BEARSCARE

You may have seen headlines about a mysterious “blob” floating in the Arctic Ocean around the Berring Straight in Alaska. What you may not know, however, is that there is no mystery to this blob. First, though, here’s a picture of the blob.

Scientists are no strangers to strange “blobs” and references to such organisms go back past Aristotle. Currently, “we know more than you might think about these things,” explains Werner Lindenberg, a professor at Radford University. “We know the great blob is made up of billions of smaller organisms; worms, actually.” Lindenberg went on to describe an intricate system in which millions of round worms (see below) involuntarily swarm together. “They don’t do it on purpose. Well, they can’t; they just aren’t smart enough. But they induce the behavior in each other and, as a group, have been shown to possess intelligence rivaling that of a medium sized mammal, such as a rabbit or fox.”

Presently, the blob is floating through the Berring Straight and both scientists and government officials are concerned it may stay close to the coast and enter the Puget Sound. “Oh yeah, FEMA knows. We alerted them to this thing a week ago,” replied Amos McMillan, a Washington State Coast Guard spokesman. He went on to explain that, apparently, President Oabama has assigned Vice President Biden to run a taskforce within FEMA to make sure that the “Katrina fiasco” isn’t repeated. “That was just a hurricane,” a figure claimed to be Biden says on a videotape provided by McMillan, “these are worms. They are alive and there’s more of them than us. We will use whatever force is necessary to acheive a satisfactory conclusion to this threat. No worms will set foot on American soil under my watch; you can be damn sure about that.”

"No worms will set foot on American soil under my watch; you can be damn sure about that." -Joe Biden

That’s all we know right now, so keep checking back for more updates.

…And it isn’t a great ape.

Yesterday, the National Zoological Society, NZS, released shocking results from a recent study on intelligence in aquatic life. Organisms of the family Phocoenidae, more commonly known as porpoises (see below), according to the NZS, actually surpass human intelligence in many aspects of their complex lives. Up until now, humans have been assumed to be the smartest creatures on planet Earth; we were thought to be the only animals capable of analytical thought and are famous not only for being bipedal, but also our ability to swim and fly (with airplanes/balloons). All that has changed.

Human and Porpoise Attempting to Communicate

Like many animals (such as the Virginia Jellyfish), the porpoise has enjoyed a relatively low profile. The scientific community, especially when it comes to non-human intelligence, tends to prefer more “flashy” animals, such as chimpanzees and octopi. Hence, the porpoise, for thousands of years, has lived a highly ordered and complex life without human meddling. The NZS’s Aquatic Mammal  Task Force (AMTF), however, has been taking a closer look at porpoises in recent months thanks to stimulus money received from the Obama administration.

“Yeah, we got the call back in April. They said they could give us $750k, but we needed to submit a proposal,” remarked Joe “Joey” Chambers, a project manager at AMTF. “We said we’d draw something up right away and called a meeting to hash out some ideas. One of our interns, Kevin Schultz, brought up Phocoenidae; we asked him why, and he said, ‘why not?’ So, we went with it. Turns out the little buggers are smart.”

Actually, according to the groundbreaking paper publsihed in Proceedings from the 32nd Aquatic Mammal Conference, porpoises have, for all intents and purposes, replicated our success in mathematics, physics and even the arts. Although their means of expression are entirely different, observations of their hunting, social, recreational and family interactions have confirmed that humans are no longer the smartest animals on Planet Earth.

“It turns out the whales use nonlinear differential equations, even high order ones, to predict the movements of large schools of prey,” replied Kevin Schultz. We later learned that he had not been notified that the study actually had been conducted on porpoises at the time of the interview. Mr Schultz continued, “the average porpoise can pinpoint the exact location of an individual mackeral with about 200 cubic feet, about the size of a bathtub. And that’s astonishing.”

Although no human casualties have been attributed to porpoises, fishermen have observed individual porpoises swimming along side fishing boats, splashing their tail fins in patterns consistent with Morse Code, “though of course the letters were off–they’ve never learned our code, but they have they’re own. I never put two and two together, but now it makes perfect sense,” said an unidentified fisherman disembarking. “They were trying to communicate with us and we didn’t even know it.”

These results have already changed human history. Although rioting has been minimal and concentrated mostly in rural regions of the United States and several European countries, we expect extreme reactions worldwide to increase. “We just care about the science–doing it and reporting it,” said Joey Chambers, “and I’m sorry if people don’t like it. We can’t lie and we can’t keep quiet.”

