Tuesday Video Lungh: How? Convenient…

On your way home and feeling hungry? Why not stop at a vending machine and buy some Video Lunch?

Of course, not just any vending machine will do. After all, you had candy bars and soda pop for lunch yesterday, and you are watching your figure (expand.) If only there were a vending machine that sold healthy food items, like fresh seafood. Oh, wait. There totally is a vending machine that sells fresh seafood. Anybody hungry for crabs?

So the Chinese can now get their hairy crabs (grow up) in the subway. You have to admit, these machines “save many troubles.”

Of course, the Japanese are famous for their vending machines. You’ve probably heard that one can purchase umbrellas, eggs or even used underpants from vending machines in Japan. But when I heard that China had live crab vending machines, I thought that they had even outdone the Japanese. I was wrong.

As it turns out, selling live animals in vending machines is old news in Japan. There machines sell live rhinoceros beetles. They apparently make good pets and even better mini-gladiators. (Before you freak out about that, it seems that they don’t actually get hurt when they wrestle.)

They also have claw games. Lobster claw games. Not games with lobster claws, but claw games with live lobsters as the prizes. But there is something that you should know before you write a blog post about how crazy Asia is (I’m looking at you, mirror.) Lobster claw games can be found across the United States, from Maine to Vegas.

Lisa Frank Wasn’t On Drugs, She Just Saw This Crab

Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Somehow all these bursts of wild colors, top hats, monocles, rainbows, and sparkles made sense to me as a kid. Now, even as a kind of artsy-type adult, I cannot understand how Lisa Frank products came to be. How does one imagine such colorful animals/backgrounds/foregrounds? I don’t think I could dream something like what she comes up with and I’ve had Benadryl Dreams.

If you take Benadryl and watch Alien, you're gunna have a bad time.

Well, now we know from where she must draw her inspiration. It’s the real world crab recently discovered doing crab stuff in the Philippines. It’s even adorably sticker-sized (one to two inches wide)

Compare

...and Contrast.

Now, I’m just a bad person. Accusing that poor woman of taking drugs and being insane when she just went to the Philippines and brought the vibrant, tropical-colored world to my trapper keepers. I could learn a lot from her.

I'm just jealous cause this isn't my life.

What’s that? You want more psychodelically colored animals? LET’S DO THIS.

   

    

  

That’s right. It’s man. The most colorful of them all.

Tuesday Video Lunch: Return of the Montauk Monster or Raccoons World Wide

This week’s Video Lunch has a very tabloid-esque feel to it. But what do you expect when an unidentified animal carcass washes up on the beach in California? But don’t take my word for it, watch this stunning* news clip!
*News clip may not actually be stunning.

Not too long ago, a similar discovery was made a hundred miles south of Seal Beach, on a beach in San Diego.  Some claimed that it was the carcass of the famous chupacabra. Based on the photographic evidence, I suspect that the San Diego discovery was actually made by an art student. The recent discovery is far more toned down (without a bleached blond mohawk or strange staring eyes.) Perhaps the same hoaxer has realized that less is more and has gone for a more subtle approach this time.

The news clip also mentions the Montauk Monster, a similar carcass that washed ashore in New York in 2008. No scientists had a chance to examine either the Montauk Monster or the recent California creatures, but based on the photographs, it has been suggested that what washed up in Montauk had been a raccoon. One of the keys to that identification was the long “fingers”, which are also a prominent feature of the Seal Beach discovery. So perhaps this is just a partially decayed raccoon carcass. They have raccoons in Southern California, right?

What am I asking you for? I have the internets right here. Yes, there are raccoons in SoCal. Also, there are raccoons in Germany where they were introduced by a farmer in one location and escaped from a fur farm during WWII in another location. Some former soviet socialist republics also have raccoons because they were introduced for fur hunting. In Japan, there are wild raccoons because everybody and their mother wanted a pet raccoon because of a popular cartoon show. The Japanese love cartoons more than reason itself. And what happens when pet raccoons inevitably escape? Let’s ask Rascal:

Hey, maybe Rascal Raccoon fell out of that canoe and his body washed ashore on Seal Beach, that’d explain everything.

Tuesday Video Lunch: The Hangover

If a group of friends get blackout drunk and wake up with a tiger in their hotel room, it is a blockbuster movie. If a group of friends get blackout drunk and wake up with a penguin in their apartment, it is Video Lunch.

