okapi

Two Odd Examples of Pre Ebola "Ebola"

gregladen — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 13:28:14 +0000

Two Odd Examples of Pre Ebola "Ebola"

I used Google N-gram Viewer to inspect the occurrence of the word "Ebola" in the Google-indexed literature. A few instances of Ebola came up earlier than the disease being known, so I figured they were references to the place name in Zaire/Congo, after which the disease is named. And that was in fact the case. But, of handful of early instances I checked out, two were interesting.

The Ngram is above. Note that I have smoothing set to zero, which I recommend, and I've got the date set for early on in the use of the term so pre-disease uses are more visible.

The two interesting instances I wanted to show you are ..

1) An Okapi at the Paris Zoo named Ebola, allegedly the first captive born Okapi to survive in a zoo.

The other is a bit stranger. Have a look:

See the yellow highlight? This (and the Okapi picture) are screen grabs of what Google Books give you when you search for a word or term. Here, "China" in funny Gothic looking script was recognized by the scanner as "Ebola." You can kind of see how that would happen. Not really. But it happened.

gregladen Sat, 10/04/2014 - 09:28

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I can see how 'China' came out as 'Ebola':

The 'Ch' reading as 'Eb' is obvious, the 'a' read correctly. The 'in' probably came through as 'not sure, there's a few things it could be'. Reading it as 'ol' was probably low confidence but on the other hand it hits an actual word, (are there even any other words that fit 'eb??a'?).

Ebola is a Chinese bio-weapon. This is all the proof we need!#%

The Ebola outbreak, declared to be an international public health emergency by the World Health Organization, has already infected more than 370 health workers and killed 216, including doctors and nurses. Due to Chanies having the queer for Ebola theses tells as that these is the matter of business runned by richer countries to eliminate competition and keeping poor countries poorer and to gain recognition.

Photo of the Day #930: Okapi

laelaps — Sat, 29 May 2010 11:26:02 +0000

Photo of the Day #930: Okapi

An okapi ((Okapia johnstoni), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.

laelaps Sat, 05/29/2010 - 07:26

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White horses are less attractive to horseflies

edyong — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:30:06 +0000

White horses are less attractive to horseflies

"That is Shadowfax. He is chief of the Maeras, lords of all horses, and not even Theoden, King of Rohan, has ever looked on a better. Does he not shine like silver, and run as smoothly as a swift stream?" - Gandalf

In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf rides upon a magnificent white stallion called Shadowfax. White horses have been greatly prized in human societies as a sign of wealth and dignity, largely because their bright coats are both pretty and rare. There are reasons for that. In the wild, the same conspicuousness that inspires legendary tales also makes white horses vulnerable to predators and sensitive to skin cancer. But they have an unexpected benefit - they make horses less attractive to horseflies.

Anyone who has been bitten by a horsefly (formally, a tabanid) knows that they're much more irritating than your average midge or mosquito. Rather than puncturing skin, their mandibles are designed to rip and shear. As a result, their bites hurt and they can drive grazing animals to distraction. They can also transfer serious diseases, including Equine Infectious Anaemia, parasitic worms, and even anthrax.

Now, Gabor Horvath from Eotvos University, Hungary, has found that white coats are more horsefly-proof than darker ones. They reflect very little polarised light - light vibrating on a single plane - and it's this light that horseflies use to track down their next blood meal.

On a sunny June day, Horvath watched two horses - one brown and one white - as they grazed in a local field. Both were almost continuously attacked by horseflies and had to defend themselves by tail-swishing, kicking, shuddering, head-swinging, biting, licking and even rolling on the group. But the white horse had the better time of it - photographs revealed that, on average, the brown horse had 3.7 times more horseflies on or near it. Eventually, the attacks were so irritating that the horses were driven into a nearby shady forest, where they gained a temporary respite. Again, the brown horse was always the first to cave and spent longer in the shade.

Why did the flies prefer the brown horse and shun the white one? It wasn't to do with colour or brightness. When Horvath put up two pieces of matte cloth, one brown and one white, he found that both were unappealing to horseflies. It was only when he half-covered the brown cloth with a shiny, transparent plastic sheet did the flies start flocking.

