So While I Figure Out DropBox...

...have a video of amazing rat tricks. Because, yes, rodents are trainable.



Tomorrow's post will be pic-heavy. Very, very pic-heavy.

Fun Spotlight: Big Run Wolf Ranch!

Instead of my usual Creature Feature, today's entry will be a totally different kind of Creature Feature. Much like many bloggers who actually go out and go things, I will provide coverage of any nature-related events I happen to encounter. I'd like to do this seriously one day- it's an awesome idea -  but funds and such will not allow. So, for now, I am limited mostly to events that happen in Illinois.

That said, if you see an event hosted at or by Big Run Wolf Ranch, don't turn it down. They happened to be at my local forest preserve last night (the 24th). That place has a lot more than just wolves, so along with Shanoa, we to see some really wild stuff:

For those of you who have no idea what a groundhog is...there ya go. This is the groundhog we in IL use for our Groundhog Day predictions. 

Skunks make amazingly great pets, even though many people would consider them wild. They also come in colors other than black and white. Kirby II here was a real doll, letting everyone pet and cuddle them. Kids even got to "babysit" him.

 There was a coyote, too. He was skittish, as a real wild coyote would be. Coyotes will not eat humans, but will eat small pets like Chihuahuas. I like them already. Pecos, our coyote, was also used as an example of a desert animal, featuring large ears and small paws. Another good example: Fennecs.

The wolf above, Shanoa, also appeared at Loyola the night we had a wolf showing. The big male, Zeus, was unwilling to come; when unwillingness is backed with a 1400-pound bite, even a wolf handler will listen. Tangent: The porcupine also could not make it.

Now, something that bugs me that did not get answered: it's hard to tell where this guy draws the line between "domesticated" and "tame." As I went into detail in my first essay on breeds, domestication is an iffy issue with no real scientific gauge to back it. I'm curious as to where this guy draws the line; his wolves and many other animals were bred in captivity and tamed.

"They Actually Eat That:" Porcupine.

Is there any vertebrate that sounds less appetizing than porcupine? It's big, and there's a lot of meat there, but it has spines, teeth, and claws to deal with. Granted, boars and bulls can be pretty nasty, but their skin won't turn your face into a bloody mess (plus, bacon). Who looks at a porcupine and goes "yeah, that looks delicious?" Well...a fair amount of people, actually.

Wherever there are porcupines, people will eat them. They usually do not want to, though. Native Americans can and will use porcupines as meat during the winter. Kenya had a porcupine crisis in 2005 - the most logical solution, after the porcupines had dug up graves and destroyed crops, was to eat the buggers. This may have been dirty porcupine meat, but there is no greater revenge than eating the ones who ate your food.

Porcupine meat is not just for the non-industrialized, either. Porcupines are assholes, for lack of a better word, on a regular basis. They carry diseases, nibble on everything, stick you or others with their hair-turned-needles, and generally are just unpleasant to have around. Last year, people in Pennsylvania started eating porcupines, too- or at least made hunting them legal in the wake of a porcupine outbreak. Again, revenge.

The practice of eating porcupine is still largely reserved for Native Americans and people with porcupine issues in the West, but China and Vietnam at porcupine regularly. It is so popular over there that porcupines are actually threatened. We knew that Vietnam and China ate almost anything. It seemed unlikely that they would hunt a rodent enough to cause a population decrease of 20 percent. Revenge? Noooo, this is just how Southeast Asia rolls. They even farm porcupines.

So how does it taste? Supposedly...weirdly good. It has been described as being "like duck meat, but with more flavour and very crunchy." That particular person actually liked it better than duck; given what I've seen from people's reactions to duck, that is quite the compliment. Maybe the Vietnamese are onto something.

Creature Feature: Bigfoot Porcupines.

In the vein of speculation about the new Grass-type starter, "porcupine" has come up repeatedly. The idea of getting a massive porcupine as a starter brought to mind a certain "Bigfoot" video that was debunked in a flash. We already had a yeti Pokemon; a porcupine becoming Bigfoot would not be out of the question. I doubt Game Freak will be that creative, but just in case, the stuff connecting porcupines and Bigfoot is pretty crazy anyways.


