Your Monday ugdorable

It's a baby aardvark! It's naked and wrinkly! It has a long snout with a piggy nose on the end! It has ears too big for its head! It's thin at one end, much much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the far end!

From the Colchester Zoo thanks to Zooborns.

Squealing,
-Wombat (No Relation)

Ugly communication

Remember our old friend the streaked tenrec? Tenrecs are a family of insectivores that occur only on Madagascar, where they've evolved to fill all sorts of ecological niches and developed into forms that look like all those other insectivores that are absent from the island. So you get tenrecs that look like hedgehogs, shrews, and, as in the case of this species, a scrub brush having a bad hair day.

The streaked tenrec has a very special feature of its own, though. It can make a sound by rubbing its quills together. In this picture you can see the special quills it uses for this purpose:



Making a sound by rubbing body parts together, called "stridulation," is familiar in creatures such as crickets. But apparently it had never been filmed in a mammal before, and now, in this clip from the BBC, you can not only hear it, but see it close up, and I have to say, it is actually kind of creepy. Go check it out.

-Wombat (No Relation)

Your Monday ugdorable

It's a baby echidna!

Unlike its cousins the long-beaked echidnas,the short-beaked species is in decent shape conservation-wise. But that doesn't mean that individuals aren't subject to both man-made and natural peril. This baby is in a wildlife rehab center because its mother was injured. Others are in trouble due to the recent massive floods in Australia.

Check out some more stories and photos of rescued echidna babies here (and for some less family-friendly information on echidnas, check out today's entry on my other blog.)

And speaking of ants

I was thinking it was wrong to post about ants twice in a row, but I just stumbled upon the amazing blog Myrmecos, which you all need to know about.

I can have my cake crumbs and eat them too, though, because - and I am about to blow your mind - that picture is NOT an ant. It's an ant mimic which is actually a crab spider (which, while not a crab, is a spider. Thank goodness there's one thing we can count on here).

There's actually a lot of cool not-ant stuff on the blog, like the Friday Beetle, and a recent guess-the-species that featured this amazing stick insect:


But there's no shortage of ants - get over there right now for Army Ant Week. You won't regret it.

-Wombat (No Relation)

Rest in Ugly Peace

The world recently lost an man who may have done more than anyone else to spread the word about ugly animals - and was well paid back for his efforts.

Milton Levine invented Uncle Milton's Ant Farm in the 1950s. Since then, over 20 million have been sold, introducing countless children to the joys of creepy crawly creatures.

Levine, who died last week at the age of 97, sold his company last year for more than twenty million dollars. He once told the New York Times about one unique way he personally appreciated ants: “Their most amazing feat yet,” he said, was that “They put three kids through college.”

With sympathy,
Wombat (No Relation)

Giant Crayfish Found in Tennessee

Recently, in Shoal Creek, Tennessee, researchers discovered a new, very large species of crayfish.

This crayfish, Barbicambasrus simmonsi, reaches a length of nearly five inches, is nearly twice the size of its local relatives, as you can see in this comparison shot.

The crayfish is also noted for its unusual "bearded" antennae, called 'setae.' These fancy antennae give this guy enhanced sensory abilities.

Pictures courtesy of National Geographic.

Ugly goes viral

Surely you've already heard about Heidi, the opossum in a German zoo who's become famous on the internet by being even uglier than a normal opossum. Maybe you read this article at the Christian Science Monitor, or Heidi's Wikipedia page, or this fan website that has sprung up to collect information on her. Or, you could go to her Facebook page or the website of the Leipzig Zoo, where Heidi resides. I can't think of much to add to that, but we couldn't let this phenomenon go without noting it here.

Jumping on the bandwagon,
-Wombat (No Relation)

Latrine Diving

Imagine hurrying over to the latrines to relieve yourself and looking down to see this face looking back at you. You might, if you lived in Peru.

Two-toed sloths in Peru have begun a recent trend of scampering (can sloths even scamper?) into latrines to eat human waste. Why, you ask? That's a good question, and surprisingly, there are several possible answers. Our feces (or at least, Peruvian feces) might have nutritional value. Maybe it's the insect larvae crawling around on the feces. Or maybe it's all the salt in the urine. Researcher don't know for sure.

(photos by M. Stojan-Dolar via Tetrapod Zoology)

Regardless of the reason, suffice it to say that were my latrines susceptible to sloth invasions, I'd probably develop a bad case of constipation. And yes, the sloth in the bottom picture is carting along a youngin' clinging to it's belly. Little sloths might want to develop the companion behavior to latrine diving of riding on mom's back.

I apologize if you happened upon this post while eating. Thanks for the article, Laura.