Creature Feature: Arabian Ostrich.

Those of you familiar with Sappho 1 are probably aware of Aphrodite's sparrow-drawn chariot.
If that sounded weird to you, don't worry, there's a reason for that: The word used, "struthio," can refer to two completely different birds. One of them is, obviously, a sparrow; the other is an ostrich, quite possibly the Arabian Ostrich (Struthio camelus syriacus):


Wark?

The fuck? How did the word for 'sparrow' become the word for 'ostrich,' too? Do not ask me to explain why the Greek language evolved that way; I honestly haven't the foggiest. Really, though, the "ostrich" part of struthio has a dinosaur to go with it; it's kinda weird that the translations of Sappho 1 that I have read only use "sparrow."


"Sparrow mimic" my ass.

Enough with my language lessons. The Arabian Ostrich was, as its name indicates, an ostrich native to the Near East. The main thing distinguishing it from the larger African Ostrich was a slightly smaller size (as well as a possibly lighter female). There were two distinct subpopulations: One near Arabia, Syria, and Iraq and another closer to Africa.


By the way, Disney cannot sex ostriches worth a crap. This is a male; Disney's Prince of Persia called it a female. You'd think an ostrich racer would know what sexes his birds were.

This bird, being native to the area, was featured prominently in Sumerian culture. They used the bird for sacrifices and painted its eggs into the most awesome Easter eggs ever. (Except they were not used for Easter, obviously.) It was traded as far as Etruria (central Italy) by the Sumerians, and later went all the way to China.



The Jews also cited it as a bad parent (in contrast to the stork that brings babies) because the female left the nest so often. Yeah, ostrich eggs have a nice hard shell, and human babies are weak, noisy little poop bags. It's hard to not anthropomorphize at times, but when your offspring are that different, the analogy falls flat.

Islamic culture saw this bird as a representation of status. Like the aurochs, it became classy to hunt Arabian ostriches.If killed in a certain way, it was also A-OK to eat ostrich meat...what? They're basically giant chickens.

The Greeks and Romans would have been aware of both the Arabian and African populations. The Romans in particular used the Arabian ostrich in venationes, hunting games held in Roman amphitheaters.

It is easy to see why this bird went extinct. Over-hunting, using its eggs as art, and use in Roman games all contributed to the bird's extinction. The last known individual died in 1966. Its niche will not go unfilled; captive-bred Somali Ostriches are being released into the areas where the Arabian Ostrich once flourished.

 Now I have the image of Aphrodite in a chariot drawn by chocobos in my head. Could someone please get it out? (I thought my chocobo jokes were over. I was wrong.)

Creature Feature: Spanish Dancer.

Did you know that you can get cold sores from stress? Well, you can, and I have two now. Enjoy this lava lamp in sea slug form while I collapse; I will be commuting a LOT in these next couple of weeks.



Soooo yeah, that's a Spanish Dancer (Hexabranchus sanguinus - what an awesome name!) is a carnivorous sea slug native to the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific Ocean. It is one of the largest nudibranchs around at over 40 cms long. Take out a ruler with centimeters and inches if you have to.

Besides floating around like it does above, it can move like a normal slug...but that swimming is so damn cool that nobody really cares. It was named, of course, due to its unique locomotion resembling a flamenco dancer's big, flowing skirt.

Night.

Creature Feature: White Snailfish and the Egret Orchid.

So there was this post on CNN.com that a friend linked me to. He added "I don't know what you're going to do with this." I will grant that it does have a lot of the qualities I was talking about in my star-nosed mole entry - light coloration (if you don't use melanin, you lose it), small eyes, and an overall "weird" look.

After clicking around, I found that they were among the deepest-living fish in the world. Trust me, science, there is always something deeper. You will NEVER see how truly weird this world can get. EVER!

World's deepest living fish



VideoLife Uzerinden Izle

He was probably more referring to my monster-designing capabilities than this blog, but regardless, nature has beaten me to the punch this time:



An abyssal fish...on land?! Actually, most people think that these look more like birds than fish. That's why it is commonly called the white egret orchid instead of Habenaria radiata (which does not have much to do with ANYTHING at first glance). They can be found in Japan, China, Korea and Russia, so there is really no good reason why they have not been made into Pokemon yet. They are also fairly easy to acquire from flower companies.

Now imagine if they could glow in the dark. Oooh.

(...Yeah, even though it's short, you can tell I wanted to do the egret flowers for a while.)

Creature Feature: Antlion.

JESUS CHRIST IT'S AN ANTLION! GET IN THE CAR!

Wait a sec. Trapinch is an antlion? What the hell's an antlion, anyways? Some of us probably thought that it was some sort of dragonfly (darn Nintendo), but the real bug is far more awesome than any dragon. It's also a lot uglier than Trapinch:



The term "antlion" can refer to any member of the family Myrmeleontidae. The bug above does not look a thing like a lion, even if the jaws do look pretty damn vicious. It does however, eat ants...in a sinister fashion that probably makes most exterminators jealous:



Antlions make remarkably precise little sand traps to catch their prey. After making a circle, they begin to crawl backwards, digging a funnel into the sand. The trap is designed such that the angle of the sand is at a steepness called "the angle of repose" - that is, the steepest angle that the sand can maintain without having the pit collapse in on itself. All it takes is a gentle touch to make the trap do just that. Then, the ant is just a snap away from being dinner. Presto, instant meal brought to you by the wonders of physics!


For some reason, they also make bigger pits when the moon is full...which makes one wonder if antwolf would have perhaps been a more appropriate title.

