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I just read that a possible intermediate host for the coronavirus between bats and humans is the pangolin.
'WTF is a pangolin?' I wondered.
Introducing one of the coolest looking creatures I've ever seen...
Also one of the most endangered species due to the trade in their scales :o(
But they are very cool and I just wish people weren't so bloody horrible!
Quokka
Carpet frogs. Able to camouflage themselves perfectly on carpets but if you step on one they have distinctive croak and let out a fowl smell
there was one on every step of my staircase this morning
Prog Rock Pangolin
I'm sure I've half seen an Attenborough program on Pangolins.
Might be on iplayer ??
Animals are awesome!
I think Pangolins are pretty mainstream 😀
My nieces would never believe that an Aye-Aye existed... they are pretty mad with their huge eyes and one long finger to extract bugs from trees. Aye-ayes, not nieces.
The Fossa was my most recent WTF off the telly. What an amazing looking thing
Binturong, also known as a Bearcat.
Prog Rock Pangolin Armadillo
I'm a big fan of the kinkajou
Boils my piss that these animals are sold in markets. If you have ever been to that market and subsequently caught this virus then I have limited sympathy...
My most recent was the Secretary bird, it just looks bonkers
I opened this thread thinking pangolins!
My most recent was the Secretary bird, it just looks bonkers
See if you can find a video of one catching a snake.
I rather like the capybara for its smug look, and for down right cute it's hard to beat the slow loris or tarsier but for all out what the hell it's got to be something like the gobi jerboa or maned wolf (assuming we're not going aquatic where there's things like lamprey at the not that weird end of things)
See if you can find a video of one catching a snake.
Get yourself to the Hawk Conservancy in Andover and they demo this every day. Stampy kicky beasties.
Binturong, also known as a Bearcat
Its arse smells of popcorn, as anyone that's seen the Animal Antics show at Chessington would know.
Binturong, also known as a Bearcat
Its arse smells of popcorn, as anyone that’s seen the Animal Antics show at Chessington would know.
I know you're not supposed to give them cigarettes. At least that's what the sign at the safari park in Indonesia said. It seems to be ok at Edinburgh zoo though.
How about a muskeljaatkat.
Drop bears.
My most recent was the Secretary bird, it just looks bonkers
See if you can find a video of one catching a snake.
I’ve seen some videos of supposed secretaries catching snakes, I’m not sure it’s the same video.
When I first started diving, I found it hard to believe that this sort of thing existed...
Long beaked Echidna. It’s like a mosquito and a hedgehog had angry sex whilst being watched by a platypus and this was the end result.
See if you can find a video of one catching a snake
It was on a documentary about them doing just that where I first heard of them. Just brilliantly bonkers
I'd heard about these but never really believed they existed.
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Prog Rock Pangolin Armadillo
I know but it was a pangolin that was posted. Which actually remind me of artichokes.
Rusty Spotted Cat.
Jeezus: what did I do???
Someone tried to sell me a pangolin in a bag.
At least I think he was trying to sell me it as neither of us spoke the same language! I had absolutely no idea what it was until I saw a stuffed one in a museum 10 years later.
Still got no idea why a backpacker would buy a dead pangolin 😢
Shitehawk? 😉
There’s been loads of pangolin stuff on my you tube “feed” this week.cute babies etc.
Makes you think.
Long nosed walking bat fish, I’ve known about them for a while, but when I first saw one in Plymouth Marine Aquarium it rocked my world.
I knew about pangolins. My wife made a scarf which resembled those scales so we called it creamy pangolin.
Octonauts is good for this subject, albeit with a marine theme. My favourite is the immortal jellyfish. Which is actually immortal. It matures, then when it gets too old, ill, or is subject to some kind of environmental strees it starts getting young again, and it can keep going indefinitely. Until something eats it I suppose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii
I was going to post the pink fairy armadillo but pik n mix's bat fish wins today's internet.
Came here to play Quokka, dammit.
A marsupial so caring, that when threatened, it'll chuck its young out of its pouch to distract an attacker.
If like to hurl into the ring an Aha-ha.
Also, a Shovel nosed guitar fish
And a Tasseled Wobbegong
And an ice cream cone worm.
And the Monkeyfaced Prickleback.
And... Ah, just read the book
Atretochonana eiselti, aka. The penis snake.
Star nose mole?
Horseshoe crabs are very strange animals. Aside from swimming upside down and looking like scifi aliens, they have blue blood which is harvested for medical uses. Apparently it has a chemical in it with which can be used to detect absolutely miniscule bacterial contamination of solutions. Very handy if you plan to inject it into someone.
