zooillogix | May 8, 2007In a sad follow up to the story posted this morning, Hope, the bearded seal who swam all the way from the Arctic to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, died at Sea World this afternoon. Scientists do not yet know his exact cause of death, but he was significantly dehydrated, malnourished and exhausted when he was captured.
zooillogix | May 8, 2007Hope was reportedly on his way to Zihuatanejo, Mexico to meet his old prison buddy, Red, when he was captured
A 350-lb bearded seal--named "Hope" by his cheese-ball human rescuers--has been taken into captivity off the coast of Florida, near Ft. Lauderdale. After eluding his rescuers for two days, Hope finally succumbed to their efforts, and now is in critical condition at Sea World. A staff veterinarian described Hope as "thin and dehydrated but...responsive and resting quietly" according to KVOA.com. Hope's caretakers hope to rehabilitate him and release him back into the North Pole from…
zooillogix | May 7, 2007Without further delay, we bring you....Shrimp on a Treadmill.
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zooillogix | May 7, 2007A relative of the starfish, crinoids are neither abundant nor well understood. Also known as "sea lilies" or "feather stars" the strange creatures consist of a mouthpart, feeding arms and generally have a stem that connects them to the sea floor. Scientists have long known that crinoids were capable of moving themselves, albeit at a very slow pace, to outmaneuver predators such as sea urchins. Their fastest speed had been clocked at .6 meters per hour, which means their entire existence is probably a lot like one of those dreams where you are being chased by something but can only move in…
zooillogix | May 4, 2007One day at a time...Tasmanian Devil, Sarcophilus harrisii
Tasmanian devils are suddenly on the verge of total extinction, due to a mysterious facial cancer that is spreading rapidly through their population. Since the first sick animal's discovery, eleven years ago, the cancer has swept through Tasmania like a plague, sometimes killing every single Tasmanian devil in an area within 18 months of its arrival. "Once they've got a lump, it's a one way trip," says Menna Jones, an expert on Tasmanian Devils at the University of Tasmania.
Not only does the cancer cause the host to die, but it also…
zooillogix | May 3, 2007After 17 years of patiently waiting underground, Brood X has begun to emerge with a vengeance, eager to populate our planet with their infernal buzzing (we actually like it). It may sound like the plot for War of the Worlds, but it is actually much more benign and very real. This spring and summer, cicadas will emerge in the billions from their underground burrows to begin a frantic and inelegant mating ritual. Who wouldn't want to cut to the chase after 17 years living in the dirt? For a few short weeks, the shrimp-sized insects create a cacophony of sound that can be heard quite clearly in…
zooillogix | May 3, 2007Scientists are "baffled" by the discovery of a strange worm-like, serpentine creature off the cost of Juno Beach in Florida. Diver Jay Garbose caught the 7-10 foot creature on film as it slithered around the ocean floor. Watch his astonishing video footage.Unidentifiably delicious!
Garbose has dubbed the beast "the living intestine" because of its smooth, tube-like features. Some have ventured to say that it is a newly found species of Nemertean worm, but for now the Smithsonian Institute is labelling it "undescribed"...creative.
zooillogix | May 2, 2007Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea have begun to cannibalize one another according to a recent study in the online publication Polar Biology. The polar bears' main food source in the area, ringed seals, are accessible only across ice shelves. Global climate change has melted these shelves, cutting off the bears from their food and forcing them to turn on one another.What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
Polar bears often kill their own kind as a form of population control, territorial dominance and reproductive advantages, but killing each other for food had rarely been witnessed…
zooillogix | May 1, 2007Coral growing at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida or the inside of my refrigerator in college?
25% of the world's coral reefs has died in the past 25 years, and 25% more is expected to die in the next two decades. With a lot of luck and a lot of hard work, however, a Floridian named Ken Nedimyer might be able to grow it back.
Nedimyer has teamed up with the Nature Conservancy, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the feasibility of regrowing staghorn and elkhorn coral in the Florida Keys. Still, no one said it would…
zooillogix | April 29, 2007Rejected by his parents at birth, Bilbo the bamboo lemur was raised by hand by zookeeper Veronica Lindberg. As a result, Bilbo thinks he is a human and refuses to leave Veronica's side. Clinging to her back, wrapped around her arm or perching on her head, the two are inseparable. Raising Bilbo is no easy task as he must be fed once an hour, every hour. His photogenic furriness has made him a media darling in Sweden, although the country's hopes of dethroning Germany's nauseatingly adorable polar bear cub, Knut, are misplaced.
