Sloth Attack

Had to post this one...

Your Monday ugdorable

I was writing a post about manatees for my other blog and I came over here to see if we had any good photos I could borrow. To my surprise I found that we have never posted about manatees here - we've only had a brief look at its relative the dugong. There's no doubt that this gray, globular, floppy-lipped, sunken-eyed, wrinkled sea mammal belongs on this blog, but just that closeup of its whiskery snout probably doesn't convince you that it falls in the "ugdorable" category, so check these out:




Come on: AWWWWW, right?

Thanks to Flickr users Andy Bernay-Roman, Pollen, windy, and Joseph A Ferris III and if you want to help conserve these very not-conventionally-attractive sea mammals, check out Save the Manatee.

- Wombat (No Relation)

Baby Aardvark Overload

I guess I should have posted this on Sunday and said that we were changing the name of the blog. I've posted enough baby aardvarks that you might have believed it for a second. But I couldn't wait.

Born on Monday at Busch Gardens, via Zooborns.

Your Monday... ugdorable?

Just when I think I've seen everything nature has to offer in the way of ugly animal babies, I stumble across this photo of a baby Sumatran rhino.

This photo was posted on the Facebook page of the Asian Rhino Project, and it's a baby picture of a rhino called Andalas that was born at the Cincinatti Zoo in 2001. The Sumatran rhino is extremely endangered, with only about 200 left in the wild, and Andalas was the first one born in captivity in 112 years.

Andalas also has his own Facebook page, but he doesn't post much, possibly because the internet connection isn't as good where he lives now: in 2007 he moved to Indonesia, the home of his ancestors and natural habitat of his species. He's now part of a breeding program that you can read more about here - and donate to, if you want to support the production of more ugly babies like this one.

-Wombat (No Relation)

The ugly member of the family

Seals are up to some shenanigans lately over at my other blog, which reminded me that it's been way too long since we saw an elephant seal here.

When people think "seal," they think of adorable pups that need to be protected from cruel hunters, or playful trained performers at a zoo or aquarium. (They also are often actually picturing a sea lion, but that's another story.)

And even elephant seals can fool you when they are young and cute and making puppy-dog eyes:

But cute little boys will eventually grow into their ugly adult snout and their ugly adult behavior, which involves harassing the ladies and lots of between-male violence, like in this photo:

As the photographer describes it: "Here one male ambushed an older male opening those wounds on his neck - and then immediately fled the area." The shot nicely captures the sand kicked up by the action, as well as an angle on that lovely proboscis that we don't usually get to see.

So if you're the next one to find an adorable seal pup curled up on your sofa, think twice before you ask if you can keep it, because you might end up with this:

Even as a lover of ugly animals, that's way closer than I need to get.

-Wombat (No Relation)

Photos by Flickr users Mike Baird and especially check out more by Joe McKenna.

No further comment

Those are some camels in a competition for the most beautiful camel in Saudi Arabia. All I can say is, it must be a difficult choice, right?

- Wombat (No Relation)

Wishes for the coming year

We love ugly animals, but still, even we think they should stay where they belong. Here's hoping you don't get any vampire squid on your head in the New Year.

-Lilly and Wombat (No Relation)

Year-End Reviews: Whose side are you on?

You have a choice. You could look at more of photographer Alex Wild's favorites from the past year on his blog Myrmecos, like the photo above. That's a type of army ant biting the photographer - getting a grip like that makes it easier for the ant to use her stinger at the other end.

Or you could look at The Telegraph's Review of the Cutest Animals Pictures of 2011. After all it does contain ugdorable babies like this orphaned wombat in a teacup:

Only you can decide what's right.

-Wombat (No Relation)

Your Monday ugdorable

This is a trailer for a show about the baby sloth orphanage at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, to air this coming Saturday. Check out Slothville.com for more info, or just watch this and be careful your head doesn't explode from the onslaught of ugdorable.

Ugly rebel baby

We've seen echidna babies on this blog before: from one that's younger and creepily hairless, to one that's old enough to have reached the ugdorable stage. But this one... even knowing that baby echidnas have the cute name of "puggle" isn't enough to make this anything but hideous.

Its ugly childhood is actually far from the most notable feature of the echidna: it's an egg-laying mammal. The egg hatchs after about two weeks and then the mother carries the puggle in her pouch for about two months. Then, says the Perth Zoo where this one was born, “Once the puggle’s spines started to emerge the mother deposited it in the nursery burrow.” Ouch.

