BEARSCARE

When I say “venomous spiders”, where do you think of? Africa? Ausralia? The backwoods of West Virginia? All these answers are correct; well not entirely correct. A little known fact: Miami, Florida (USA) is home to the most poisonous spider. This spider, an extremely rare spider, is called the taupe recluse. Don’t laugh! It’s actuall related to the brown recluse but a SINGLE bit contains over 70 times the venom of a similar bit of a brown recluse.

The taupe recluse gets its name from–take a wild guess–the color of its belly. Actually, this spider looks identical to the brown recluse except for its underside; the brown recluse has a pinkish belly whereas the taupe recluse has a taupe belly. The taupe recluse lives exclusively in Miama and feeds primarily on spilled beach food such as hot dogs, chips, soda, whatever. Often, taupe recluse bites take some time to kill a person but quickly retard respiration without the individual’s knowledge. Hence, many drown after taupe recluse bites and these deaths are usually attributed to drinking, drugs, sting rays, sharks, Dutch teenagers, etc. The taupe recluse should be feard and nobody should visit Miama without reading this article.

Watch your ass because I’m too busy watching mine,

Tom

Some kid, after years of Sega, NEEDED a pet hedgehog, which he got. He found out, to his dismay, that hedgehogs were illegal in his state. So what did he do? He took his cause to court, just like I would. After months of debate, hedgehogs were finally legalized. My wife says that when we get a pet hedgehog she wants to name it Lucifer. Here’s the link:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/01/03/pkg.hedgehog.love.ktka

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.

Every morning (when I wake up) I scour the news for bear related headlines. Today I was in for a real surprise: somebody filmed a PYTHON trying to eat a kangaroo. The image is pretty disgusting, so I’m only going to link to the article. Here it is: http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,26058,24615712-5014090,00.html. I will, however, say few words about pythons and kangaroos.

Pythons are large snakes. Like the anaconda, the python is among the two largest snakes in the world. The primary difference between anacondas and pythons is anacondas live in the water and kill other things that live in the water whereas pythons live on the land and try to eat kangaroos, aligators (http://bearscare.org/2008/05/12/snake-vs-lizard/) and sometimes people.

Kangaroos are marsupials. Marsupials (koala bears, kangaroos, etc.) are characterized by a pouch on females which is strictly reserved for their young. Some marsupials live in their mothers’ pouches for several years before vacating for good. All marsupials live in Australia (no coincidence there) and kangaroos are known for their jumping.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Wikipedia for providing the images for this article and also foxnews.com and all pythons.

Today we went to the zoo in DC. Here is an incomplete list of animals we saw and my personal feelings on them:

1. Pandas – AWESOME
2. Lions – sweet
3. Tigers – similar to lions
4. Anaconda – scary/sweet
5. King Cobra – deadly (stay away from these)
6. Prairie dog – opposite of (5)
7. Elephants – Very large and friendly. These were the Asiatic variety.
8. Cow – I felt bad about my lunch
9. Orang utan – Me 10,000,000 – 100,000,000 years ago
10. HIPPO – wet

This is absolutely tragic. These sickos in Peru dress up their Guinea pigs, take them out for parade and slaughter them. And then they eat them right then and there. Hey! I have an idea! Let’s take a bunch of PEOPLE and parade them down Broadway and eat them. How about that?

This has been a great summer for the bears. Two black bear attacks (one fatality), me seeing black bears, a baby bear with burned feet . . . and now this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAPuwp2tsIU]

Here’s how my mornings start. I wake up, fall back asleep, wake up again and look out the window for bears. But guess what? I never see them–lame. I would kill to live somewhere where this could happen (like Alaska).

You know, being me isn’t all fun and games all of the time. Reporting on worldwide zoological events is extremely rewarding and just knowing that we are the most complete, accurate and interesting animal-news website on the net helps me wake up enthused and rested every morning. Some nights I don’t even sleep.

But with great power comes great responsibility, so it is my sad but necessary duty to report that a dolphin has died. Sharky, as he was affectionately known, was mortally wounded during an aerial feat at Sea World, FL. Rest in peace, slippery prince. Rest in peace. You will be remembered always. Below is a tribute to dolphins and I think it’s only appropriate that we all watch it. Gather the family around, or whatever you have in your house/burrow and click the triangle and let yourself be taken away to an underwater paradise.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAmZF79wvu8&feature=related]

I guess there’s this baby giraffe in Germany that just started walking. Over-all I have positive feelings about this event. I’m glad when any giraffe learns to walk. Unfortunately the only video is on CNN and, since they’re losers, I can’t embed it. So, until I can get footage of Katja, here’s a sweet ice cream cone being eaten by an even sweeter giraffe!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRwzkxgG8yU]

So, these two high school kids were driving to school one day (in Oregon) and saw this kangaroo-hamster looking thing in the road. Since they weren’t murderers, the stopped the car to peep it out rather than just running it over like some other Oregonians might. It turns out the beast was a cavy–a large Argentinian rodent. It’s actually really sweet. They want to keep it, but it’s probably somebody’s pet. Also, they don’t know what it eats (have you kids ever heard of google?). Anyways, here’s a link to the video on CNN. As soon as this is available to embed, I will.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2008/04/16/dnt.weird.animal.kgw