Horvath says previous studies have shown that horseflies are attracted to polarised light. In his experiment, the shiny, brown surface reflects plenty of polarised light, vibrating in the horizontal place, regardless of the angle it's viewed from. Neither of the matte surfaces do this.

To demonstrate this even more clearly, Horvath built three life-size horse models, one brown, one black and one white, and all covered in a sticky coating. Using a polarimeter, he measured the polarised light bouncing off these models and showed that the stronger those reflections, the more flies became stuck to them. Even the parts of the models that reflected the most polarised light - the rump and hindquarters - attracted the most flies.

Horvath says that the horsefly's proclivity for horizontally polarised light probably has several functions. It could lead them to water sources where they can lay their eggs. And horseflies are usually dark and drab in colour, so landing on a white body could make them more conspicuous to hungry birds.

Regardless of the fly-proofing provided by white coats, it's clear that for wild horses, this benefit doesn't outweigh the many drawbacks. Otherwise, white horses would be far more naturally common. However, some grazing animals like the zebra and okapi are striped, and all individuals carry some degree of white banding. That hasn't escaped Horvath's attention and his paper ends on a tantalising note:

"We would like to mention that we are preparing a separate paper on the effect of stripes on host animals like zebra, okapi, etc. to the attraction of tabanid flies. We show that such stripes make the host quite tabanid-repellent."

Reference: Horvath et al. 2010. An unexpected advantage of whiteness in horses: the most horsefly-proof horse has a depolarizing white coat. Proc Roy Soc B http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2009.2202

More on horses: Jockey postures make things easier for horses and speed up races

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edyong Wed, 02/03/2010 - 03:30

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As a counter-example, I can remember a town near the Argentina-Chile border, famous for its horse flies around December. Huge things, they drew blood when they bit you. But if you wore white, you were OK. Anyone in a black T-shirt had nightmares - you could see them from miles away, going frantic, trying to evade the things. As soon as you went in the shade, they stopped following.

Isn't that a supporting example? White = fewer horseflies. What am I missing?

If, unlike a King, you groom your own horse every day (and especially want it to look good for horse shows), you don't want a grey/white horse - they are such a pain to keep clean and pretty. Which may explain why they are prized - the person who has a white horse also shows off he has money to hire a groom.

Sorry, Ed, I read the article as saying that the colour itself didn't matter - it was the polarisation. I can't see your average T-shirt cloth reflecting polarised light...

In popular mythology, the Camargue horses (live in swampy areas) are white, as any brown horse would be eaten to death by insects. So the old wives tale is true!

I would like to address your assertion that white horses are more prone to skin cancer.

Horses with white hairs and black skin are considered to be "grey." Truly white horses are white-haired and pink-skinned. Truly white horses do have an increased risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma due to sun exposure. Grey horses, on the other hand, are at an increased risk of developing melanoma unrelated to sun exposure. Grey horses are actually better off than their black-haired black-skinned counterparts in terms of sun exposure since their white hairs reflect more radiation than do darker hairs. Both grey and black horses are better off than truly white horses.

Grey horse melanoma is less like to be malignant than the melanoma occurring in non-grey horses and appears to be caused by some underlying genetic problem with the melanocytes.

Okapi: More lies than Sarah Palin!!!

gregladen — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:53:50 +0000

Okapi: More lies than Sarah Palin!!!

Well, not really lies, but untruths. As perhaps the only person blogging on Scienceblogs.com who has actually eaten an okapi (Okapi johnstoni), I feel the need to clarify some misconceptions that are floating around about this beast.

If you go to the Sb home page, you'll find numerous links to the current Okapi story, about how the first photographs of a wild okapi have been obtained, and how the okapi was thought to have been wiped out due to the current civil war. I do not have time to write extensively about this right now, but I'll make a few points.

First, it is not the case that wild okapis have not been photographed before. Of course they have, though quite rarely. This might be (not verified) such a photograph:

This is from one of several books by Gatti on the Congo.

Second, no one thought the okapi was wiped out by the civil war. This assertion was made only for one of the several patches of forest they live in. They still need protection and we are all terribly worried about them, but nobody actually thought they were totally wiped out.

