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I write a lot about animals for Neatorama and that’s because I’m always reading about them. The coolest thing about the vast variety of critters is that there are so many and each has evolved their own strange adaptations to survive in their own niche of the planet. With each animal trying to carve out its own special place in the world, it’s not too surprising that there are some that had to dig a little harder and have ended up adapting in very strange ways. These six creatures might not seem too strange at first, but just wait until you read more about their bizarre adaptations.
I’d like to give a special thanks to The Proceedings of the Ever So Strange and The Book of Animal Ignorance, both of which greatly contributed to the information in this article.
Generally, when you’re being attacked by something that wants to eat you, the last thing you want to do is let them get a taste of your delicious, delicious blood to further entice them. But for critters that aren’t as tasty as us humans, this rule applies less and less. In fact, the Texas horned lizard has blood that tastes so gross that it voluntarily gives predators a taste just to show them that they won’t find any pleasure snacking on the lizard. As if that weren’t strange enough though, the source of the lizard’s blood buffet is even weirder …it launches its fluid sample straight from its eye. Even if the taste of the little critter’s blood wasn’t enough to turn away a potential predator, this horrifying scene certainly is!
Source Image via randomtruth [Flickr]
Being the most deadly animal in Africa, the hippo doesn’t have much to worry about in terms of predators. Sure, an occasional lion, croc or hyena might munch on the babies, but once these river monsters grow up, they’re pretty much at the top of the food chain. That’s why their biggest defenses aren’t against other creatures, but against the ravaging African sun and disease-causing bacteria. While rolling around in the mud can work as a natural sunscreen, it’s simply not enough when the majority of their day is spent wading through the river. Instead, hippos have developed their own natural sunscreen, which oozes out of their pores in a shocking, bright red color. This strange secretion has earned the appropriately horrific nickname of “blood sweat,” although it contains neither bodily fluid. Instead, it is made up of a number of highly acidic compounds that absorb ultraviolet light, preventing sunburn, and that inhibit the growth of bacteria. While we usually think of the blood sweat as bright red, it actually comes out clear, turns red and then fades to brown as it becomes exposed to the air.
Being stuck on an island with no natural predators, the Komodo dragon already has a good evolutionary hand, growing to become the largest living lizards on earth, reaching almost 10 feet long. But as many lizards will be happy to tell you, “size doesn’t matter,” so the Komodos also evolved a quite nasty way to bring down their prey.
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Video link
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the German superstar bear, Knut. He rose to stardom when his mother abandoned him at birth. A keeper at the Berlin Zoo stepped in and raised the cub from childhood, feeding him from a bottle, cuddling him, playing with him and otherwise rearing the little one. The issue really came into the public attention when PETA and other animal rights groups argued that the cub should have been left to die, as it was nature’s course and these activists believed animals shouldn’t be kept in zoos anyway.
Knut passed away on March 19 and while activists are still crying foul, blaming the zoo for Knut’s death, his fans will remember the adorable little bear that passed away far too soon -at only four years old. The zoo will be performing an autopsy, but results have not yet been released. In the meanwhile, we can console ourselves by remembering Knut kindly through this great memorial over at Cute Overload.
On a more positive note, the circle of life always continues and as the star of Berlin’s zoo passes on, Rotterdam recently introduced their newest addition to the public for the first time. Little Vicks (seen above) was born on December 6 and is every bit as cute as little Knut once was.
You’ve gotta love how happy these little babes are in their kiddie pool.
Video link.
What is it about interspecies animal friendships that make humans so infatuated? Is it the unlikelihood of the partnerships or the simple cuteness of two different species reflecting so well upon one another? Whatever it is, these adorable animal pairings are simply precious no matter how you look at it.
Perhaps one of the most famous strange animal friendships involves Greg Pike’s three companions, Booger, Kitty and Mousie, who constantly ride on top of one another. His animals were named by a group of school children who Greg gave the opportunity to name.
Pike is a busker who receives monetary compensation from passersby who wish to photograph his bizarre animal trio. He currently resides in San Francisco, but he and his pets previously lived in a small border town in Colorado, Arizona, in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in Santa Barbara, so if you think you may have seen him in person and you happened to be in one of those places, then you almost certainly saw the real act, not an impersonator.
Greg likes to think of them as a symbol of peace, if these three national enemies can get along, why can’t we humans. If you like the act, you can always make a donation via his website.
When Stuart and Caroline Ward bought an owl named Boobah right before her German shepherd, Hazel, gave birth to puppies, they worried the dog would be overprotective of the litter and act aggressive towards the owl. Fortunately, the exact opposite was true. Hazel immediately started to look after her owl friend who took to riding on the dog’s back for rides. The pair soon became inseparable and Boobah even tried to suckle milk from Hazel like the young puppies did.
