shrew
bleimanb | March 11, 2010New research is ROCKING the notoriously arrogant carnivorous plant scientific community: It appears that the largest carnivorous plant, the giant pitcher plant of Borneo (or the Nepenthes rajah for those in the know), has not evolved into its immense size in order to capture and eat small rodents, but to be a large toilet for furry tree shrews to deposit their nutrient rich feces in.
Don't nobody go in there for thirty-five...forty-five minutes!
Since their discovery in the early Eighteen...ahem...hmmm...(sorry, we're animal guys), the giant pitcher plants have been rumored to ingest not…
kthompson | October 6, 2009I'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…
zooillogix | September 9, 2009Sure you could watch your cat sleeping or your TV while it was turned off, but we here at Zooillogix prefer to stare blankly at this shrew not moving for 1:16 minutes.
Thank you Philadelphia Zoo.
zooillogix | August 13, 2008A ScienceFriday video podcast from over a year ago on how the star-nosed mole and other mammals can actually sniff for prey underwater.
I wonder if this is what my dog is doing and she sticks her nose to the base of the door and snorts as people approach.