Why I Hate Penguins: An Essay

I have a real hatred for the humble penguin. It causes me some issues in my life, mostly with people thinking I’m a heartless monster, and partially people waving toy penguins in my face and mocking me as I cower in repulsion.

Let me explain my 3 part reason for hating the Spheniscidae family:

1. They pretend to be Chickens, to steal diamondsOk, so it’s a film, but it’s really impacted on my opinion on the peguin in a way I know you’ll never understand.
2. Always. In. Formal Wear. You know who else is always in Formal wear? Bond Villians.
3. They’re just straight up sinister
   

   This one is Judging You.

I think you’ll find that an acceptable answer.

The Lion King

I was thinking of posts I could do, where I mock animal based movies for their glaring inaccuracies in plot, rather than just little mistakes, and my first thought was “Lion King, I bet all of Lion King is wrong,   I’ll watch it and make some notes on it”

But….wait a minute…it’s…Ok?

A pride usually consists of several related females, and one or two males who breed with all the females. That’s right, Mufasa was putting it around! And when one of the Males is challenged (I’m looking at you Scar) it is only right that that males offspring is ousted from the pack (Run away Simba. Run away and never return).

So, the social structure of the Lions in the Lion king works well doesn’t it! I’m pleasantly surprised, because you think a kids film wouldn’t follow the frankly dubious morality of the big cats, but it does! It just skates over the mating rights!

Really the main issue is…Timon would never live with a lion and a warthog, Meerkats are very social animals!

Error Error: 5 animal inaccuracies in popular movies

As a smug and self-satisfied idiot, nothing makes me happier than finding flaws in movies, and has there is only one thing I have any knowledge of, animals, I find lots and lots of problems..usually in childrens films which makes me some kind if joyless monster, but…pssh. I’m sure you do the same with your passions, right? Seriously someone back me up.

Finding Nemo

• When there are no females in a group of clownfish, the most dominant male will become a female..Marlin should have become Marline!
• Nigel was a Brown Pelican, not an indigenous species of Australia

I could go on, but it’s too good a film to tear apart with pedantry

Ice Age

• Just…everything. Animals from every geological era all together…somewhere a paleontologist is weeping.

Prince of Persia

• “Anita” the ostrich…bloke. Shoulda called him Anthony.

Master and Commander

• Weevils? Really?Biscuit Weevils were teeny tiny and wouldn’t show up on screen.

This one doesn’t bother me at all because The Lesser of Two Weevils is one of my favourite scenes in any film ever. (It’s probably 2nd, with the contact lens scene in Monsters Inc as No 1!

Lion King

• What the hell is Rafiki? Face of a mandril, body of a baboon? I’m so confused! And don’t even get me started on the social structure of a Pride of Lions!

Your turn. Any flaws in movies which drive you nuts? Or drive other people nuts when you smuggly declare that it’s wrong?

Fish are getting stoned

We’ve all heard of the hormones in contraceptive pills finding their way into waterways and affecting fish, making manfish grow boobs and all that, so it follows that other drugs would affect fish too.

A recent swedish study has looked into how our overmedicated population might be affecting fish, specifically Oxazepam which is a Benzo usually prescribed for anxiety disorders. This is a drug which is found in rivers and streams in small amounts, as it is excreted by humans taking it, and the sewage…you don’t need me to explain how sewage works.

As is oft the case with behavioural studies, it’s easier to do it in the lab, so fish were dosed with the same levels as found in the rivers. In humans Oxazepam can cause risk-taking behaviour and hostility..in the fish? Well they called it “bolder and less social”…which sounds a bit like risk-taking and hostility doesn’t it?!

It’s not surprizing I suppose that drugs which affect the nervous system would affect all chorates similarly, but it’s a worrying thought that our reliance on drugs is affecting our fauna in this way.

Ok, what would be the funniest animal/drug combination? I’m going for frogs with tramadol-induced drowsiness

Nah, you guys go without me..Im just gonna *yawwwwwwwn* stay…here…

Horse Meat

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the horse in the beef debacle of late. People are up in arms about certain supermarkets selling “beorse” burgers, what do you think?

Personally, I am annoyed by the missinformation, if you’re selling beorse people should know they’re getting beorse, but I honestly don’t see why people are upset at the fact it is horse. Maybe I’m biased, as I really dislike horses, so don’t feel the same way as horse lovers do- i.e. that it’s like eating a pet. But lets look at it from a purely nutrional point of view:

Selected nutrients per 100 g (3.5 oz)

Food source	Calories	Protein	Fat	Iron	Sodium	Cholesterol
Game meat, horse, raw	133	21 g	5 g	3.8 mg	53 mg	52 mg
Beef, sirloin, raw	140	21 g	7 g	1.7 mg	53 mg	42 mg

Compare foods, NutritionData.com.

Lower fat, less calories, higher iron, all good there, but higher cholesterol as well.

Lets just say I wouldn’t order horse if it was on a restaurant menu, but I’d sooner eat horse than veal or foie gras. What about you, would eat horse, have you eaten horse?