Recently, a new species of bear was discovered. It’s called the Water Bear, and they only grow to about 1 mm long. Water Bears are extremely aggressive, like most bears, but the cool thing is how resiliant they are. Water Bears can survive ANYTHING. They are the only animal to be exposed to the harsh conditions of outerspace and survive. I’m not kidding: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080908135906.htm.

Here’s a video of a Water Bear in action.

The boar-croc is an ancient animal which shares characteristics of both crocodiles (large alligators) and wild pigs, such as boars. The animal was discovered in early January but only announced Sunday. The discovery was kept secret to allow a multinational team of zoologists to conduct a thorough survey of current crocodile and pig species to make sure this animal is not a threat. Fortunately, it was found that the boar-croc was most likely killed off in North America by Spanish colonialists in the 17th Century. “The current threat status to humans and other crocodiles is negligible,” remarked the beast’s discoverer, Paul Sereno. “We are much more concerned with other, exotic crocodilian variants”

The boar-croc along with a multinational team of researchers

Source: http://www.examiner.com/r-6589195~The__Boar_Croc__dined_on_dinosaurs.html

You may have heard a lot about The Octomom in the news lately but you may not know what she’s all about, and so I’m here with the scoop.

It all started back in 2007 when an animal was discovered off the coast of South America called an Octosquid (pictured below).

The octosquid is bassically half octopus (Octopus cyanea, a cephalopod) and half Southern Giant Squid (Architeuthis sanctipauli, also a cephalopod). See below.

Scientists have been baffled for 2 years now trying to figure out how such a monster could come to be. They theorized that there must be some shared ancestor in the evolution of octopi and squids from dinosaurs and they named this ancestor The Octomom. Aparently, an Octomom has been recently located, except very few details have come out about her condition. The one thing we know is that she spawned 8 offspring very recently. Perhaps the fact that she was giving birth explains why she ventured out of the safety of deep, southern Pacific waters. Check back here for updates.

Recently scientests uncovvered a colony Hispaniolan solenodons. Basically the Hispaniolan solenodon looks like a big rat with a crocodile snout. These little critters may be cute but they AREN’T cuddly; the venom from one bite is 12 times more potent than a cobra’s bite and 10 times more deadly than a python’s.  Hispaniolan solenodons make excellent pets but they are not for the beginning venomous mammal enthusiast. Please check out some books at the library before you buy one or at least read Wikipedia.

Hispaniolan solenodons mostly eat meal worms but will also eat carrots, fishfood or thawed frozen peas. You’ll need a large terrarium or, even better, a serious Habitrail setup since the Hispaniolan solenodons love to run and dig. And bite.

Click it or ticket –> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7791989.stm

“Make calamari out of him!”, my wife SCREAMED when she saw this video. I think he’s kind of sweet and probably poisonous. This little fellow was discovered by a remote controlled submarine owned by the Shell oil company and has been baffling cryptozoologists since.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJV5mH3YY70]
Gross.

Abstract: A bunch of scientists went to Asia to look for animals. They found some new ones in the Mekong River which runs through China, Burma, Vietnam and some other countries. The pictures are pretty gross.

I    Introduction

It happened again: spiders bigger than dinner plates. A recent discovery yielded several new species of animals which are shown right here.

II   Findings

Figure 1   Scary green snake

Figure 2    Striped rabbit

Figure 3   Creepy millipede

Figure 4   A SPIDER THE SIZE OF A DINNER PLATE

III   Analysis

This animals are pretty creepy, but overall I’m glad they were discovered. The snake is pretty sweet and I bet it tries to eat the rabbit. I think the rabbit is kind of stupid and definitely not very cute. The millipede is gross.

IV   Conclusions

I really just care about that enormous spider. It sends shivers down my back just thinking about it.

Yes.

Yes, it’s true. I’ve been waiting for this day all my life: these sweet animals have been discovered under water off the coast of Antarctica [1]. Spiders the size of dinner plates? I HOPE they crawl out of the ocean and onto the land and rock my world. Who do you think would win in a fight, a spider the size of a dinner plate or the Frog from Hell (also about the size of a dinner plate)?

This picture is so disgusting [2].

[1] http://voanews.com/english/2008-02-20-voa16.cfm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pycnogonida