Bilbo shows-off "Blue Steel". Bamboo Lemur, genus Hapalemur
We…
zooillogix | April 27, 2007Everybody thinks a wagging tail is the sign of a happy dog. But researchers have recently made a telling discovery: a) not all tail wagging is necessarily positive and b) one can tell this by which side (left or right) the tail wags on!Happy dog, Carnivorous Slobbius
According to a new study--,AeuAsymmetric Tail-wagging Responses by Dogs to Different Emotive Stimuli,,Aeu by Giorgio Vallortigara of the University of Trieste in Italy and Angelo Quaranta and Marcello Siniscalchi of the University of Bari, Italy--positive feelings are displayed by wagging on the right side, while more negative…
zooillogix | April 26, 2007Researchers in Florida poured a liquid plaster-metal mixture into the nests of the Florida harvester ant. The resulting casts display astonishing intricacy and depth. One interesting discovery was that the top heavy nature of the chambers reflects age distribution within the any colony and not necessarily earlier digging. Younger ants tend to dig within the bottom 2/3rds of the nest while older ants dig in the top 1/3rd, eventually graduating to harvesting outside of the nest. The highest concentration of ants, therefore, is in the top of the nests, resulting in more chambers.Although this…
zooillogix | April 26, 2007A nearly extinct species of hummingbird has been captured on film for the first time demonstrating its spatula-crazed mating dance. The aptly named Marvelous Spatuletail lives in a single, isolated valley in northern Peru. There are only 350 - 1,000 thought left to exist. The video really is extraordinary.
Marvelous Spatuletail, Lodigesia mirabilis digg_url='http://zooillogix.blogspot.com/2007/04/marvelous-spatula-tale.html';
zooillogix | April 25, 2007Are you talking to me? I said....Are you talking to me? Northern elephant seal, Mirounga angustirostris
Sometime in late March, "Nibbles" --a 2,500 lb. elephant seal living on the Sonoma Coast in Northern California-- snapped. In the ensuing month, the adolescent seal has bitten a surfer and a pet pit bull, attacked a kayaker and killed a number of harbor seals (12 according to a park ranger), apparently crushing the skulls of the females and disemboweling the males. Officials have gone public with a warning, speaking out to the press and posting signs all around the mouth of the Russian…
zooillogix | April 24, 2007In an embarrassing revelation for termites everywhere, researchers from the Natural History Museum of London have determined that termites are actually a highly social form of cockroach. Although they appear more similar to ants, genetic testing confirmed the relationship and definitively determined that they were a family of cockroaches. As if this wasn't humiliating enough, entomologist Paul Eggelton suggested that the cockroach penchant for coprophagy, or eating their own feces, may have led to the evolution of termite physiology and society in the first place... not cool. Speculation…
zooillogix | April 23, 2007For over a century the nature of prototaxites has been a source of mystery and debate among scientists. Growing over 20 feet tall and a yard wide, the organism grew straight up like a tree trunk, but had no leaves or branches. Prototaxites fossils from between 420 and 350 million years ago have been found throughout the world. Speculation as to whether prototaxites was a lichen, algae or fungus has divided researchers since the first fossil was found over 100 years ago. After advanced chemical analysis, the verdict is finally in: prototaxites was a huge friggin fungus. University of Chicago…
zooillogix | April 20, 2007Chinese scientists have made a remote controlled pigeon. By planting micro electrodes in the pigeon's brain, the scientists can make the bird fly up, down, left or right."I'm looking for a boy named John Conner. Have you seen him?"
Chief scientist Su Xuecheng explains, ""The implants stimulated different areas of the pigeon's brain according to electronic signals sent by the scientists via computer, mirroring natural signals generated by the brain."
Whether or not the pigeon is going to defend the city of Detroit from a gang of criminal masterminds, who are headquartered in a toxic waste dump…
zooillogix | April 19, 2007Bear with us on this one...it might get a little complicated:
Wasps from the genus Copidosoma lay two eggs into a host egg (for example a moth or butterfly egg). One of these two eggs is male and one is female. The male and female larvae then begin multiplying--much like single celled organisms--into a thousand copies of themselves inside the egg. Thus the female "sisters" are more closely related to each other than they are to their brothers, and vice versa. The host egg, however, can only accommodate about half of the thousands of larvae now writhing around within it.Congratulations! It's…
zooillogix | April 18, 2007A small pod of narwhals, Monodon MonocerosFor centuries, humans have speculated on narwhals' bizarre horns, believing them to be everything from supernatural appendages to spear fishing weapons to tools for poking around on the ocean floor. In 2005 a team from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology put a horn under an electron microscope and discovered that it was actually covered in nerve endings, more than 10 million total, tunneling from the center of the horn to the outer surface. As it seems, the horn is a highly advanced, completely unique sense organ, probably…