It has been too long since I've written and I still can't write today but check out this slide show of new species that have been discovered at bbc.com http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7780514.stm

The Death Dealing Devil

I would like to start off by saying, I spelled "noble" wrong in the TITLE of my last post and no one said anything. Does that mean you guys aren't reading this anymore? What the hell? You guys love this shit!


With that said, a friend inspired me to do a little wikipedia searching for the Tasmanian Devil. I hadn't even thought about blogging about this little guy, which just reminds me that there are SO MANY animals in the world. Do you know how many animals are in the world? No, you don't. Because there are SO MANY! How many? SO MANY!

Ok, so I would like to start off by saying in May of this year the main animal of the hour, the Tasmanian Devil was put on the endangered species list. This is due to an initial systematic hunting of Tasmanian Devils who were believed to be a threat to livestock but then continued with the development and widespread outbreak of devil facial tumor disease. Currently, steps are being taken by the government to combat the disease.

The tasmanian devil is the largest existing carnivorous marsupial in the world. It releases an apparently awful smell when it is stressed and has a troubling screech. It is known as a particularly vicious animal and of all the mammals in the world the tasmanian devil's jaws are the strongest. The jaws are so strong due to it's proportionately large head.

The T.D. can live up to 6 years in the wild and a little more in captivity and uses its whiskers on its nose and head in order to locate prey when hunting in the dark. Although the T.D. is carnivorous, it tends to eat more carrion and less freshly caught meat.

The Devil can be found all over Tasmania, even the ouskirts of rural areas and tends to travel in solitude, only occasionally meeting up with other devil's in order to share a meal. The are nocturnal and can apparently also swim. In addition they eat about 15% of their body weight everyday but in some situations can eat 40% their own weight in just 30 minutes. They eat the entirety of their prey including bones and fur and are celebrated by some farmers who cherish the devil for ridding their farm of carcasses that can house insects that would be potentially dangerous to the livestock.

Ok that's all I got for today because I'm exhausted from extreme lack of sleep. I hope you enjoyed.

The Nobile Nautilus

Even though everyone and their mothers wants to talk about the Olympics and the Obama/McCain morality interviews, I want to talk about the Chambered Nautilus. Why the Nautilus? Because it's prehistoric, it's weird looking, and I used to have one when I was a kid. Just kidding, I never had a nautilus...I WISH I had a nautilus, but I didn't.

The Nautilus has survived for millions of years nearly unchanged and as a result it is referred to as a "living fossil." Despite having the appearance of an octopus and a snail, the nautilus is not related to either of these creatures. I'm really bad at figuring out this order, suborder, genus, yadda yadda stuff and the Nautilus is particularly confusing but I think I can safely say that it is an entirely unique animal belonging to the cephalopoda class and is the only member of the nautiloidea suborder. Don't ask me what that means.

Nautiluses can have up to 90 tentacles and are arranged in a dualcircular pattern. Unlike its cephalopoda relatives, its tentacles do not have suckers, are undifferentiated, and are retractable. They also have 9 teeth!!! That's awesome. While their eyes are primitive compared to other cephalopoda (their eyes work in a way similar to a pin hole camera) they hunt their food through smell and the detection of various chemicals.

The shell of the nautilus, when cut open displays a chambered spiral that were common pieces of small natural history collections in the 1800's. From the top, their shell appears dark and patterned and blends in with the sea floor when looking down on it. The bottom is white so the nautilus will blend in with the light from above when predators are below. Get it?

There's a lot more to write about the nautilus but a lot of it I don't quite understand because it is either a very complex creature or the guy who wrote this wikipedia article is hard to read and I'm too lazy to really try because my mom is watching some celebrity gossip show and I just found out that J Lo is training for a triathalon.

The NOT slothlike sloth

I finally remember the animal that I had gone batty for (no, it's not a bat you disgusting pun seekers). All it took was a little trip to the Central Park zoo and there it was hanging right there in front of me in the rainforest exhibit, A SLOTH!!!
Sloths are also hysterical because they look like such stoners. I want to say that FHQAR is not here to make fun of animals but seriously, look at these pictures of these sloths:

"Oh dude, I'm so high right now..."

"Yeah bro, seriously. I can like hardly hang on to this tree...but I feel like I AM this tree."

"Dude, these leaves are so good. Even though they're going to take me a month to digest, I don't even care. They're just so good, man."

Ok, onto the real stuff. Lemme tell you about the sloth, because it's an amazing creature and has a bad rap (it was named "sloth" for chrissake).

Once, there were tree sloths and ground sloths. Now there are only tree sloths. Why? Well scientists aren't exactly sure but they have found that the ground sloths of South and parts of North America went extinct around the same time humans arrived on the continent so it probably had to do with over-hunting. So now the world is left with 6 different species of tree sloth that live throughout Central and South America.

The remaining tree sloths are omnivores but primarily stick to eating leaves, buds, and "tender shoots" (this is not my wording. This would never be my wording). Because leaves have very little nutrition and do not digest easily sloths have incredible tummies whose contents take up two-thirds of the sloths body weight. These stomaches take a month or more to digest the leaves and the sloth only defecates once a week, this is the only time it will leave the tree and come to the ground.

Unlike most animals, sloth's hair does not grow towards their extremities. Instead the hair grows away from the extremities in order to provide protection from the elements while the sloth hangs upside down. In addition, algae grows in the sloth's hair and turns them green. This provides camoflauge and also creates a small ecosystem in the sloth's fur.