Late last year, this video was blogged by an ardent cryptozoologist. Unfortunately, not only was it a year or two too late, but the video had been debunked. Not "no way, you're avoiding the truth!" debunked, but legitimately, "OK, yeah, our bad" debunked. It continues to fool people today regardless. So, what was it, really?

A few PhotoShops and de-fuzzes later, "Bigfoot" was revealed to be a rather large North American Porcupine. For those of you who are secretly mole people, porcupines are spiny rodents native to virtually every landmass except Australia and Antarctica. They are herbivores, but are armed with spiny hairs ("quills") which they do not shoot, merely bristle whenever a predator approaches. They are also fairly large, third only to the beaver and capybara in size.

It turns out porcupines can look an awful lot like large primates when they want to. The first instinct of a porcupine is not to turn buttwards towards a mouth of teeth; they would rather run than fight, and resemble rather large, furry, short-tailed monkeys when they climb away from predators. Giant, short-tailed thing? Clearly Bigfoot.

One of the craziest conspiracy theories has a basis in fact: that porcupines may be hiding Bigfoot bones. Macabre as it sounds, porcupines do indeed hoard bones. Bones are the rodent version of vitamin tablets. If a porcupine finds a bone, it may well chew on it in order to gain phosphorous.  Whether Bigfoot wound up in there and absolutely nowhere else or not is another matter entirely. I would suspect the men in black before a porcupine conspiracy.

...

You didn't see anything.

Creature Feature: Horned Gophers.

Looking at the design of one of the latest Pokemon, Chespin, made me notice something: it is really, really hard to make rodents anywhere near badass. Even giant rodents like capybaras are seen as buck-toothed meat. Adding horns and fire to a fuzzy mouse wouldn't make it any more -

Oh, wait a second. That actually looks pretty cool. Still not intimidating, but cool. 

Horned gophers (Ceratogaulus) were once very real, very alive creatures.  There are four species known in the genus, all of which had nasal horns like small, fuzzy rhinos. They lived in burrows, much like modern gophers. Presumably, they were also herbivorous. They lived in what is now the modern U.S. Great Plains, particularly Nebraska, in the Miocene and Pleistocene eras. Everything cool there is dead.

Horned gophers had many things in common with modern rodents and moles, which are not rodents (so please hold your Gurren Lagann jokes). They had flat paws with sharp claws that were perfect for digging, and thus likely spent much of their time in burrows. These gophers were just shy of a foot long, so even if they had facial horns, they were far from terrifying. This makes horned gophers the smallest horned mammals to date. A shame they're all extinct.

To this day, nobody really knows what those horns were for. They're the wrong shape for digging. Moderns rodents similar to these gophers have terrible vision, so a mating display is virtually out of the question. The best guess, judging by the horns' positioning, is that the horns were used as a defense against predators. They even evolved further towards that end as the species progressed.  This rodent had teeth and horns for any preds to deal with. Not bad for a rodent!

The horned gopher's unique look has not gone unnoticed by the media. Although you will never see these guys in Jurassic Park, games like Tiny Zoo offer them as extinct oddities. They are fairly popular as far as small, extinct mammals go. I kinda wish the new Primeval would have one as a mascot character.

Oh, hey, speaking of...

Freak Week IV: White Laboratory Rats.

Sometimes, domesticated animals become so normalized that we forget they're effectively freaks. Dogs are a good example; they can deliver quite a nasty bite and are noisy at night. This is not the case with lab rats. Despite Ratatouille's best intentions, there are still more people who freak out around rats than around dogs.

Before you go "aren't rats exotic?", no, these laboratory rats are most definitely domesticated. They are calmer, have smaller organs, and produce more offspring than their wild counterparts. Despite being able to breed with wild rats, these rats are derived from Victorian fancy rats. Fancy rats have been domesticated since he Victorian era, and even if they hadn't been, someone would have eventually made pet rats simply because of their intelligence and proximity to humans.

Onto albino lab rats - the typical white rats seen in science labs. Rats have been used as test subjects for centuries. The first test done on rats was in 1828. Soon, rats became the first animals deliberately bred for scientific research. They have since been used to test...almost anything that could possibly happen in a human body. Really.

