From 2008 to 2010, a pet octopus named "Paul" was given the rather burdensome chore of predicting the outcome of World Cup soccer matches. His handlers would put food into two boxes at a time, each box decorated with the flag of their respective country's teams, then whichever one Paul decided to chow down on first would be the predicted winner. Over his two-year career, Paul got it right 11 out of 13 times. Of course, nobody's really suggesting that Paul was following soccer games. Rather, plain old luck doesn't put the odds too far away - one might get the same sort of record flipping a coin. Some have speculated that Paul was attracted to flags with horizontal stripes, which just raises the question of why countries with horizontally-striped flags should win soccer matches more often. Paul was the subject of international fame - for an octopus, anyway - and was widely missed after his passing at old age of octopus years. And just when this story couldn't get any sillier, there's conspiracy theories around his passing. Here's Paul in action during one of his televised picks:
Paul and his handler also got death threats and recipe suggestions after Paul's predictions proved accurate:
...it might only be a mechanical "digesting" duck. Such was one of the iconic inventions of the dawn of the mechanical age, "The Duck." The steampunk creature of clockwork limbs could not only move, but simulate eating food and - sparing no effort in attention to detail - pass droppings as well, although the actual product was pre-stored and didn't involve actual biological digestion.
Such was the invention of Jacques de Vaucanson, widely considered to be one of the fathers of robotics or at least automata. He created this duck in 1738, for demos to the elite, using it to finance further creations. Before you scoff too loudly at such frivolity, keep in mind that Vaucanson's major accomplishments included automated, programmable looms, which could be programmed with punch cards - in 1745. Later this same media storage format would be used to input data into the world's first computers.
You can still generate a punched-card design at emulators like this. I would recommend the 'bcd' command from the bsdgames package on Unix systems, but that's such lost technology that it's barely worth mentioning.
Well, as the video explains, the hippos - the original pair, anyway - were part of the menagerie of Pablo Escobar, famous Columbian drug lord. They adapted to the environment and roam free today, starting from a breeding pair. The life and times of Pablo Escobar read like something straight out of Scarface. Legends of his tremendous cocaine-fueled wealth even include an anecdote of how they had to store cash in a warehouse for so long that rats broke in and gnawed 10% of the stored $100-bills, destroying them. Escobar's henchmen just shrugged and wrote it off as a loss. Anyway, when you're so goddamned rich that you have a problem with rats eating your money because you can't spend it fast enough, you tend to splurge on a few indulgences. So Escobar built himself a wonderland, complete with his own zoo. What a show-off! And that's why today, hippos are now a native species in Columbia.
The answer turns out to not only be fascinating, but a nice little cottage industry. Ecosphere is a company that sells just such an item: a glass globe with simple plant and animal life forms, which you just set in the window and let sunlight do the rest. It's basically a sealed, maintenance-free aquarium. Here's a video of one in action:
From the site:
"Because the living organisms within the EcoSphere utilize their
resources without overpopulating or contaminating their environment, the
EcoSphere requires virtually no maintenance. EcoSpheres have an average life expectancy of two years. However, it
is not uncommon for shrimp populations to be thriving in systems as old
as 7 years."
One wonders what the long-term implications of this would be. What if generations reproduced within the ecosphere - would they mutate? Could they evolve? Certainly, sealed systems in nature do tend to produce life forms with exaggerated characteristics. Could the system survive a global apocalypse? It needs sunlight energy, so we know it couldn't survive in space, but what if we included an artificial life source and launched it at habitable planets? Would the seed be planted for Earth-like, but adapted, life forms when we eventually go there?
"Hermit crabs are not really classed as crabs due to the fact that they do not own their own shell." "The shape of the shell that a baby hermit crab chooses determines the shape of its abdomen." "Hermit crabs will often consume their old skin for its nutrients." And more hermit crab facts...
Just in case you were thinking that the New Age hippies had backed off from the dolphins, this LiveJournal observer has bad news:
"I hadn’t realized that among a certain segment of profitable 'eco'-tourism it is a commonly-held belief that dolphins not only have achieved higher consciousness and are intimate with the secrets of life, but also use telepathy to transmit their teachings.
"My favorite interaction with a dolphin-oriented wingnut occurred at the dump. As we threw our trash in the big stinky dumpster, a woman pulled up in her SUV plastered with hippie/new age bumper stickers. Dressed in all white, she asked us, 'Have you seen the dolphins?'
"'Not today,' I answered.
"'They’re out there right now. Did you know that humans are the only animal that fears when it doesn’t need to? Dolphins only fear when they are in danger?'"
Penn 'n' Teller's Bullshit did a whole episode on dolphin New-Age-ism, BTW:
There's a lot more videos on YouTube where that comes from. The temple of Karni Mata comes complete with silver gates, marble carvings, hundreds of hidey-holes, and that stylish checkered flooring (pity the poor sap that has to clean it!).