The antlion is technically only the larval form of the insect. After it has dug a million sand pits and eaten a load of ants, it goes into a pupal stage. (No idea why Nintendo skipped that.) One month later, it emerges as an adult that looks quite a lot like a dragonfly or damselfly, but is not. Adult antlions are not as strong of fliers as dragonflies or damselflies, and can deliver a painful bite if touched on their drunken hunt for a mate.


This guy seems to be fine.

This makes one wonder about Flygon, though...a horny bug that can breathe fire. WE'RE SCREWED!

Creature Feature: Giant Clam.

Bivalves are cool. They make pearls. They look good and they taste good (well, to some people). Their shells are darn awesome, but not quite as awesome as some snails. Never has a bivalve seen the light of this blog...until now.



Meet the giant clam (Tridacna gigas). Its name says it all: This clam is the largest extant bivalve known to man. It is native to the South Pacific (they have more awesome fauna where this came from), and, owing to its great size, often carries a lot of stories with it. It is one of the most endangered clam species.


That's not an eye, it's a siphon. Really.

A little primer on bivalves: All bivalves, clams included, start their lives as little larvae called glochidia. These are mobile little critters that look an awful lot like Pac-Man would if he ever made a heavy metal album:


Those teeth are for latching onto fish, not eating your soul.

The giant clam goes from being a motile little Pac-Man larva to a sessile, gigantic clam. How big are we talking? The shell of the largest giant clam was 115 cm long, and it is estimated that the live weight was around 734 pounds (340 kg).


It's a clam and it's giant!

Along with being the world's largest clam, the giant clam produces the world's largest pearls. The largest pearl on record, the Pearl of Lao Tzu, was given to Wilburn Cobb by a Philippine chief in 1939. This pearl is 24 cm's in diameter and weighs 6.4 kg (9.45 pounds). Later, Cobb told a story about how the pearl was cultivated in successively larger clams until it reached this massive size. Since its discovery, it has been dubbed "the Pearl of Lao Tze" and "the Pearl of Allah." It currently resides in the private collection of Victor M. Barbish, so should you ever desire a giant calcified bird dropping, you know who to go after.


You would have to be an eccentric billionaire to want it to begin with, really.

The giant clam gets its food from the algae growing in its shell. Every so often, it opens its shell to let the algae photosynthesize. These algae are what allow it to get so big; hey, if Popeye could not convince you that veggies were a good thing, perhaps a giant clam can.

Creature Feature: Kookaburas.

At some point in your life, you have heard this laugh. It is often part of the standard "jungle noise" track. Many people probably assume that it is some sort of loud monkey call.

Nope. That was a bird up there:



The Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) is a carnivorous bird native to Australia. As its form would suggest, it is closely related to kingfishers, but hunts land-locked prey like rodents instead of fish. These vocal birds are a dime a dozen in Australia; due to their hysterical calls at dawn and dusk, they have sometimes been called the "Bushman's clock." Other names include "giant kingfisher" and "Laughing Jackass."


They're cute once they have feathers, too.

All kookaburras 'laugh.' The Laughing Kookaburra is by far the most notorious. Although it sounds happy to humans (enough so to merit a children's song), these calls are usually territorial. There are several kookaburras in one territory that form the chorus, but like boy bands, they are otherwise trying to outsing each other.

Once they get more members, they will call themselves the Backstreet Birds.

These are probably the most friendly carnivorous birds one will ever meet. They willingly accept handouts. Hell, if you do not give them your barbeque meat, they might just take it.


Why so serious?

"They Actually Eat That:" Mickey D's and Other "Fast Food."

Here on "They Actually Eat That," we try to wound all nations equally when it comes to gross food. It stands to reason that the fast food giant McDonald's would eventually wind up here.

Many of us already know that fast food is horrible for us. It has a lot of fat, even more sugar and is generally treated as "empty calories" by most nutritionists. Most of us grew up with fast food in America because they advertised during our Saturday morning cartoons.

A note when buying junk food: There are a number of things that the companies do not want you to know are terrible for you. Anything ending in "-ose" is a sugar; everything on a McDonald's menu has at least one ingredient that requires knowledge of Latin/Greek to properly decipher; it does not matter if the label says "0g Trans Fat," if it has "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" in the ingredients, it still has trans fat.

And you eat it every day if you live in America.

They Actually Eat That?!

The menu at McDonald's is guilty of all of the above.  Sure, you think a hamburger there is just meat, cheese, and bread, but it has a million chemicals, additives and "natural flavors."



This is what goes into chicken nuggets: A nauseatingly pink paste that is, essentially, mystery meat. Officially, it is called mechanically-separated meat (MSM). It does not consist of eyeballs and such, but the slim pickings off of the bones are pretty gross in their own right. McDonald's used this icky paste up until 2003; I do not know what they have replaced it with, but there is probably a lot less chicken in there than you think. MSM can still be found in hot dogs, salami, frozen chicken breasts, and a bunch of other meats that you probably thought were safe.

The whole food industry is a lie. There are huge companies lying and bribing in Washington to make us all fat. There is no truly safe fast food in the U.S.

And you know what's sad? Other countries buy it. The Chinese think that Ronald McDonald knows what kids should eat. Marketing companies have all sorts of clever gimmicks, such as these adorable little cheese blobs from Japanese Pizza Hut (they took the franchise and ran with it - seriously).They are trying their damnedest to get money while screwing over as many people as possible.

That means you, too.