Depending on what factor is being tested, a different white rat may be better than another. The different strains of albino rat are meant to be as genetically identical as rodent-ly possible.  That said, the whole genome of Rattus norvegicus has been very easy to sequence because of this extensive captive breeding.

There are several strains of albino rat used in scientific research. The most common is the Wistar rat, which dates back as far as 1906. It was the original lab rat strain and is still commonly used today. The tail of a Wistar is always shorter than the body, and the head and ears are longer than average. This is the generic "test rat," although there are more genetically-stable, outbred strains that don't have a fancy name.

That said, there are other kinds of lab rats aside from the standard albino varieties. Some are bred to get diabetes. Others have tumors bred into them. A variety of "fuzzy" rat gets kidney failure after one year of life. There is even one strain of rat that is bred to be morbidly obese, just so that people can test diet products on them. The list goes on, and all of them merit an inclusion in Freak Weeks. All of them.

Creature Feature: Cream-Colored Giant Squirrel.

Any environmentalist  will tell you that every animal alive today has its place in the world. Every single species is a special little snowflake and a piece of a much bigger puzzle. This blog was made to celebrate how wicked awesome other species are. If you've been reading this blog, this paragraph was a broken record to you.

Then there are some animals that make us go, "the fark, nature? Why is this thing still alive?" The panda bear is on that list. So is this:

The Cream-colored Giant Squirrel (Ratufa affinis) is one of those animals. It can be found only in Thailand, Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It eats seeds, leaves, bark, and insects. It is almost completely arboreal. It is thought extinct in Singapore and Vietnam, making the stamp above very ironic. 

So, let's get some facts down. The Cream-colored Giant Squirrel ("creamy-squirrel") is exactly what it says on the tin: a pale squirrel that is giant. It can get almost a yard long from the tip of its nose to the end of its long, bushy tail, which helps it balance like a tripod while eating. Along with being pale, these giant squirrels are usually boldly marked. The name alone says that this animal should not survive.

Surprise surprise: It just barely lives. OK, so it's not on the Endangered List  yet, but it is near-threatened. These squirrels are easy to hunt and prone to deforestation. As arboreal animals, even sustainable logging might be a threat. What else is new? Well...

Along with human interference, the creamy-squirrel has competition from the giant black squirrel. In most of its range, these two squirrels share habitat. The only place where creamy-squirrel is truly safe is in Borneo, where it is the only giant squirrel. The main difference is that creamy-squirrels do not so much as go to the ground to feed, whereas the black squirrels leave the trees every now and then; otherwise, the creamy-squirrels have no real niche. Regardless of how many enemies the cream-colored squirrel has, I bet this is one of the few times you will ever hear of a squirrel going extinct.

Creature Feature: Australian Hopping Mouse.

Australia is both the land of weird and the one place where everything is out to kill you. Seriously, even the koalas and kangaroos are capable of leaving nasty marks, and there are few more humiliating deaths than "head smashed by a wombat's rump." Dingoes- you know, the things that eat babies - started out as dogs brought over by Aborigines, which then went right back to being wolves. The rule of thumb is, if it has a placenta, it doesn't belong in Australia. That includes humans.

Thing is, there are exceptions to every rule.

There are roughly five species of hopping mouse (genus Notomys), with five others completely extinct. Several are vulnerable. All are herbivores, feeding on whatever seeds, roots, and leaves they can find. They live in most arid areas of Australia.

Australian hopping mice are actually mice. As in, rodents. As in, they have a placenta and did not come there as stowaways with humans. That makes them weird by Australian standards. Although not the only native placentals there, these jumping mice are among the few.

Of course, this is Australia. Everything that comes to or lives on Australia becomes weird, aggressive, or both. Since diverging from the common ancestor with normal mice, hopping mice have become larger and, well, hoppier. The good news is that they reproduce a little more slowly than other rodents. Insofar as we know, they have not killed anybody, even with unintentional parasites.

A Dusky Hopping Mouse. I promise, it won't bite.

In this case, the hopping mice have several similar rodents to call distant cousins. The kangaroo rat and jerboa are both desert rodents with parallel adaptations. It's not that somewhere along the line, kangaroo rats were transported to Oz; this is another cool example of convergent evolution.  Desert mice suddenly becoming bipedal seems to be a trend.