Along with the platypus, echidnas belong to a group called monotremes that thinks it's too special to obey the rules that everyone else has to follow to join the mammal club. I suppose the echidna figures that as long as it doesn't have a duck's bill, it's still less of a radical than its closest relative.

Thanks to Zooborns for the tip.

-Wombat (No Relation)

Ugdorable mutant

Is this the legendary chupacabra, finally captured alive? Wow, it's a lot cuter than I expected.

No, it's a hairless raccoon, found last week in Vero Beach, Florida. An officer of the local humane society says that the animal doesn't have mange or any other signs of illness. Apparently it's just a natural mutation, like the Sphynx cat or those hairless guinea pigs. And like those, isn't there something strangely appealing about it?

This wrinkled boy was found trapped in a trash can by sanitation workers, who called animal control to rescue him. There'll be no more dumpster-diving for this guy: From here on in it's room service, at a wildlife sanctuary located in the town of Jupiter. Seems like a fitting destination for this alien-looking critter.

You can see more pictures here.

-Wombat (No Relation)

Ugly transformed

That is a Hispanolian solenodon. There are only two species of solenodon, and we haven't seen them nearly often enough here. This is another animal that doesn't stop at being ugly to look at. That rubbery nose has got a ball-and-socket joint inside it for extra mobility. And if that's not weird enough for you, this is a mammal that is venomous. They've got toxic saliva that's delivered through grooves in their lower incisors when they bite their prey.

But as we know well on this blog, there's no animal that is so ugly that someone doesn't love it. And since this guy is highly endangered, its fans are hoping to spread that love so that people will help protect it. To this end, one conservation group has designed cuddly solenodons:



They clean up pretty nice, don't they? At least when you knit them out of wool with little t-shirts on them. Hey, if that's what it takes, I'm not going to argue.

If they've captured your ugly-loving heart and you want to know more, you can read the blog and website of the group The Last Survivors for more about how they're trying to save the solenodon, and follow naturalist (and photographer of the above) Jose Nunez who tweets as Solenondon_Joe.

- Wombat (No Relation)

Naked News

The naked mole rat has made many appearances on this blog, as is only proper. But there's nothing better than a news story that justifies revisiting these wrinkled, bucktoothed, grotesque creatures, and I've got two of them.

One is the announcement last week that scientists have published the entire genome of the naked mole rat. It took a team of 36 scientists on three continents, and you might wonder, why bother? But as this story from the Washington Post summarizes perfectly, their appearance is not the only thing that's unusual about these animals:

The upside is you live a ridiculously long and healthy life, can’t develop cancer, feel very little pain, never get lonely and have great skin right to the end.

The downside is you breathe stinky air, rarely go outside, tend to get cold, don’t see well, live in a monarchy and can’t count on having sex. (Also, you’re a naked mole rat.)

Scientists hope that information about how the mole rat works at a genetic level will be valuable for solving human health problems. (At least that's what they tell the newspapers; I'm willing to bet that they mostly did it because this animal is so incredibly freaking cool.)

The other bit of naked mole rat news is that today is the 20th anniversary of the arrival of naked mole rats at the National Zoo. I'm tickled to salute these particular mole rats since I have known them personally, but also because I realized that we have never posted a link to the National Zoo Naked Mole Rat Cam. I'm pleased to rectify that omission.

Check out more anniversary photos at the National Zoo's Flickr page.

-In increasingly wrinkly solidarity,
Wombat (No Relation)

Cause for Celebration

We've met the maned sloth before, but here's another photo (via wikipedia) to announce that this coming Saturday is International Sloth Day. You can read more from the sponsoring organization (in Spanish) here or visit their Facebook page here, but really, what more do you need to know? Plan a party! You have plenty of time, even if you move reaaally sloooowly.

planning a little nap first,
-Wombat (No Relation)

A sad anniversary

Today is National Threatened Species Day in Australia. The date is chosen because it's significant to a species that may not be strictly speaking ugly, but it's certainly not conventionally beautiful, and I think it's worth taking note of here: the thylacine.