Horseshoe crab has lasted 450 million years and three mass extinctions, which certainly sorts out any weak points to design.
Blue blood (At a guess A Chelate of copper - we use Iron, as does nearly every other living thing) coagulates (clumps around) any bacteria it comes across. Crocodiles also have fantastic antibacterial blood defences. Octopus/squid/cuttle fish are pretty WTF creatures too. Caronavirus source is unkown, be a little bit ironic that it could come from one of the above oddities that must be getting rarer with mankinds rampant expansion.
Caronavirus source is unkown, be a little bit ironic that it could come from one of the above oddities that must be getting rarer with mankinds rampant expansion.
I read somewhere it was from Bat soup, could be militant animal consommétionists.
living in Aus' always finding stuff never heard of...thought i saw an otter last week but google tells me the only otters in Melbourne are at the zoo....what I saw is colloquially named a "water rat" but has rebranded with it first people's name a Rakali about 30cm long body big tail with white tip that is was using as a rudder
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The Fossa was my most recent WTF off the telly. What an amazing looking thing
They’ve got one down in Folly Farm, in Pembrokeshire. It’s an astonishingly muscular animal, to the point of looking scarily alien.
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Like that sea dragon, incredible. I had no idea that existed but it actually seems very widespread.
I like a leafy sea dragon too. Saw one diving on the North Shore of Bondi.
amazing looking things
There's a whole world of weird cats out there, beyond yer common or garden ocelot. This is a jaguarundi:
There’s a whole world of weird cats out there, beyond yer common or garden ocelot
How is do you tittilate an ocelot?
Oscillate it’s tits a lot
Tapir
If you want weird ...go small
This is becoming ‘guess the animal’ 😉 ?
I got the Mane Wolf (by using reverse image search). As a result found self watching a fascinating overview of it on that free video channel.
Latest surprise was the Black-Spotted Cuscus.
Imagine most of these creatures are critically endangered. Hurrah for humans. We showed that evolution who was boss.
Today I happened across the Sundas Flying Lemur. In this post truth age its not a Lemur and doesn't strictly fly
which lead me to...
Buettikofer's Epauletted Fruit Bat
Buettikofer can keep his ****ing fruit bat!
Imagine most of these creatures are critically endangered. Hurrah for humans. We showed that evolution who was boss.
I'm not saying the biosphere is rude health, but many of the featured animals are far from critically endangered. Secretary birds, Maned Wolfs, Horseshoe Crabs, those demented bats, those platypus type things, the sea slug floaty thing, jaguarundi etc
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
need something cute to take my mind off that
A little closer to home: the desman. Eyes that don't work, webbed feet and a snorkel for a nose.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/05/pyrenean-desman-photo-ark-joel-sartore-animals-spd/
Bobbit Worm anyone?
Ah yes, the Bobbit Worm. We were watching some programme about marine creatures, probably Blue World 2, and that turned up. Traumatised my g/f, did that!
Back to pangolins, and possibly the cutest babies ever...
The trade in their scales is utterly abhorrent, they do nothing, collecting human fingernail, toenail and hair clippings, grinding them up and selling them as ground rhino horn or pangolin scales would have as much ‘medical’ effect, it’s all just keratin. 😖
Carpet frogs.
Well I lol'd
And yes to Octonauts. I didn't realise it was actually factual until watching a wildlife program and my then 3 year old started telling me what things were and what they did.
Dracula Parrot
I saw a good few of these in Borneo, but I never caught sight of a pangolin
Half of these are just extras from the 'Where's your head at' video.
Mantis shrimp, the colourful killer.. became more notorious a few years ago, but still a favourite of mine
Mantis shrimps kill their prey by smashing them with hammer-like appendages known as dactyl clubs.
These move at up to 23 metres per second and accelerate faster than bullets, giving the creature one of the fastest blows in the animal kingdom.
How about the Tardigrade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
Nature's survivor:
Vacuum - fine
-272 deg C - ok
6000 atmospheres pressure - whatever
Ionising radiation - no problem.
A really stupid one... Driving to Winnipeg last year through forest on a dead straight, quiet road there were these birds stood by the road - cranes or egrets I reckoned.
Came over a crest and there was one stood in the middle of the road looking gormless, til I approached at which point it ran off at speed. Turns out the roadrunner is an actual real live animal, which lives in Manitoba (among other places)
