So who would win a battle between an electric eel and an alligator?
Well, actually a smart alligator would leave an electric eel all alone.
Nature provides all sorts of defenses – poison, camouflage, big brains combined with opposable thumbs. For the eel, it’s a shock of electricity that can save its life from a predator.
A squirrel was run over and killed by a vehicle. Its loyal friend keeps scavenger crows from attacking its corpse. This just makes me choke up a little bit.
If the video above doesn’t work, here’s a link to its page on Youtube.
There are some links to more of the squirrel’s protective nature in this post about a mother squirrel protecting her baby from a dog.
He gave me the heads up (thanks David) and left a link on my About Page (which I highly recommend that everyone should read so they know all the pertinent info on why I tick the way I do).
David’s link directed me to one of those uncommon freaks of nature - a five-legged lamb.
The Australian sheep has a small leg dangling from the back of its neck that should remind Newscoma of one of her all-time favorite bad movies Basket Case.
Not only does it have an extra leg, its extra leg has an extra hoof. That’s right. One sheep = five legs, six feet.
The wooly one appears to be doing fine and is just another sheep in its flock.
In Tasmania, crop circles have been puzzling farmers and government agents.
The answer to the mystery has been revealed.
It’s a case of “high as a kite” wallabies getting into government-owned fields of opium poppies, munching on the plants until they get hopped up and then wandering around in circles like the last few partiers at a rave in 2002 trampling the plants that end up in their way.
These drug-fiend marsupials apparently have more of a jones for the opium than Sherlock Holmes without a case to solve.
Tasmania is the world’s largest producer of legally grown opium for the pharmaceutical market.
So the dogs woke me up at 3:45 a.m. to go out for a urinary jaunt.
Upon opening the door and getting a face full of cold air as I let them out and back in, I was immediately wide awake.
Trying to find something on the TV to knock me back out again, I watched the end of a MacGyver episode. (For the big finale, he used two silver candlesticks wrapped in bare wires to conduct electricity and defibrillated a man’s heart to bring him back to life. So what did you do at work today? Top that.)
When the mulleted magician was done, I was still wide awake. Surfing the channels, I found a show on the grid entitled “Humanzee” on the Science network. I thought to myself, that will do the trick. I’ll be conked out in 8 minutes.
Instead I was fascinated by the story of this chimpanzee brought from Africa in 1960. It turned out to act differently from all other chimps. Oliver preferred to walk upright. His cranial features were more humanoid than the average Zippy the Chimp. The animal trainers it lived with said it was capable of doing tasks and that other chimps shunned it.
Strange indeed.
At around the age of 16, Oliver’s libido took over and resulted in his being sold by his original owners, beginning an odyssey around the globe. There was talk that Oliver was a hybrid between a chimp and a human.
I still can’t believe I fell back to sleep with this animal mystery on the TV screen, but I did.
So, thanks to Youtube, I tracked down the rest of the episode in six parts.
Here is the first of the videos, so you can see why I wanted to know more.
No, it’s not a fancy shrimp from a Japanese restaurant.
It’s a bone eating worm from the deep blue sea called the Osedax.
Mental Floss has 6 Weird Worms that have to be seen to be believed and details about them that make them even odder.
One Australian crawler is blue. There’s one variety called the pig butt worm because of what it resembles. Another was thought to be extinct until a few years ago.
I’ve heard of plagues of frogs, but where does our feathered friend fit into the End Time equation. You know, we are one day closer to 2012, the end of the world Mayan calendar.
There have been some strange bird happenings in recent days.
Now, there are more bird beatdowns. In the Windy City, a terroristterritorial red-winged blackbird has been divebombing and, in general, annoying everyone from bicyclists to pedestrians.
Then I ran across an incredible Barbie representation of Tippi Hedren in The Birds posted by Hollywood Ron over at Subtle Bluntness. It’s a must see.
I’ll have to ponder this while I gnaw on an order of chicken nuggets with extra flavorful dipping sauce.
In Tasmania, crop circles have been puzzling farmers and government agents.
So the dogs woke me up at 3:45 a.m. to go out for a urinary jaunt.
No, it’s not a fancy shrimp from a Japanese restaurant.