Recently three friends got hammered and broke into SeaWorld after dark. They then went swimming with the dolphins and absconded with a 7 year-old fairy penguin named Dirk.

In the light of day, keeping the penguin didn’t seem like a great idea. Lacking a better plan, they released Dirk into a canal. The particular canal, however, is known to be frequented by sharks and dolphins and Dirk was chased out of the water… and into the path of a dog. Luckily, he was saved from the canine and restored to his home SeaWorld and his mating partner Peaches.

The three revelers have been charged with criminal trespassing, theft and illegal possession of a protected animal.

Tuesday Video Lunch: If I could spend time in a bottle…

Harry the hermit crab has a brand new house at LegoLand Windsor Resort. In England, this qualifies as news. Here at Animal News the Podcast Blog, it qualifies as Video Lunch!

Personally, I prefer when hermit crabs take up residence in beer bottles. Glass is way more environmentally friendly than plastic and somewhat less gaudy than children’s building blocks. Take, for example this lovely bottle neck “shell” found in Finland:

When he grows up, he can move into a larger model:

So stick to glass bottles for your beer. If not to avoid the poisons from plastic bottles, then do it for the hermit crabs. (And the other animals that are adversely affected by all of the pollution caused by plastics.)

Tabloid Thursday: Big Money, No Whammy!

There has been a lot of buzz about the “Mega Millions” lottery recently. Not all of it good. It is well known that government run lotteries are a big source of revenue, but studies have shown time and again that the lottery is played by the poor and under-educated people in society. In fact, lots of news sources from around the country are running stories about how the lottery is basically a “poor and uneducated” tax. But of course, somebody wins. In Michigan, two recent lottery winners continued to receive food-stamps after. But what takes the cake is that the Mega Millions has been won by one of society’s poorest and least educated, a dog. It must be Tabloid Thursday!

According to Weekly World News, a golden retriever/poodle mix named Princess walked into a convenience store with the winning ticket tucked into her collar. The winnings represent a staggering $218 millon (before taxes and flea bath.) There is no indication as to who her owner is, so “As far as we know, this is the dog’s winnings.” What will happen if the dog remains unclaimed is not clear.

Tuesday Video Lunch: WHAT?!

For all the times we’ve mentioned it on the Podcast, it is amazing that we hadn’t posted the following video earlier. So often our conversation has drifted to the topic of a couple dozen Japanese giant hornets killing 30,000 honey bees in a single attack. It is this sort of insane destruction that makes the Japanese giant hornet the stuff of nightmares. They are terrifying monsters and that is why they are so awesome and so appropriate for this week’s Video Lunch.

But something we never mentioned was that the native Japanese honey bees have a bizarre defensive mechanism that helps them fight off the hornets. If the bees can capture an advance scout hornet, they will engulf it and vibrate to raise their body temperatures, killing the hornet by overheating it. A recent study has shown increased activity in a specific section of the bees’ brains when they are engaged in their defensive ball, perhaps acting as a timer so the bees know when to turn down the heat.

I particularly enjoy the Gone With The Wind style shots of the dead and dying bees writhing on the ground.

Tabloid Thursday: Planking is Dangerous

As usual, the bulk of so-called “news outlets” have missed the most interesting part of an amazing story. Science Magazine, Practical Fishkeeping and the BBC are all reporting that a new study has found that some species of zooplankton actually leap out of the water to avoid predators. The tiny copepods can jump as much as 60 times their own body length. They are only a tenth of an inch long, but still.

This is all fairly amazing. Until recently, it was generally thought that zooplankton mostly just floated around, incapable of real evasive action in the event that predators attacked. Now we see that some of these microscopic animals have a fairly advanced and successful escape mechanism.

It also helps to explain the high survival rate of these specific copepods. These particular copepods do not migrate to darker waters during daylight hours, so they should be easy targets for predators. However, their ability to jump out of the way of danger has allowed them to stay close to the surface without acting as an all-fish-can-eat buffet.

But why do none of these stories mention the terrifying part of this story? They have left out a bit that you can only find from Weekly World News and Tabloid Thursday!

