Archive for November, 2009
There are a lot of weird looking animals and the deep seas have got more than their fair share of them. Nevertheless, the beautifully-monikered blobfish must be a challenger for the title of “world’s ugliest bastard”. How has the blobfish survived? If you looked like the blobfish, you wouldn’t mate. If that’s what its face looks [ READ MORE ]
Much like people who want to make it in ‘business’, a tarsier’s eye is as big as its brain. In the tarsier’s case, this is because its eyes are massive. They have ridiculously long fingers. The third one is the same length as their upper arms. Two of their toes have bear claws – but not [ READ MORE ]
Well, it was either a man saying your name and laughing before starting a chainsaw or it was a lyrebird mimicking the sound of a man saying your name and laughing before starting a chainsaw. Lyrebirds are known for their extraordinary ability to replicate sounds that they hear. As well as mimicking other birds, lyrebirds can [ READ MORE ]
It fucking is. That’s one above. It’s more penguin than macaroni, I’m not going to lie, but the name is genuine. Apparently the name doesn’t come from the form of pasta. It was given to the penguin by kindly sailors in the 19th centurty who thought that it’s stupid yellow bits looked like some particular fashion [ READ MORE ]
A gliding marsupial. That’s pretty cool. Sugar gliders live in trees and are nocturnal. They’re called sugar gliders because they like sweet foods, although their preference is for fruit, rather than cakes or chocolate. Weirdly, despite living in groups of about 15 and therefore seeming like they might be quite sociable animals, they actually boot their young [ READ MORE ]
Yes, it is. Honestly. It’s one of those Australian animals that you feel like you would have heard about if it had lived in Africa, but which is afforded a low profile through living in a barren land inhabited by sexists in vests. They can grow to be 2m tall, can jump 1.5m into the air [ READ MORE ]
I don’t know. It’s just a freaky little lemur, I guess. The picture above looks pretty hideous, but they’re not quite so bad when they’re full-grown. Focusing on the weird look rather detracts from its major selling point anyway. The Aye-aye has a truly massive middle finger. It doesn’t use this finger for expressing its displeasure [ READ MORE ]
That, my friends, is a pangolin. Pangolins are also known, more descriptively, as scaly anteaters and quite sensibly, they only live in the tropics, although less sensibly they’re nocturnal. Features of the pangolin About one to three feet long Loads and loads of really sticky spit which it uses to gather termites The tree pangolin hangs from trees by its [ READ MORE ]
That, my friends, is a capybara. It’s a big, fuck-off rodent and its name means ‘master of the grasses’ which is a brilliantly overblown name for something so lumpen. Capybaras seem to be animals that aren’t really made for mooching around fields eating grass. For one thing they’ve got webbed feet, which seems totally unnecessary. Secondly, their [ READ MORE ]
That, my friends, is a numbat. As with most mammals that you think you should recognise but don’t, it’s from Australia. And yes, it is a marsupial, because Australia can’t build an animal without sticking a damn pocket on it. What do numbats eat? They eat termites and NOTHING ELSE. They need to eat about 20,000 of [ READ MORE ]