zooillogix | March 3, 2008A few weeks back we brought you a story on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, a system developed to compare the relative intensity of Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants) stings. The index was developed through personal "research" conducted unintentionally by Dr. Justin Schmidt, an entomologist who has devoted his life to these ornery critters.
As the Index combines all the things Zooillogix readers love (i.e. science and non-life threatening personal injury) the response to the post was strong. Therefore in collaboration with Shelley Batts, formerly of Retrospectacle and now the brand new…
zooillogix | February 28, 2008A fascinating new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the impact of human fishing may be reducing the fitness of fish populations overall. It may also explain why your grandfather insists that "the fish don't bite like they used to." The thinking goes like this: bold and aggressive fish tend to eat more, grow faster and ultimately have more baby fish. They also tend to be the ones that chase and bite fishing lures, and in the case of commercial fishing, get caught in gill nets.
Aggressive, fast breeding fish are naturally attracted to huge…
zooillogix | February 25, 2008Ever wanted to build a world-class exhibit for your pet Asian Sloth Bear in your backyard or living room but didn't know where to start? What kind of furniture do sloth bears prefer? How do they feel about toile? Can you feed them chocolate? Well now your problems are solved, thanks to ZooLex!
ZooLex is a service of the World Zoo and Aquarium Association (WAZA), and includes a small but growing collection of design specs and industry resources for folks in the zoo exhibit planning business. As you might imagine, every last detail needs to be mapped out, from safety, cleaning and feeding to…
zooillogix | February 23, 2008Dentistry under the sea looks a lot less painful but potentially much more dangerous for the hygienist.
Moray and cleaner shrimp. Photo credit to Erwin Kodiat
Sand Diver and Pedersen's cleaner shrimp. Photo credit to Reef Reflections
Fun fact: adorable cleaner shrimp are notable for crawling down people's throats and laying eggs in their chest! Photo credit to Michael Haas.
bleimanb | February 19, 2008Check 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 structures are called tunicates.
bleimanb | February 19, 2008We'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 known. Alright, let me explain.
In college, my buddies and I used to...
...take a road trip up to the University of Pittsburgh for their Goldfish Party, an annual get together where a frat house was filled with thousands of goldfish scattered around in those little aquarium bags. Inevitably, the…
zooillogix | February 18, 2008Scientists in Madagascar recently discovered the remains of a giant prehistoric frog, a relative of today's horned toads, which blew away the previous record for the largest known frog, Bennicus Bleimanicus. Dubbed Beelzebufo, meaning "frog from hell," the Devil Frog had important differences from today's frogs. To begin with, it was freakin huge. Susan Evans, a researcher from the University College of London, explained that if it was anything like its closest living forebears, "it would have been quite mean." Considering the fact that it was "the size of a slightly squashed beach-ball,…
zooillogix | February 18, 2008Fascinating BBC footage of geckos coaxing leafhoppers to feed them honeydew. The lizards tap their feet or bob their heads, and the insect dutifully tosses them a bead of delicious tree sap. This definitely qualifies as bizarre zoology.
zooillogix | February 15, 2008For years debate has raged amongst bat researchers as to whether or not bats were really just "flying rodents..." <--(NOT TRUE). At age 6 Ben was in the World of Darkness at the Bronx Zoo when he heard a mother tell her young children this totally incorrect animal fact. As bats were his favorite animal, he became angry and marched up to the mother and informed her that she was totally wrong, told her to "read the signs if she didn't know the facts" and then filled her in on a few million years of evolutionary history <--(TRUE). In fact many scientists believe that fruit bats, may…
bleimanb | February 14, 2008Anyone 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 Neame, apparently the oldest brewery in England. They make the beer the same way they always would, but throw a handful of scallops into the vat for an hour. While Andrew and I are suspicious that he might have actually gotten the idea from God, the brewer Stewart Main claims to have thought it up…
zooillogix | February 12, 2008A novel approach to connecting people and animals while generating new revenue or exploitation and poor judgment from those who should know better?
The Georgia Aquarium announced this morning a new program that allows regular Joe Public to swim with their famed whale sharks, among other critters, in their largest tank. For the low price of $199 a swim or $290 for a SCUBA dive (actually quite a deal compared with traveling to the Philippines or one of the other exotic locales where you might get a chance to dive with them), you get a guaranteed swim with these biggest of all fishes. It looks…
zooillogix | February 8, 2008Out of Africa Wildlife Park was founded in 1988 by a husband and wife team in Arizona. In their words... "It was a preserve born from their single-minded objective of bringing God, people, and animals together in a natural setting."
In our words... oh Jesus... this place is a disaster waiting to happen. In particular, we would like to introduce you to the comedically-dangerous "Tiger Splash Park," where you'll discover how tigers "instincts, intellect and feelings interact to form spontaneous, natural behavior." If that description isn't foreshadowing for the inevitable human mauling, I don't…
bleimanb | February 6, 2008Scientists 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's maiden name, colugos. The scientists also didn't "strap" the backpacks on the colugos, they attached them with adhesive, so from now on we're going to say that they were "glued" on.
Domo Arigato, Mr. Colugo
The backpacks use an accelerometer and a memory chip to track the colugos' movements in 3-…
bleimanb | February 6, 2008Those 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.
bleimanb | 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 were published in the Feb. 4 issue of the Journal of Zoology.
Meanwhile, in the wetlands of southern Nepal, scientists captured a new kind of warbler. It is a sub-species that seems to be the "missing link" between two other species of warbler...blah, blah, blah. Let's get back to the massive…
bleimanb | February 5, 2008These 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...
zooillogix | February 5, 2008Alpheid shrimp are a type of snapping shrimp, which have a specialized claw to create a blast of pressure to stun or kill their prey. This motion can also create sonoluminescence, a burst of light from a collapsing cavitation bubble. While the light is not visibile to the naked eye, the pistol shrimp is the only known organism to create light in this way. They are also among the loudest critters in the ocean, competing with whales for the amount of noise they create. Enjoy this unneccessarily melodramatic, but still very cool, video:
Family Alpheidae
* Some other notable features of snapping…
zooillogix | February 4, 2008Some very cool BBC vids of arctic wolves getting pestered by snowy owls, then doing some pestering of their own.
Both videos are below the fold because, unfortunately, we can't seem to prevent them from both running automatically and don't want you to startle your cubicle mate unintentionally.
Methinks the snow geese should have taken this threat a little more seriously...
zooillogix | January 30, 2008
A FEMA home for a New Orleans crab? "George Bush doesn't care about hermit crabs."
This photo is begging for a back story. We propose a competition: Who can write the best description of what you see here? We will give out awards for most creative, heartwarming and disturbing in a couple of days.
Thanks to Tyler Lang for sending along. As he put it, "it seems pretty self-explanatory."