Supper time for the well-tended-to rats:
Hindus and animal-housing temples just seem to go together. There's also the Ubud Monkey Forest and temple in Bali, where they have so many temples it's all you can do to find a non-holy place to pee (unless they have a special pee temple too?).
The Echizen jellyfish, AKA Nomura's jellyfish, can reach a diameter as long as a human's height. It's native to the coasts of Japan and China, but has been thriving lately due to overfishing in the area removing its competition. And this diver's ballsy getting close enough to it to tag it with a sensor!
Jenny Haniver, that is. These charming little devilish creatures are made from dead sea life such as rays and skates, taking advantage of their natural features. They're dried and then carved or shaped into natural poses to suggest demonic mermaid-like life. The 16th-century Swiss naturist Conrad Gessner was a known fan of the dolls.
The Pemba is a species of megabat native to Tanzania (east side of lower Africa, for the geographically slow). At a six-foot wingspan, they're one of the largest bats and the perfect critter to kick off the month of Halloween.
The Fiji Mermaid, often ranked today as one of the top ten science hoaxes, was a hoax exhibited by P.T. Barnum at sideshows. It was later revealed to be a top half of a monkey sewn onto the bottom half of a fish, and rather artlessly at that.
However, one need not think that early beliefs in mermaids were entirely founded by superstition; there is a rare congenital birth deformity known as Sirenomelia, in which a baby is born with the legs fused together.
A post about it here, but be warned, some photos are shocking. And Googling the name in images isn't advised for the nervous, either.
"Biobots" "roboroach", and "cyborg roaches" are just a few of the names being given to the emerging technology of driving a remote-controlled cockroach for useful purposes... such as searching for earthquake survivors. As the linked article reasons, why go to the trouble of building a robot to crawl through rubble when nature has already given us a perfect design that's more than up to the task? Roaches can squeeze through tight spaces and seamlessly traverse walls, edges, ceilings, and just about any shape, right side up or upside down! Even our best designs are still years from accomplishing this.
There's a video at that link. Here's a few more examples of this bizarre field of research (trigger warning for anybody with entomophobia):
As this video shows, you could easily make this a flying unit with a little helicopter rigging:
You could also help them on their way by giving them their own ground vehicle to pilot:
And before everyone starts yelling about "cruelty to animals": (1) They're bugs. They process pain/discomfort differently than we do (and how do we know they aren't having a blast anyway?) (2) From exterminators to flyswatters to electronic bug-zappers, we've been killing bugs off en mass practically since we first found one, and nobody's protested yet. Don't pick a time when we're doing important things in science with them to get high-and-mighty now.
If you've ever encountered a paying mantis in real life, these things impress you with how alert they are. They'll land right on your hand and turn around and look you right in the eye, challenging you to prove your sentience to them. If we didn't have praying mantises on our home planet, we'd be astounded to find them in space and instantly convinced of their intelligence.
Hopefully Blogger will cooperate with a non-YouTube video, but the thing is aparently only available on Vimeo.
Sarina Brewer is a taxidermist who makes fantastic creatures from mythology, and this is her website.
Brewer is a devoted wildlife preservationist and naturist who also volunteers at the Science Museum of Minnesota. She follows a "waste-not, want-not" policy, so that none of the animals she works with were killed for the express purpose of taxidermy. Obviously, when you follow a policy like that, you end up with lots of spare parts, and well, this happens...
On August 22nd, 2011, a 5.8 earthquake hit Washington, DC, home to the Smithsonian National Zoo. While mostly non-destructive, it did rattle a few cages and nerves. This afforded a rare opportunity to observe the various animal's reaction to the quake.
About five to ten seconds before the quake, many of the apes abandoned their food and climbed to the top of the tree-like structure in the exhibit.
The red ruffed lemurs sounded an alarm call about 15 minutes before the quake and then again just after it occurred.
All the snakes began writhing during the quake.
The ducks immediately jumped into the pool.
The beavers stopped eating, stood on their hind legs and looked around, then got into the water.
The lions all stood still and faced the building, which rattled during the quake.
The flamingos rushed about and grouped themselves together, where they remained huddled during the quake.
The deer immediately ran out of the barns and appeared agitated during the quake.
The giant pandas showed no reaction whatsoever.
In addition, after the quake several animals began vocalizing in alarm and annoyance, notably an orangutan, the howler monkeys, and the female deer.
Here's a news story reported after the incident, with naturist Jeff Corwin:
This katydid was photographed in 2005, in Lake Erie Metro Park in Wayne County, Michigan.
Pink katydids are extremely rare; about 1 in 500 katydids are born this way. The color is the result of a condition called erythrism - it's a similar effect to animals who are born albino. As opposed to the usual coloring, pink katydids have no camouflage advantage.
