River Monster

When being given a lead on a new ugly animal, you are rarely steered wrong by a zoo keeper. Such is the case here, where Gabriel Montague of the Children's Zoo, Zoo New England, clued me in to the river monster that is the Goonch catfish.

This beast haunts the great Kali river between India and Nepal. If its appearance weren't enough, there is also an increasing concern that this beast might have become a maneater. The theory is that since local burial rituals consign partially burned human corpses to the Kali river, these catfish might have begun consuming human remains (which might also account for some of the inordinate sizes we're finding in the Goonch). A side effect of this cuisine is that some members of the Goonch clan may have developed a taste for human flesh, and see no difference between live meat and dead meat.

Just keep this in mind the next time you're swimming the Kali. Also, try to make sure that your burial rituals don't cause local fauna (especially the big ones) to acquire a taste for us humans.

Thanks for the monster, Gabriel.

Photo source: Discovery.com



















Photo source: OtterReserves.com

Vulture Chicks

The American black vulture (Coragyps atratus) is pretty widespread across the New World, though their territory doesn't reach the same northern and southern extremes of its cousin, the turkey vulture. Unlike many other vulture species, these birds usually lay their eggs on the ground (which is probably why you see these two-week-old chicks huddled on the ground). They don't even bother much with making a nest, though sometimes they'll decorate the egg spot with colorful bits of plastic or glass or bottle caps.

I wonder what they used for decor before I started throwing my garbage out my car window...

Thanks for the photo, Clair.

Dairy Cow Business

You're looking at the business end of the dairy cow, at least when it comes to gas emissions. That's right: the front end of the cow, not the rear end.

It turns out that dairy cow belches are releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than their flatulents. Since the dairy industry is estimated to account for 2% of the greenhouse gases in the US, Tim Maikshilo and his wife, Kristen Dellert, are doing what they can to minimize those belches.

They're doing it by feeding their dairy cows foods and grasses that are high in Omega 3 (alfalfa, flaxseed, etc.), as opposed to the more typical corn or soy.

No one tell my wife about this. If she ever were to find out, I'd find significant changes to my dinner plate tonight.

Thanks for the article, Ida.

Photo source AP Photo/Toby Talbot via Yahoo!

Writhing Pile of Worms

I've been on vacation for the past week, so I missed a lot of the hype and buzz on this viral video. Though it seems that there was rampant and sophomoric hypothesizing about what it might be, we know it to be a writhing pile of tubifex worms. I've had more than my fair share of dealing with tubifex worms, as I've fed them to my aquarium fish in the past. But that practice was soon banished from my home when I accidentally didn't seal the worms' container properly and the tupperware clattered to the bottom of the refrigerator, leaving a writhing pile of worms for my wife to discover. There's a lesson in this: writhing piles of worms rarely lead to marital harmony.

Thanks for the link, Kelly, Claudio, Kat, Monica, Leslie, Guillaume, Tracy, and Adam.

Hypnotic Eyes

Opo Terser is one of those photographers who I envy. He's one of those photographers that make the world a better place. Why? Because of photos like this, and his detailed description of the intricacies of what he observed and how he took the photo. Read here for more.

Photo by Opo Terser


















You're looking into the colorful eyes of a female Maevia inclemens, though to me she would no doubt look like any other jumping spider. Opo has observed, and this shot proves it, that many jumping spiders have amazing colors in their eyes, though not many as much as M. inclemens. Opo noted through his view finder that a wave of red oscillated across the eyes as the retinas shifted beneath the lenses. That would be absolutely hypnotizing to watch.

It's probably for the best that these salticids are so tiny. Otherwise they'd make for the most amusing and distracting pets.

Thanks, Opo.

Lone Lycos

There are something around 2,300 species of wolf spider (family Lycosidae) the world over. They're found almost everywhere, so I have no idea what particular species of wolf spider this one is. I am confident that it isn't a nursery web spider (they are often confused for one another) though, because nursery web spiders carry their egg sac with their chelicerae and pedipalps, as opposed to the wolf spider, who carries it by her spinnerets.

Photo by João P. Burini



















Can't help myself here, but I've got another bit of word trivia for you. Lykos is Greek for wolf (ergo the Latin version Lycosa for this spider). For my fellow gaming geeks out there, now we know where the term 'lycanthrope' comes from. Lycos = wolf, anthrope = man. Wolfman.

Of Double Wombs and Albus

BJ volunteers at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa and snapped some shots of one of their newest guests.

There are 65 species of possums worldwide, but only one is native to North America: Didelphis virginiana, aka the Virginia opossum. Possums get their common name from the Algonquin name for them: apasam, which means 'white animal.' The Latin world, Didelphis, means 'double womb,' a reference to the marsupial pouch which functions as a secondary stage for offspring development. And, of course, for the last bit of etymology trivia: the word albino comes from the Latin word albus, which means 'white."

No, sorry. One more bit of word trivia: ROUS stands for Rodent Of Unusual Size. Beware the Fire Swamp.

Thanks for the albino possum, BJ.

A Toast to Fruitful Rainy Season

My wife once did a research paper in college in which she discovered that arranged marriages report much higher marital satisfaction than is found in a typical 'love marriage.'

I hope this trend holds true for these two newlyweds. Raja (left) and Rana (right) were joined in matrimony, complete with full Hindu ritual, in the state of Mumbai, for the purposes of appeasing the rain god. I also hope that the rain god will be pleased and that a fruitful rainy season will follow.

Photo source AFP via Yahoo!