{ In 1999 ‘Prozac’ – the trade name of fluoxetine – was named on of the ‘Products of the century’ by Fortune magazine. In 2007 Eli Lilly began to market fluoxetine for dogs under the name Reconcile. In this incarnation it’s chewable, tastes like beef and is intended to treat something called ‘canine separation anxiety’. | Frontier Psychiatrist | Continue reading }
Jeanette’s Taxidermy proudly introduces Pet Pillows as an alternative way to remember your pet. Each pet pillow is hand made from the fur of your pet and made into a pillow that you can display. On one side of the pillow is your pet’s fur and the other side of the pillow is your choice of fabric. These soft, huggable pillows are a great way to enjoy your cherished pet and is an inexpensive alternitave to taxidermy.
Prices: $65 for a cat, $75-$125 for a dog, $150 for a horse.
Freeze your pet immediately upon passing to insure there will be no hair slippage.
Double bag to insure no freezerburn.
Ship packages ONLY on Mondays to prevent carrier mishaps. All frozen animals must be shipped next day air to insure against spoilage.
{ Thanks Shampoo! | The site Jeanettestaxidermy.com doesn’t exist anymore | Jeanette’s Taxidermy profile on Muley Madness | Read more: Woman who turns pets into pillows faces death threats and Taxidermist Jeanette Hall standing with her pedestal mounted horse | The story behind this photo }
There comes a time in every science writer’s career when one must write about glass duck vaginas and explosive duck penises.
That time is now.
To err on the side of caution, I am stuffing the rest of this post below the fold. My tale is rich with deep scientific significance, resplendent with surprising insights into how evolution works, far beyond the banalities of “survival of the fittest,” off in a realm of life where sexual selection and sexual conflict work like a pair sculptors drunk on absinthe, transforming biology into forms unimaginable. But this story is also accompanied with video. High-definition, slow-motion duck sex video. (…)
In brief, Brennan wanted to understand why some ducks have such extravagant penises. Why are they cork-screw shaped? Why do they get so ridiculously long–some cases as long as the duck’s entire body? As Brennan dissected duck penises, she began to wonder what the female sexual anatomy looked like. If you have a car like this, she said, what kind of garage do you park it in?
Brennan discovered that female ducks have equally weird reproductive tracts (called oviducts). In many species, they are ornamented with lots of outpockets. And like duck penises, duck oviducts are corkscrew-shaped. But while male duck penises twist clockwise, the female oviduct twists counterclockwise.
A gigantic, bullet-scarred black bear with a hankering for human food and a knack for breaking and entering has been terrorizing homeowners on the north shore of Lake Tahoe and deftly outmaneuvering gun-toting rangers, bear dogs and traps.
The burly bruin - a male that weighs an estimated 700 pounds, roughly twice the poundage of the average adult black bear - has broken into and ransacked dozens of homes in Incline Village since last summer, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage and more than a few sleepless nights. (…)
Lackey said the bear is unusually smart. He has eluded the Karelian Bear Dogs that were put on his trail and waltzes right by bear traps. He even knows the garbage pickup dates in certain neighborhoods and routinely shows up to feast when cans are full, Lackey said.
The bear often leaves a humongous, smelly deposit as a kind of calling card.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth. It might also represent the most prolific cradle for new types of animals on the planet, according to new research. (…) In fact, of the 6,615 seabed invertebrates surveyed in the so-called Paleobiology Database, 1,426 evolved in a reef ecosystem. And the result is not just an artifact of reef and shallow-water fossils being relatively more studied. (…)
According to some mathematical estimates, 99.9 percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. As it stands, estimates of the number of species on Earth at present range from five million to as many as 100 million, with science having identified only two million members of the biodiversity extant today. That means literally billions of species have come and gone in the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed.
New research will be needed to determine exactly why reefs are such efficient cradles for new life-forms. But the threats faced by coral today—from rising ocean acidity to agricultural runoff and rampant disease—do not bode well for marine biodiversity in the near future.
photo { Josh Brand }
{ Pregnant male seahorse | Seahorses are the only species in which males truly become pregnant. }
{ A group of young sea horses }
{ The sex life of seahorses + how to keep seahorses as pets | The Guardian }
The naked mole-rat is the longest living rodent with a maximum lifespan exceeding 28 years. [Mice live a couple of years.] In addition to its longevity, naked mole-rats have an extraordinary resistance to cancer as tumors have never been observed in these rodents.
Naked mole-rats aren’t likely to win any beauty contests. Some might refer to them as downright ugly, resembling an overcooked hotdog with teeth. Nonetheless, biologists and zoogoers are enchanted with these bizarre rodents.
Naked mole-rats spend virtually their entire lives in the total darkness of underground burrows. Ensconced in the arid soils of Africa, these three-inch-long creatures must continually dig tunnels in search of sporadic food supplies and evade the deadly jaws of snakes. Within this formidable environment, naked mole-rats have broken many mammalian rules and evolved an oddly insect-like social system.
