zooillogix | May 25, 2007Female pandas ovulate for only 3 days out of every year, making them one of the least evolutionarily "fit" animals we are aware of. If you were in God's factory trying to figure out where to invest, betting on the panda would be like deciding to build a Ferrari and not include a gas fill. Then it occured to us, maybe they were betting on using man to survive. Their perfect combination of seizure-inducing cuddliness and total biological helplessness, has encouraged us to invest more in them than Olympic athletes. Between unparalleled pre-natal care, panda porn, artificial insemination and all…
zooillogix | May 23, 2007Kruger National Park in South Africa is a renowned location for observing some of Africa's most famous wildlife. Here we have all of that wildlife fighting one another, all at once. Basically this is Kruger's equivalent of a WWE event. Watch it through to the end or at least minute seven or so.
zooillogix | May 23, 2007In another example of how much more progressive Europe is than the US, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire (i.e. Brittania) has entrusted the care of an orphaned flamingo chick to gay parents. Carlos and Fernando, the only gays in the sanctuary, have been egg-nappers in the past. On more than one occasion, the flamboyant pair have chased other nesting couples away to hatch the other birds' eggs as their own. Because bonding with the chick is vital, the zookeepers put the chick back into a fake egg, which they then placed in the partners' nest.He looks just like dad…
zooillogix | May 23, 2007Nuestra Tiberone de la Conception, Hammerhead shark, Sphyrna zygaena
A female hammerhead shark gave birth to a pup in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska in 2001 despite having no contact with a male shark. Thanks to new DNA profiling technology, scientists have been able to show conclusively that the shark pup contained no genetic material from a male. Before you whip out your Book of Revelations and start begging for forgiveness, you should know that this is an example of a naturally occurring phenomenon called parthenogenesis. In parthenogenesis, egg cells develop as an embryo without the…
zooillogix | May 22, 2007A new book, "The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss" by Claire Nouvian, a French journalist and film director, reveals haunting images of some of the most bizarre creatures on the globe, ones that live in the deepest parts of the ocean. In many cases the creatures- some of which were photographed as far down as four miles- have never been recorded on film before, and some are still unidentified. The fantastic book contains 220 photographs and scientific information about the living conditions of life miles below the surface.
Speculating in the book, Craig M. Young of the Oregon…
zooillogix | May 22, 2007This month marks Carl Linnaeus' 300th birthday and biology textbooks still look much the way he imagined they should. Linnaeus is the father of the ranking system of classifying the living world. You might remember kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, species from the back of your hand in 9th grade biology class. Indeed, this system has stood up surprisingly well for almost two and a half centuries despite revolutionary advances in other scientific fields like medicine, where we now know that flu is not caused by a small gnome living in your stomach. Unfortunately for Linnaeus' legacy,…
zooillogix | May 21, 2007The Thylacine was the largest known carnivorous marsupial and lived in Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. Known as both the Tasmanian Tiger and Tasmanian Wolf, it is believed that thylacines were hunted to extinction in the 20th century. Although sightings are still reported, scientists are skeptical because, for the most part, people are idiots. Sharing a startling degree of physiological adaptations with canines and markings similar to tigers, the thylacine is an often-cited example of convergent evolution. It's closest living relative is the Tasmanian Devil, which, sadly, has also seen…
zooillogix | May 21, 2007The Antarctic Benthic Deep-Sea Biodiversity Project (ANDEEP) has been working on an unprecedented project to document marine life near the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean. 80% of the isopods identified are entirely new species. Another species, foraminifera, single celled organisms with decorative shells, have also been identified in the waters beneath the North Pole. It is astonishing that these tiny creatures could find their way to the opposite sides of the earth, traveling through dramatically different environments along the way. "What was once thought to be a featureless abyss, is in fact…
zooillogix | May 17, 2007Per Gizmodo's Jack Ventura, the Japanese government has spent $12,000,000 over the past two years developing "silver technology." For those of you, like every single person reading this, unfamiliar with this term, apparently it refers to robots designed to help lonely old people. The seal was on display at the recent RoboBusiness 2007 conference in Boston and is meant to resemble a baby harp seal. Equipped with internal motion sensors, it responds to cuddling, petting and scratching. It also emits nauseatingly cute baby seal squeals and apparently sheds its fur... for some reason. The $3,500…
zooillogix | May 17, 2007A team of Florida International University zoologists studying poison arrow frogs in South America have identified the source of the colorful critters' toxicity. Researchers have long known that the amphibians do not produce the toxic compounds, alkaloids, themselves, but were uncertain of their origins. The FIU team discovered that the frogs were eating tiny oribatid mites that are abundant in decaying plant matter. Analysis of the mites determined over 80 types of alkaloids present in their tiny bodies, explaining the source of the frogs' defense.Come on... just one quick taste... all the…
zooillogix | May 16, 2007The results of a diabolical experiment are forcing scientists and philosophers to reevaluate their notions of free will.
