Posts filed under 'Odd Animals'
Marine biologists studying wild octopuses have found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subtrefuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex. The new study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, who journeyed off the coast of Indonesia found that wild octopuses are far from the shy, unromantic loners their captive brethren appear to be.
The scientists watched the Abdopus aculeatus octopus, which are the size of an orange, for several weeks and published their findings recently in the journal Marine Biology. They witnessed picky, macho males carefully select a mate, then guard their newly domesticated digs so jealously that they would occasionally use their 20-to-25-centimetre tentacles to strangle a romantic rival to death.
The researchers also observed smaller “sneaker” male octopuses put on feminine airs, such as swimming girlishly near the bottom and keeping their male brown stripes hidden in order to win unsuspecting conquests.
Shortly after the female gives birth, about a month after conception, both the mother and father die, researchers said.
“It’s not the sex that leads to death,” said Christine Huffard, the study’s lead author. “It’s just that octopuses produce offspring once during a very short lifespan of a year.” I guess the conclusion is that underwater sea life is very similar to us.
April 3rd, 2008
The case of a chilli dog on display at a local convenience store prompted an outraged woman to take action. Cindy Gravelle says she took a big gulp when she spotted a miserable looking pooch in the walk-in cooler, pressing its face up against the glass door, during a milk-run to her local 7-Eleven earlier this week.
Gravelle was doubly disturbed the next day to find the same dog, which appears to be an American Eskimo, in the cooler apparently for safekeeping while its owner worked a shift at the store near Centre St. and McKnight Blvd. N.E.
“Eight hours later it was still in the fridge,” the horrified 41-year-old said yesterday.
“What is wrong with these people?”
Gravelle’s dogged pursuit to rectify the situation led Calgary Humane Society officials to contact the store about the strange pet-keeping practice.
7-Eleven spokesman Alyn Edwards said it was “a discretionary decision” based on “unique circumstances” which will not happen again. It appears the dogs owner thought because it was an Eskimo dog it needed to be kept in very cold surroundings.
February 2nd, 2008
A recent report out of Berkely confirms that dinosaurs had high rates of teen pregnancies. Dinosaurs descended from reptiles and evolved into today’s birds, but their growth and sexual maturation were more like that of mammals - complete with teen pregnancy, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
The conclusion, reported the week of Jan. 14 in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes from an analysis of the only three dinosaur fossils that have been definitively identified as female. Thin slices of these dinosaurs’ fossil bones all show an internal structure similar to tissue found in living female birds - a layer of calcium-rich bone tissue called medullary bone that is deposited in the marrow cavity just before egg-laying as a resource for making eggshells.
Tenontosaurus lived in North America during the Early Cretaceous period, 125 to 105 million years ago, and was an ancestor of the duck-billed dinosaurs. A common plant eater, it is known for its long tail that made the dinosaur up to 27 feet long when walking on four legs. Because fossils of these one- to two-ton beasts are common in Oklahoma, Werning was able to obtain many fossil bone slices from the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Both a femur (thigh bone) and a tibia (shin bone) from the same fossilized Tenontosaurus showed medullary bone, while growth rings in its bones indicated the pregnant dinosaur was eight years old. As the father of a pre-teen girl this article caught my eye.
January 15th, 2008
A Vermont man on a flight home from Chicago was stung twice on the leg by a scorpion - the second such incident to take place in a week.
David Sullivan, 46, was aboard the United Airlines flight on the second leg of his Jan. 3 trip home from San Francisco, where he and his wife Helena had been visiting their sons. He awoke from a nap shortly before landing and noticed something strange.
“My right leg felt like it was asleep, but that was isolated to one spot, and it felt like it was being jabbed with a sharp piece of plastic or something.”
The second sting came after the plane landed and the Sullivans were waiting for their bags at the luggage carousel. Sullivan rolled up his cuff to investigate, and the scorpion fell out.
“It felt like a shock, a tingly thing. Someone screamed, ‘It’s a scorpion,’ ” Sullivan recalled. Another passenger stepped on the five-centimetre-long arachnid, and someone suggested Sullivan seek medical help.
He scooped up the scorpion and headed to the hospital in Burlington. His wife stopped at the United counter and was told the plane they were on had flown from Houston to Chicago. The Sullivans surmised the scorpion boarded in Texas.
United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the incident “is something that we will investigate and look into. We’re very sorry for what happened. Our customer safety and security is our No. 1 priority.”
It was the second scorpion-related airline incident to take place this week. On Sunday a scorpion stung a man on board a Toronto-bound flight, causing an hour-long delay at Pearson airport.
The arachnid apparently got through security in Costa Rica in the man’s carry-on knapsack, said airline officials.
The man, who is expected to make a full recovery, was preparing to return to Canada from a Costa Rican camping trip with his brother when the scorpion crawled into his bag undetected.
Scorpion stings are rarely fatal, except to babies or older people with health problems, said Dr. Stephen Leffler, director of emergency services at Burlington’s Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital.
For a healthy adult, a scorpion sting can mean numbness or shooting pain extending out from the site of the strike, or flu-like symptoms, which Sullivan said he had the next day.
Is this a new type of terrorism?
January 11th, 2007