Hopping mice, like jerboas and kangaroo rats, are capable of surviving on very little water. They do not drink. They also have larger ears than most rodents; as in jackrabbits, these large ears help redistribute heat. Their urine has less fluid than that of the average mouse. Plus, they're adorable. Chalk another one up for convergent evolution.

Hopping mice are so adorable, in fact, that Australia will let people keep some of them as pets. The two species up for consideration are the Mitchell's Hopping Mouse and the Spinifex Hopping Mouse (which can already be kept as a pet in New South Wales). This study from 2010 favors keeping the Mitchell's as a pet in order to preserve the species. That's right: Even Australian customs might be letting this one slide. YAY.

Creature Feature: Musasabi.

Before you immediately assume that the title above is some sort of Japanese liquor, consider the following: 1. you know this blog only covers "LET'S BREW!" topics on Wednesdays, and 2. Japan is a chain of islands with a bunch of unique wildlife by default. Did you really think that their weird mythology just happened? Nooo, their wildlife inspired a lot of it, just to make things extra-disturbing!

Nocturnal = shiny eyes. The squirrel is not possessed...as far as we know.

The musasabi (Petaurista leucogenys) is known as the "Japanese giant flying squirrel" in English. Specifically, it lives in Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku in the Japanese archipelago, as well as Guangzhou in China. It eats fruits and nuts. They can be found fairly close to civilization, with Mt, Takao being only an hour away from Tokyo.

Once again, the question is "how giant is giant?" This video actually gives you a pretty good idea. For those of you who prefer stats, it can weigh up to 1500 grams and can be up to 90cm long including the tail. Aside from being a darn big squirrel, the musasabi can also glide up to 160 meters. It's almost as big as a cat, and it can all but fly. Japan has fine nightmare fuel indeed.

From here.

The weird does not stop at its size. Like something out of a hentai, the musasabi plugs the female's vagina with a sticky protein called a coitus plug after sex. There could be a number of reasons for this, such as increasing chances of fertilization. It also prevents other males from mating with the plugged female. Supposedly, they're monogamous, too. Between these guys and raccoon-dogs with overlarge testicles, we should not be surprised that Japan has a reputation for weird porn.

Although not as well-loved as the momonga, the musasabi does have some representation in Japanese culture. It can be found at Japanese exotic pet conventions, although, aside from having an easy diet, I cannot see these squirrels being good captives. There is also a popular Italian restaurant on the Keio line called "Musasabi." The mususabi, like the momonga, also has the rather funny honor of being a Kaiyodo sculpture and featured on a children's trading card:

Frankly, we're surprised that the electric momonga in Gen V doesn't evolve into this monster-squirrel. That would be kinda cool. FUND IT.

"They Actually Eat That:" Nutria.

A while back, this blog did an entry on a giant water rat called a "nutria." For those of you who missed that entry, here it is in a nutshell: Nutria are giant water rats native to South America that were introduced to the United States for the sake of the fur trade.They have since become invasive in the Southern United States, particularly the swampy areas such as the bayous of Louisiana. For the record, they also happen to be the basis of the Pokemon Raticate.

Hi. Remember me? :B

That said, Louisiana is proposing an innovative method for getting rid of the nutria: Turn them into cuisine. www.nutria.com, along with having great info on these giant rodents, also has a handy recipe page should you encounter one in its unnatural habitat.

There is a whole group of recipes devoted to turning giant rodents into food. For those of you wondering before you click, they include rodent rump roasts, nutria chili, Surprise, surprise, nutria gumbo is a thing. They even have a page of nutria meat processing for your convenience. These are all sponsored by the Lousiana Department of Wildlife and Fishieries, so you know they're good.



Unfortunately, nutria supposedly taste terrible. That's a real shame, seeing as rodents are whole foods for a lot of the natural world. They're probably loaded with protein, and the meat's gotta go somewhere in the end. Hey, if it's good enough for an anaconda, what have you got to lose?

