Oddities in the animal kingdom

[TeleMad]

Just think of the cool buildings we could make with it! Clothes too; shoes you could walk up walls with & gloves too. Lions & Spiders & Bears, oh my!

 

No, that's not spiders, that's Gekos! :-)

 

Gekos can climb straight up verticle surfaces, even exceedingly smooth ones. Scientists looking at the Geko's feet figured out that they don't work by suction or microscopic hooks, but rather by the accumulation of 'tons' of minute Van der Waals interactions with the surface they encounter; and, in typical "how can we apply this new knowledge" fashion, some have proposed that the "Geko's foot principle" could be used to manufacture devices that would allow even something as heavy as us humans to climb shear surfaces just like a Geko.

[C1ay]

___There is no more dynamically odd creature for me than the Spider.

 

FWIW, they make great pets. I've half a dozen tarantulas myself. One of my favorites is my Usumbara. She really makes a lot of webbing and it's amazing how strong it is. Her pic is attached below. They're very interesting to watch as they grow. One question I have always pondered is do they really sleep? With so many eyes and not an eyelid for any of them. IMO, I think they do because I have snuck up on mine numerous times and startled them when I touched them. It seemed that they hadn't seen me at all.

[TeleMad]

One question I have always pondered is do [tarantulas] really sleep?

 

Don't know, but animals can sleep in ways that one wouldn't expect: some can be quite active while asleep...

 

"Despite the difficulty in strictly defining sleep, an observer can usually tell when a subject is sleeping: the sleeper ordinarily exhibits relative inattention to the environment and is usually immobile. (Dolphins and other marine mammals swin while sleeping, however, and some birds sleep through long migrations)." (Why We Sleep, Jerome M. Siegel, Scientific American, November 2003, p92)

[Turtle]

Nice spider C1ay. Have you ever tried to make a thread or cord from it?

 

___My new vote for animal oddity...the cuttlefish. Color changing, ink squirting, beak chewing, tentacles tentacaling... 'scuse me, I'm mistin' up here. Love the cuttlefish! :Alien:

[Queso]

i just saw them on the discovery channel a few days ago, strange creatures.

i'm hooked on the sloth, i think that is the weirdest looking thing. i would honestly almost be terrified if i saw that thing face to face. i know it won't harm me, but the look on it's face....creepy.

[bumab]

Nice spider C1ay. Have you ever tried to make a thread or cord from it?

 

___My new vote for animal oddity...the cuttlefish. Color changing, ink squirting, beak chewing, tentacles tentacaling... 'scuse me, I'm mistin' up here. Love the cuttlefish! :Alien:

 

Tasty too... dried cuttlefish is awsome. i think it's called aki. :confused:

[C1ay]

Nice spider C1ay. Have you ever tried to make a thread or cord from it?

 

I have braided some of it. Just pulling it loose from the tank is a chore, it's strong and it's bonded well. It's not sticky either. This webbing that is spent for housing is not coated to catch prey. None of my tarantulas use webbing to catch their prey. I have kept Black Widows from time to time and they use webbing to catch their prey. It's amazing to watch them spin their prey on a thread of silk while the wrap it with new silk they spin as needed.

[Turtle]

Ahh the Black Widow Spider! Now there is a specimen of beauty. The archetypical spider. My cousins kept one that layed eggs. When they hatched they decided it was best to take them all out to the forest & let them go. One is scary enough!

___I have watched orb weavers build an entire web before. The order of assembly is fascinating. Often times I have observed that the number of radial spokes is the same as the number of spirals (minus the very center which is a seperate structure in itself).

___Fascinating creatures indeed. :confused:

[Fishteacher73]

With all the wierdo critters out there it is a bit hard to realize that many of them are gone. As for sloths, there used to ge giant sloths (aprox 20 ft. long) Here is a link w/ more info on the sloth: http://ladywildlife.com/animal/giantgroundslothinfo.htm .

 

The odd behaviors seem to be more modern though...(Enough evolutionary time to ultra-refine into a niche). There's the bombardier beetle (Brachinus fumans). It has two storage tanks that contain volitile chemicals (Hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone) that mix them in a "reaxction chamber" and shoot an explosion out of their butts. ( http://www.wcsscience.com/bombardier/beetle.html )

[Queso]

a 3 ton giant sloth!!

that is something out of a nightmare...wow.

[Fishteacher73]

Possibly the oddest thing I have seen are giant guinea pigs. They were about the size of a cow.The fossil were found in South America. How would you like to clean that cage?

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4183

[Turtle]

___We simply can't discuss odd creatures without invoking the deep water hydrothermal vent tube worms, crustaceans, & bacteria. Who woulda' thunk it? Suddenly life on other planets has a much wider lattitude than we previously ascribed. :)

[Fishteacher73]

There are a group of fish (Carapus sp.) that live in the anal cavity of sea cucumbers (ALWAYS REMEMBER: Location, location, location!!). Not only that, they are at least polite guests as they knock before entry....

 

A full study of how and why this is look here:

 

http://bio.classes.ucsc.edu/bio162/Previous%20Class%20Material/Moorea%202002/Readings/cucumbers.pdf

[MortenS]

Its a bit odd that we have not mentioned any ants in this thread, don't you think?

 

There are quite a few oddities among the ants.

 

We have honeypot ants that are living storage containers for liquid sugar solution.

 

We have ants with enormous saliva glands that run through the whole body. these ants explode in selfdefence, and leaves goo all over the attacker.

 

We have desert ants that are masters of navigators, as they run in all different directions out from the nest looking for food, but when it is time to head back, they somehow run in a straight line back, without any visual landmarks, other than the sun.

[Fishteacher73]

Yea, the whole idea of a bivouac of army ants is a bitt odd.

[Turtle]

___The leaf-cutter ants who don't eat the leaves they harvest, but rather feed the leaves to a fungus (or is it bacteria?) that then feeds the ants. And we can't forget to mention the formic acid in many Ants. So many varieties & specialized variations within varieties.

 

___Can't help but relate Ants to math; The Ants go marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah.... :)

[Turtle]

___Wasps & hornets who make paper. I once collected a basketball size hornet's nest & cut sections of the paper to give as a gift to a stamp artist freind. You can see each mouthful of pulp seperately as the different wood sources change the color of the paper. I wonder if they were the inspiration for the first paper made by a human? ;)