More weird animals and animan traits.

SCORPIONFLIES Most people have never seen one of these, but once you see a picture of them you'll easily recognize them in person.

Notice the long snout and the abdomen, which coils up like a scorpion's tail. The coiled up abdomen, found in the male only, is its genitalia and, therefore, not harmful. They are mostly scavengers, often feeding on dead insects.

Link to same photo:http://www.scottcamazine.com/photos/insects/images/scorpionflyMale_jpg.jpg

There have been studies on the symmetry of the wings of scorpionflies that are also applicable to the sexual attracttiveness of humans and other animals. It was found that the more symmetrical the length of the right and left wings of these insects, the more often the females selected them. It has also been found since this study that humans are attracted to faces of the opposite gender that are the most symmetrical.

Indian Gavial or Gharial. Gavialis gangeticus. Range: India

This large crocodilian lives in large rivers where it lives primarily on fish, which it grasps with its needle-sharp teeth. The snout is especially narrow to reduce water resistence while hunting fish. Gavials reach lengths of 18 feet, but are not dangerous to man.

Bulbous appendage on snout is a resonating chamber—on mature males only—used to make buzzing sounds and produce bubbles during courtship.

Closeup of gavial head.


Full body of large gavial.

False Gavial (Tomistoma schlegelii). Range: Malaysia and Indonesia.

Most Cephalapods are bioluminescent.

Assassin bugs

This is a family of true bugs, two of which are commonly seen in the Eastern U.S.

The blood-sucking conenose (Triatoma sanguisuga) feeds on the blood of mammals including man—I've occassionally found it in my house. It feeds while the mammal sleeps because it takes about 20 to injest a meal. In one website, it's bite is claimed to be painless, but an expert entomologist in a reputable textbook claims the bite is "extremely painful." Still, it's difficult to see how any mammal could sleep through an extremely painful bite. Nevertheless, its bite can cause severe allergic reactions in some people. A related Latin American species called the "kissing bug"—because it bites around the mouth while people sleep—carries the trypanosomic illness, Chaga' s Disease, which is though to have killed Charles Darwin.


Blood-sucking conenose.



The wheel bug, a very large—1 1/4 inch insect—is unmistakable because of a cogwheel-like process on its thorax. The elongated, skinny head is on the right. The paired antennae are above, and the needle-like probocis curves under the head. It feeds on insects, but it has a bad bite if picked up.

Flying snake (Chrysopelea paradisi)


This is a video of a captive flying snake in flight. You must have quicktime to view it. There are some excellent short videos here showing long glides, and if you stop the video midway a definite dorsal-ventral flattening can be observed. http://www.flyingsnake.org/video/video.html

Pygmy Marmoset baby. Cute little bugger isn't it?

Pangolin - Mammal - Kenya

Glaucus & Porpita - Open Ocean - Bermuda Triangle

Cuttlefish - ocean floor

Short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus)—rapid tongue, with sting(the sting probably referring to the spines). Range: Australia

Two species of echidnas and the platypus comprise the Order Monotremata (one hole). The monotremes, like the reptiles, have a common duct, the cloaca, into which the urinary, digestive, and reproductive tracts empty.

Echidnas and platypuses are unique among mammal in their egg-laying capabilities. The short-beaked echidna lays a single, small egg directly into a pouch where it hatches in ten days. The young echidna remains attached inside the pouch feeding on milk secreted from a patch, and remains there for 8-12 weeks until it develops spines. It remains in a burrow for six months dependent on its mother's milk. Adults feed primarily on termites and ants.

Here's a website with pictures of echidnas in various stages of growth from hatching egg to adult. http://www.healthsci.utas.edu.au/medicine/research/mono/Echidna-basic.html


Picture of a echidna being held.

Leafy Sea Dragon - Southern Australian waters

Kea (Nestor notabilis) Range: South Island of New Zealand

Keas are cold-hardy parrots that live above the timberline of the mountains of New Zealand. They are vegetarians, for the most part, also taking insects and insect grubs that they find by tearing apart rotten logs. Sheep were introduced onto the South Island in the 18th century, and they competed with the keas for food. The keas, being resourceful and hungry, started feeding on their competitors, the sheep both the dead and living animals. They would stand on the sheep’s back and bite through their skin, apparently looking for fat. Some sheep died from infection or of bleeding. There was a bounty put on the birds, and hundreds of thousands were killed by sheep herders.

Today the kea is protected, but their numbers have sharply declined. They are often thought of as pests, attacking windshield wiper blades, car weather stripping, and ski equipment and frequenting landfills, as our gulls do, but are considered highly intelligent, curious, and ingenious when it comes to getting food.


Kea on back in food bowl:

Shingle-back skink (Tiliqua rugosa)or (Trachydosaurus rugosa) Range: Southern Australia. Length: about 20 inches total length.

This lizard is not only a morphological oddity, much of its behavior is anomalous to other lizard's behavior.

With its short stubby legs, this skink cannot run to escape predatore, and its major defense is to open its large mouth, stick out its blue tongue, and hiss. Should this fail, the fat tail, which mimics a head, can be detatched if it is grasped; however, reserves of fat will be lost.

The home range of individuals overlaps the ranges of other shingle-back skinks, but these lizards are not agressive with each other. The food is mainly plant materials, such as fruits and flowers, but being oppurtunistic it also includes arthropods and just about anything else available including carrion on highways.

Shingle-backs are viviparous, meaning that the fetuses are retained within the body and fed via a primitive placenta and born after considerable development so they are better able to fend off predators.

During the two months of their breeding season, the males remain with a single female, and this monogamous relationship is repeated for a number of years, the pair being able to recognize each other. The male protects the female from possibly mating with other males.

Zebra or Zebra Longwing. (Heliconius charitonius) Range: Gulf states and especially Florida.

This is one of the most beautiful butterlfies in the U.S. Heliconius species are very common in Latin America. Many different species there look similar and all are bad tasting to predators who learn to avoid them. This mimicry between the different species is called Mullerian mimicry. where poisonous or bad-tasting species mimic each other's appearance, thus reinforcing the bad experience of bird predators.

Zebra butterflies lay their eggs only on Passion Flower Vines (Passiflora sp.). The eggs are yellow, and the the vines have their own strategy using egg mimicry to avoid predation by Zebra catepillars. (See below)

"Egg mimicry in Passiflora. Similarly, we have already given examples of egg-mimicry in Passiflora, which protects plants against species of Heliconius butterflies. Female Heliconius avoid laying eggs on plants already occupied by eggs, because first instar larvae of Heliconius are highly cannibalistic; the plants exploit this habit of Heliconius by creating fake yellow eggs as deciduous buds, stipule tips, or as part of the "extrafloral nectaries" on young leaves. Clearly, the plant, whose defenses of cyanogenic glycosides, alkaloids, and a host of other secondary compounts, have been breached by Heliconius, has counterevolved new defenses against this genus."

While the "fake yellow eggs" produced by the plant discourage the zebra butterflies from laying their eggs, the extrafloral nectaries secrete a nectar that ants eat. The ants attack anything attracted to the plant including, but not limited to, the zebra.

Bumblebee Bat - Smallest Mammal - Thailand

Aquatic dragonfly nymph or naiad that feeds on aqautic invertebrates, small fish, and tadpoles. Note bud wings. Fully grown nymph climbs up a plant out of the water, undergoes its last molt, and emerges as an adult dragonfly.

Closeup of head showing partially extended mask, a modified labium that it uses to grasp prey.