I am also quite sure that there are a million other ways to market nutria meat. "Mystery meat" comes in a lot of forms, usually with horror stories attached. Nobody wants to know what's in hot dogs anyways. Pet food is always an option - giant rats must be a mega-meal for cats. Humans are the ultimate omnivore. Wrap it in a sausage skin and someone will eat it.

Creature Feature: Giant Cloud Rat.

If reading about insular gigantism scared you, worry not. Not every giant animal on an island  is going to eat you. Here, let us show you:

From biolib.cz. Cutest pic I could find.

OK, bad example. I know some people are terrified of rats. Still, the giant cloud rat - and cloud rats in general- are at least as fascinating as Darwin's finches. They're all native to the Philippines, just like giant crocodiles. The main difference is that, unlike crocs, giant cloud rats would make great plushies.

All cloud rats are leaf-eating, nocturnal rodents that spend most of their time in trees.  There are a total of six species of cloud rats that are in turn divided into two genera. The "giant" ones in question are the North and South Luzon cloud rats, both of the genus Phloeomys. Again, aren't they cute? No? Fine, rat-haters.

Also very cute!

The giant cloud rat is the largest type of cloud rat in the Philippine forests. It is also the largest species of rat in the entire world. We're talking a 7-pound rat with teeth an inch long. That's a rat that would give a cat a run for its money. Being so big also makes it good meat, of course, and Filipinos have indeed been known to eat them. (Rodents are whole food. Really.)

Despite being unique species, not much study has been done on cloud rats. The only reason I even know about them is because one scientist at the Field Museum is studying these weird insular rats. Only three zoos have any kind of cloud rat in their collections, so even that's not a good bet if you want to gawk at a live giant rat.

Want a giant cloud rat as a plush- I mean pet? They're rare, but in the exotic pet trade nonetheless. A few of them are reliable breeders, so you should be seeing more captive-bred specimens soon.  They are marketed as the replacement for the Gambian Pouched Rat, which, while also large, is less cuddly.  Cuteness and legislation are together on this one, plus the giant cloud rat actually needs to be researched. 

Creature Feature: Goya the Giant Guinea Pig.

Before I actually get started with this post, a funny story: In an attempt to get used to what will be my new address for a few months, I suggested that a friend and I do a 'guinea pig' trade. My friend then linked me to an adorable, but slightly overpriced guinea pig figurine made by Safari Ltd.- a company that prides itself on super-detailed, anatomically-accurate models. Still, unless it was a giant guinea pig, it might not have been worth seven bucks.

Hey, come to think of it, a giant guinea pig would be kinda awesome.

Copyright Science/Carin L. Cain. It's the only pic out there.

 

At one point, giant guinea pigs (Phoberomys pattersoni ) were actually a thing. They lived in South America (specifically Venezuela) during the Miocene. The area is now desert, but back when Pigzilla would have been around, it would have been a lot wetter and greener. It also would have been loaded with giant predatory birds and crocodiles itching to eat a giant fuzzball.

To be fair, Goya, as the archaeologists affectionately called it, is different from the modern guinea pig in several ways. Imagine a guinea pig the size of a buffalo. Give it a long tail and situate it along a riverbank. It may even have been a herd animal; let's add a few more into your mental image for good measure. Oh, and it was able to walk on its hind legs, most likely. This adds up to a rodent that was approximately 3 meters long and weighed 700 kg, making it the largest rodent ever. The capybara has nothing on a giant guinea pig.

Strangely, there was only one skeleton of this monstrous rodent ever found. The only known specimen was found in Urumaco, Venezuela as a remarkably complete skeleton. Sure, the giant guinea pigs had predators, but it is still unlikely to find only one of this giant creature ever. Can we call 'alien interference' on this one? Maybe; I'm not ruling it out.

A post about giant rodents would not have been complete without Ultra-Peepi.

But really? I know what you're all thinking: When can we get Jurassic Park technology, clone this thing, and make it into one of the best-selling pets ever? It's not that regular guinea pigs aren't cute - we just want one that will give us piggy-back rides for carrots. That is all we ask.

Prehistoric Mammal Week: Palaeocastor.

Rodents are very successful animals. After the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, they evolved to spawn like crazy and chew through anything that their giant incisors possibly could. They are currently the most diverse group of mammal if not the most populous. Overall, they are solid survivors.

