Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animals. Show all posts

Sunday, 28 August 2011

Injecting a Little Colour

This is pretty Darned cool!

Via:The Daily Mail

Through mixing coloured sugar solution with a paraffin base (in order to allow the drops to retain their shape), Scientist Dr Babu managed to change colour of some ants in his back garden, owing to the translucent nature of the ants abdomens, apparently the ants had a preference for lighter colours favouring yellow and green over darker red and blue...
thank god he's not wasting his time on curing cancer...

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Pigeons & Papercrafts

After lurking within the depths of the internet, i came across This gem of a site and as my family keep pigeons, and I got a new printer last week (so cheap it almost hurt) I thought I'd give it a whirl...


Here he is in all his glory...
And then I thought 'Now what the hell do I do with him?'
Solution: Put him in with the birds....
Man did they freak when they saw me coming at them with a block of paper! they were all over the shop, kids were crying, sirens were sounding, but after a while they settles down and got a few pics ...

I'm pretty chuffed, a completely pointless exercise, but it filled in an hour of my unemployed time, which is much more productive then staring at image boards all day, gradually degrading my corneas with the glare from my netbook...

Monday, 7 February 2011

Charity Shop Find...

I love a good dig in a charity shop, most of their 'stock' is crap, granted but occasionally a gem appears, giving a feeling comparable to finding a crisp £5 note in ones pocket.
And today this is it....
For the princely sum of one gold coin, I am now the proud owner of a copy of 'cats with guns' and the contents of this book you ask? To be fair it pretty much says it on the Tin... cats, with guns.
and my personal favorite...
 Man that cat looks like he can see forever , he knows your secrets AND your desires

I just love the idea that someone believed there was a market for such a book, especially with the newfangled invention known as the internet...' hmmm....cats ai? you know what they need.... More Guns!'

Brilliant, just Brilliant

I'm more of a dog man me :D

Cats with guns, coming to a bookstore near you!

Sunday, 6 February 2011

5 Reasons a European Bison is Better than a Nintendo DS

well i did this for a job interview, which sadly i didn't get, a little gutted, but the world still turns and I still possess a full set of limbs so its not all bad. I blame much of my failure on the room in which I had the pleasure of having my interview which was not unlike the natural history museum, only a little less organised, a large room littered with stuffed badgers, bones, logs, excessive amounts of wasps nests, skulls and other miraculous curios, alas this may of been the crux of my down fall but man that badger was fucking sweet!

Ok Ok! this is the less child friendly version (obviously)
5 Reasons a European Bison is Better than a Nintendo DS


1. A Bison is More Useful around the Home.
Bison's are bloody huge, in fact they are the largest land based (terrestrial) mammal in Europe, these guys are huge, and are strong as hell! And they have MASSIVE horns, usually they use them for ramming each other  at the bar whilst making quips abbout one anothers maternal figures, these features make them brilliant around the house, they can carry your shopping, help nan put away the shopping and make fantastic door stops!



2. Bison Don't Run out of batteries
No more will you have to make the mad dash for the nearest power outlet ripping out the tv power cord from its electrical abode causeing hysteria throughout the household, you wont even need to spend hours hunting the illusive power cord. Bisons dont need any of that shiz, they run on more obtainable fuel that they find in their woodland abodes, preferring a diet of leaves, moss, and when times are hard will even settle for a cheeky gob full of bark, in fact they'll eat any old shit they find laying around, unless it has a face (unlike the Japanese)


3. Bison Love to Go on walks
Man they walk all over the place looking for food and love nothing more than bombing about the woodland in doing so, infact they get really pissed if you construct some form of barrier in their way, they hate that crap! Luckily because Bison love roaming around in groups, they'll even take you too!, it will EVEN carry you if you ask really nicely (they are a stickler for good manners!... A DS doesn't do any of these things, you just sit there and balloon in weight as you shovel in all those doritto's as you level up your Charizard, and when you need to go some where you have to CARRY IT!


