The Strange Beast Awareness Thread

Qingu

It's been a while since we've had a bestiary thread. BBC and Discovery have recently come out with a new "Planet Earth"-style series, called "Life," that focuses entirely on living things (as opposed to living things + locations).

It's pretty awesome. I myself am partial to underwater invertebrates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG17TsgV_qI&feature=related

But cheetahs taking down an ostrich is also pretty cool, as it reminds me of my cat murdering a toddler:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oV6SqyemCk

Though my favorite beast of all is not on the new series—the siphonophore, a colonial cnidarian that consists of a bunch of individual clones that act together as a single "body":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhbBfZGfLQ

Scalfin

Wearingglasses

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

Morninglord

Wearingglasses wrote: »

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

That's amazing.

Bee's are suicide attackers too aren't they? Or am I mistaken that they die after stinging?

enlightenedbum

A very, very large fish that is not a shark. Up to 36 feet long! Though that one is obviously somewhat shorter but still huuuuge. First one in 150 years washed up on the shore of Sweden.

Cedar Brown

The Aye-Aye.

The Proboscis Monkey.

Raoulduke20

enlightenedbum wrote: »

A very, very large fish that is not a shark. Up to 36 feet long! Though that one is obviously somewhat shorter but still huuuuge. First one in 150 years washed up on the shore of Sweden.

I could definitely see that thing being mistaken for some sort of sea creature. I imagine those frills on top look pretty spooky when it's swimming on the surface.

Captain Carrot

For a second I read the OP as "bestiality" and I was very confused.

Wearingglasses

Morninglord wrote: »

Wearingglasses wrote: »

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

That's amazing.

Bee's are suicide attackers too aren't they? Or am I mistaken that they die after stinging?

Most of the time. From wikipedia:

Although it is widely believed that a worker honey bee can sting only once, this is a partial misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim's skin, tearing loose from the bee's abdomen and leading to its death in minutes, this only happens if the victim is a mammal or a bird. The bee's sting is speculated to have evolved for inter-bee combat between members of different hives, and the barbs serve to improve penetration of the chitinous plates of another insect's exoskeleton. When bees sting elastic-skinned mammals, the barbs become a hazard to the bees as described above.

Wazza

Wearingglasses wrote: »

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

The insect world is full of all sorts of fascinating creatures. My favorite amongst the ants:
The Honeypot

Morninglord

Wearingglasses wrote: »

Morninglord wrote: »

Wearingglasses wrote: »

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

That's amazing.

Bee's are suicide attackers too aren't they? Or am I mistaken that they die after stinging?

Most of the time. From wikipedia:

Although it is widely believed that a worker honey bee can sting only once, this is a partial misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim's skin, tearing loose from the bee's abdomen and leading to its death in minutes, this only happens if the victim is a mammal or a bird. The bee's sting is speculated to have evolved for inter-bee combat between members of different hives, and the barbs serve to improve penetration of the chitinous plates of another insect's exoskeleton. When bees sting elastic-skinned mammals, the barbs become a hazard to the bees as described above.

I saw that but it said [citation needed] so I wasn't sure if I should trust it.

Wearingglasses

Yeah, I've been trying to look for other non-wiki sources on that. This is what I've found so far:

http://www.bumblebee.org/bodySting.htm

Qingu

There's a lot of shit in these two videos but the very beginnings of each are basically the two trippiest things I've ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EJ1mbcOuHo&feature=related

(Beginning shows an octopus nursing her eggs)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkF8biitWhs&feature=related

(Beginning shows corals battling each other at night)

Wearingglasses

Octopodes are pretty awesome, I remember the threads describing the octopodes that walk with two legs, the ones that use coconuts as hiding places, and the octopus who steals fish in an adjacent aquarium during night hours.

Cedar Brown

The strangest animal of all... Man!


But seriously, what the hell is a platypus supposed to be? An egg laying, duck-billed, venomous mammal?

Morninglord

Wearingglasses wrote: »

Yeah, I've been trying to look for other non-wiki sources on that. This is what I've found so far:

http://www.bumblebee.org/bodySting.htm

Cool. Thanks for the info.

Looks like the fact that bees die from mammal/bird skin is accidental according to these sources. So they're not really suicidal, it's just that their weapons are specifically designed for fighting bees and turn out deadly when they attack creatures with elastic skin like us.

The way their stingers work is gruesome. Two sheathes on either side of the main stinger that attaches to the surface. Each side pulls in succession via muscle contraction which draws the main stinger deeper in.

It's less of a sting and more like some kind of razor claw digging it's way in. :O

However strange his clothing and tastes are, he's one funky bass player Cedar Brown.

