Our own is doing right well.
And they think there might be alien life on other planets…
by CJ | May 17, 2013 | Journal | 35 comments
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Go home, Evolution! You are drunk!
I think I’ve met some of those.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZkn5pA5ts
Missed one.
I was surprised when I recognized Andre Norton’s barsk as a maned wolf.
Faces only a mother could love. — Kinda cute jerboa, though, and I’ve seen one of those running wild here in the US, or something similar, a “kangaroo mouse.”
* Agrees with Steve Stein. * — Does Evolution need a cab after one too many (hiccup) iterations?
Not sure what I’d do if I saw one of those giant crabs crawling on a big trash can. Might go back in and stay there! LOL!
This sort of attitude, and it manifests in various ways, always causes infelicitous feeling in me. We modern people have this [expletives deleted] idea that we are the arbiter of what should be in the natural world and how it all should work. I know it should just make me feel “sad”, but I can’t help getting more passionate about it.
My first thought on the crab was about its edibility… Also, pretty is as pretty does, and most of the time it don’t do damnall!
I believe this is from Central America. If you are squicked out in the least by giant bugs, be warned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UROVfmY3NTA
The mildest comment was “KILL IT WITH FIRE.”
They also found their cousins living on the Big Island, 400′ down in a lava tube. They were NOT albino, which indicated they don’t stay there; I don’t like the idea of having them out and about!
I find beauty in most creatures, even worms—well, I kinda prefer they have a kind of a symmetry, but my finding them beautiful is not necessary to my appreciation for their function. I keep a marine tank. The prettiest worm is not a good worm, and some of the least attractive are very good…
Mosquitoes, why do you find me so tasty??
I figure whatever else is there, as long as it’s neighborly, live and let live. Now, if it’s pushy and wants my living space, that’s different. Certain critters, I don’t want to share habitation with, y’know. Others, hey, if they’re friendly, I’m friendly. Personally, I prefer not to share the same roof with tiny wildlife with more than four legs. Other people are more open-minded. 😉 — For sure, I like sharing my domicile with my two cats. (I like dogs too, pretty much any mammal, possibly birds, just haven’t shared life with a canine or other critter in years.)
All those other “critters” out there have just as much right as we do, maybe more.
Hey, until WE’RE willing to break down whale bones and extract the food value from them for other denizens of the deep, I cede that job to the specialized worms; and the hagfish, which have a slime production capacity that is now intriguing science. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22564-hagfish-slime-could-slink-to-the-height-of-fashion.html
This is not really about strange animals, but did you see the New Yorker article about the two inovaters inAlbany who have invented a new substance to take the place of styrofoam, which is really just mushrooms? Strong as anything, and biodegrade able. Pretty amazing. Mushrooms, it seems, can take the place of plastics. I wish I had about a billion dollars to invest.
Another totally cool thing I saw recently was a huge parking lot that had been roofed over with solar panels. They provide some shade for the cars, and at the same time generate power.
Apologies for the OT
this one is down the street from me. Some on the building (and it’s not the only one in the area with panels), and a bunch more over part of the parking.
The platypus, when first shown in London, was originally thought to be a hoax; duck bill, lays eggs, suckles its young, mammalian etc. And its nearest relative on the family tree, the echidna, is on the list as well. If I remember correctly they are monotremes.
I suppose one of the clues I was touched by ASD, if I’d known how to interpret it, happened in my 20’s as I was driving down the street (7th?) in Long Beach, CA, and for no explicable reason it popped into my consciousness, “Metronome and monotreme are anagrams!”
That’s a pretty cool observation. And possibly a good band name. 🙂
I will say that some of these things made me go “Why in the world DO they look like that? What niche in the ecology demanded THAT specific shape/color/skin?”
But my favorites far and away were the pangolin and the malay eagle owl. That bird is far too cute 😀 And pangolins are just plain nifty.
The salamanders were also intriguing. I’ve always thought they were neat, with the feathery bits on their heads…though I can never remember if those are gills or what. But they’re neat.
