February 2012

Scientists Discover New Species of Leaf-Nosed Bat

Somewhat unsightly flying mammal found in Vietnam

Um, so. The National Geographic is calling what you see to the left there a "leaf-faced bat". I don't know about you, but I don't see leaves. Maybe that bat has leaves on its face in the same sense that Georgia O'Keefe painted flowers. And only flowers. If you catch my drift.

Anyway. That rather hideous alien orifice-faced mammal is very much real and there's more than one of them. An entire species of them, in fact. They've just been discovered in Vietnam, where apparently it's considered acceptable for bats to evolve into grotesque, bubbly-nosed beings. Nature's a little weird sometimes. Sometimes, I guess, it expresses its Freudian nightmares through the snouts of animals.

Goats Have Accents

And they change over time!

Several big surprises out of a study recently published in the journal Animal Behaviour about goat voices. First, it had never occurred to me that goats had voices to begin with. We tend to think of all animals as making the same noises, although anyone who has had a dog or a cat can tell you that their voice is different from that of other dogs or cats. Obviously the same is true of farm animals as well, and it's only my ignorance which led me to think otherwise!

Second, goats were found to have "accents." An accent, in this context, is the series of inflections which the goat uses in its voice. I knew that orcas and other whales have dialects and accents to their songs - but then again, those are incredibly intelligent animals. I have known several goats, and while they aren't as stupid as (say) sheep, they are also not necessarily the smartest animals in the world.

Read more about Goats Have Accents

Vampiric Bat Fly Fossil Discovered

20 million year-old specimen found trapped in amber

When you think of bats, you tend to think of them as the perpetrators of vampiric activity. Even though most of the furry fliers aren't actually bloodsuckers, they've gotten a bad rap with the whole Dracula association. But we typically don't consider them the victims of bloodthirsty parasites. The bat fly, however, has been hard at work sucking the blood of all kinds of bats for millions of years, according to a newly found amber fossil.

Whale Shark Found Dead

Or so the fishermen claim...

The whale shark is one of the world's most impressive animals. I was pretty sad to see a dead one in my news feed, being hauled up onto a dock by its lifeless tail. This animal was found dead in shallow waters off Pakistan. Most sources initially said that the animal was confused by ships and died in shallow waters, but it's probably more likely that it was caught in fishing nets and suffocated.

Like all sharks, the whale shark has to keep moving forward in order to breathe. Its ability to pass water over its gills is sharply limited when it is motionless. Being held still is not a common occurrence for whale sharks in the wild… unless they get tangled up in a fishing net.

Russian Woolly Mammoth Video

Six reasons why this footage is SO FAKE

If you weren’t tipped off by the fact that this video made its first appearance in The Sun, Britain’s worst tabloid, here are six other reasons to disbelieve:

1. The trunk is all wrong

When elephants cross a body of water, they hold their trunks up out of the water. They don't just let their trunks dangle under water. The reason for this is simple: elephants breathe out of their trunks. Hello! If that was really a woolly mammoth, it would have drowned halfway across the river.

Cows On Waterbeds

Farmers report that their cows are healthier, and that swollen hocks and pressure point sores are a thing of the past

A dairy cow isn't a machine. She's an animal, and the happier she is, the more milk she produces, and the higher the quality of the milk. Dairy farmers live and die by the slimmest of profit margins, so it makes sense to crunch the numbers and make the animal as comfortable as you can afford. If a new farm initiative costs $X, but it results in 10 x $X in added milk profits over the next however-many years, then it's definitely worth it!

And so: waterbeds for dairy cows.

Read more about Cows On Waterbeds

Weird Animal Report

The place for cryptozoology buffs and cryptids, from the chupacabra to the yeti!

You are here