Many people have seen this image without ever seeing the equally sweet story. The 12 week-old macaque was brought to an animal sanctuary after he was discovered close to death after being abandoned by his mother. After his rescue, his health improved, but he remained listless until he struck up a friendship with an unlikely suspect –a white pigeon. The two were so close keepers almost never found them more than a few feet from one another’s side. The friendship managed to bring the monkey back from the brink and he displayed a whole new attitude.
While some consider cats and dogs to be mortal enemies, it is still fairly common to see the two animals become close friends after living together. As common as cat and dog friendships are, it takes a special bond to capture the interest of a nation, but Cashew and Libby were that close.
Cashew was an older yellow lab that had gone blind and deaf in her old age, but his feline friend, Libby, didn’t let that stand in the way of their friendship. Libby served as a seeing-eye cat for her elderly friend, leading him to his food and watching over him while the pair slept next to each other. The cat would even follow her friend on walks to make sure he got back safely.
After Cashew passed, Libby has shown no interest in other dogs and has been known to hang around at her friend’s favorite nap spots. The cat’s utter loyalty to her friend earner her the Cat of the Year from the ASPCA, a high honor with so many great kitties in the country.
While the header for this one has the makings of a great animal sitcom, it’s actually a true story that warms your heart. It al started when a stray goat and dog were picked up by animal control outside of a wedding chapel in Dallas. They were brought to the East Lake Pet Orphanage, where volunteers soon saw the pair was inseparable. Unfortunately, Texas law requires that abandoned pets must be kept with animals of the same species, so a sheriff’s deputy took away the goat, named Minnelli. If the goat stayed unclaimed, she would have been sold at a livestock auction.
Fortunately, the story already hit the papers and the Dallas County Commissioner assured the public Minnelli would not end up on someone’s dinner table. A few days later, the animal’s owner came forward. The family also owned a three-legged yellow lab and could no longer afford to take care of their animals, so they signed over the rights to all three pets to the East Lake Pet Orphanage.
The shelter received hundreds of adoption requests for the unlikely trio, which they then narrowed down to the five best applicants. Representatives from the shelter visited each home to ensure the pets were given to the best possible candidates. Eventually, they were adopted by Norman and Sandra Williams who owned three acres of land and plenty of other critters to keep their new family members company.
I consider myself a big animal lover but okapis, diprotodon, and the good old oar-fish really stumped me. (bonus points to any of you who’ve heard of these animals before viewing the slide show! 
Some animals are so exotic that their initial discovery is difficult to comprehend. Stories of dragons, sea serpents or mermaids may seem like tall tales to us today, but most mythical beasts actually have a basis in reality. In fact, many creatures of lore are founded on real living or extinct animals. To prove it, here’s our list of 12 animals that have been mistaken for mythical creatures. You might be surprised to discover that fact is often just as bizarre as fiction
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If you just finished looking at the Google Street View of Stonehenge, it might be time to take a trip to the World Famous San Diego Zoo. All from your computer, of course. The paths can be a little difficult to navigate and some of the animals are hard to see from the street map distance, but it’s definitely awesome to be able to check out one of the best zoos in the world from your home. When you first load the site, it drops you right in the heart of the zoo’s newest exhibit, the Elephant Odyssey.
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Zoos, or at least animal menageries, have been around since at least Roman times when exotic animals were collected for the purpose of being used in battles in the coliseum. During medieval times, the greatest zoo around was actually contained in the Tower of London. It was opened to the public for the first time during the reign of Elizabeth I. During the 18th century, guests could visit the zoo for only three half-pence, or they could come for free if they brought a dog or cat to feed to the lions. This animal collection was eventually moved into the world’s first official “zoo,” the London Zoological Gardens.
Over the years, zoos have moved from being collections of caged animals designed to please the public to expansive parks dedicated to maintaining ecological diversity and conservation. While modern day zoos are mostly safe places where the public can go to see wild, exotic animals, this isn’t always the case. Here are some weird stories relating to modern zoos in honor of Visit The Zoo Day on December 27.
Image Via www.theedinburghblog.com [Flickr]
When the only two zebras in the Mara Land Zoo in Gaza Strip starved to death during the Israel-Hamas war, zoo officials knew they needed the popular creatures in order to entertain the crowds. Unfortunately, replacing the expensive attractions through the secret underground tunnels in the area was not an option for the financially strapped zoo. So keepers did what any good zoologists would do and just faked their zebra collection by painting donkeys to look like their stripped cousins. To give them the dye jobs, zoo keepers used masking tape and black hair dye to create “authentic” stripping patterns on the creatures. While it may sound like a bad solution, many of the zoo’s young guests had never seen a real zebra and were equally impressed by the frauds. I guess it is still better to see a mock wild animal than no wild animals.
Source Image Via Associated Press
What’s exotic to one culture may just be a standard farm animal to another, as evidenced by Khanzir, the only known pig in all of Afghanistan. Because pork products are illegal in the country, the pig is a true rarity in the country, who received Khanzir as a gift from China. As if the poor pig wasn’t lonely enough grazing beside goats and deer, when fear of the swine flu hit the country, he was forced to spend his time in quarantine all by himself.
