Tuatara

Submitted by: Steph, inadvertently



Lately, people have been accidentally submitting animals to me. This post comes as a result of an e-conversation in which a minor dispute over dinosaurs being truly extinct occurred. VERY minor. A quick google search on living dinosaurs eventually brought me to the tuatara.

The tuatara, the modern dinosaur, is native to New Zealand (aka Neighbor to The Deadliest Place on Earth, further aka'd as "Australia Jr."). They are...get this...in between a lizard and a snake, even though they look 100% lizard.

Tuataras also have a parietal eye, or a third eye (only in hatchlings, it gets covered by scales after a few months) and are able to hear despite not having ears. According to always trustworthy Wikipedia, tuataras retain some unique skeletal features of fish through the magic of evolution (WHAT?!). That paragraph right there is what Animals Are Weird is all about.

Additional Fun Fact: Tuataras were on the back of the New Zealand 5 cent coin until October 2006.

Meerkat

Submitted by: Chiara, with help from Lotte




Meerkats, most famous for being Timon in The Lion King, are small mammals who are members of the mongoose family. Meerkat is apparently a Dutch (Afrikaans) word meaning "lake cat" (though this is not a cat), yet the Dutch call them "stokstaartjes", or "stick tail".

According to popular African belief, the meerkat is also known as the "sun angel" who protects villages from "moon devils", aka werewolves. This is from Wikipedia, so believe at your own risk. My money is on the werewolf I'm afraid.

I don't have much else to write, but with the surge in meerkat popularity due to "Meerkat Manner" on the Discovery Channel I may have to add more.

Brown Recluse Spider

Submitted by: work pal Hannah (though she doesn't know)



Shown here posed on a quarter for scale, the Brown Recluse Spider is apparently biting people at random in NYC (specifically Brooklyn). Those who know me best know I am no big fan of the spider, one of natures creepiest crawlies.

The brown recluse is a weirdo even amongst spiders. Whereas most spiders have eight eyes, recluses only have 6. Perhaps the lack of those extra two eyes makes them more aggressive to overcompensate? They like to hide in shoes, sheets, towels, well...anything really and bite when they feel threatened. In all fairness, it seems brown recluse spider bites are actually rare, and can actually be a misdiagnosed case of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which I have chosen not to look up, dear readers. But when they do bite, the bites can cause necrosis, which causes skin cells to die among other things. Thanks a lot tiny venomous spiders.

Aside from two fewer eyes than most spiders and secret ninja attacks, there really isn't much else of interest going on here. I was going to use the Goliath Bird Eater as my first spider entry, but Hannah's reported epidemic (or shoddy medical diagnosis???) of spider bites meant this was news that NEEDED TO BE TOLD.

Box Jellyfish

Submitted by: Nick, who is a lover of all things tie related. Be sure to check him out and give your support to this very important life-altering project.



The box jellyfish is native to the aforementioned Australia, Land of 1,000 Dooms. It is also identified by experts as the DEADLIEST CREATURE ALIVE. How do we know this? Consider the following: they have many many tentacles with which to sting you with their powerful neurotoxins. Once they sting you, the pain is excruciating...to the point that you are likely to go into shock and drown (while writhing in pain). The pain is so strong that, should you make it to shore, you will probably wish you had drowned. They are also responsible for the overwhelming majority of reported yearly marine animal related deaths, with many more deaths estimated from indigenous tribes (who don't report such things).

Why do they sting? There are chemicals on your skin that cause box jellyfish to freak out and start stinging once you touch them. Not very nice. To prevent this, Australian lifeguards wear nylon pantyhose on their arms and legs, which the jellyfish can't sting through (wetsuits don't work nearly as well, FYI). They may look silly, but not as silly as you will when spazzing on the beach uncontrollably.

As a SPOILER for a future post, Australia also has the deadliest snakes (6 of the top 10, including number 1!), many other deadly marine animals, deadly spiders, so on and so on. I haven't fact checked this yet, but even honey bees are deadly down there!

Yeti Crab

AKA, the Kiwa Hirsuta. Recently discovered, the Yeti Crab dwells in the South Pacific close to Easter Island (a weird locale featuring the world famous Moai Statues), in hyrdothermal vents (WHAT?) near volcanic activity. It eats green algae, shrimp, and bacteria (yuck?). Oh, it has furry claws.

Woodpecker

Submitted by: A book Jaime left behind




Ummm, it pecks wood. I've never seen a live woodpecker, but I imagine it would be kind of annoying early in the morning outside your window. They peck for the following reasons: to hunt for bugs, to communicate (morse code????), and to signify the possession of territory. They also have really long tongues (apparently sometimes as long as the woodpeckers whole body). They also have thick skulls and a spongy cranial tissue to protect their brains as they pound away at pieces of wood. That's really all I care to write about out.

(be on the lookout for the yeti crab...coming soon!)

Hippopotamus

Hippos, one of the largest of all land animals (behind the white rhino and elephants), are actually pretty fast...they can run at around 18 mph (30 km/h).

Believe it or not, hippos are actually Africa's most dangerous animal. Think about that..a continent that has lions, hyenas, leopards, rhinos, and constantly rampaging primates, and the hippo is the most dangerous because they are fiercely territorial. Don't let the docile cartoon hippos fool you!

Strange fact: The closest living relatives to the hippo are actually cetaceans...which are whales, porpoises, etc. Craziness.

Blobfish

Seriously, WTH? At least it's accurately named.

Blobfish live in the deep waters of Australia and Tasmania. They stay afloat because their bodies are composed of a gelatinous mass slightly denser than water. Also, they are quite gross.

Flying Squirrel

Submitted by: Joyce W.

My good friend Joyce suggested "jumping jackalope", but it's hard to find facts about animals that are not real. So I made her choose again, and we ended up with flying squirrel:



I say this in the least scientific way possible: it's a squirrel with a loose fold of skin stretched out and attached to their legs (called a patagium), which is what allows them to glide. They also have GIANT eyes, I guess for nocturnal hunting purposes and also making them kind of cute. Huge eyes are very marketable in the animal kingdom, unless you're an insect (for the purposes of this blog, bugs will be considered animals).

There are no especially strange facts about flying squirrels that I could find, so we're going purely on aesthetics here. I was able to find that their meat and fur hold little to no value, and are therefore not hunted. Who eats squirrels anyway, flying or otherwise?

I think once we start getting into marine life is when we will start seeing some truly bizarre things. Keep suggesting!

Intro

This is a blog dedicated to showing that animals, while extremely lovable, are also extremely weird. I will search the web for facts using a random animal and a random adjective. Let's begin.