Despite the fact that they burrow underground like moles and have rat-like tails, naked mole-rats are in fact neither moles nor rats. The majority of the species referred to as mole-rats belong instead to the family Bathyergidae and are more closely related to porcupines, chinchillas, and guinea pigs than to their namesakes.
Much like ants, termites, and some bees and wasps, naked mole-rats are considered “eusocial,” or truly social. They live in large colonies, presided over by a queen, in which only the queen and a few select males breed while the rest of the colony—all members of the same family—work together to raise young and maintain the colony.
{ Smithsonian Zoogoer magazine | Continue reading }
Naked mole-rats are the exception to biologists’ one-half rule , which describes the fact that mammals have half as many babies, on average, as they have mammary glands. H. glaber breeding females average 12 mammary glands to feed their 11-16 young, and an odd number of mammaries — nine, 11 or 13 — occurs frequently.
{ Cornell University | Continue reading }
Some of the “hottest” research on naked mole rats today concerns senescence, or aging. Naked mole rats in the lab have reached up to 28 years of age. And it’s not just the controlled environments of their captivity that are doing this. Braude has observed mole rats in the wild that are 17 years and older. But these are the breeders. Lab researchers didn’t realize that in the wild workers only live two or three years. “For a rodent of this size, they are ridiculously long-lived,” said Braude.
{ ScienceDaily | Continue reading | Mole Rats May Hold Key to Human Longevity | NY Times }
{ The New York Times, Feb. 10, 1935 | The legend of alligators in the sewers — discarded pets that have grown large in the bowels of the city, the story goes — leans heavily on a widely cited three-page section of the book. (The city and the state no longer allow alligators or their near-relatives to be kept as pets.) | NY Times | Continue reading }
A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.
The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men’s livelihoods at risk.
The venom of the Nomura, the world’s largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day’s catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan’s Wakasa Bay.
“Some fishermen have just stopped fishing,” said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. “When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed.”
This year’s jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan. (…)
In 2007, a salmon farm in Northern Ireland lost its more than 100,000 fish to an attack by the mauve stinger, a jellyfish normally known for stinging bathers in warm Mediterranean waters. Scientists cite its migration to colder Irish seas as evidence of global warming.
illustration { Ernst Haeckel }
Taser gun used on 10-year-old girl who ‘refused to take shower.’
Would-be Seattle ninja impaled on fence.
Malawi: HIV drugs used to ferment local gin and feed poultry.
Live strippers ad campaign halted in Las Vegas.
The curious case of gay-porn-star identical twins.
The cards ask: Do you know who killed me? The South Carolina Department of Corrections started selling these decks in its prison canteens for $1.72 about a year ago. Each card asks that you please call 888-CRIME-SC if you have any information about a case.
The father of the boy who once accused Michael Jackson of molestation has committed suicide in NJ.
Cheap money and fiscal stimulus seem to have averted a second Great Depression. But policy makers haven’t been able to generate enough spending, public or private, to make progress against mass unemployment. And China’s weak-currency policy exacerbates the problem, in effect siphoning much-needed demand away from the rest of the world into the pockets of artificially competitive Chinese exporters.
A carry trade is when you borrow from a currency with a low interest rate, and then invest in a currency with a higher interest rate. Say the US interest rate is 3%, and the Chinese interest rate is 5%. Borrow at 3%, invest at 5%, make 2%.
The Dow gained more than 53 percent from its March trough, while the S&P is up over 61 percent from its springtime low. That’s just not normal; it’s too much, too soon.
If the economy’s stagnant, why are stocks up? It’s possible that the stock market is just getting it wrong again. Plus: Why the crisis isn’t going away.
Oil production is reaching its limit: The basics of what this means.
The world is running out of uranium and nobody seems to have noticed. The coming nuclear crisis.
The nothing-can-be-believed chaos of the financial crisis created a golden opportunity for Zero Hedge, a blog run by a mysterious ex-hedge-funder with a dodgy past and conspiracy theories to burn.
Japanese contractors owed billions by Dubai firms. Related: Burj Dubai – Tallest Tower & Armani Hotel Opening 2009.
Patients with empathic, attentive doctors recover more quickly from the common cold.
Men often treat their friends better than women do.
A European study shows that, over time, even the most sophisticated readers can be manipulated.
Most women don’t need a mammogram in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50, a government task force said Monday, a major reversal that conflicts with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing position.
Most people know their own vote is hardly worth it when weighed against the effort involved in getting registered and actually going to vote, let alone when weighed against all the other people voting. Why do people bother voting?
Artists have long described the powerful linkage of smell and the past. Why is smell so sentimental?
The world’s biggest single flower attracts insects by mimicking rotting meat.
How much power does the human brain require to operate?