Perhaps it is just to prevent mass hysteria that the story is being suppressed, but we can’t live with the thought that others might be saved, if only they knew the truth about the flying plankton. The “fact” of the matter is that they are not leaping just to escape predators; they are out for blood! The copepods have developed a taste for human blood and are now leaping onto unsuspecting fishermen and sucking them dry. Of course, given their minuscule size, it must take hundreds if not thousands of them to drink all of a fisherman’s blood. However, Weekly World News is “reporting” that “There have been 27 fishermen that have died from the flying plankton over the last few weeks.”

Don’t believe everything you read though. For the first time ever, we have some cause to doubt Weekly World News. They acknowledge that the copepods are 0.1 inch long and can jump 60 times their body length, but they also say that the copepods can “jump ten feet of the water.” Even if we are generous and assume that they mean “ten feet out of the water,” the math seems a bit squiffy. 0.1 in. x 60 = 10 ft? Sounds about right, never mind. Or do they mean that they can jump 10 feet vertically and travel laterally for 60 times their body length? That makes sense too.

EDIT:

Weekly World News is also reporting that a couple of bottle-nosed dolphins have taught themselves to fly, using their fins as wings. Not just leap out of the water, actually fly. But since they quote a “NASA expert” as saying that dolphins learning to fly is “ not completely surprising,” we decided that it really isn’t news-worthy.

Tuesday Video Lunch: Van On The Run

Here at Animal News the Blogcast, we tend to paint in broad strokes. Is this because we know that our readers have short attention spans? Is this because we don’t actually know what we are talking about? Will some pedant object to my ending that last question with a preposition? The answer to all of these questions is “probably.” However, occasionally, we do aspire to present real news and real perspective, even for Video Lunch.

Do you have a pet? Do you treat that pet as if it were your child, calling it your “baby” and lavishing undo attention on it? No? Well you know somebody who does. There are heaps of people out there who assert that their pets (usually dogs) are equal members of the family and claim that they love them every bit as much as they would love their own children. (It may be important to note that most of these people do not have real children of their own, but that does not make them any less sincere.)

Now imagine the dismay if government agents wanted to take away these pet owners’ “babies.” Well in Louisiana, a case like this has come up, and Jim and Donita Clark have gone on the lam with their “babies,” four capuchin monkeys. They will do anything to keep their monkeys from ending up in the hands of the government, to be separated and sent to zoos.

This issue is very divisive. Most veterinarians and other animal authorities advise against keeping monkeys as pets. Capuchins are particularly intelligent and require a lot of space and stimulation. I personally advise against keeping a monkey because I saw the movie Outbreak. But what about people who can and do provide all of the space and stimulation that a zoo would? Before going on the run, the Clarks lived in a house with two dedicated monkey playrooms and a large outdoor enclosure. The monkeys also get more personal attention than a zoo could possibly provide. Not to mention the fact that the transition would likely not be swift and easy for the monkeys.

The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has stated that they have no intention of confiscating the monkeys, as long as an inspection shows they are well cared for and their facilities are acceptable, but the Clarks don’t trust them. Being crammed into an R/V is doing no good for the people or the monkeys, but what would you do to keep your family together?

Friday Night Creature Feature: Jurassic Park

This week on the feature, we’re talking a little about a movie that seemed to get everything right at the time, but apparently had a lot of stuff that may have been wrong.  Jurassic Park was seen as a triumph when it came out, but the creatures in the movie are actually quite inaccurate, and changes in the scientific consensus have made the movie interesting.

The biggest inaccuracy in the movie is that none of the dinosaurs have feathers, which is now seen as a pretty common trait in the dinosaur world.  Especially the more “avian” looking species, at least one of the gallimimus, t-rex, or velociraptors would have probably had some sort of plumage.  However, this could be explained away as another effect of the frog DNA that was inserted into the genetic strands of the dinosaurs.  Not a great explanation, but interesting.

Several of the species have been found to differ from their counterparts, no more so than the velociraptor.  Velociraptors, as a species, were most likely around 3-4 feet tall, and while they had some intelligence, there is no evidence other than speculative that they were intelligent pack hunters.  However, Utahraptor, named for the dig site where it was found, was closer to the movie’s seven feet tall, and had a very similar body shape.  So, once again, there could be an explanation for it.

But, all in all, this movie is just too good as a movie for you not to love it.  It has everything you could want, dinosaurs, action, paleontology, and Samuel L. Jackson.  So, everyone, hold on to your butts, and watch: