The Song: Barry White is Magic

The Sea Life London Aquarium has just upped its antics to try and mate zebra sharks!!

So the story broken down is this:

• Mazawabee= single, "lonely," female zebra shark
• Zorro= renown "ladie's man," male zebra shark--hailing from Belgium
• Barry White= awesome singer/songwrite with SOUL POWER (and a moving deep, bass voice) of the 70's
• Zorro so far has not lived up to his expectations...so the Aquarium people are trying a little something different, such as some awesome tunes to try and get everyone in the mood...
• If that doesn't work, they say they will switch to Marvin Gaye!

To see the awesome-ness for yourself, click here.

The Solved: Mysteries Unveiled

While hopping around my tumblr blog, I saw a link which led to an article titles " The Truth Behind 5 'real' Monsters that fooled the Internet." And it turns out that the myths addressed are actually ones that I've heard of before. Now days technology does wonders, especially with the advancement in photoshopping. Combine that with the witty, selfish, lying man...and what do you get?? MONSTER MYTHS!!

WELL HERE'S THE TRUTH:

1. The Montauk Monster Carcass: originally a monster that looks similar to Japan's water monster+monk, it became quite interesting when a "carcus" rolled onto shore and had people claiming it as the Montauk Monster.
---> Answer: simply a decomposing racoon which had lost all its fur from being in water (kind of YUCK when you get the image in your head!!)


2. The Moscow Monster: legend of a while meets the dinosaur long neck. When a decomposing carcus found near the sea seemed to have the exact head shape of the Moscow Monster, it got people talking
---> Answer: decomposing baluga whale! (strange how decomposition is misleading)


3. The "Chupacabra": Kind of the description of a wolf with a long, narrow snout, or a large coyote which also supposedly have some strange traits of a reptile. Also suppose to suck blood out of innocent animals and children around the globe.
---> Answer: hybrid coyote or coyote with bad, BAD skin disease.



4. Body of Bigfoot: Bigfoot is LEGENDARY, however, no one ever found a carcus of it...UNTIL noooow. (say whaaaa??)
--->Anwser: two police officers (who are supposed to be upholding honor, trust etc.) Actually bought a costume...then stuffed it, and including some guts!! genius~




5. The SewerCam Creature: a "creature" filled with goo and dripping weird wetness that looks as though it will eat you alive!
--->Answer: tubifex worms, aka sewage worms...are organisms who eat sediments, and actually started to coil around each other, creating a globe like "slime creature."




to read the whole article and see all its wonderful pictures, click here.

The Small: extra extra mini horse

While browsing facebook, one of my friends linked an interesting story that I thought I'd share with you guys. It's the most fantastical, yet weirdly minute story: the story of Koda.

Koda is an American Miniature horse who also happened to be born a dwarf. What this means is that on top of the already small stature on the breed, Koda is actually a "mini-mini horse." Size extra small please!

Normal American Miniatures cannot exceed 34 inches to be considered a full American Miniature. Now compare this to Koda who is a whopping 59cm tall (roughly 23 inches) in fact, Koda is often mistaken as a robotic, stuffed animal horse...strange!

Veterinarians were orginially going to euthenize Koda, as the hose has nurmous health issues includding a jaw too small for all its teeth and extensive leg problems...all of which need surgical measures to correct. However, the veterinary technician on hand felt for the little guy and decided to give him a fight chance! (woohoo, yay Koda!)

Now days Koda is enjoying the life of a full time pet and gets to relax with a companion closer to its own size: the veterinary cat :)

To read for yourself, this cute little article on the tinnnny horse, click here.

The Missed: Taco Bell Dog Dies

Our beloved 90's chihuahua famed of "yo quiero taco bell!" has passed away at the fruitful age of 15. She suffered from a stroke and had to be euthanized. So here we send our love and condolences, rest in peace Gidget (her name). Taco Bell FOREVERRRR!

The "Outrageous": weird facts...what the heeells?

I'm currently watching Animal Planet's show "50 Outrageous animal facts" and I've decided to share a couple of the facts because really...they are SO weird. The animal kingdom never ceases to amaze me, nature's truly talented!!

• A manatee (also known as the mermaid) sleeps in between breaths, making their full sleep time...actually only about 20mins.

• Dolphins sleep with only half of their brain at a time...which sort of explains why they're always on the go and active, crazy lil buggers!

• Mudskippers can actually climb trees even though, like their name, they are normally found in muddy, swamp areas.

• Octopus live longer without their sex organs

• Killifish usually mate in small pools of water, then the female will hatch eggs...and die afterwards because the small pool of water dries up. THE STRANGE PART is that even if you leave the mama female in a normal fish tank with enough water, after she hatches her eggs...she dies anyways =/

• An average of 10 people are killed each year by sharks...

• ...this compared to COWS who kill 100x more people on average per year. (yeah, that's right...fix those stereotypes!)

• As many as 4 million prairie dogs can live in ONE colony.

• Insects have roughly 740,000 different species.
  

The Fashionable: Ugliest Dog Competition

While studying for a test earlier today, some friends and I started doing some research on ugly animals. Animals like the sphinx, hairless cat came up and deformed dogs and such came up. This reminded me that there is a "WORLD'S UGLIEST DOG COMPETITION" annually!! how could I forget?!?!

They JUST crowned a new winner this past June. Everyone...meet Pabst, the new world's ugliest dog! Surprisingly, it's actually not that ugly to me...so I'm not sure why it won because in the past 7 years, the Chinese Crested breed has won!! Oh well...I must say...Pabst does adorn the "what the heck are YOU looking at" look well, so congrats to him!

For winning...Pabst and his owner received $1,600 from the Sonoma-Marin Fair for sweeping all three rounds ($100 for mutt class, $500 for runoff with the pedigree class winner, and $1,000 for World’s Ugliest Dog).

This year sponsor House Of Dog upped the ante with another $1,000 in prize money, a table of “bling” that included collars, leashes, and bowls plus a year-round modeling contract that Pabst signed with his paw. Event Photographer Grace Chon included a professional photo shoot.

Pabst was adopted from a rescue shelter 3 years ago and stands as the first "mutt" to win the competition.

2008's winner...a Chinese Crested cutie/ugly named Gus passed away a couple of months after winning the crown from skin cancer. He seemed to be an awesome, happy little one-eyed tripod (yep, only THREE LEGS folks!) and may he rest in peace. Gus was 9 years old.

To read more details on the annual Sonoma-Marin Fair and its awesome ugly dog show, click here.

The Ugly: Aye-Aye

I knew that my next blog post had to be something funny, maybe another profile? I thought of doing fictional animals like the unicorn or something, then remembered this ugly, hilariously looking creature I saw on animal planet once--The Aye-Aye...and secretly chuckled to myself. SO here is the animal in all it's fashionable glamor!

The Aye-Aye is a rain forest dwelling, ape/chimpanzee/HUMAN (whaat??) related ugly monkey-look alike...Madagascar native. and only in Madagascar will you catch a glimpse of the weird looking creature.

It's an omnivore which means it eats both meat and plants and has a diet that consists of fruits, veggies and insects. They are nocturnal, so they spend their days sleeping and only come out at night...and prefer to stay up in the trees unless absolutely necessary to come down.

Like many primates (that's us!) , the Aye-Aye has opposable big toes which help it grip and hang from trees and grab things easier. They can live up to 20 years and have a tail as long as 24 inch es! I think these guys, though ugly...are perfectly loveable <3. href="http://www.animalinfo.org/species/primate/daubmada.htm">here.

Interesting facts about these uglies:
1. They are one of the rare animals that use echolocation to find prey, such as listening for insects that crawl under tree barks
2. To the native people, Aye-Ayes are considered a bad omen...and are often killed on sight....resulting in their name being on the Endangered Species list. (good going humans!) The good news is that they are also now protected by law as their numbers are dwindling.