4.A Bison Will Keep you Warm in Winter
I'd Like to see a DS do that! In Winter the European Bison Grows uncomfortable amounts of hair which is warmer than the inside of a microwave, they radiate heat! You know when it snowed so much the whole of England stopped for a week? The bison were all like 'Dude did someone leave the door open?'
'But what happens when it gets hot?' i hear you say? well they even have that covered, they shed their winter coats, meaning they are all ready for the beach as soon as the sn comes out... and the left over fur? its perfect for making high quality hair pieces!
5. Bison are Uber Rare, some people haven't even heard of the things, and get them all confused with normal cows and stuff, meaning that if you have a Bison your are roughly a billion times cooler than a DS user.
Like 80 years ago there were no bison in the wild, zilch, zero, nada they got hunted because they make the coolest hats, people cut down their houses and deer ate all their deer (greedy cunts) even the Russian kings were like 'Dudes don't kill my fucking BISON' then the first world war came and the bison got royally screwed over,
after which some clever bloke decided to pool together the remaining captive bison to start a new population (this consisted of 12 individuals).
In the second world war even Hitler protected the remaining Bison and even killed 3 of his own soldiers because they killed one, that's right even Hitler stuck up for bison, the fucking nazi chief stuck up for them (and he hated everything!, That's how cool they are, you can't say that about most animals!

Nowadays there are about 1800 in the wild but they arn't the happiest bunnies ever they all get STI's because their genetics are all crap, so they all have cock rot and so breeding isn't the easiest thing in the world...

But hey id Rather have a European Bison any day!

Saturday, 15 January 2011

The Surrey Hunt Ball

One of my best mates Pam is probably the poshest person I know, she speaks posh, she drinks posh she even goes on 'hacks' and hunts, with those blokies on the back of horses (she doesn't kill foxes so ya' know she does drag hunting or some shit like that), also she has a conservation degree, just so you know ;)
Anyway today she announced she was going to a hunt ball, and immediately a vortex of childish imagination formed in my head, I figured lots of animals hunt, collectively forming a fraction known as 'predators', hell, even the foxes are in the gang.

Its rough as hell, and my watercolour work is average at best, but that's EXACTLY what I imagined

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

My Dog Sticks his Tongue Out

These are prime!
and my personal favourite...
This is probably one of my most favourite things in the world, party because he looks hillarious, and party because I'm pretty sure he doesn't realise he's doing it :D

Saturday, 6 November 2010

Wait...What?


Wait....what? how do you cruelly obtain wool? Armed Robbery?, pulling it out? , skinning the sheep/llama alive? Claiming to have slept with the ovine's mother whilst harvesting warm fluffy treats?

Also why just cruelly obtained wool from Australia , not every where? Surely if your going to make a group like this you may as well hit as many birds with the same stone (bad metaphor, I know)

I would look into it further but i have an instant hatred of groups like this, regardless of the causes that they endorse...

Also Why is wool never as fluffy as you imagine it?

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

Things I Find at Work Pt. 3 Nature Addition!

Today I have been Gardening and so we have nature making an appearance :D YAY! My favourite :D
My first Find was this chappy,
and would you believe it? another bloody Toad! 22 years its taken me to see an example of Bufo bufo and in the space of a month I find 2! And s/he's Miniature! Really laid back just chilled out on my hand whilst i took a picture:D AWESOME!
Next on my list is this Badman Magpie checking out his reflection in car windows...
he was making the most awsfull racket ever, and i managed to sneak a little closer
I find magpies get a bad press (my mum despises the things - especially the bald one in the garden, despite me trying to convince her its a monk), I on the other hand admire Corvid's(magpies, crows, ravens ect) despite the plural for crows being a 'murder of crows', I admire their intellect, and the amazing self awareness they (can) exhibit, despite the lack of cortical structures within the brain (these are linked with self awareness and Theory of mind in mammals). I would totally own a Corvid.

Now for some invert's (Yes)
Found these guys when i was digging up the flower beds, they are without a shadow of a doubt beetle larvae but i have no idea what species at all, my first thought was some sort of chafer beetle (think may bugs) but the colouring just isn't right (chafers have white bodies and orange heads) they look nice tho :D
The last think i found was that nature is stronger than metal after hitting a tree root...
 I was down a Tool... well thats it for today :D

Sunday, 3 October 2010

The Spoils of War

Ok so as promised here are my purchases from the AES :D
first off are the leafies Phyllium siccifolium for all you geeks :D
ive kept leaf insects before but never this species but paying £10 for 8 (when they usually go for £4 each (trade price) you can't be too picky, so i snatched up these bad boy's (and girls)

as you can see they are a nice size and as i have a few friends within the 'animal show' sector im planning to breed some and flog them to make some cash :D leaf insects generally go quite quickly as they are uber desirable within collections and who can blame collectors for wanting them?
This lot are a bit battered (even if I exclude the one that lost a limb yesterday when she decided to shed in transit- she will be fine, it will grow back in her next shed :D ) i imagine these critters (wow that sounds really American)  were probably kept in high densities and when that happens they tend not to differentiate between food (i.e leaves) and each other, and it is for this reason that you should never keep leaf insect species with other stick insects ;)


