Sorry About the Hiatus.

The last few weeks have been craaaazy. Never let me take 5 classes again, guys. It drove me further off the deep end than I already was.

However, one of those classes was worth it. I did not know Bio-Art was a thing when I made the entry about a Museum of Living Art. Turns out that art intersecting with science is its own category of "Bio-Art." There is, to my knowledge, no museum just for that particular art form...which sucks. Some of it is really cool and not what one would expect at the mention of the word "Bio-Art."

Hunter Cole's "Human Dog Spine." She was the one teaching my whole course! Ain't it cool? :D

That said, this blog will be an extra hosting source for my Bio-Art pieces. Each piece will get its own entry, complete with a fully-detailed explanation (with links to previous entries if applicable). There will also be a few fictional entries made amazingly real utilizing real-life examples. The more complete this little encyclopedia of worldly magic becomes, the better. Yes, I will cover dragons; Animal Planet did (and I can pinpoint EXACTLY what is wrong with their logic, starting with dragons being sparklesnakes. There, I said it).

Also, BEST MALARIA EVER.

I will still try to do an awesome entry a day (starting today) in exactly 30 minutes. This means that they will be more concise, harder-hitting, sassier, and more awesome than ever! Some ghostwriters will be helping while I am in Rome, so don't worry about this blog for a month or so, 'kay?

~Kuro.

Freak Week II: Bully Whippets.

Pop quiz: What is wrong with this dog?
A) OMG THAT PICTURE IS SOOO FAKE!
B) It's an experiment by the EVUL COMMUNIST RUSSIANS! We're SCREWED!
C) One gene.

Sorry, this picture has been sent around the interwebs so frequently as a "real or fake?" or Russian conspiracy fodder that it merited a short quiz. Beneath all this internet BS is a normal whippet with only one gene awry. As you can see, Wendy is a perfectly content Boston family pet underneath all that muscle:



Not all whippets are as muscular as Wendy. Whippets are a sort of mini greyhound bred for one thing: speed. They can run up to 36 mph and have a winning demeanor. As dog breeds go, whippets are relatively problem-free; at most, they have some "athletic" heart diseases, but otherwise lead average dog lives.


Normal whippet.

Super-muscular whippets like Wendy are called "bully whippets." This says nothing about their personalities, just their bizarre build. The gene for extra-fast whippets is the heterozygous form of the gene that omits myostatin in dogs. Having two of the same omission allele together leads to double-muscling, creating the same beefy look found in Belgian Blue cattle (from last Freak Week). Seriously - it's the exact same mutation, just in a dog instead of a cow.

Hey, Korea...

 

Imagine crossing a bully whippet with a Chinese Crested, Xoloitzquintle, or Peruvian Inca Orchid. If the resulting image made you wet your pants in a combination of fear, WTF, and awesome, our work here is done.

Tomorrow: Hello kitty...with straaange ears.

Might As Well Face It...

Iron Hand in a Velvet Glove by =KuroKarasu on deviantART

...I'm addicted to lav. People who don't know me, meet Priscilla, a lavender corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) who's a total spaz. Yes, she is named after Priscilla from Claymore; yes, she has a slight bump on her back that might be responsible for her occasional freakout.

Yes, she really is purple. She looked more purple as a baby, but she is still purple. Really.

Albinism is one thing. That mutation just turns off melanin- the pigment that makes animals black or brown. The idea of a purple animal is freaky on its own level, simply because mammals do not make purple. Everything with purple looks somehow unearthly.


It looked like a Purple People-Eater to me...

There are many variations on lavender/purple coloration in snakes. Strangely, instead of this coloration being limited to one species or subspecies, lavender-ism (phoenicism? I'm not sure there IS a proper scientific word for this, so I'm using the Greek word for purple) occurs throughout species and genera. There are lavender retic and ball pythons, kingsnakes, corn snakes, and although they REALLY do not look the part, cobras. The lavender trait has also been found in some lizards.

Now, I'm not a scientist. I do not know the molecular mechanics behind every color of the rainbow. My educated guess, judging primarily from the light purple found in caramel ball pythons, is that lavender coloration has something to do with the enzyme tyrosinase.



Tyrosinase is one factor that goes into an albino animal's coloration. In ball pythons, a T+ albino is called a caramel (above), and a T- albino is, well...a normal albino. White skin with yellow patches...y'know, as normal as albinos get.

The same enzyme also oxidizes dopamine, the chemical known for regulating pleasure, so there may be more merit to the 'drug trip' idea than one would think. (This effect will only be strengthened by my pending 'Molave' project...shhh.)

As one site so delicately put it, as they mature, lavender ball pythons look like they are 'glowing under blacklight.' That is the case with young lavender albino reticulated pythons as well. As young lavender 'tics grow, however, they become more yellow than orange...



...becoming one of the most beautiful snakes in the world. Wow. Beat that, Canis lupus familiaris!

A Museum of Natural Art?

Today, I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. They did not have some of the truly special stuff that made me 'wow' the first time around, like a gigantic light chamber and a hall of iridescent mirrors. They had some neat tricks with mirrors with an interesting thesis behind them, but most of the things made me tilt my head in WTF. Looking at the crap that people turn into art made me wonder:

Why the hell isn't there a museum for natural art?

To clarify: I am not only talking about all that is beautiful in nature, but also all that was created from life itself. That means morphs, hybrids, things with two heads, and so on. Collies, sphynxes, bubble-eye goldfish, scaleless rattlesnakes and Chinese Cresteds all deserve their own pedestals. Breeds can go extinct, too. Credit must be given where credit is due.

Don't think it would work? Check out how many zoos are pimping white tigers - as I have said before, white tigers are just about the least natural animals there are (after dogs and cats). Freaks mean big money, which is why Siegfried and Roy can get away with pimping their white cats in Vegas.


Remember them?

Despite everything I have said about white tigers, I do admit that they are on their way to becoming a solid breed. If people can breed crossed eyes out of Siamese cats, they can probably do the same with white tigers. Call this a double standard if you like, but I am cool with white tigers being part of an actual show. They should not be representatives of real, wild tigers any more than German Shepherds should speak for wolves.

Zoos should not make ligers, white tigers, black panthers, and so forth just to attract customers. As I said before, ligers do not happen in nature, and white tigers are about as inbred as European royalty - they are far from pristine natural specimens. Going to a zoo just because it has a white tiger is a scam; you are not helping the problems associated with the morph, and more and more regular tigers will suffer for the attention given to their inbred cousins.

That is not promoting conservation. That is conservation mixed with a veritable freakshow. It misrepresents and skews what people really want to save. Do you want to save an animal that could never survive in its natural habitat?


Speaking of black and white attention whores...

This does not mean that all white tigers should be eradicated - just keep them out of conservation arguments. They are the rough equivalent of using advertisements in a scholarly paper; that is, they are clutter that should not be used when trying to make a serious point. Ditto with ligers. Black wildcats can slide, but they too suffer from inbreeding (and several misconceptions). By the way, support Lady Gaga!



I swear she's a rare specimen from Pandora.

Let's give the freaks a place to stay. Zoos should not have them. Get a bunch of taxidermists and exotic pet owners together and make it happen. There are also plenty of glowing microbes and stones to pick from, so we could really go nuts.