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Axolotl
(Ambystoma mexicanum)
Home: Mexico
Size: 15-45 centimetres (5.9-18 in)
Discovered: Unclear
The Axolotl is the best-known of the Mexican neotenic mole salamanders belonging to the Tiger Salamander complex. Larvae of this species fail to undergo metamorphosis, so the adults remain
aquatic and gilled. They are science's aquatic lab rats due to the fact they can regenerate most body parts with ease, among other things. They are commonly kept as pets in the United States,
Great Britain, Australia, Japan (when sold they are known as Wooper Rooper).
Aye-aye
From this site
The aye-aye is a kind of lemur, with large round ears that rotate independently. How does it eat? There are no woodpeckers in Madagascar, but the aye-aye has evolved to feed like one, using its long middle finger to scoop out grubs in tree bark. See it in: Madagascar (and the Bristol Zoo Gardens).
BILBY
These cute little animals are an endangered species. Bilby's don't drink water, they get enough from the food they eat. They sleep during the day in deep burrows and forage at night and are found mostly throughout the arid, dry areas of Australia.
Emperor Tamarin
From this site
Named for the last emperor of Germany, this tamarin's wildly eccentric
moustache (strikingly similar to Mr. Monopoly's) is something of a mystery. Experts think it might be a unique identifier, as a fingerprint is for humans.
See it in: Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru (and the Paignton Zoo, in Devon, England).
Deep Sea Stargazers
Stargazers are a family of muscular bulldog-like fishes that typically bury in the seafloor and ambush passing prey. Stargazers are the ultimate ambush predator, with the eye sets on top of the head allowing it to be almost completely hidden. This is combined with an electrical capability which can be used to stun its prey.
Dumbo octopus
This deep-sea octopus got its nickname from the ear-like fins protruding from the top of their “heads” (actually bodies), resembling the ears of Walt Disney ’s flying elephant . They are benthic creatures, living at extreme depths, and are some of the rarest of the Octopoda species.
Echidna
Together with the platypus, echidnas are the world's only monotremes, or egg-laying mammals. There are two species of echidnas, one confined to the highlands of New Guinea, and one which lives in Australia and New Guinea. The smaller species is found throughout Australia, although the animals vary in colour depending on their location. In the northern, hotter regions, echidnas are light brown, but they become darker with thicker hair further south. In Tasmania, they are black. All echidnas have sharp spines covering the back of their short, stocky bodies. The echidna's snout is between 7 and 8 cm long, and is stiffened to enable the animal to break up logs and termite mounds when searching for food. An echidna's mouth is on the underside of its snout, at the end. This allows the animal to feed easily - especially when suckling. Adult echidnas vary in size, from 35 to 53 cm. Males weigh about 6 kilograms, while females weigh about 4.5 kilograms. The short, stout limbs of an echidna are well-suited for scratching and digging in the soil. The front feet have five flattened claws which are used to dig forest litter, burrow, and tear open logs and termite mounds. The hind feet point backwards, and help to push soil away when the animal is burrowing. Two of the claws on each back foot are used for grooming. An echidna's tail is short, stubby and hairless underneath.
The Fangtooth fish is found in midwater depths of about five kilometers (three miles). They are extremely muscular and their teeth are so long that when the jaw is shut, the lower pair must slide into special sheathes on either side of the fish’s brain to avoid impaling it.
Gelada Baboon
From this site
This primate's fangy yawn is actually a display of aggression to show off its canine teeth. The red patch of skin on the female's chest gets brighter as her hormone levels increase. As a natural design feature, it's probably a little too much information. See it in: Eritrea and Ethiopia (and the Bronx Zoo).
Gelada baboons are not actually true baboons, although they look very similar and are easily recognisable by the patches of hairless skin on their chest, which turns crimson when females are in oestrus. They are in fact the last surviving species of a once widespread group of grass-grazing primates. Geladas live in large groups of as many as 600 members. Such a complex society requires clear communication, and geladas use visual signals, such as facial expression and body posture, to interact.
HAGFISH
Hagfish are marine craniates of the class Myxini, also known as Hyperotreti. Despite their name, there is some debate about whether they are strictly fish (as there is for lampreys), since they belong to a much more primitive lineage than any other group that is commonly defined fish (Chondrichthyes and Osteichthyes). Their unusual feeding habits and slime-producing capabilities have led members of the scientific and popular media to dub the hagfish as the most "disgusting" of all sea creatures. Hagfish are long, vermiform and can exude copious quantities of a sticky slime or mucus (from which the typical species Myxine glutinosa was named). When captured and held by the tail, they escape by secreting the fibrous slime, which turns into a thick and sticky gel when combined with water, and then cleaning off by tying themselves in an overhand knot which works its way from the head to the tail of the animal, scraping off the slime as it goes. Some authorities conjecture that this singular behavior may assist them in extricating themselves from the jaws of predatory fish. However, the "sliming" also seems to act as a distraction to predators, and free-swimming hagfish are seen to "slime" when agitated and will later clear the mucus off by way of the same travelling-knot behavior.
