Dec 21, 2011

Holiday baking inspiration... or not


Distracted by my urge to post pictures of my pugs in Christmas outfits, I was finding it a bit of a challenge to come up with a respectable idea for a holiday-themed post about ugly animals.

But then I realized - of course! For many people, the holiday season is all about baking those Christmas cookies, so why not the cookie cutter shark?

The cookie cutter shark uses the impressive teeth in that picture to gouge nice round pieces out of the flesh of large prey. And in fact, there's some recent cookie-cutter-shark news that I neglected to report on: in November, a paper was published documenting the first recorded attack of a cookie cutter shark on a HUMAN. The critter took a chunk out of the leg of a guy who was attempting a long-distance swim from Hawaii and Maui.

This was actually fairly widely reported, but for the first hand account, check out this interview at Deep Sea News. It's complete with a clear photo of the actual wound which may spoil your appetite for those Christmas cookies for a while.

-Wombat (No Relation)

5 comments:

Flehmen Response said...

Thanks a lot for your high-quality, consistent work this year.

wombat said...

you're welcome!

Anonymous said...

I wonder if there are cookie cutter sharks for different holidays?

wombat said...

Maybe. There's still so much left to be discovered in the depths of the ocean!

triblog carol said...

haha, reminds me of the teeth of the abominal snowman in the rudolph movie!