Third, "okapi" is pronounced in one of two ways, either with the K or without (and a glottal stop in it's place ... oh [stop] OP eee) and it is one of the very few words that you know in the Kilese language, the language of many of the people (including most of the Pygmies) of the Ituri Forest. itene talu teseba erembe rachanini. There, now you now a few more words but I'm not going to tell you what they mean because it's kinda dumb.

This is a tonal language, so if you say the name of this animal wrong, you could be saying something you don't mean. (not really likely, though, if you've got the context down. Like no one is going to think you are saying "Hey, where do I get my fur coat cleaned" while you are pointing at the picture of the Okapi in the animal guide book.)

By the way, although you probably don't know much Kilese, you might actually know some cognates in other Afro-Asiatic languages. To the chagrin (quite frankly) of the average Israeli or Arab, Hebrew and Arabic are run of the mill African Languages and words like Ima and Afa (mom and dad) tend to be very similar in all of these languages (as is true for any language family). So when a baby Lese or baby Pygmy or baby Tel Avivian or a baby Saudi utters her first word, it's all pretty much the same word.

And yes, they do taste like certain parts of the local elephants. I've only had okapi once, and it was a very unusual situation that I may tell you about another time.

Finally, when they run, they sound like a horse. But invisible.

gregladen Fri, 09/12/2008 - 09:53

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Artiodactyla

okapi

Could you provide recordings of invisible horses for the enlightenment of your readers?

Thank you. I was reading the others and wondering what was I missing - I thought I've seen pictures of the okapi in the wild before and did not hear anything about it being extinct outside of zoos.

A lot of the pictures you see are actually at the Epulu research station (a few km north of "mombasa" ... the other mombasa) and they are not really wild, but rather in large naturalistic enclosures. So it is hard to tell on a picture by picture basis.

And what did it taste like? Hopefully not chicken. Venisony perhaps?

...Pygmies) of the Ituri Forest.

Some might say that as 'the I [stop] uri Forest'.

Seriously, d'you think the GOP campaign will be affected much by them all running off to NC with their guns?

Would any Arab or Israeli really have a problem believing their language didn't spring from the earth fully formed? I guess maybe you've run into some pretty sheltered individuals. I don't think any Israelis I know would have a problem believing that their language had origins in Africa.

Finally, when they run, they sound like a horse. But invisible.

Now if only they were pink and had one horn.

Zach, Hebrew does not have origins in Africa. It is an African Language. If you speak Hebrew you speak an African language.

Llewelly: Actually, it has been suggested that the Okapi is one of the many possible sources of the unicorn myth. But of course that's pretty dumb.

Anyone here besides me ever eat Mammoth meat? Frozen for a long time. Thawed. At the Explorers Club in New York City, maybe 30 years ago. From Siberia. Gamey. Chewey. Bones used to build sacred huts of Shamans. Impresses my students who've eaten, at best, Rattlesnake Chili or Alligator Sausage. My wife and I often barbecue kangaroo, buffalo, and other critters. Other than all her policies, and her creationism (WHICH version does she believe?), I have no problem with Sarah Palin shooting caribou from helicopters.

Johnathan, Palin's 'predator control' BS is shooting wolves from aircraft to ostensibly increase ungulate populations and make them easier to hunt for tourists. Not that this is on topic...

About half the wild animal species that I've eaten, I've been involved in the hunt. But never, ever with guns. That is just not fair. let along helicopters)

Cute. It looks like a tapir with leggings.

Cute, but I can see why the wildebeest threatened legal action if he were to be mistaken for one.

Greg, sometimes the point isn't being fair. Sometimes, although obviously not in the case of the okapi, the point is to cut the numbers down so the animals don't face a much worse death by winter starvation, or even by pickup truck.

Stephanie: I totally agree. I guarantee that if you gave the male members of the six Pygmy groups I worked with each a firearm (of pretty much any kind) and ammo, there would be nothing walking on four legs or hanging on two arms in the region. This is why bushmeat trade is so good at wiping out animals: Being good with a gun/rifle is not important. Being good at HUNTING is important. Someone who is good at hunting (with, say, bow and arrow) will pick up the details of the firearm very quickly and then .... that's it as long as the ammo holds out.