They also evolved to scare the f*ck out of modern man. No, we are not talking about the mice that make 50's housewives jump up on chairs. We are talking about giant rats that grew as large as bears, making the current largest rodent, the capybara, look like a kitten. We are talking about gophers with horns that would make any exterminator scream in terror.

We are also talking about rodents that made structures like this:

 

That is called a "Devil's Corkscrew." These, umm, screwy formations can go up to three meters down into the soil. They appeared around areas that either currently had water or were known to be near lakes in the past. Such areas include Nebraska and North Dakota, places where there is nothing today.

For the longest time, nobody knew what the hell the Devil's Corkscrew was. Some suggested it was a type of freshwater sponge; others said it was ancient vegetation. It was not until a giant rodent's skeleton was found in one of the curls that people figured out what this silly straw of a geological formation was: A burrow.

Now, if I told you all to name a type of rodent found near water, what would you say?



If you said a beaver, congrats: the nutria have not invaded your area yet. The Devil's Corkscrews were indeed made by Palaeocastor (lit. 'ancient beaver'). There were several species of Palaeocastor with varying sizes. These beavers lived during the Oligocene Period in the North American Badlands (told you those places sucked). Castroides, a beaver the size of a bear, evolved later.


Leave it to beaver to terrify us all.

Devil's Corkscrews were made by Palaeocastor eating its way through the earth as opposed to digging. As with modern beavers, fossil evidence says that these ancient beavers had large families. Picture that for a minute: A family of rodents with teeth strong enough to chew through the earth. There is a modern rodent that does that, too:


You'll be seeing it in your nightmares. We think the ancient beavers at least had fur. 

What reduced the beaver family from several species to only two extant members? Probably competition. Although beavers were always around water, Palaeocastor were more terrestrial. There was less competition for marine rodents, so the result was the webbed-footed, paddle-tailed animal found all over Canada, the northern U.S., and Europe.


Oh, and Bibarel.

So the burrows and giant beavers are pretty strange, but how about something bigger? Check back tomorrow.

Creature Feature: Gambian Pouched Rat.

3...2...1...

AWWWWW! <3

Flower up there is not a fancy rat. She is a Gambian Pouched Rat, also known as a Gambian Giant Rat (Cricetomys gambianus). Despite being only tangentially related to rats (they're both rodents - that's all!), they resemble giant regular rats at first glance. By "giant," we mean approximately a meter from head to tail.

What really sets these African rodents apart from other rats, however, is their cheeks; like hamsters and chipmunks, pouched rats have cheek pouches. Regular rats do not. The pouched rats are actually from a uniquely African branch of mousy rodents, and can make great exotic pets.

Yeeeaaah...that is where the problems come in.

If you have followed this blog long enough, you know the stance on exotic pets: As long as you can handle them, cool. As with giant pythons, however, a few animal conservation groups got cheesed by the giant rats. That's not fair; they're being trained to sniff out land mines in Africa.

Plus, they like bananas.

To be fair, these rats have one thing against them that the giant pythons did not: Monkeypox. As with the Black Plague, giant pouched rats were blamed for an outbreak of monkeypox in the U.S. in 2008. They have also invaded Florida - geez, guys, can't you just ban the exotic pet trade there? Yes, yes, Floridians love their giant snakes and rats as much as anyone else, but all of these invasions are in one area. Have some sense.

"They Actually Eat That:" Mice.

After insects getting the spotlight several times, are you really surprised mice ended up here? After all, they are at least as common as insects, a good source of protein, and follow too-omnivorous humans wherever they may go. They were bound to wind up on the menu eventually.

Eating mice goes way back. People have been eating mice since prehistoric times because, hey, they were around. The ancient Romans ate stuffed dormice on a fairly regular basis, to the point that there is a species of mouse called the "edible dormouse." Then people in Europe finally went, "ew, that's gross and not even a challenge. Let's eat innocent songbirds instead."

(Ortolan says hi.) 

Some poorer nations in Africa and Europe still eat mice, but, largely because of the rodent's reputation as unclean, eating them is considered taboo in many parts of the world. They're adorable, too, but when has cuteness ever stopped someone from eating an animal? Should you wish to try mouse meat, there are still plenty of places in which to eat them; not many of them are well-off countries.