Leafy Seadragon
Named after the dragons of Chinese mythology, Leafy seadragons (Phycodurus eques) resemble a piece of drifting seaweed as they float in the seaweed-filled water. The Leafy seadragon, with green, orange and gold hues along its body, is covered with leaf-like appendages, making it remarkably camouflaged. Only the fluttering of tiny fins or the moving of an independently swiveling eye, reveals its presence.
Like the seahorse, the male seadragon carries as many as 150-200 eggs. After being deposited by the female, the eggs are carried in the honeycomb-shaped area (known as the brood patch) under the male's tail for approximately eight weeks. Seadragons have no teeth or stomach and feed exclusively on mysidopsis shrimp. Known as "Australian seahorses" in Australia, they are found in calm, cold water that is approximately 50-54° F (10-12° C). Leafy seadragons have been protected by the South Australian government since 198
Matamata Turtle
From this site
The knobby, gnarled matamata uses its huge mouth to suck in unsuspecting food sources as they pass by. In Spanish, matamata means "it kills, it kills."
Mekong Giant Catfish
The world’s largest scaleless freshwater fish lives a tenuous existence in the murky brown waters of Southeast Asia’s Mekong River. Capable of reaching an almost mythical 10 feet (3 m) in length and 650 pounds (295 kg). Mekong giant catfish live mainly in the lower half of the Mekong River system, in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Once plentiful throughout the Mekong basin, population numbers have dropped by some 95 percent over the past century, and this critically endangered behemoth now teeters on the brink of extinction. Overfishing is the primary culprit in the giant catfish’s decline, but damming of Mekong tributaries, destruction of spawning and breeding grounds, and siltation have taken a huge toll. Some experts think there may only be a few hundred adults left. Mekong giant catfish have very low-set eyes and are silvery to dark gray on top and whitish to yellow on the bottom. They are toothless herbivores who live off the plants and algae in the river. Juveniles wear the characteristic catfish “whiskers,” called barbels, but these features shrink as they age. Highly migratory creatures, giant catfish require large stretches of river for their seasonal journeys and specific environmental conditions in their spawning and breeding areas. They are thought to rear primarily in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake and migrate hundreds of miles north to spawning grounds in Thailand. Dams and human encroachment, however, have severely disrupted their lifecycle. International efforts are underway to save the species. It is now illegal in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to harvest giant catfish. And recently in Thailand, a group of fishers pledged to stop catching giant catfish to honor the king’s 60th year on the throne. However, enforcement of fishing restrictions in many isolated villages along the Mekong is nearly impossible, and illicit and bycatch takings continue.
Mexican Walking Fish (axolotls)
These little guys aren’t actually fish at all — they’re a type of salamander. The carnivorous little creatures are officially called axolotls, and as their common name implies they’re native to Mexico. Sadly they’re endangered. They can regenerate their own body parts.
See it in: The Amazon River in Brazil, and in parts of Trinidad and Guyana (and the Honolulu Zoo and San Diego Zoo).
Naked mole rat
From this site
Almost totally blind, the naked mole rat is one of only two species of mammals that live in colonies with a caste system, like termites or ants. There's one queen and sometimes hundreds of workers and soldiers — which are expected to sacrifice themselves in battle should a snake appear (and not lose its appetite). See it in: Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia (and Zoo Atlanta and the National Zoo.
Okapi
As strange as the okapi might look (it appears to be some kind of cross between a zebra and chestnut horse, but with an unusually large neck), it sure is cute isn’t it? Not all strange animals have to be freaky or ugly or downright scary looking. That long neck we talked about is a reminder that the okapi isn’t actually tied to horses or zebras. It’s in the giraffe family!
Found in the dense forests of the Congo, this herbivore jungle giraffe can live to be over 30 years old and grow to over 500 pounds.
Philippine Tarsier
From this site
Weirdness factor: The tiny tarsier's eyes are about twice the size of a human's and have no peripheral vision. Tarsiers pounce on prey with their vulnerable eyes shut tight, for protection (because who wants a cricket stuck in their eye?). See it in: The southern Philippine islands of Bohol, Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao (and the Philippine Tarsier and Wildlife Sanctuary in Bohol).
Proboscis monkey
From this site
The male proboscis monkey has a pendulous nose that is thought to amplify his
calls to females (and his warnings to big-nosed rivals). The most dominant male usually has the biggest nose and can collect a harem of five to eight females.
See it in: Borneo (and the Singapore Zoo).