Qingu

Cedar Brown wrote: »

But seriously, what the hell is a platypus supposed to be? An egg laying, duck-billed, venomous mammal?

Well ... mammals evolved from reptiles. Reptiles lay eggs, and sometimes have venom and bill-like features.

Marsupials don't lay eggs, but the way they care for their young is also very different than us "normal" placental mammals. Bearing young in a placenta is also pretty fucked up, if you think about it.

Morninglord

Kangaroo babies have to crawl up to the pouch after being born since they're not connected internally.

Just a random factoid for you all. Such a dangerous trek for a firstborn!

Even stranger than that, they finish development in the pouch.

wikipedia wrote:

Kangaroos have developed a number of adaptations to a dry, infertile continent and highly variable climate. As with all marsupials, the young are born at a very early stage of development – after a gestation of 31–36 days. At this stage, only the forelimbs are somewhat developed, to allow the newborn to climb to the pouch and attach to a teat. In comparison, a human embryo at a similar stage of development would be about seven weeks old, and premature babies born at less than 23 weeks are usually not mature enough to survive. When the joey is born, it is about the size of a lima bean. The joey will usually stay in the pouch for about nine months (180–320 days for the Western Grey) before starting to leave the pouch for small periods of time. It is usually fed by its mother until reaching 18 months.

Qingu

Speaking of reptiles, phylogenilly speaking, all of these things are reptiles:







Which is to say, it's kind of a dumb category. "Whatever amniotes aren't birds or mammals."

Zxerol

Wazza wrote: »

Wearingglasses wrote: »

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

The insect world is full of all sorts of fascinating creatures. My favorite amongst the ants:
The Honeypot

Crazy thing is that sometimes rival species of ants will invade the nest just to kidnap the honeypots. Then there are ants which tend to "herds" of aphids and leafcutter ants, which cultivate underground fungus for sustenance.

Eusocial insects in general are fascinating little bastards.

Fireflash

Wazza wrote: »

Wearingglasses wrote: »

As articles have described them, nature's very own suicide bombers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camponotus_saundersi

Two oversized, poison-filled mandibular glands run the entire length of the ant's body. When combat takes a turn for the worse, the ant violently contracts its abdominal muscles to rupture its body and spray poison or glue in all directions.

The insect world is full of all sorts of fascinating creatures. My favorite amongst the ants:
The Honeypot

I had never heard of those. So awesome.

Morninglord

There are some ants that go and capture the larvae of a smaller species of ant and use them as slaves to do all the work.

It used to be thought the captured ants were perfectly content with this but it turns out they can run amock.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227034.400-slave-ants-keep-a-taste-for-revenge.html

DarkCrawler

Ants are awesome. They are so humanlike in some of the aspect of their society.

Also, Argentine ant, at first glance it seems like the regular pest ant all of us are familiar with. The interesting thing is that every one of the pest ants we have seen are part of a single massive worldwide mega-colony. The Catalonian Super-Colony stretching for 5760 km, or the California Large, occupying 900 km of the Californian coast? Mere sub-divisions of the greater Argentine Ant Empire. Put two Argentinian ants from whatever part of the world next to eachother and they not only recognize eachother but work together as well.
http://www.ant-maps.com/news/does-the-argentine-ant-mega-colony-take-over-the-world.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1932509.stm

Until 2000, the largest known ant supercolony was on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaidō, Japan. The colony was estimated to contain 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 nests interconnected by underground passages over an area of 2.7 km².

In 2000, an enormous supercolony of Argentine ants was found in Southern Europe (report published in 2002). Of 33 ant populations nested along the 6,004 km stretch along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts in Southern Europe, 30 belonged to one supercolony with estimated millions of nests and billions of workers, interspersed with three populations of another supercolony. Another supercolony, measuring approximately 100 km wide, was found beneath Melbourne, Australia in 2004. In 2009, it was demonstrated that the largest Japanese, Californian and European Argentine ant supercolonies were in fact part of a single global "megacolony".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony

Their most recent conquest is New Zealand. They spread through human travel.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10582786
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant#Global_.22mega-colony.22

A global "mega-colony" of Argentine ants is spreading through New Zealand, with evidence the pests are forming inter-nest alliances to dominate native species.

The ants, which have invaded all continents except Antarctica thanks to human movements, are so closely related that nests refuse to attack each other, co-operating instead to overrun native species.

A single supercolony of 16 hectares can already have a 100 million ants. The Argentine Ant Empire has probably hundreds of trillions of subjects.

My guess is they eliminate every other ant species in the world in a couple of hundred years.

