bleimanb | January 2, 2008An international consortium of zoos, aquariums, conservation organizations and scientists, calling itself the "Amphibian Ark," has dubbed 2008 the "Year of the Frog." Amphibian Ark made the declaration in order to draw awareness to the mass extinction of amphibian species around the globe and to infuriate the Chinese, who already named the year after the rat "like 5000 years ago". The AArk is a joint effort of 3 principal partners: the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA), the IUCN/SSC Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG), and the IUCN/SSC Amphibian Specialist Group (ASG…
zooillogix | December 31, 2007Seafood Watch is a very cool and very practical conservation effort led by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Basically, it is a regularly updated guide to which lake and ocean critters should or should not be devoured each year. At its most convenient, they print a handy business card sized reference guide which you can carry around in your wallet. Impress your animal loving, patchouli wearing date when you take her out to your favorite seafood restaurant and tell her what she is not allowed to order off the menu. In all seriousness though, it is incredibly handy, they will send you one or more for…
zooillogix | December 28, 2007As many of you might have noticed, Benny and I have been off for the week for Christmas in San Francisco. The plan was to visit the Zoo on Wednesday, which obviously did not happen, so we checked out the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a twelfth time. Anyway, our apologies for the lack of posts. We will pick up next week but we leave you with this piece, directly lifted from this Wired article.
Genetic engineering isn't just for scientists in ivory towers or corporate R&D labs anymore. Researchers are still creating new mice and crops every week, but the tools and knowledge necessary to create…
zooillogix | December 19, 2007A pod of Orcas surrounds a seal on an ice sheet and creates waves to try and knock it off. This reminds me of when you buy a candy bar and it gets stuck by the wrapper and you have to shake the machine to get it out.
Thanks to Zooillogix reader extraordinaire Don Quixjote (aka ali) for forwarding along.
bleimanb | December 19, 2007Japan is a country pretty much known for only one thing: being mean to whales. They eat whales for taste and curiousity and conduct "experiments" on whales for "Mengele street cred." But now, they have finally taken their twisted torture too far. The Daily Mail, Britain's most trusted source for news, reported today that a Japanese aquarium has PUT SANTA CLAUS HATS on two beluga whales who are being held hostage there, an act which has brought "laughter and cheers" from the aquarium's visitors. Just hold a moment and let that last part sink in...Yup, you heard me correctly. It would appear…
zooillogix | December 18, 2007Olney, Illinois is famous for white squirrels. In 1943 there were 1000 of the little guys but by the '90s the population remained constant around 200. The town has implemented a rather strict set of laws to protect them. Dogs are not allowed to roam free anywhere in Olney and in 1997 cats were prohibited from roaming free as well. Running over an Olnean white squirrel, which has right of way on all streets, will get you a $200 fine.
Olney's white squirrel community is a true albino population, which has managed to support itself for over sixty years. According to the White Squirrel Institute…
zooillogix | December 17, 2007When it's served at Long John Silvers! I just saw an ad for LJS' new "Buttered Lobster Bites," basically a carton of popcorn-chicken-like-crustacean-parts for $2.99. Careful listeners may have paused when they heard that the lobster was "real langostino lobster." Huh? Now I know my lobster. In fact, I created the world's premier lobster site years ago while bored, working for the US Embassy in Belgium. However, even I, the great De Kreeft (The Lobster, as I was known in Dutch) was uncertain of which beast this referred to.
Well a little internet sleuthing proved that others also had their "…
bleimanb | December 17, 2007While we're on the topic, we thought you might enjoy these videos of electric eels using their super powers to defend the world from evil. It's a Christmas miracle!
What's up now, son? Does that feel good? Who's the punk now, son? Who's the punk now?
Oh please, don't eat me Mr. Crocodile. I am just so scar-- Psych!!!
zooillogix | December 17, 2007Using aluminum panels as electrodes, Japanese inventor Kazuhiko Minawa has powered a mall Christmas tree with an electric eel. Minawa told Reuters Televesion that "If we could gather all electric eels from all around the world, we would be able to light up an unimaginably giant Christmas tree." Hmmmm.... let's not do that.
The tree has proven to be quite the Christmas attraction. Eel is particularly popular during the summer, because it's rich in vitamins, which the Japanese believe they lose through sweating in the summer heat. "I would love to have an eel like this at home. This is very…
zooillogix | December 17, 2007Much like Pier 1 Imports is the place to make great unexpected holiday gift discoveries this season, Indonesia is the #1 source for mildly inventive new mammal species. In the Foja Mountains rainforest of eastern Papua province, a joint Indonesian and American research team recently stumbled across some new critters. More correctly, in the case of at least one, it stumbled across them. "The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the…
bleimanb | December 12, 2007Two weeks ago, we asked you what your favoritest animals in the world were. Then, last week we asked you to up the ante and get weirder. You responded in turn with a veritable cornucopia of odd critters some of which we had never heard of! (Just kidding of course we'd heard of them, we're like freaking bizarre animal encyclopedias.)
Anyway, without further ado, your responses (in video, whenever possible):
Drhoz! wants to cuddle with a tardigrade, aka a 'water bear.' Who doesn't?