My Favourites however are my Deroplatys dessicata (Dead leaf mantis) ive kept these before and they are gorgeous however i sold them before they reached adulthood :(
they are only little at the moment but adult females are pretty damned bulky and im planning to have one free range in the front room (its almost a tradition in our house) 
here are the little fella's :D






in the last pic you can really see the shape of the protonum (the back bit behind its head) and as they mature it becomes more pronounced and arrow shaped in this species (this is why i love them... i cant wait till their markings appear on the inside of their 'arms' 
like this one:D
(old skool picture)
they have all been fed and put to bed now :D so they have no chance of eating one another 
lets hope they don't cark it on me ...i'd be gutted

Friday, 17 September 2010

Facebook gems

I'm addicted to and hate facebook as much as the average person (massively) and generally it bores the crap out of me.
However, there are some brilliant things that do come of it, unlimited space for pictures that you want to share (if you can be bothered to wait for 15 minutes to get an error message) however today my highlights have been Fraping my brother...
note: Although its fairly entertaining actually commiting such a crime, the real joy is watching people comment on it as if he would really write such a status, this is why you have to be creative and stay away from the obvious (all be it tempting) 'is gay' or 'cannot believe i fit that in my bum' comments. Its got to seem real but still be somewhat undesirable. I could of made him fans of numerous homosexual/neonazi/justin beiber groups but it seemed far too easy...

The second thing i love is the Manatees group, the owners of which are hillarious, unlike all the other conservation based groups, these guys (i assume they are male) have taken something cool and made it awesome through the use of adult themes and the creation of earth hating, self absorbed egotistical anthropomorphized mammals.


Fucking brilliant:D and this is a relatively tame status for the manatee group. I just love the mental image this group gives of a 1930's mob comprised of manatees plotting dominion of the world

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

More things out to get me...

First the sewing Machine, then i saw this little lady bopping along the floor...
and i thought... that looks a bit Widowy to me, had a further little peek...

im pretty darn sure this is a false widow, Im not a massive spider boff (mantids are my forte) but i have an intermediate knowledge of them and have a rough idea of types.
So had a little gander on the web to see if there were any other species that looked similar. I at this point say that false widow spiders are Britains most venomous spider although there are 3 species that look very similar with only 1 being any threat.
 Steatoda nobilis is the nasty one that is to have reportedly of originated from the canary islands, and has been cotching down south (like the stick insects) for around 100 of years now, but due to warmer summers they have come alot more south and people have started running around screaming and making babies cry and the tabloids to go mental (as per usual) 
"False widow spider bite reports include symptoms such as chest pains, swelling and tingling of fingers."
This one however seems to be a similar species called Steatoda grossa judging by the semi circle abdominal markings, so my slight alarm as it ran under the sofa was in vain *phew*
"Their bites are known to cause pain and discomfort for a small portion of the population, however for most people, their bite produces no side effects"
so its only an issue if you are allegic, to be fair, even if you are bitten by a real widow (Latrodectus sp.) even untreated you still only have a 1 in 8 chance of dying unless you are old or really small

in other news, the post man came and delivered this...

Oh yes! 16 Kg of dead chicks my mum ordered for the harris hawk, in the freezer. That goes next to his dead rabbits, the bread rolls and ready meals. a popular game in my house is making unsuspecting guests get things from the death freezer-thats always guarented a laugh! although to be fair the first time i saw the rabbit foot poking out of the freezer as i rummaged for some burgers, i thought a cat had fallen in and died (its a massive chest freezer-no mammory jokes please:D ) and THAT scared the bloody shit out of me.
Its weird really i can deal with a box of hundreds of dead chicks, but not a frozen cat. Figures

Sources: greennature and Natural History Museum

Wednesday, 25 August 2010

Uncyclopedia- Everything that Wikipedia used to be

when searching for orange's Awesomasaurus ad campaign (which i still cannot find a picture of) i came accross Uncyclopedia, filling the gap that the new, moderated wikipedia has left (see Last post), its just full of nonsense, and occasionly some whitty well written entry turns up
''Given the controversial nature of Awesomesaurus, the genus has often been overlooked in the mainstream. Many Anning followers felt vindicated, however, when Michael Crichton included a pointed reference to Awesomesaurus in Jurassic Park.