Diversity of Ungulates

Today, if you’ll indulge me, I’m gonna chat a little bit about Ungulates, and as such summarise the article “A climatic explanation for patterns of evolutionary diversity in ungulate mammals“. As I’m sure you clever chaps all know Ungulates come in two types,  odd-toed and even-toed. Odds are horses (donks and zebras included), tapirs and Rhinos. Your evens are much more varied, sheep, cows, goats, giraffes, pigs, deer, hippos..the list goes on. So why did the Even-toed ungulates diversify so much when the odd-toed stayed pretty much in the horsey region (Honestly- Rhinos are super horsey, look it up.) ?

It has often been attributed to their different gastrointestinal tract: i.e. Even-toed ungulates are ruminants with a forestomach fermentation site, rather than the hindgut (the cecum) as the site of fermentation, and that this mode of digestion is superior.

So, the Odd-toed reached their diversification peak in the late Eocene with 13 families, 9 of which were extinct by the Miocene. Now, despite the assumption than the even-toed where better suited to their environment due to their gastrointestinal oddities, all the even-toed who went extinct in the were omnivores or obligate folivores and those that survived were, you guessed it- hindgut fermentors just like the odd-toed.

The paper shows that the reduction in hindgut fermented ungulates correlates with climactic changes rather than out competing.  So in the middle Eocene, even-toed ungulates were small, and living in low-seasonality regime forests, and as the climate changed, and herbage became sparse, the even-toed got larger to better withstand the seasonal changes in food availability. Meanwhile the larger odd-toed ungulates went extinct. Maybe forestomach fermentation isn’t so superior after all! Suck it cows.

I’m the ZooLOLogist, and I read crazy long journal articles so you don’t have to.

Anxiety: Primates

An article in the latest edition of Primates looked at anxiety in orphaned chimps , and being a fellow primate with anxiety issues, I obviously found this an interesting bit of research. Essentially they recorded the rate of behaviours exhibited, and compared the orphan chimps to those with a mother present. Behaviours included typical chimp behaviours- grooming and playing etc, as well as aggression, and the main sign of anxiety “rough self scratching”. Orphaned chimps exhibited much more RSS and less playing, but there was no statistical difference between agression levels in the two types of chimp.

It’s been observed before that chimps play to regulate stress, and as the chimps which played less engaged in more anxiety behaviours, play could be used to measure stress levels.

Personally, the aspect of this study I found most interesting (and feel free to read it and tell me I’m wrong) was the concept that animals which lost their mothers at different stages engaged in different abnormal behaviours, and even if raised by peer groups after the fact, are never fully social.

So, like birds can only learn to sing in their “sensitive period”, and if deafened and then returned their hearing, never fully learn…or I guess like how humans can learn to drive in months at 17 but if they try when they’re 22 they stall in a junction, burst into tears and never get behind a steering wheel again…no? just me? where was I? Chimps must have a sort of sensitive period too, where they pick up these social behaviours easily, but cannot do so afterwards.

Sadly I can’t relate too much to these apes, as whilst I am socially awkward, my anxiety is all compulsion based, and luckily not at all due to a violent and lonely upbringing, now please excuse me whilst I lock and unlock my front door 17 times and then cry.

Fun Beginnings: Enteroctopus dofleini

Ok, this isn’t really a fun one at all (Have any of them been?), it’s cute, and interesting,  but ultimately kind of sad. Enteroctopus dofleini, the Giant Pacific Octopus female lays her eggs in some hidden away place, on the inside of some rocky opening maybe, and she looks after them. I mean she really looks after them! For 150 days she cleans, and watches over, and gently fans them to keep them aerated, not leaving her post even to eat.

Mamma Octopus dies, to bring her 50000 babies into the world!

Fun Beginnings: Giraffe

Giraffe Babies, honestly do ungulates get cuter? But the birthing process for our long neckéd friends is not an easy one. I’m  sure you can imagine giving birth to a 6 foot baby isn’t the easiest, but imagine it from the baby’s POV… A six foot drop which snaps the umbilical cord, and smacking the ground must be a good jolt to get the system going! The little scamp will be indistiguishable from a week old giraffe within a few hours, frolicing and looking as knock-kneed and cute as anyone.

Fun Beginnings: Surinam toad

Well, for the first installment of my fun beginnings, baby animals series, on this, the national holiday of hangovers, I made the foolish decision to pick a story which makes me feel physically ill, so if the quality of this post deteriorates, it’s due to vomiting, soz.

The Surinam toad appears at first to be a most unremarkable anuran…flat bodied, tiny eyes, you know the drill. But when it comes to reproduction, it gets a bit weird. Sure they do the usual Amplexus aka spooning, but during this process, the fertilized eggs get implanted on the females back, where they grow, until emerging as fully formed tiny toads.

It must be a real sick one for people with Trypophobia, but it makes me very uneasy too, and I’m not easily wigged out..I once had a giant cockroach nestled in my labcoat sleeve!

I gotta go, I just had to google image search these..pukes ahoy!