SLOTH
They live in South and Central America, where they spend much of their time hanging upside down in trees. In fact, they rarely come out of the trees at all.
Soft Shelled Turtles (Pelochelys Cantorii)
The large soft-shell turtles live in fresh water, and spend most of their time buried.
The Star-nosed Mole (Condylura cristata)
is a small North American mole found in eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States. It is the only member of the tribe Condylurini and the genus Condylura.
It lives in wet lowland areas and eats small invertebrates, aquatic insects, worms and molluscs. It is a good swimmer and can forage along the bottoms of streams and ponds. Like other moles, this animal digs shallow surface tunnels for foraging; often, these tunnels exit underwater. It is active day and night and remains active in winter, when it has been observed tunnelling through the snow and swimming in ice-covered streams. Little is known about the social behavior of the species, but it is suspected that it is colonial.
The Star-nosed Mole is covered in thick blackish brown water-repellent fur and has large scaled feet and a long thick tail, which appears to function as a fat storage reserve for the spring breeding season. Adults are 15 to 20 cm in length, weigh about 55 g, and have 44 teeth. The mole's most distinctive feature is a circle of 22 mobile, pink, fleshy tentacles at the end of the snout. These are used to identify food by touch, such as worms, insects and crustaceans.
The Sun Bear (Helarctos malayanus)
is a bear found primarily in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia.
The Sun Bear stands approximately 4 ft (1.2 m) in length, making it the smallest member in the bear family. It is often called the dog bear because of its small stature. It has a 2 in (5 cm) tail and on average weighs less than 145 lb (65 kg). Males tend to be slightly larger than females.
Unlike other bears, the Sun Bear's fur is short and sleek. This adaptation is probably due to the lowland climates it inhabits. Dark black or brown-black fur covers its body, except on the chest where there is a pale orange-yellow marking in the shape of a horseshoe. Similar colored fur can be found around the muzzle and the eyes. This distinct marking gives the sun bear its name.
The White-Faced Saki (Pithecia pithecia),
also known as the Guianan Saki and the Golden-faced Saki, is a species of saki monkey, a type of New World monkey, found in Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela. This monkey mostly feed on fruits, but also nuts, seeds, and insects.
Fri
13
Nov
2015
Are Languages Products of their Environment?
DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article:
Languages Are Products of Their Environments
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different
environments.
Tue
03
Jun
2014
The Case for Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 21, 2014
Chapters
- I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
- II. “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
- III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
- IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
- V. The Quiet Plunder
- VI. Making The Second Ghetto
- VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
- VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
- IX. Toward A New Country
- X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
Mon
02
Jun
2014
A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA
PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.
As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.
The New York Times
Sunday Review
By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014
American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,” as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.”
This was not a “carefree” nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead” boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries. Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,” liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality” was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.”
Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.
The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.” Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,” whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.
And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg” — a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.
Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture” offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.
But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.
Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.
So how did we get from “democratic sucklings” to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.
Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.
Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.”
There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.
“Precocious” 19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.
Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.
There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.” It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.” Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.
________________________________
A National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society who is writing a book on the role of young people in 19th-century American democracy.
Mon
21
Apr
2014
Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change
From The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD
APRIL 19, 2014
HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.
In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.
But President Xi Jinping has targeted Mr. Zhou in an extraordinary corruption inquiry, a first for a Chinese party leader of Mr. Zhou’s rank, and put his family’s extensive business interests in the cross hairs.
Even by the cutthroat standards of Chinese politics, it is a bold maneuver. The finances of the families of senior leaders are among the deepest and most politically delicate secrets in China. The party has for years followed a tacit rule that relatives of the elite could prosper from the country’s economic opening, which rewarded loyalty and helped avert rifts in the leadership.
Zhou Family Ties
Fri
13
Nov
2015
Are Languages Products of their Environment?
DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article:
Languages Are Products of Their Environments
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different
environments.
Tue
03
Jun
2014
The Case for Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 21, 2014
Chapters
- I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
- II. “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
- III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
- IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
- V. The Quiet Plunder
- VI. Making The Second Ghetto
- VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
- VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
- IX. Toward A New Country
- X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
Mon
02
Jun
2014
A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA
PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.
As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.
The New York Times
Sunday Review
By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014
Mon
21
Apr
2014
Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change
From The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD
APRIL 19, 2014
HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.
In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.
Write a comment
sally_panda (Wednesday, 03 November 2010 22:22)
wow, those animals look so strange and alien.
dragonboy (Thursday, 04 November 2010 07:12)
oh !how wonderful!lord is a great creator!hope one day i could
write novels about animals.
why (Thursday, 04 November 2010 08:27)
to be honest. none of them i've seen ever.but that didn't mean i am i iam not interested in them.they look so cute and impressive.i
David Lu (Friday, 05 November 2010 02:46)
haha! the animals' expression is very rich.