Bj/drn Brembs from the Free University in Berlin began his experiment by postulating that if fruit flies are no more than biological robots simply reacting to their environments (i.e. beings without free will), then they should move completely randomly in a featureless room. Then in stroke of pure, evil genius, Brembs and his team glued tiny hooks (attached to strings) to the heads of fruit flies and let them "loose" in completely white surroundings. The fruit flies could…
zooillogix | May 15, 2007Good God Almighty....(From Sir David Attenborough's "Life in the Undergrowth")
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zooillogix | May 14, 2007After careful research, it turns out the footage in this Motorola commercial is in fact real. Pretty ridiculous.
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zooillogix | May 14, 2007Brown-headed cowbirds cannot incubate their own eggs. Instead, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, who incubate them and raise the cowbird chicks as their own. According to a new study by Jeff Hoover of the Florida Museum of Natural History published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences the cowbirds have an interesting way of ensuring their offspring will be treated well: extortion.Feathers Bonmarito, a top earner amongst the cowbird capos...
After a cowbird lays her egg in another bird's nest, she returns frequently to check on the status of her chick. Hoover…
zooillogix | May 11, 2007Burmese python, Python molurus bivittatus
Robert Pope, a researcher at Indiana University South Bend and Jean-Herv/(c) Lignot from Louis Pasteur University in France have discovered a new type of cell--found only in the Burmese python's stomach--that helps the animal survive on only a few meals a year. A Burmese python, which can grow to more than 20 feet long, often eats twice its body weight in a single sitting. The snake takes down its food quickly, but the newly discovered cells, named pit cells by Pope and Lignot, allow the snake to absorb even the calcium from the bones of its prey.
The…
zooillogix | May 11, 2007Friends say he was a good neighbor who mostly kept to himself...Gray Squirrel, Sciurus Carolinensis
A disgruntled squirrel stormed Evergreen Elementary School in San Jose, California and started biting anything in sight yesterday, injuring three people including two, 11-year old students and a teacher. The students who were preparing for a field trip made a costly error by leaving the outside-facing door to their classroom open, allowing the squirrel to infiltrate the unguarded facility.
The school does not have a high squirrel population nor a history of squirrel attacks, said Will Ector, a…
zooillogix | May 10, 2007Researchers have long known that female fiddler crabs have a certain appreciation for the size of a mate's claw, but new findings suggest that in at least one species, the design of the male's pad is also important. John Christy, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, studied the courtship behavior of a particular species of fiddler crab in the intertidal waterways of Panama. The male fiddler crabs often build sand castles atop the entrance to their burrows. Flagging the young crab vixens down with their oversized "holla" claw, females were much more likely to…
zooillogix | May 9, 2007This albino African pygmy hedgehog was born in Cumbria, England. Albinism, more technically known as hypomelanism, is a congenital disorder that results in a lack of melanin pigment in the eyes, skin and hair. In mammals, this typically results in white hair or fur and eyes that appear pink due to the retinal blood vessels showing through where there is not enough pigment to cover them. Albinistic organisms are typically just as healthy on average as those with regular pigment, although the lack of natural camouflage often makes them much more likely to be spotted by predators. In small…
zooillogix | May 9, 2007(Not exactly a bizarre zoological curiosity, but maybe it could fall in the exotic pet category? Either way, the world deserves to know.)Robert Bashwell, a 44-year old homeless man in West Palm Beach, Florida, fell asleep in a dumpster to escape the rain, but woke up to find himself in the back of a garbage truck being crushed by the truck's trash compressor. In order to shield the blows of the compacting garbage, Bashwell claims he used the corpse of a dead opossum.
Jaws of life..."I screamed one last breath," Bashwell said, but a trash collector discovered him before it was too late.…