While sloths mainly stay in trees, they somehow (lord knows how) are competent swimmers. Also, they're claws are so strong that even if a hunter shoots them from below they do not fall from the tree. They just continue to hang on which deters hunters even though they are still one of their biggest predators besides jaguars and eagles.

What is most important about the sloth to me, right now, at this moment is the fact that people think sloths are slothlike. It's not true at all! SURE, they're the slowest moving mammal and SURE, they're muscle mass is half that of animals that are similar to them in size, but they do not sleep NEARLY as much as what was originally suspected. Instead it has been found that sloths sleep far more when living in captivity because they are bored. So there. That's what I really want you to know about the sloth. YOU are probably more slothlike than our little sloth friend, checking your Email during work, going out to dinner instead of cooking, watching TV when you get home from work! You know who you are!!!! The sloth doesn't have those kinds of luxuries!! He just cools out in the jungle and gets by with what he's got!!!!!!

Here is my favorite sloth video. Anderson Cooper and Jeff Corwin are in it. Enjoy.

The surreptitious Snow Leopard

I want you to know that I realize I should be shot for how little I've been updating. Mainly this is because I thought of THE BEST animal to do sometime in May, but now I've forgotten and have been kind of hung up on it and haven't been able to move on. I've moved on though and so without further ado, I present you with the snow leopard, one of my favorite animals in the world.

The snow leopard covers a lot of territory throughout the mountains in Central Asia. It's like span is 15-18 years but it has been known to live up to 20 years. Unlike most big cats the snow leopard is unable to roar and has a proportionately longer tail than any other cat species. For some time it was believed to belong to a genus separate from other large cats but after recent molecular studies it was placed back in the panthera genus.

Leopards tend to leave solitary lives and hunt whenever meat is available. They like to attack their prey from above and can jump as far as 14 meters in pursuit of a ibex, boar, deer, or small mammal. They have a very well defined home range but will not aggressively defend the range if another animals wanders into it.

There are guessed to be between 4,000 and 7,500 snow leopards left although it is hard to say since they are so solitary and hard to track. I once heard of a group of conservationists trying to track snow leopards and going out for 5 hours every day and never seeing a trace of the leopard until they turned around and headed back to camp , only to discover snow leopard tracks on top of their own along their entire path.

The snow leopard can also be found on various countries' currency and city flags particularly in Kazakhstan.

The Timeworn Tarsier

Well let me tell you, this little guy sure has been capturing my attention these days. So much that I just made a birthday card featuring him. He is my new buddy, the Tarsier.

First, I have to admit that wikipedia doesn't have too much on these guys and what they do have makes absolutely no sense to me so I'll try to draw out what I can.

The Tarsier gets its names from its insanely long tarsus bones, that of course causes it to have very long feet and its fingers are also elongated (the third finger is actually as long as their upper arm). It has very soft and velvety fur and uses its hind feet claws to groom itself.

It is found exclusively on the islands of South East Asia although it used to be more wide spread. Despite this, it is not endangered.

It is a nocturnal animal but unlink most nocturnal animals it lacks a light-reflecting eye. I think this means like, when you're driving and it's dark and there's a racoon in the road and its eyes look spooky because it's reflecting the light of your headlights. So it lacks that, but I don't know what that means. It also eats bugs but sometimes eats frogs and lizards and snakes and can even catch birds in mid-flight as it jumps from tree to tree!!!!

Something cool about them is they have the longest continuous fossil record of any primate!!!! Also, they have never been able to breed in captivity and often kill themselves due to stress.

Camel: The Beast of Burden

This is a (psychotic flag wielding) bactrian camel!!! I know because it has two humps! There are only 1.4 million of these camels left compared to its one humped counterpart, the dromedary that numbers about 14 million. Currently, almost all camels have been domesticated. Like the buffalo, we will never see the majestic camel run wild and free (except for the 1000 wild bactarians in the Gobi desert. Apparently there is also a feral population of about 700,000 is Australia but they're subject to systematic extermination...just kidding, I don't know if that's true...actually yes, this is true.)

Both the dromedary and the bactrian can live for sixty to eighty years and stand 6 feet tall at the shoulders. They're found in the dry deserts of western, central, and eastern Asia although the dromedary is particular to western Asia. While the bacterian camels are more well equipped for the rugged cold, the dromedary prefers the arid heat and maintains a body temp of 106 F that would normally kill most animals!

Despite popular belief, the camel does not store water in its humps. I don't know where that rumor came from but I believed it until this very moment. It reminds me of the time my science teacher in 7th grade told us that pandas weren't bears but raccoons. Anyway, what really happens is a number of things:
1. Their blood cells are oval shaped instead of circular so they travel more easily in a dehydrated state.
2. Their nostrils magically trap water that is being exhaled and return it to the body.
3. The can stand 20-25% weight loss due to sweating unlike most animals who can only stay 3-4%.
4. A camel's coat reflects the sun. The more hair the better!
5. The kidneys and intestines are awesome at retaining water. Their urine comes out like molasses and you can make a fire with their shit!

Ok, I think that's about all I want to say about the camel. They're totally cool though and I have a new found respect for them. They've carried a lot of stuff for us humans and they truly are the "beast of burden." One word of caution though, it is said that if you eat raw camel liver you might catch the bubonic plague...no joke.