Category: Animals are weird

Interesting article in The Guardian:

Experience: I was nearly drowned by a sea lion

What Trish hadn’t seen was that at the moment she said “Smile!” a sea lion had leapt about 7ft out of the water to get the fish, and grabbed my left hand in the process. Sea lions have canine teeth, just like a dog. It dragged me headfirst into the water. I’d actually seen it out of the corner of my eye a split second before I felt the pain. It was big and had such strength. It pulled me straight down to the bottom of the bay, about 25-30ft.
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Sea lions are so agile. I don’t buy the idea that it accidentally got my hand; I think it was angry and territorial. The supply of fish here is dwindling and their numbers are increasing – there’s not enough food for them all.

Quite a bit more there. Go read it, amazing survival and interesting incident for an animal many of us think of as “cute.”

Pity Colbert isn’t back on the air yet. I’d love to see his take on it.

‘Depraved’ sex acts by penguins shocked polar explorer

9 June 2012 Last updated at 20:36 ET
By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service
Accounts of unusual sexual activities among penguins, observed a century ago by a member of Captain Scott’s polar team, are finally being made public.

Details, including “sexual coercion”, recorded by George Murray Levick were considered so shocking that they were removed from official accounts.

However, scientists now understand the biological reasons behind the acts that Dr Levick considered “depraved”.

The Natural History Museum has published his unedited papers.

Mr Levick, an avid biologist, was the medical officer on Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910. He was a pioneer in the study of penguins and was the first person to stay for an entire breeding season with a colony on Cape Adare.

Who knew? (Or, as someone on Flyertalk put it “Fifty shades of penguin?”

North American scientists have discovered the longest bird penis ever – a 42.5cm organ belonging to a duck.
Dr Kevin McCracken of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and colleagues, report in this week’s Nature that they have found a specimen of the Argentine lake duck (Oxyura vittata) that has a penis as long as its body – nearly half a metre long.

Very old news, but too funny not to share.

Couldn’t figure out how to embed this, sorry.

Cat vs. Bear

Cat wins. Too funny!

See also: http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/funny-pictures-nasa-launch-abort-spider.jpg

Leftover vacation video, just for you!

Scientists can’t get sloth to move

JENA, Germany – Scientists in the eastern German city of Jena said Wednesday they have finally given up after three years of failed attempts to entice a sloth into budging as part of an experiment in animal movement.

Alrighty-then.

A post on Making Light tracks BBC “obsession” with hamsters, and this one story caught my attention:
Hamster back from the dead

Three-year-old Claudia had gone to the great cage in the sky. Or so it seemed.

For despite being buried in her makeshift coffin three feet below the ground, the plucky rodent was determined not to give up on life just yet.

She gnawed her way out of the box and burrowed up to the surface, before making her way back home.

via a post on DailyKos (probably C&J?)