Someone get these guys a makeover

One of my highly placed media sources suggested that we might be interested in this video, and I couldn't agree more. Poor things, who does their hair?

(Those are Zanzibar red colobus monkeys, and you can quit at about the one minute mark if all you care about is ugly animals.)

Not that I have any right to talk,
-Wombat (No Relation)

Race to save the ugly

In Vietnam, hundreds of people are racing to clean up a lake that's home to one of only four known specimens of a species of giant freshwater turtle.

Rafeteus swinhoei is revered, almost sacred to the Vietnamese, but sadly, this hasn't kept it from the brink of extinction.

Some even believe that the turtle currently living in Hoan Kiem lake is the same individual that helped a 15th-century king defeat an army with a weapon given to him by the gods. Unfortunately, this legendary status hasn't stopped people from throwing trash into the lake in Hanoi, which has become polluted and full of debris. Now, open wounds are visible when the turtle is spotted, as you can see on its neck in the photo above.

Would-be rescuers are cleaning the lake, pumping in fresh water, and hope to coax the turtle onto a small platform so they can treat its injuries.

Wishing them luck,
-Wombat (No Relation)

Your Monday ugdorable

It's another baby aardvark! Coming right at you! From the Detroit Zoo! Thanks again to Zooborns!

Overexcitedly!,
-Wombat (No Relation)

Giant Centipede Doesn't Respect Food Chain

The food chain, while informal, does tend to have a few rules. Chief among them is the general consensus that those of us with backbones get to eat the ones that don't (I am in favor of this being a rule, even if it isn't, owing to the fact that I, and most of you reading, have backbones). Unfortunately, no one bothered to tell the Giant Amazonian Centipede about this little rule. He tends to enjoy eating such things as mice and bats.

Yes, that mouse is in trouble. The Giant Centipede grows over a foot long (see first picture for scale - no that's not me, I'd be way to chicken), and is extremely venomous. Mice are easy, he just has to sneak up behind them. Bats are a bit tougher, seeing as the Giant Centipede isn't content to catch them on the ground. Instead, he nabs them in flight.

He does this by climbing onto cave ceilings and hanging down. Then, when a bat flies by, he grabs it and bites. His venom is so powerful that the bat is killed instantaneously. It takes him an hour or two to eat, but after that, I think he deserves it. Watch a video of him in action below.

Strangely, people have been adopting them as pets recently. If you decide to follow them, remember

extreme care must be taken while handling them due to the fact that the slightest trace of the venom can cause a reaction on the skin. Fortunately, the poison from the Scolopendra gigantea is insufficient to kill a healthy human adult. The alarmingly massive centipede can, however, cause symptoms such as local sharp pain, swelling, chills, fever, weakness, and uncontrollable running-away-and-screaming.

Pictures courtesy of Cracked.com(NSFW/18+) and Damn Interesting.

Youtube video courtesy of user Twinkdizogg

Inside-Out Sea Life

We've seen the hagfish - also called the slime eel - before on this blog, and how could we not? It fits right in here, and not just for its gray, limp, featureless, basically gross appearance.

The names used for this species can be misleading. It's definitely not an eel, and it might not even be a fish, because it's got no spine and its skeleton is made entirely of cartilage. (Note to hagfish: if you want to be classfied as a type of vertebrate, you need to have vertebrae. Sorry.)

But the "slime" part is right on the mark, and this is their revolting glory: when disturbed or threatened, they ooze out unbelievable amounts of disgusting goop.

You can see a lovely video demonstration of this ability here, but actually, the inspiration for today's post is an entirely different ugly fact about the hagfish.

These guys have rather repulsive eating habits: they're scavengers, and they will swim inside a dead carcass and eat their way out. (Using the lovely mouthparts in the photo above, which you can see a enlarged version of here, if you're sure you want to.)

And now, a researcher has discovered that they don't do this just to get at the tasty inner parts first. They immerse themselves in their meal of rotting food because they eat through their skin. Seriously: their skin actually absorbs nutrients faster than their intestines.

Some animals have adaptations that we envy. Who wouldn't like to fly, or see in the dark, or - my favorite - sleep through the winter? But you know what, hagfish? That's ok - you can keep yours.

-Thanks anyway,
Wombat (No Relation)

Thanks to the award winning blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, perfect for all your science needs.

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.)