Oh, except for China, Vietnam, and Korea. (We could debate about how poor or not they are until the cows come home; Korea and China are industrialized, at least.) What, are you guys going for some sort of "Place With the Weirdest Food" record?



China and Korea make the ancient Romans look like wusses for eating cute, fuzzy dormice. Besides using mouse meat in several dishes, they put regular mice on skewers along with snakes, lizards, and scorpions. This bizarre buffet is usually found in Chinese-style night markets. Take your pick of odd eats there. Name it and if it is small enough to put on a stick, they have put it on a stick.

It gets worse/better, depending on how you see these entries: Do you know what a pinky is?


Not THIS Pinky.

If you are not in the reptile or bird of prey trade, a pinky is a baby mouse no more than 2-3 days old. It is furless with closed eyes and no more than an inch or two (a few centimeters) from head to skinny tail. Pinkies are commonly used to feed baby snakes and other small carnivorous animals in captivity. In Korea, they are also put in wine.



Korea takes eating mice the extra mile by taking not just one, not two, but a whole mountain of baby mice and drowning them in wine. The resulting mixture is left to brew for a year. It supposedly tastes like gasoline and, according to Korean folk medicine, can cure asthma, liver problems (cure or cause, guys?) or...well, anything else that ails you. Baby mouse wine is a common health tonic there; I have heard that China does this as well, but Korea remains more notorious for it for whatever reason.

Congratulations, Korea: You have officially won the "Place With the Weirdest Foods" award. Take a bow; you deserve it for swallowing baby mice to cure asthma.


Next week: Enough about Korea. There's plenty of gross stuff in the States, too.

Creature Feature: Grasshopper Mouse.

Mice have a good reputation in pop culture. People love rooting for the little guy, and mice are among the littlest guys there are. Only mean, nasty animals like cats, hawks and snakes eat them. Whether you are scared or fond of mice, they are generally harmless creatures, and we root for the rodents when they get in the room with a cartoon cat. They're innocent.

Except for one genus.

Mice of the genus Onychomys are the eccentric cousins of the common house mouse. There are three species spread variously across the Americas, and they are all weirder than your average mouse. Hell, they're pretty weird by rodent standards, nutrias included.



"What? That looks like a pretty normal mouse."

Yes, it looks like a normal mouse. It's a little bigger and has longer claws, but why should that make any difference? Nutrias are bigger than most rodents, but even they're gentle herbivores that only look menacing. It's not like real-life-Raticate's huge yellow teeth will bite your hand off.

Grasshopper Mice are different. Beneath that cute exterior beats the heart of a cold-blooded killer. Don't believe me? Watch this:


I think that might even be a remixed Grasshopper Mouse howl in the background...

Grasshopper Mice are the only purely carnivorous rodents. They eat anything from bugs (such as grasshoppers) to snakes to even other mice. (There's a video of that, by the way; not for the faint of heart.)  They have evolved immunities to snake, spider, and scorpion venom, as well as ways of dealing with said creepy crawlies that makes Saw look like Barney. Tearing off a scorpion's tail and claws like that is vaguely like a human in a bulletproof vest tearing off your limbs even though you can't do anything to him anyways. Holy fuck; this cuddly critter just put Mighty Mouse to shame.


The Grasshopper Mouse has been called "Chuck Norris." Be very afraid, mouse-in-tights.

Grasshopper mice also howl. After a successful kill or to claim territory, a Grasshopper Mouse will let out a shrill call that is probably what a wolf howl would sound like if the Chipmunks got at it.  Click here for a video of this; YouTube has several 'modified' howls, including a Mexican soccer call. The real howl is actually pretty cool, and cements that this really is a wolf in mouse's clothing.

And you thought the Killer White Rabbit was bad. 

Screw the mongoose when it comes to snake removal. I want the mouse that thinks it's a wolf.

Creature Feature: Momonga.

If you have ever heard the above word before, you have no doubt borne witness to it in some form of Japanese monster culture. Yu-Gi-Oh! has a few Momonga cards and Pokemon just got another electric squirrel in Generation V:



Japan has several species of flying squirrel. They can all be referred to as "momonga," but the 'true' momonga is the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga). I'll let that sink in before I post the pic. Dwarf. Squirrel. That flies.