My son had a good time looking through the pictures as well and says to tell you all hello!
PS: The giant isopod made my squeamish boss flee the room (oops).
Gills. (My sister sent me a knit-your-own-axolotl pattern. I also have a pattern for making a yeti crab.)
I have bitsy amphipods in my tank that look like that, but only 1/4 inch long!
I must say I don’t think jerboa’s are strange; cute, yes; strange, no.
And to be, once again, wildly off-topic, I made a slight variation of your no beans/no tomato/no onion (and, may I point out, no sugar) chili/pulled pork that you posted back in (IIRC) 2010. I did through in a little dried onion and some ginger. It was very good.
Seaboe
Oh, good! Glad you liked it!
Btw, the leafy sea dragon is one of the most beautiful creatures you’ll ever see swimming. But there are so many…the oarfish is another. And cuttlefish have to be seen to be believed: their color changes are fascinating. So is the mimic octopus, that can shape-and-color-shift amazingly into what it isn’t.
If’n octopi lived longer than a couple years they’d rule the world! 😉
If ever an insect can be said to have an ‘attitude’ it’s the so-called ‘Parktown Prawn’ found in the Johannesburg area of South Africa. It’s actually a species of cricket, named after the Johannesburg suburb of Parktown, and ‘prawn’ because of its bright orange color.
They are the most excessively and disgustingly HORRIBLE insects – sorry, I know that have a right to exist too, but they really are! They can be 3 inches long, or maybe 4 with their long gangly legs, and they look like this.
But their appearance – which no photo ever seems to do justice to – is the least of it.
The worst thing is when you go bed at night and switch off the light, and after a few minutes you hear a loud scraping, rustling sound behind or under the furniture. You switch on the light, and it immediately stops. You look around, but you can’t see anything. You switch off the light, and just as you are about to go to sleep again, the noise starts up again. Then you know it’s a Parktown prawn walking around like it owns the place.
And you CAN’T just leave it. If you do, the chances are that you will wake up with a jolt in the early hours of the morning to find a Parktown prawn walking heavily over your hand… or over your face.
They are NOT scared of humans.
If you try to catch it, it will jump. They can jump about a yard high and two yards in distance.
And if a Parktown prawn gets the idea that you are after it, then instead of jumping away from you, it will jump aggressively right AT YOU and cling tightly to your clothes with its barbed claws. It will grab you by the collar and stare you in the eye.
Yes, they have an attitude.
And even worse, they have the ability to discharge their stomach contents at will, in the form of a thick, black, sticky goo which has the most intense and disgusting smell you can imagine, and which is very difficult to get off clothes or carpets. And it will do that if it decides it doesn’t like your ugly face.
That’s why they are bright, shiny orange. Most animals and birds will give them wide berth, as they are NOT nice to eat, due to the horrible-smelling black goo.
Cats, however, are an exception. Cats consider them to be better fun to play with than mice, and will bring them into your house so that you can share in the amusement of a contest of wills with a large pushy insect.
Parktown Prawn: “You lookin’ at me? Who you lookin’ at? I walk on your face, you ugly mammal!”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Libanasidus_vittatus01.jpg
So, not as urbane as a thranx, then? 😉
If the thranx were raised on the wrong side of the galaxy…
Oh there are some VERY strange looking fish out there, they’ve only started to cover them with that list! I think one of the most memorable from my observer days was a long skinny thing about 3 feet long and maybe as big around as a soda can… This thing had a mouth that would open almost 8 inches and TEETH that looked like they could slice a finger off! Darned if I can remember what they were called, but I know I cut the jaws out of one and dried it, then sent it back home to entertain my little brother.
If freshwater, probably a pike: Eatimus Everythingus
If salt, maybe a pipefish, although they are usually innocuous, or possibly a young barracuda.
This was a deep water pelagic northern pacific critter, it looked somewhat pike-ish though! I know it wasn’t a barracuda, this was something far less known. Oh well, it was running with the pollock, probably eating them!