Unfortunately, Drhoz! also claims to...
... be open to "shacking up" with a goose barnacle if it buys dinner…
bleimanb | December 11, 2007Update: This snake was actually discovered by Roygan Taylor working for Bio-Ken in Kenya. He has his own fantastic blog, which in addition to providing a lot of fascinating information about the enormous snake in question, covers all sorts of other interesting snake related issues in Africa. Check it out here http://www.wildlifedirect.org/blogAdmin/savingsnakes
Researchers have identified a new species of spitting cobra in Kenya, one that is over nine feet long and has enough venom to "kill twenty people" according to an "expert" on the subject in this article on nationalgeographic.com.
I'm…
bleimanb | December 10, 2007
What? What? Huh? I can't hear you? What did you say? What?
A scientific expedition in the Gobi desert has yielded the holy grail for hamster lovers, film of the long-eared jerboa, a creature that has heretofore never been captured by a camera. Dr. Jonathan Baillie of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) tracked down the big eared desert friends, filmed them and even captured them in "pitfall traps" so that he could study them more closely. Dr. Baillie's research has discovered that these nocturnal creatures spend their days in burrows and eat insects. Wow! Didn't see that coming!
Watch…
zooillogix | December 7, 2007Some of you may be familiar with this dish, but the rest of you are in for a real treat! This Chinese delicacy consists of large shrimp that have been immersed in alcohol, making them more than a little groggy and, undoubtedly, delicious. As you will see in the video below, they are still very much alive when it's time to chow down!
Fun fact: traditional Chinese cuisine was strongly influenced by the research of Josef Mengele!
For more along the same lines, check out thishref="http://www.weirdmeat.com/2006/02/shanghai-drunken-shrimp.html">Weird Meat
zooillogix | December 7, 2007That headline was so bad I made myself a little sick. Anyway, as reported by WCBS in New York, Simba the tiger cub was thought to have a tumor or brain infection and was scheduled for routine euthanization. Ok so there is nothing routine about euthanizing a rare Siberian tiger cub, but apparently young Simba had lost her sense of balance and the Ohio zoo was unable to provide further care. On a side note, it seems a little sketchy that the actual zoo Simba came from is not specified.
Just when things were looking pretty grim for Simba, enter animal enthusiast/exotic animal wrangler/rich guy…
bleimanb | December 6, 2007Scientists studying Amazon river dolphins have discovered that males use gifts to woo potential mates. Not only that, but the male dolphins appear to give better gifts to more prized females, and the dolphins who bring the most gifts seem to sire the most offspring. The best gift? A bouquet of river weeds!
Dark green weeds signify love. Brown weeds? Friendship.
After a three-year study in the Brazilian Amazon, Dr. Tony Martin, of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge has returned with his findings. Dr. Martin observed that...
...when a male was carrying a gift to a female, the other…
bleimanb | December 5, 2007A week ago we asked you-- our very attractive, highly intelligent and unbelievably nerdy readers --to tell us what your favoritest animal in the world is. We received a flood of responses, and we wanted to show some pictures of the highlights.
Adam likes the Ai, a maned three-toed sloth that lives in the jungles of South America because they are "stupid-looking"
Meg has a fondness for...
...saiga antelopes
Jonathan, yawn, likes killer whales
J-Dog believes lobe-finned fish to be "dizz-own" in his "hizz-ouse"
Who knew? Jenbug likes sloths and hyenas!
Anne-Marie Hodge, fittingly, likes…
zooillogix | December 4, 2007Zooillogix knows you depend on us for the latest in groundbreaking cat toilet training research and technology. Today we bring you sage advice from the father of feline toilet training. Since when does Zooillogix bring you two stories about regular house cats defecating in the same week you ask? Since Charles Mingus stepped on the scene. That's right, "The Angry Man of Jazz" shares his methodology for training his rapscallion of a kitty, Nightline, below (reproduced from MingusMingusMingus.com here)
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Cat-Toilet PicFirst, you must train your cat to use a home-made cardboard litter box, if…
bleimanb | December 3, 2007Humans are now one large step closer to producing armies of undead, zombie hordes who live only to feast on the brains of the living and reproduce by infecting non-zombies with their "zombie virus" through their saliva or other bodily fluids. This is thanks to the work of a team of scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, who have documented a kind of wasp that zombifies cockroaches.
Ampulex compressa enjoys licking pieces of wood, long walks on the beach and necromancy.
The Ampulex compressa actually stings a roach twice, once to disable it, and again (this time…
bleimanb | December 3, 2007Finally an invention Zooillogix can get behind! Inventor, Jo Lapidge from Canberra, Australia has unveiled a kit called the Litter Kwitter, designed to train cats to use the toilet rather than the unruly and unsanitary litter box. Inspired by the movie, Meet the Parents, Lapidge developed a three step program for teaching cats to balance on and use the toilet.
Lapidge's follow-up invention, the Hidden Cat Toilet Cam, has not received quite as enthusiastic a response.
First, the Litter Kwitter is placed on the floor beside the toilet. Then the litter box is place inside the toilet. Slowly…