Brace yourselves:



How did nature make something so goshdarn cute? You might be able to blame insular dwarfism; sometimes, when creatures evolve on islands, they get substantially smaller than their mainland counterparts. Japan also has another giant momonga, which may be the opposite case (insular gigantism). In the end, it really does not matter: They are adorable.



Momongas, as well as other flying squirrels, do not actually fly. They have a flap of skin called a patagium in between their forelimbs and hindlimbs. "Parachuting squirrel" does not have the right ring to it, even though it would be more accurate.


The ugliest momonga picture science could manage.

The momonga is native only to the sub-alpine forests of Japan. It eats seeds and fruits - you know, like most squirrels do. As the big eyes might have hinted, the momonga is nocturnal. It is threatened by habitat loss, but not enough to make it a super-endangered animal (instead listed as least concern). 

By the way, be careful looking this little guy up on YouTube; I have seen a few sugar gliders posing as momonga. Those are cute, but not the dwarf flying squirrel. (They are actually marsupials, for starters; the Japanese use the term "momonga" to describe them regardless.) For future reference, here is a picture of the culprit:

Truly the eyes of a con artist.

Japan is capable of great atrocities and great cuteness; that is why they can make both tentacle porn and Hello Kitty. (For your own sanity, do not combine those two images in your head. Have a cute video to push that nasty image out.)



If this squirrel does not kill you by sheer cute, then you do not have a soul.

Creature Feature: Springhaas.

I was debating whether to do something cute or terrifying for today. The coin voted cute. Who am I to defy it?



Is it a rabbit? A baby kangaroo? A new, top-selling pet made by marketing committees and horrific adorable genetic splicing?



Furby, eat your chip out.

Oh, I wish. The springhaas/springhare (Pedetes capensis) is a vulnerable rodent from southern Africa. They are nocturnal animals that eat plants and insects. Most of their time is spent in burrows; their paws are equipped for digging and their ears are designed to keep sand out.

These guys have had taxidermists stumped for centuries. Is it a hare or a rodent? Should we lump it in with other rodents, or give it is own group? How many plushies of it should we order? Seriously, though, this little guy is pretty much his own group now. Adorable and weird have never looked so good together.

Despite being listed as "vulnerable," several people have springhares as pets. What, you thought they weren't cute enough to smuggle?


Even CITES couldn't stop this one from getting through.

Creature Feature: The Nutria.

Do you like rats?

Honestly, rats have a lot to like about them, even if they did unintentionally wipe out half of Europe. They're fuzzy, intelligent and make excellent lab subjects since they are so biologically similar to humans. They make good pets with as many colors as melanin can muster. They clean up our mess and get shit in return. If nothing else, they are extremely versatile creatures.


Our bad. Also, it's your fault for leaving that grain where we could get it, you slobs.

You'd think a bigger rat would be like a giant, buck-toothed plushie, right?



Wait a sec. What the fuck is that?! It looks like Raticate from Pokemon made into flesh!



Actually, yeah, it is. The nutria, also called the coypu, beverrat, or Myocastor coypus is a giant water rat native to South America. It was the basis for the annoyingly-common Raticate from Generation 1 of Pokemon. It was also farmed for its fur and found a home everywhere except Australia. Australia wiped out rabbits with a rabbit-killing virus; imagine what they could do to this thing besides make fur coats out of it.



Like beavers, nutria have orange enamel coating their ever-growing teeth. They do not build dams like beavers, but, being semi-aquatic rodents, have webbed hind feet and thick pelts. Their water-dwelling lifestyle has also led them to develop nipples on their flanks instead of their underbellies.

Nutria used to be farmed for their fur and low-cholesterol meat. Farming them, however, was not very profitable; many of them either escaped or were released. They were regarded as an invasive pest and have since been eradicated in several of the United States. Good riddance, in most cases, although its adaptability is impressive.

So, should you see one outside of South America, feel free to attack it with whatever bizarre creature you have that can control plants, fire, or water. The giant rat shouldn't be there.


I CHOOSE YOU!