The zoo director, Mr Saqib explained the zoo’s decision to isolate the animal, despite the knowledge that it would not actually be able to infect the general public, “The only reason we moved him was because Afghan people don’t have a lot of knowledge about swine flu, and so when they see a pig they get worried and think they will get ill.”
Mr. Saqib does have hopes to alleviate the pig’s loneliness though, he says after the swine flu concerns die down, he would like to get Khanzir a female companion. Perhaps then, poor little Khanzir could at least be a member of the only pig family in the country.
If you’ve ever wondered how keepers prepare for the possibility of an animal escaping the zoo, you’re not alone. Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of the internet, a Japanese training session to get keepers prepared for a potential rhino escape has been caught on tape and made its way into your home. The “rhino” in this case is pretty darn terrifying, what with its eight legs and all. While the team’s efforts seem effective, you have to wonder if they would work nearly as well when the beast is actually 1 ton and angry as all heck.
Perhaps those zoo keepers should have worked on their plans for escaped primates rather than escaped rhinos. A video seen on Animal Planet (sorry its not embedded, but they don’t offer that service) demonstrates the terrifying things that happened when a four-hundred pound angry orangutan broke out of its cage and chased tourists and charged security guards. During his escapade in the outside world, Blacky also smashed some scooters and took control of a camera tripod hoping to use it as weapon against the guards who shot him with a tranquilizer dart.
In the shot, you see just how long it takes for a huge animal to fall after getting shot with a tranquilizer dart –meaning the rhino training exercise certainly was optimistic about that part of the procedure.
In nature, it is not uncommon for a mother to abandon her cub. Some environmentalists claim that the best thing to do in these situations is to let nature take its course and let the cub die off. But when the animal is already affected by human intervention because it lives in a zoo, it seems more than a little cold-hearted to just abandon the cub. Zookeeper Thomas Dörflein agreed, which is why he saved a two newborn polar bears that were abandoned by their mother.
One of the bears died of an infection within four days, but the other, Knut, was hand raised by Dörflein, who provided the cub with around-the-clock care. Only a few months into little Knut’s life, a German tabloid carried an article about Knut that featured a quote by animal rights activist Frank Albrecht, who said the bear should have been left to die rather than be subjected to a life as “a domestic pet.” The director of another local zoo agreed with Albrect and said that keepers should have “had the courage to let the bear die.” To be fair, both of the people quoted said they were taken out of context and Dörflein has said that he was making a point about a German court’s decision saying that it was OK for another zoo to have euthanized an abandoned cub in a similar situation.
Naturally, animal lovers everywhere rallied in support of the little bear and the Berlin Zoo vowed to keep him alive and care for him. As a result of the controversy, Knut became a worldwide celebrity and videos of the little cub with his zookeeper were loaded onto YouTube for everyone to marvel at. His fame brought so many visitors to the zoo that it soon experienced its most profitable year out of its entire 163 year history.
As Knut grew older, he continued to be a popular attraction for visitors and he is still living at the zoo. Unfortunately, Dörflein died of a heart attack in 2008, although he remains a hero to many residents of Berlin.
Source Image Via Jean-Luc [Wikipedia Commons]
A long time ago (actually as recent as 1958 in Brussels), it wasn’t uncommon for humans of other races to be displayed in zoos alongside exotic animals. While racism in that time is not unusual, having people live in a zoo these days certainly is. But in 2007, the Adelaide Zoo in Australia ran a zoo exhibit where humans were housed in a former ape enclosure (they did get to go home at night). Inhabitants took part in a number of exercises and the amused onlookers were then asked for donations towards a new enclosure for a new exhibit for the chimpanzees.
Ever wonder where the zoo critters get their names? Well, most of them are named by the keepers, but if you’ve ever wanted to name one yourself, particularly the baby tapir shown above, here’s your chance. The Belfast Zoo is holding a naming competition for the little babe born on June 22, 2009.
All you have to do is send us your chosen name and up to 100 words explaining why you think it would suit our new tapir to namingcomp@belfastzoo.co.uk
Artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf created this art installation in the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna to show the potential effects our negative actions take on the evironment.
According to the artists, these scenes of ecological nightmares are “experimental set-up[s]” in which “the viewer is forced to reconsider traditional modes of animal presentation and simultaneously to question the authenticity of concepts which are restaging ‘natural’ environments while they are increasingly endangered.”
This little critter is just too cute. Just look at her sitting there with her teddy bear mama. The best part is how exciting her birth is -she’s one of only 17 of her species in captivity. More pics are available when you click the link.
The critters out in the Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney, Australia got a special treat for Christmas this year. I know it starts with an ad, but the video is totally worth the wait.
Zooborns is a fantastic new niche blog, one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. It’s all about little baby critters born at the zoos across the world. If you love animals as much as I do, it’s a must see!
Link Via MentalFloss
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