Now, give every able bodies person in Minneapolis a firearm and ammo and send them up Routes 36, 169, and 371 with a truck of ammo and as much time as they want and in five or ten years you will have a deer population low enough to start worrying about its survival.

Frankly, it is not just being nice to the animals (avoiding starvation, etc) it is that they become dangers, even vermin-like. I have not seen this in Minnesota, though as a person who has had Lyme Disease (as many have) I have a special place in my heart for deer hunters. Anyway, in Connecticut (the ultimate example of the urban-wild overlap) many people have to keep a large stick in their car so they can use it to push aside the deer feeding on gardens, lawns, and bushes, as they (the people) go from their car to their home after work. And I'm only exaggerating by one or two OOMs.

Dead on. I do nothing to control the deer population because, as good as I am with a gun, I am not a hunter. I'm not willing to spend the time to get uncertain results, and I'm not sure I could pull the trigger with something alive in front of me. I had a tough enough time drowning the squirrels I trapped in the attic, and I hate squirrels with an irrational passion. Butchering a deer once it's dead is no issue, though, so I do my share.

As for sending people up north (36?), I'd be much more concerned about the effects on the human population.

I always add or subtract a one or a five from any route number I mention in Minnesota. I don't know why. But it is my only annoying trait.

(Comments are now closed on this post)

Good idea. Can't have Julia getting on here and spilling all her dad's secret vices.

A photo (credited to Illustrated London News and "Sig. Ribotti") appeared in the Washington Post Sept. 20, 1907 with the text: "The first photograph of a living Okapi, a calf of about 1 month old."

Also, a long article by Atillio Gatti appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on Nov 6, 1935, entitled "Hunting with the Camera" which describes his succesful attempt to photograph an Okapi. In the article, he states: "A noise of moving leaves, followed at once by the song of the mutuki, told us that the Okapi, having become aware of our approach, had plunged into the forest... and had stopped there to try to determine clearly what was taking place.... Before I was able to take in the fact that he was a beautiful male... I had already snapped half a dozen pictures.... His teeth ground with irritation, and he laid back his ears, accentuating the strange outline of his head. Then he lunged forward, giving me just the time to jump quickly aside as I was clicking my fifteenth photograph.

The 1907 picture of infant okapi was a captured animal that was then put down for some pics, this is all on record at ZSL (written by the photographer) therefore the cynics quoting (and posting) this pic are wrong about it being in the wild.

As for the other one mentioned above, haven't seen it myself so can't say too much but the sensationalist gibberish the photgrapher wrote (ooh, the dangerous charging okapi! please...) sounds like the old "ferocious gorillas raping women" type of story of old so i personally don't put too much stock in it.

oh, and if eating an animal makes you an expert i must be an authority on cows, chickens, sheep, goat, without even realizing it. Plus the "like a horse but invisible" line suggests that taking a photo of one gnashing its teeth while it decided what to do is kinda unlikely, don't you think?

Colin, is that you? Goodness, you've certainly gotten worked up into a bad mood since we last spoke. No, wait, you must be a different colin. Please tell me it is not you. Have we met?

You might be right about the photo, but what is definately true is that tens of thousands of unpublished photos have accumulated over the last 30 years or so of research in the Ituri Forest, where the Okapi is common. I would not be even a tiny bit surprised if there were dozens of pictures of wild Okapai. Unless I hear this form the Harts, I'm not committing. The Virunga forest is a very marginal habitat for these animals. and the hype regarding this expedition was outrageous. We don't need that kind of misinformation, if you please.

Regarding the link between my expertise and my having partaken of the flesh: Just so you know, that was a literary technique not an actual claim. Yes, I've eaten Okapi, and yes, compared to my Sb colleagues who were just repeating a news story, I'm light years into the expert range (which was my exact claim). My expertise with Okapi specifically is limited, but my expertise on the ecosystem we are talking about comes from living there for three years doing research, and writing my thesis there. So, a little expertise, not much. But to this I'll add that you probably don't have to work too hard to get your teeth on a hamburger.