What are the odds that intelligent, technically advanced aliens would look anything like the ones in films, with an emaciated torso and limbs, spindly fingers and a bulbous, bald head with large, almond-shaped eyes? What are the odds that they would even be humanoid? I argue that the chances are close to zero.
Recent, wistful pictures of the Moon show the Apollo landing sites, including Apollo 11’s lunar module, still resting at the site where it was left 40 years ago. [pics]
Some of the concepts that Kazantzakis attributes to Nietzsche appear to be based on a mistaken interpretation of Nietzsche by Lichtenberger, according to which man is a particle of the divine substance, the eternal Will. For the real Nietzsche, the mysteries of sexuality constitute the only form of eternal life.
If you examine philosophy-department offerings around America, you’ll find staple courses in “Philosophy of Law,” “Philosophy of Art,” “Philosophy of Science,” “Philosophy of Religion,” and a fair number of other areas that make up our world. Why, then, don’t you find “Philosophy of Journalism” among those staple courses?
Brooklyn chef goes ballistic, throws live lobster on patrons, shouts “You think my fish is not fresh? Look how fresh this is!”
Even the star that goes on the tree in Rockefeller Center has some work done every once in a while.
When is the best time of day to break bad news to someone? In the evening.
Undercover with a Michelin inspector. Conceived in France at the beginning of the last century, the Michelin guide today has editions in twenty-three countries and is one of the best-selling restaurant guides in the world.
An expert’s three-step process to cure your fear of mice.
20 of the most shameless cultural franchises.
The definitive guide to becoming a seasoned all-you-can-eat buffeter.
Oxford word of the year: Unfriend (verb). Unrelated: Start using these words.
Ed Benguiat is an American typographer who crafted over 600 typefaces including Tiffany and Bookman. He also designed logotypes for The New York Times, Playboy, the original Planet of the Apes film and Super Fly. Related House Industries typefaces: Ed Benguiat and Planet of the Apes.
How to make your own book in 3,000 simple steps.
The catastrophic decline around the world of “apex” predators such as wolves, cougars, lions or sharks has led to a huge increase in smaller “mesopredators” that are causing major economic and ecological disruptions, a new study concludes.
The findings, published today in the journal Bioscience, found that in North America all of the largest terrestrial predators have been in decline during the past 200 years while the ranges of 60 percent of mesopredators have expanded. The problem is global, growing and severe, scientists say, with few solutions in sight.
An example: in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, lion and leopard populations have been decimated, allowing a surge in the “mesopredator” population next down the line, baboons. In some cases children are now being kept home from school to guard family gardens from brazen packs of crop-raiding baboons. (…)
Primary or apex predators can actually benefit prey populations by suppressing smaller predators, and failure to consider this mechanism has triggered collapses of entire ecosystems.
The crocodilian has three eyelids. The top and bottom lids are the normal, opaque eyelids found on most reptiles and mammals. A third, transparent eyelid moves sideways across the eye. This eyelid protects the otherwise ‘open’ eyes when the crocodilian submerges and attacks under water.
Although nobody is quite sure how well the crocodile can see underwater, the transparent membrane which covers the eye during diving ensures that light can reach the eye if the water is clear enough to see. It is possible that the membrane itself alters the refractive index of light entering the eye to possibly improve vision underwater slightly.
{ Crocodile: Evolution’s Greatest Survivor by Lynne Kelly | Continue reading | Video shows an Australian saltwater crocodile opening its eye }
A suburban high school student finds love (sort of) when his sleepy Louisiana town—and his plans to rob the grave of Adolf Hitler’s horse—gets rained on by Hurricane Katrina. A true story. (…)
The typical day consisted of us playing Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo 64 then walking to the gas station to get Icees. We’d sit sweating in front of the glass storefront, spinning the wise words only teenagers can.
“Man, this place sucks.”
“I know, dude.”
photo { Arnaud Pyvka }
It’s said that dogs sniff each other as a kind of canine equivalent to the human handshake; an otherwise meaningless “greeting ceremony” which reportedly started in medieval times as a way of checking the other guy for weapons.
But is it really just a social gesture? Does it have an adaptive purpose? (…)
We know that at least 33% of a dog’s brain is devoted to processing olfactory information whle in humans that figure is closer to about 5%.
Marc Bekoff wrote that “[a dog’s nose] can distinguish T-shirts worn by identical twins, follow odor trails, and are 10,000 times more sensitive than humans to certain odors.” (…) So if a dog’s nose can pick up information from yellow snow, from the fear that hangs in the air after another dog leaves an examination room, from scents left behind by the shoes of an escaped prisoner, or from lifting its nostrils to the wind, why would a dog need to stick his nose directly into another dog’s snout, genitals, and nether regions to garner social information? Couldn’t he do that at a “safer” distance? (…)
Dog trainer and natural philosopher Kevin Behan says it’s a way of grounding themselves. “Anytime there is … any change, any stimulus or stimulation, and especially when stressed, dogs need to smell something.”
related { Answers about exploring New York with your dog. }