“If we hatch an Awesomesaurus, how the hell will we feed it? Impossible. We'd need the whole rest of the island, every day of the week.”
~ Dr. Ian Malcolm (character from Jurrasic Park) on Awesomesaurus''
i checked the chicken article as well because i hoped that  Ryan north's legacy still existed... some of the best stuff i found was ii HERE

''What happened to the chicken since it was a T-Rex? In direct rebuke of the chicken's royal and reptilian aspirations, modern chicken have been so modified that now they do not so much resemble the Rex as they do the common garden slug, itself a sad parody of the more graceful snail. The science of eugenics, pioneered by evil men like Charles Darwin, Colonel C. H. Sanders, and Adolph Hitler, led to the manipulation of the chicken's once terrifying genes, twisting and changing them into something base and disgusting''

Although i see the need for a boring informative thing such as wikipedia... i still love this  :D
yeah a Nazi T-REX

Tuesday, 24 August 2010

Animal Welfare and the Band wagon of poorly advised people

''A middle-aged woman caught on camera dumping a cat into a wheelie bin is being offered police protection as thousands join a Facebook group protesting against her actions.


PCSOs are on duty outside the woman's home 'to ensure public order is maintained' after she was filmed stroking the tabby along a suburban street.

The woman - a bank worker from Rugby who has been interviewed by police - is then seen grabbing the cat, called Lola, by the scruff of her neck and throwing her into the green bin before slamming the lid shut.''

Ok on the face of this its actually terrible, and a breach of animal welfare, yes the cat was left in the wheelie bin for an obscene amount of time (apparently 15 hours), but i cant help but feel that it has beeen blown massively out of proportion, batterery farming still occurs
 (on such a large scale where hundreds of thousands of individuals have reduced welfare for the entirity of their lives)which is imho a much more serious welfare issue.
but frankly...
this is hillarious

i mean really? all that fuss?
and its not like i don't know what im talking about either, ive studied animal welfare...
Mini pigs for instance were origionly bred (and are still used) to measure the effects of explosions on flesh by the army, they strap them in a explosive vest and BOOM! (and que scientists)

Yeah these guys.... its all because pig flesh has a very similar desity to that of humans, and the organs are in similar places, i mean new zealand arn't using greater apes as crash test dummies any more, but stuff similar to it still does
My point is that in the grand sceme of things the act of putting a cat in a bin is barely distinguishable from gaffataping/clingfilm a groom to a lamp post the night before his wedding, no harm comes of it in the end, granted  its not very nice, but its a better fate than that of thousands of hampsters owned by school children (i should know mine drowned in a tea cup).
Animal welfare is such a sticky conversation subject although this is mainly because half of the populations doesn't really care,and the rest either don't really understand it or are crazy idealistic, short sighted hypocrites, who decide to release non indiginous predators from fur farms *COUGH* MINK *COUGH* and desecrate natural fauna and flora (this is probably why i have never seen a water vole in my life) all for the greater good apparently ...Idiots, fucking idiots
Granted some people are awesome, and although will probably make a no notable difference, do it for the good of the world,
God bless you people who are awesome
Animal extremists...well sort your life out


Monday, 23 August 2010

Herman Gets Naked

Well, yesterday my hermit crab decided his skin was a little tight, so shed it, and now he looks like a prawn caught in a road traffic accident, its quite cool because i managed to snap a picture of him out of his shell, he looks disgusting doesn't he? well my freind that is the result of millions of years of evolution...
His claw has lost its colour but im sure this will reappear again when his exoskeleton all hardens up, i say 'he' but really i have no idea in the sexual mechanisms of crabs, so gender hasn't really been established, i need to het herman/ita a mate as his mate died a little while ago and so i may pick some more up at the AES bugshow in october if i have the funds and means to get there...
In other news my dog did one of my most favourite things today ....
This
Sleeping with his tounge out :D, he has done it alot of late, must be old age ....

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Donky Kong

Holy Crap this is AWESOME!


So the story Goes,an amateur photographer Chris Spicuzza was spending her day at the San Francisco Zoo, doing what photographers do... taking pictures.
However some stupid kid drops their DSi XL into the enclosure (I mean you're at a bloody zoo for gods sake why on earth are you playing a DS?)
But like all Higher Apes Gorrillas love the nintendo franchise (DK is something of a role model), and so thje gorrilla picked it up and leveled up some of those pokemon. And thats why i love animals


Source

Thursday, 8 April 2010

Ahhhh Bless...

What a Gorgeous Day!
went for a massive attacker walk it was snazztastic :D

in other news i found this picture adorable, its 2 baby Plytapuses, which all us animal bod's know as 'puggles' could they get any cuter?... basicly...no




its from this blog, which is composed almost entirely from pictures of cute animals, if i didn't have to be constantly proving my manlyness, id so be on this all the time, i think i'll stick to Dinosaurs