Your last sentence, about the horse, is incomprehensible to me. I'm just a dumb guy and don't get what you are saying here.

Feel free to explain but starting now you be polite or you are deleted. Children read this blog.

Not Dead Animals - Weekly Recap

zooillogix — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:37:10 +0000

Not Dead Animals - Weekly Recap

A quick wrap-up of the animals discovered not to be extinct this week:

Armoured mistfrog

This Armoured Mistfrog, thought by many experts to be extinct due to the recent amphibian chytrid fungus epidemic, was rediscovered by my boss, enterprise search god, Chris Cleveland, while he should have been working, on CNN. And more specifically, in a remote tropical area in northern Australia.

Tadpole Shrimp

Heavy rains in Scotland have created perfect conditions for the reemergence of the tadpole shrimp, thought extinct in the UK until recently. The little critter resembles a tiny horseshoe crab and lays eggs which can lie dormant in dry pools for decades, making this discovery maybe not so unexpected. Also called triops, these crustaceans are most notable for appearing in this awesome YouTube video.

Okapi (not wiped out by civil war)

While hoof prints and dung have been identified in the past, okapi in the wild have never been caught on film. Well the Zoological Society of London has finally done so, proving that the okapi does not actually possess the power of invisibility, the ZSL's previous working hypothesis. This close relative of the giraffe is a frequent target of poachers and publicity hungry ZSL cameramen.

Thanks to JP Berkery for cluing us into this last one.

zooillogix Thu, 09/11/2008 - 12:37

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Um, I saw a pair of okapis in the San Diego zoo a few years back, so they were known to not be all that extinct. Or, I guess, all that elusive. Is the news here only that they were filmed in the wild?

maybe?

I adored the Triops video. The music really made the video. And, I apparently like to watch the little critters do their thing. Thanks for sharing. The narration was a hoot, loved it all.

Pat

The okapi might just be my favorite animal ever! I'm so glad there are still wild ones out there!!!

okapi is unknown for me . I am so much glad to see the pictures of it but i want to know more about it.

--------

brianna

A.H. Infosource

I have seen Triops in temporary waters in Texas and in Venezuela. I would guess, not having checked, that they are present on all continents except Antarctica.

I'm cheering for the golden toad (Bufo periglenes) to make the list one of these days . . .

Thanks for keeping us all so well informed. :)

For anyone interested in raising some triops, I stumbled upon this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/75ab/?cpg=ab

The narration was a hoot, loved it all.

thanks...

thanks..

Rare Okapi Photographed in the Rainforests of Africa

grrlscientist — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:53:49 +0000

Rare Okapi Photographed in the Rainforests of Africa

tags: Okapi, Okapia johnstoni, camera trap, zoology, rare mammals, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo rainforest, African Wildlife, Zoological Society of London

This undated image provided by the Zoological Society of London, Thursday, 11 September 2008, shows an okapi, Okapia johnstoni, in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo proving that the species is still surviving there despite more than one decade of civil conflict. The Zoological Society of London says cameras set up in Congo have snapped the first photos of the rare okapi roaming wild. Okapi have characteristics similar to a deer and a giraffe but is most notable for its zebra-like leg stripes. Zoologists found evidence of an okapi population in the park through tracks a few years ago. Experts say the photos indicate a second group also exists there. The animal previously had only been glimpsed only in passing in the wild, but captive okapis are found in many zoos.

Image: AFP/HO/Zoological Society Of London.

When I was in London, I visited the London Zoo to see the rare okapi, Okapia johnstoni, which has been one of my favorite mammal species since I first learned of its existence when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the zoo's okapi enclosure was undergoing some sort of refurbishment and the okapi were hiding, so I never even caught a glimpse of them. However, even better than seeing captive okapi is seeing them in the rainforests of the Congo, as is being reported today by the Zoological Society of London.

Thierry Lusenge (right), a key member of ZSL's DRC survey team and monitoring officer for ZSL's conservation project in the park, with a ranger. He is showing the ranger how to install the camera trap.