The last thylacine died 75 years ago today at the Hobart Zoo. Sometimes called the Tasmanian Wolf or Tasmanian Tiger, it was actually a marsupial, unrelated to canines or cats. It was a carnivore, though, and that was at least part of its downfall: it was hunted by humans because farmers thought it was a danger to their sheep. But to make the story even sadder, recent research suggests that it was killed for a crime it didn't commit: its jaws were actually too weak to hunt and kill such large animals.

You can read about the life of the last thylacine at the Thylacine Museum. There's also first-person recollections of an expedition to search for the species in the wild in the 1940s and an amazing amount of other stuff. Check it out.

In marsupial solidarity,
-Wombat (No Relation)

Most Beautiful Goat Pageant

Joan brings this one to us. Behold the Damascene goat. This goat, which looks like a sock puppet, has been featured here before. Every year a contest is held in Amman, Jordan, to determine just which of the lucky females will win the title in her category. Here is this year's winner.

Photo source: Ali Jarekji / Reuters via BoingBoing

And we can all see why. If those tube ears weren't enough, then that snout would be. Wasieef is her name, and she'd better get some rest. She'll be making tours of the country, speaking as a guest lecturer at schools, visiting orphanages, making policy statements, etc. Just wait till Donald Trump gets his hands on her.

Thanks, Joan.

A bad hair life

That's a crested rat, or maned rat, or Lophiomys imhausi to be precise. The species is in the news lately because of some research showing that, in the words of one eminent science blogger, this animal "slobbers poison on its fur, dares predators to bite it."

Yeah, this seems like the kind of behavior that belongs on my other blog. But my first thought was "Whoa, that is a terrible photo! What is wrong with that animal's fur?" Surely the poor thing was unfairly caught on a bad hair day, right?

Well, it turns out that pictures of this animal are rather uncommon on the internet, and I now suspect that that's because it's so ugly that either it hides from photographers or no one wants to take a picture of it. I did find this photo of a taxidermied specimen:

I always think that a taxidermied specimen in good condition like that one is, I'm afraid, pretty damning evidence. If the Smithsonian Institution labored over that animal with all its experience and skill and that's what it came up with, I am sorry, crested rat, but you are one unattractive rodent.

Photos from wikipedia and Flickr user isolethetv.

Your Monday ugdorable

A little baby nine-banded armadillo - definitely the ugliest species of armadillo - drinking out of a hose in Texas, where it's apparently even hotter and drier than usual. Poor little guy!

Thirstily,
Wombat (No Relation)

Another bad hair day

I thought I knew a lot about sloths. I used to work with two-toed sloths as a zookeeper. I know that the closest relatives of sloths are the apparently very different anteaters and armadillos, and that together they all make up an order called xenarthra. Hey, I even wrote a mystery with a sloth in the title, a sloth on the cover, and where important plot-related peril happens to sloths.

And yet somehow I only recently stumbled upon this species, the maned sloth. It's reportedly the rarest species, so I guess that's how I missed it.

Sloths are definitely not conventionally attractive, but I think they're the cutest things ever - especially the babies. I mean, if this doesn't prove that the world needs the word "ugdorable" I don't know what does:


That maned sloth, though...

But hey, maybe all it needs is a good makeover. It doesn't look too bad in this artist's rendering:

You can have some ugly animal craft fun by downloading that cutout-and-assemble maned sloth at the Yamaha website (I am not making that up).

You can also read more about this sloth and other xenarthans at - where else - xenarthrans.org, the website of the conservationists who specialize in them. And see more pictures, including some very clear views of that unfortunate hairstyle, at the website of photographer Kevin Schafer.

-Slothfully,
Wombat (No Relation)

Two-toed sloth baby by Flickr user justonlysteve.

A True Illustration of "Eyes Glazing Over"

Finally, someone to accurately portray how my eyes looked during operating systems class!

Photo by Toby Hudson

This obliging masked lapwing (shown below enjoying a juicy worm) has provided a prime depiction of the nictating membrane, or third eyelid, that provides eye moisture and protection to various animals while still maintaining visibility. The lapwing uses its nictating membrane to blink but closes the whole eyelid to sleep.


Photo by Toby Hudson

Shown here is a chicken blinking:

Photo source: Wikimedia Commons

A red-tailed hawklet winks for the camera:

Photo by flikr user ronmdon

And yes, this is the same nictating membrane you have seen up close and personal on your pets:

Photo source: Washington State University

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Thanks to alert reader JIP for bringing this terrifying horizontal eyelid to our attention. Happy 25th birthday today!