wildlife Conservation Society. It's not pure numbers that they're talking about here, it's how many animals can be found within a certain area, and when there's wolves about, the density drops by about 33 - 39 percent for coyotes (percentages from different study areas). Despite the lower densities, coyotes still far outnumber wolves in these areas.
So what's going on here?
It's not predation. Wolf predation on coyotes accounts for only about 16 percent of…
grrlscientist | September 14, 2007The 157th edition of the popular blog carnival, The Friday Ark is now available. This blog carnival specializes in publishing links to pictures of animals so you can enjoy looking at them. Some of these pictures are accompanied by essays, too.
tqa | September 11, 2007
I was out walking yesterday morning when I saw several very large spiders sitting on webs. I had my camera with me, so I shot a bunch of pictures, and got a couple of really nice ones. I think I've managed to identify the species for a couple of the spiders, but there's one that I'm not quite sure of.
I'm pretty sure that three of the spiders are golden orb spiders (Nephila clavipes). The body shape is right, the markings are right, the site (League City, TX) is within the known range of the species, the habitat (marshy scrub along the bank of Clear Creek) is right, and the behavior (head…
voltagegate | September 11, 2007Shelley, Orli and Grrl have amply discussed the untimely death of Alex and the history of his relationship with Irene Pepperberg, so I will say nothing more than how much of an inspiration he was to my fiance. She has been working on a series of paintings depicting animals in famous experiments, and was immediately taken by Alex's charm.
Three cheers to Alex! You taught us much, and will be remembered.