Image: Zoological Society of London.

Using a camera trap, zoologists from the Zoological Society of London and the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN) captured the first ever images of wild okapi, proving that this shy and rare relative of the giraffe has managed to survive war and poaching in the Congo rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The camera trap was set up in the Virunga National Park by the zoological society and conservationists in Congo after okapi tracks were found in the area a few years ago.

"To have captured the first ever photographs of such a charismatic creature is amazing, and particularly special for ZSL given that the species was originally described here over a century ago," stated Noelle Kumpel, a conservationist with the Zoological Society of London. There was one other photograph of an okapi in the wild that scientists previously knew about, she added, but it showed only a leg.

"Okapi are very shy and rare animals -- which is why conventional surveys only tend to record droppings and other signs of their presence."

Okapi droppings look like round pebbles. They are one of the first signs that okapi are not far away.

Image: Zoological Society of London.

The bold stripes on the animal's rump are sometimes referred to as "come follow me stripes," because it is thought they help young animals see their mothers so they can follow through the dense rainforest. Each animal's stripes are unique, like fingerprints.

"The photographs clearly show the stripes on their rear, which act like unique fingerprints. We have already identified three individuals, and further survey work will enable us to estimate population numbers and distribution in and around the Park, which is a critical first step in targeting conservation efforts," added Kumpel.

Okapi stripes are unique and are therefore used like fingerprints to identify individuals.

Image: Zoological Society of London.

Not only has the camera trap provided unequivocal data that can be used to identify individuals, it has enabled zoologists to record new behaviors in these animals.

"We've managed to get pictures of three separate individuals, and we've also got a picture of one roaming around at nighttime and actually foraging, which is the first evidence of this behavior," noted Kumpel. Scientists previously thought okapi fed only during the day, she added.

A nightshot showing the first image of a rare okapi to be photographed in the wild in Congo's Virunga Forest taken 6 August 2008, as released by the Zoological Society of London to Reuters on 11 September 2008.

Image: Zoological Society of London (Handout).

The images indicate that okapi are more widely distributed in the park than was previously thought. For example, these images provide evidence that there is a previously unknown population of okapi on the east side of the Congo River. However, these animals are only found in the Congo rainforest.

Okapi were unknown to European scientists until only one century ago, although early sightings of this animal might have inspired claims of unicorn sightings by Victorian-era explorers. Male okapi have two horns on their foreheads, but when seen from the side, these two horns can look like one.

"Stories came back of this mythical creature and the fact that it might be a unicorn," Kumpel mentioned.

Unfortunately, these mythological "unicorns of Africa" are under threat from poaching by the African bush-meat trade. Virunga National Park is near the Rwanda and Uganda borders, and is still occupied by Congolese and Rwandan rebels, who have hidden in its dense forests for more than a decade and used parts of it as bases to launch attacks.

Besides fighting government forces, these rebels also engage in the bush-meat trade, and okapi meat from the Virunga National Park is now regularly on sale in the nearby town of Beni. The Zoological Society of London survey team warns that if poaching continues, okapi could -- tragically -- become extinct in the Park within a few short years.

The Virunga National Park is also home to a population of endangered moumtain gorillas.

Earlier this year, the Zoological Society used a camera trap to photograph another shy mammal, a pygmy hippopotamus, in Liberia.

Even though okapi are shy and very rare in the wild, there are some animals in zoo breeding programs throughout the world. Below is a picture of a female at the Berlin Zoo accompanied by her two-week-old calf.

A two-week old Okapi stands beside its mother at an enclosure in Berlin Zoo, 5 October 2007.

Image: Arnd Wiegmann (Reuters).

This story is a follow-up on an earlier piece that I wrote: Rare Cousin to the Giraffe Found.

Source

Zoological Society of London press release.

You can help conserve wild okapi

Okapi conservation donations (they also include lots more images of these unusual animals on this site).

grrlscientist Thu, 09/11/2008 - 07:53

Tags

Democratic Republic of Congo

mythological unicorn of Africa

okapi

Okapia johnstoni

Virunga National Park

Endangered Species

mammals

zoology

Weekly Readers' Poll 3.0: Videos of the Weirdest Animals Yet!!

bleimanb — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:46:06 +0000

Weekly Readers' Poll 3.0: Videos of the Weirdest Animals Yet!!

