Weird Animals

It looks like it's pooping out ET. Oo

Moar penis horror:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2012/10/Seed-beetle-penis.jpg

Better ("better") pic:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/files/2012/10/Seed-beetle-penis2.jpg

Instead, Hotzy and Arnqvist found that the spines puncture or erode the female’s genital tract, allowing sperm to seep into her bloodstream. The duo labelled the sperm of their males with a mildly radioactive chemical so they could track its whereabouts in the female. They found that around 40 percent of the sperm ends up outside the female’s reproductive tract, in other parts of her body. And the longer the penis spines, the greater the leakage.

Why does that help? The sperm obviously aren’t going to be fertilising any eggs in the female’s bloodstream. But seminal fluid contains more than sperm – it’s also a cocktail of other behaviour-bending chemicals. Some make the female more receptive to mating; others seem to induce egg-laying. For the seed beetle, as with many other insects, ejaculation is an act of manipulation as well as fertilisation.

Discus fish parents secrete a highly nutritious mucus all over their bodies that the young feed on until old enough to feed themselves.

Taking liberties here, but:

Rather than the fully-formed, free-living cells we know today, the last common ancestor of all living things (known as LUCA) was a hollow piece of rock.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/0e954b0469c281a9a09eb1378daada3e/tumblr_mh0cpm19zR1s3yrubo1_1280.jpg

Wolffish, derrr.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/2f4d4957e3ee785be0350ccee8bc5e6f/tumblr_mhfynesy4J1s3yrubo1_500.jpg

^^Red-lipped batfish, btw.

Just found this thread to post http://wtfevolution.tumblr.com/ - looks like Leee already got there!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/fcf782ba878b03c484d9bd8395707bb8/tumblr_mhurkyOYo71s3yrubo1_1280.jpg

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/02/Nudibranch.jpg

Nudibranch:

Ayami Sekizawa from Osaka City University watched the mating slugs, she noticed something odd. After they finished mating, they would crawl away with their penises still extruded from their bodies. Twenty minutes later, these trailing genitals broke off completely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUk08iYZKE

Leaf-nosed snake:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N-smWGi7SUA/UPc6YA5L7GI/AAAAAAAAMqI/VxweN-_7JEE/s320/Langaha_nasuta_female_DB.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ED_exG3qLk&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBkWhkAZ9ds

Omfg!

Hyenas: more closely related to cats than dogs!

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1575

once in college, standing around in the quad, i was talking with a girl from europe and she saw something out of the corner of her eye and gasped, "What kind of animal is that!" it was a squirrel, but she had looked at it backwards, believing the tail was the head and neck, and so thought it was some kind of exotic american animal she had never seen before.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/2013/04/19/unusual-offshore-octopods-does-the-worlds-largest-octopus-only-have-seven-arms-video/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8zl5vrAu8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8zl5vrAu8

Combining weirdness with cephalopods, <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSB71jNq-yQ

http://i.imgur.com/kR3PVOC.jpg

http://www.featureshoot.com/2013/05/endangered-frogs-of-ecuador-photographed-by-peter-lipton/

http://i.imgur.com/z76zx7B.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/science/blaschka-glass-menagerie-inspires-marine-expedition.html?_r=0

Wish that the blobfrog url did not include the word "endangered." :(

I've caught these before. They bark!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRluB6eyN3c

Couple more keepers in the gallery, but this mite deserves special recognition:

Microscope studies showed that, inside each impregnated female, her own eggs hatch a brood consisting of some half-dozen sisters and a single male. As the brood develops, the lone male copulates with his sisters; by this time, mom has died. By the time the sisters are old enough to chew through her body and reproduce anew, the male's job is done, and he dies soon afterwards. Sometimes he never even crawls outside, spending the entirety of life inside mom.

i know a guy like that.

the wasp one is amazing

Weird animals, now with smackdown of idiot Republicans!

Ostrea puelchana is a South American oyster with a reproductive strategy known as rhythmic successive hermphroditism. Larvae settle and, after about a year, become sexualy mature males. Then, as they continue to develop, they turn into hermaphrodites. Finally, they end their several year life as females.

...

If the spoonworm larvae lands on the seafloor it becomes female and begins to secrete a potent toxin called bonellin. Should the larvae come in contact with this toxin, it will be masculinized and sucked into the spoonworm’s body through her feeding proboscis, where it will be absorbed into her genital sac and spend the rest of its life producing sperm.

bats are pretty weird

"If you think about it, that's like having your urethra melting your penis," says Kelly.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/06/how-chickens-lost-their-penises-ducks-kept-theirs/

the links at the end of that are so good

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/13/the-alligator-has-a-permanently-erect-bungee-penis/

Weird Animals

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/files/2013/06/Croatobranchus-mestrovi.jpg

White, subterranean leeches.

that is kind of cute. it seems like it could be a pokemon.

Funny you should say that, there's already a cartoon tee shirt.

(Ace d/n btw.)

thanks Leee. i like your display name too. i was just explaining madness and civilization to people at dinner but i don't think they were listening.

i like the t-shirt but i don't think i am going to get one.

You just gave me an idea.

i am imagining that display name as a really mean caption for an unflattering photo of Carey Mulligan in OK! magazine or some other celebrity tabloid.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/86a3bd6344d460f399adbb21cf056f5e/tumblr_mp9xi8oAT41spgl94o1_500.jpg

courtesy of another ilxor, who posted it to facebook:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/files/2012/06/Pyura_chilensis.jpeg

Despite appearances, this is not some kind of cruelly bisected alien stone organism or a tomato thunderegg. This is Pyura chilensis, a sea creature that lives on the rocky coast of Chile and Peru. And if (like me, very recently) you’ve never seen one of these before, you’ll probably be interested to know that in Chile, they are fished commercially, and the locals eat them raw or cooked with salad and rice because apparently they’re delicious.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2012/06/21/pyura-chilensis-the-closest-thing-to-getting-blood-from-a-stone/

video left me a little traumatized

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot-_xTDJgVI

The obvious question remains: How can a worm remember things after losing its head?

“We have no idea,” Levin admitted.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/16/decapitated-worms-regrow-heads-keep-old-memories/

YES.

Great spider gallery: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/weirdest-spiders-ever/

Also the butcher bird: http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2013/07/30/the-macabre-habits-of-the-butcher-bird/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2428971/Is-beautiful-squid-world-Underwater-photographers-incredible-pictures-capture-amazing-colours-bobtail-squid.html

Not clicking Daily Mail link, even for weird animals. So apologies if this is the same:

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/cookie-monster-of-the-sea-photographed-off-curacao/

http://cdn.grindtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/MH_NGIC0610_0183-Web.jpg

It doesn't actually look that much like the cookie monster, but it is cute.

non daily mail link here http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2013/09/brilliant-photos-of-the-bobtail-squid/

Thanks, d. That squid is trippy.