Wearingglasses

Then there's the bullet ant, so called because its sting is as painful as getting shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_ant

The pain caused by this insect's sting is purported to be greater than that of any other Hymenopteran, and is ranked as the most painful according to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. It is described as causing "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours".

Captain Ultra

Greatest idea:

Pistol Shrimp loaded with bullet ants.

Peter Ebel

The platypus is the weirdest animal. Egg laying mammal that feeds it's young with milk, though it has no nipples. Doesn't use its eyes or nose under water, rather it senses the world through minute changes in electrical currents in its leathery bill.

Rhesus Positive

Behold, the blobfish!

Wikipedia wrote:

Blobfish live at depths where the pressure is several dozens of times higher than at sea level, which would likely make gas bladders inefficient for maintaining buoyancy. Instead, the flesh of the blobfish is primarily a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water; this allows the fish to float above the sea floor without expending energy on swimming. Its relative lack of muscle is not a disadvantage as it primarily swallows edible matter that floats by in front of it.

Aroused Bull

Oh, beasts. Never mind.

Verr

DarkCrawler wrote: »

Scary things about ants

So that kid with the magnifying glass was a sick psychopath in training, he just new the truth! Excuse me while I go firebomb my lawn.

DarkCrawler

Verr wrote: »

DarkCrawler wrote: »

Scary things about ants

So that kid with the magnifying glass was a sick psychopath in training, he just new the truth! Excuse me while I go firebomb my lawn.

Hahaha, you poor fool. Do you believe mere explosives could stop the might of the ANT?

Our armies are more vast then the stars in the sky.

Our empire spans the known world.

Each of us speaks with ten trillion voices, bites with ten trillion jaws, walks with sixty trillion legs.

Kill one, and millions take it's place.

You can only stall the inevitable. Submit, and live your meager lives as our transports, a mere gateway to our endless expansion. Or be destroyed.

Deadfall

Did somebody say Octopus?

I'm fond of this curious little fella.

The female California two-spotted octopus swam to the top of her tank, disassembled a valve with her powerful arm, and released at least 200 gallons (757 liters) of seawater into nearby exhibits and offices.

Also this little guy:

In one instance, an octopus given a slightly spoiled shrimp stuffed it down the drain while maintaining eye contact with its keeper, Linden said.

Not only did he stuff the spoiled shrimp down a tube, he did it while staring his keeper in the eyes.

Jean Boal and her colleagues have done some experiments that show how good octopuses are at learning geography. Boal put the octopuses in tanks with an assortment of landmarks, such as plastic jugs, plates of pebbles, and clumps of algae. It took only a few trials for the octopuses to find the quickest route to a hidden exit in the bottom of the tank. What made Boal's results particularly impressive is that the octopuses were learning two completely different mazes at once. Boal would move them from one to the other after each trial. Somehow, the octopuses could keep track of two geographies concurrently. When octopuses are moving across new terrain, they can perhaps learn the best escape from predators.

The fact that they have such short lifespans makes this learning ability even more impressive.

surrealitycheck

K, I feel I should share the platypus weirdness.

The platypus is probably the weirdest animal on earth.

a) It is one of the only 2 land animals to use electroreception to find prey - it can literally sense electric fields
b) It has not 2 but TEN sex chromosomes. It produces YYYYY or XXXXX sperm, and generally confuses everybody

It shares property a with the echidna - the other electroreceptive land animal - which possesses a 4-headed penis.

Click at your peril.

Rhesus Positive

Whoa, NSFW x4.

Cliff

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality

Check out these death-cheating organisms.

Feral

The Time Lapse Photography Awareness Thread?

Kidding. These threads are awesome.

surrealitycheck

It mentions tardigrades. They are pretty much the most awesome thing ever. If aliens ever invade, we can just fire tardigrades at them.

Apothe0sis

The platypus also has poisonous barbs on on the back of its hind legs.

I think the Plumed Basilisk or Jesus Lizard is a fun creature.

It's a fairly sizable dragon which runs so fast that it can run across the top of water.

All, runrunrunrun

Feral

Tardigrades creep me right the fuck out.

I saw some electron images of them when I was a kid and ew gross.

Apothe0sis

Also, The Thorny Devil, or Moloch horridus, is another awesome dragon.

It lives in the central deserts of Australia. It has capiliaries that run all over its body. If it gets wet or stands in a puddle it will leech all the moisture along these pathways to its mouth, which it then slurps up.

Cliff

DarkCrawler wrote: »

Ants are awesome. They are so humanlike in some of the aspect of their society.

Or more accurately, we are so antlike in some aspects of our society.

Apothe0sis

I love the octopus and cuddlefish.

I refuse to eat them because they are too smart.

I'd probably eat squid, because they are mean. But squid is gross, so I don't do that anyway.