Two 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 first

and goes on to say that after a few drinks a box jellyfish's life-threatening poison is a "total turn on"

and once at a "vulnerable moment" got jiggy with a phorid fly

TMI Drhoz! T...M...I.

Ryan woves his wittle polypterus endlicheri

and saved a wittle snuggle-wuggling for Neoceratodus forsteri

milkshake apparently still does not understand the rules and nominated another fictional creature, the yeti

HP: "Blah, blah, blah, Jaguarundis, blah, blah, blah..." (here's a happy one!)

jk, HP, we love your enthusiasm

Jenbug + babirusa = sitting in a tree

G Felis is like a conundrum wrapped in a question wrapped in an illusion. Does G eat turkey, mayonaise, and whitebread sandwiches with the crust cut off while looking at pictures of woodchucks?

Or does he date super models, race Ferraris and speak 14 languages, including vampire squid?

Or is G actually a woman? We may never know...

Greg Morrow likes this video of giant isopods or Bathynomus giganteus. We can't blame him; The footage is amazing.

auswoman's daughter is in first grade and loves okapis. Is her last name "Bleiman" per chance?

Dave Briggs may just be a serial killer. His submission was "kittens."

Meg wanted to reiterate that saiga's have weird "nose tubes." How true, Meg. How true.

And also pointed out, appropriately so, the existence of the elusive yellow-footed rock wallaby.

Bob's favorite animal is President Bush seen here after a press conference in the Rose Garden...

G's least favorite animal is Bob seen here, "at a different period" in his life.

Jenbug thought that Bob thought that she was dissing the U.S. so she brought up American icon, Ranger Rick. Too bad Ranger Rick came to the U.S. on a student visa and never left! Bob doesn't like that one bit!

If Rick hadn't have been Teddy Roosevelt's gardener, he would have never gained citizenship.

Ash represents the mean streets of MD with the freakish coconut crab

Jenbug also wanted us to know that she had an uncle...Bet he looked like this!

Susannah likes long walks on the beach, pina coladas and hooded nudibranches (Melibe leonina)

Oh yeah, hermit crabs also...

Finally, Kristen lives in a dark world filled with betrayal and sadness, a world where the slender-horned gazelle rarely makes the headlines

We want more? What other weird creatures do you love? Bet you can't stump us!

bleimanb Wed, 12/12/2007 - 09:46

Whoa-- TR AND RR? What a serendipitous moment in the history of Earth, and my own existence! Next it'll be Bugs Bunny and Barry Manilow. Or Daffy and Claus Maria Shenk Graf Von Stauffenberg.

And my Uncle looks much more like one of those meatheaded baseball players who got busted for steroids recently. Except he's 5 feet tall.

Great Babyrusa footage; the one I saw was a smaller female and her tusks were much less splintered on the ends.

LOL :D

and the other people have also chosen wisely :D

Wow! Thanks for including my fave, I feel honored. :)
Let's see, what are my other favorites? Well, I like the ampelomeryx, but those are amazingly hard to find. I'll go with Aepycamelus major. Those are awesome!

You know what I find kind of funny, is the difference between the list of favorite animals on a zoology board versus a furry board. Here you get amazing variety, and while you'd think that furries are just as interested in animals, the responses are not unlike "wolf, wolf, wolf, fox, wolf, cat, wolf, dragon, fox, wolf." :)

Team axlotl!

I'd include Sacculina. Coolest parasite ever.

You made my daughter's day. Thanks for the pic of okapi butt!

I must be rather boring. My fav animal is the Red Panda (Poonya) I adored the video you had on the site a while back of two of them living with the young Asian woman.

I'ld beg to differ, Kristin - whilst wolves, foxes, and dragons seem to be disproportionately common, my friends list elect otters, dolphins, utahraptors, geckoes, aye-ayes, beetles, and , just today, a jellyfish-eating pelagic nudibranch.

I recommend for your consideration the ping-pong tree sponge. One of the few animals that might double as a 1960s lighting fixture.

Hmmm... Have "Snot Otters" ever been featured here. I can't remember. Of course they are a fave over at Ugly Overload but somehow they seem to fit in with this crowd. :)

Axolotls are amazing. Paedomorphism at it's finest! Gastric brooding frogs are also way cool. Too bad both of these are super endangered in the wild.

I gotta say, though, my favorite of all non-mammals are sandhill cranes. They make the BEST noise.

I love the tardigrade. But I have to agree with Stevie Foster, sandhill cranes make the best noise.

DrHoz-- These are furries? You must be friends with a group of people who overlap both communities, which of course exist, but are quite rare, because that definitely doesn't represent a good portion of the community that I've met. x)

Last I heard the Gastric-brooding Frog was extinct, Stevie :( chytrid fungus :(

and yes, Kristin, all furries.

Hands-down, the weirdest animal around has GOT to be the Symbion pandora. It lives on the lips of Norwegian lobsters. It has three distinct life stages: asexual, male, and female.
While male, it has two reproductive organs but no mouth or anus. While female, its digestive system collapses and becomes larva. It is the sole member of its own PHYLUM (yes, phylum, not species!), Cycliophora.

Read all about it: http://www.google.co.th/search?q=pandor*+%22lobster+lips

Great Babyrusa footage; the one I saw was a smaller female and her tusks were much less splintered on the ends.

Photo of the Day #2: Female Okapi

laelaps — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:46:20 +0000

Photo of the Day #2: Female Okapi

The photo I posted yesterday of a male Gerenuk (Litocranius walleri) has prompted some discussion about other long-necked artiodactyls, especially the living representatives of the family Giraffidae. Although the family once contained more members (like the oddly-ornamented Sivatherium), only the Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) and the Okapi (Okapia johnstoni) are extant. Pictured above is a female Okapi at the Bronx Zoo, the distinction between the sexes being easily distinguished as the female lacks the skin-covered protrusions made of ossified cartilage known as "ossicones" that are prominent in the male.

laelaps Wed, 10/10/2007 - 00:46

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Okapi!!! This made my morning. Thanks, Brian. My dad loves okapis, too, and he always calls them examples of "evolution in action." This isn't really true, given that okapis are the chimpanzees of the giraffe family (if giraffes evolved from okapis, why are there still okapis?). But I think he must be talking about the zebra stripes on the okapi's legs. Although, obviously, okapis aren't related to zebras, and they're not turning into zebras, so...maybe he thinks that in a million years, okapis will be fully striped like zebras.

You're welcome Zach; I thought you'd like it. I know I have some shots of the male around, too, but I think it's on my other computer.

Okapis evolved from a common ancestor with the extant Giraffe, although it might represent a more basal form (giraffes didn't evolve from the living Okapi just as we didn't evolve from chimpanzees). If stripes are your game, tell your dad to read up on the Quagga, an extinct (sort of?) zebra-relative that was only partly striped. I said "sort of" because there have been efforts to recreate the Quagga in a breeding back program of living zebras, but whether the Quagga-look-alikes really deserve the name is controversial.

Funnily enough, the okapi first hit the scientific literature in 1901 as Equus johnstoni. It seemingly didn't take long for it to be recognised as not a horse, because the name Okapia appeared in the same year.

I know we didn't evolve from chimps! I was just making a bad joke about creation arguments against evolution. And I've heard much of the Quagga and breeding-back techniques to uncover a common ancestor. Isn't the "quicken" (a quail and a chicken) the same kind of thing?

If I'm not wrong, and IIRC, DNA evidence points to the quagga and the extant Plains Zebra being the same species anyway.

Oh, and I'd love to see an Okapi in the flesh one day! You'd think that a supposedly world-class zoo in a wealthy tropical country would jump at any chance to bring one in, but no...

One thing I've found extremely fascinating is how the giraffids seemed to have had their heyday in the Miocene, only to give way to bovids and eventually have their range entirely restricted to Africa. And it's a real pity that the even more biarre samotheres and sivatheres did not survive to the Holocene.

do you think the quagga should be restored and why