Creature Feature: Spotted Skunk.

Skunks have as much uniqueness to them as any other animal. Spanning four genrera, they do not all have the same stripes, which cannot be said of animals such as cheetahs and zebras. There are many different sorts of skunk out there.  Honestly, just because the Looney Tunes say that a skunk can fall in love with a cat that just so happened to be painted with a skunklike stripe does not make it so. The two carnivores are too far apart to ever belong together like Pepe Le Pew so desires.


Mais, qu'est-ce que c'est?

The spotted skunk (genus Spilogale) would like a word with Warner Brothers. The four species of spotted skunks live in much of North America (minus the Great Lakes area -bummer) and some of Central America. They are omnivores, eating anything from berries to small animals. Yes, you can probably have one as a pet; check your local laws.

Unlike 'normal' skunks (y'know, in whatever way an animal that reeks so much can be considered 'normal'), spotted skunks have swirls of white streaked onto their black fur. The spotted skunks are smaller and faster than their striped relatives. They also sport silkier pelts and have been bred for the fur trade for over 100 years.

The spotted skunks should be submitting a letter of outrage to Warner Brothers any time now. Not only do they look considerably more weasel-like than other skunks, they are also frequently misidentified; their pelts used to be sold as "marten pelts," and the skunks themselves can be mistakenly called "civet cats." The two species are unrelated. Civet cats are vivverids and skunks are mustelids, the branch of carnvorids that includes weasels. Get it right, WB; the spotted skunks will leave you alone if you give them a ferret.



Plus, these skunks are far too badass to accept anything less. How many animals have you seen doing handstands lately?

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: Andean Condor.

In the grand scheme of things, many people overlook scavengers. After all, who wants to talk about creatures that feed on dead animals that they don't even hunt? (Actually, most of the "big predators" seen on Discovery Channel and the like scavenge, too; lions do so more often than hyenas.) What on earth could be interesting about an animal that eats rotting meat?



Oh, wow. Never mind. Take back all the bad reputation scavengers have for the Andean Condor (Vultur gryphus), the largest flying bird on land.

The Andean Condor ranges along the Andes mountains and the Western coast of South America.  It is entirely a scavenger, feeding on dead deer and other large carcasses. It sometimes follows other scavengers, such as turkey vultures, to find said large meals.



This condor possesses the largest wingspan of any bird that flies over land. Its wings stretch 3.2 meters - approximately 11 feet - from tip to tip. An Andean Condor uses its large wings to glide continuously over hot updrafts of air called thermals. It can spend over a half hour just riding thermals, never once flapping its wings, and its nests are located such that it can jump straight into an entrancing, majestic glide.


Can we get any more pictures of this bird flying? Sure.

The Andean Condor is one of the few carnivorous birds with distinct sexual dimorphism. Not only are males bigger than females - unusual for birds of prey - but they have different eye colors. The male also has a fleshy comb like a rooster's (only considerably more like a pancake). Both have the featherless heads common to all (not necessarily related) scavengers called vultures, and both clean their heads meticulously. (If you ate rotting animals, you would, too.)


Also, he just LOOKS like a dude. 

Due to their general awesomeness, Andean Condors were revered as gods by many South American tribes. They were often associated with the sun. Their bones were thought to have magical properties, so the natives around the Andes would often do the Chinese thing and use them as medicine. Even today, many nations, including Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Argentina use the Andean Condor as their national bird.

Also, because this condor was regal enough to get its own Nazca line, it became the 'boss among bosses' of the Earthbound Immortal card group in the popular card game Yu-Gi-Oh!. A shame that the only condor in Pokemon is not nearly as flattering.


When you look at Wiraqocha's pink wings, the Pokemon condor is particularly sad.

Creature Feature: ...Haggis?

Deep in the misty moors of Scotland, a strange, furry animal roams. It is called the Wild Haggis (Haggis scoticus), and is specially adapted to live in the mountainous highlands.



There are two subspecies of haggis: one with long right legs, and one with long left legs. They cannot interbreed because, if they try to mate, both partners will fall over...

HA HA! Fooled you! There is no such animal as a Wild Haggis!

You already know from "They Actually Eat That" what haggis really is: Sheep's organs simmered in a sheep's stomach with special sheepy seasonings for three hours. The Scots were so amused that tourists did not know what haggis was that they took the notion of somebody's innocent "is that some sort of animal?" and ran with it.


Complete with some INSANELY cool taxidermy.

There are millions of depictions of haggis as some sort of wild or domestic creature. They range from the furry critter seen above to disembodied stomachs with eyes, noses, and legs. There is even a cute little sculpture (or shop?) of a mother haggis and her little hagglets suckling her nipple-less belly.



As of 2003, 33% of Americans visiting Scotland believed that the haggis was an animal. Wow, we're stupid.

"They Actually Eat That:" Haggis.

The stereotypical Scotsman looks something like this:



The kids found out the hard way that not all people wearing skirts were women. 

Red hair, bagpipes, lots of plaid, kilts...all that's missing is Nessie, bad poetry, some bashing from the English, and haggis. You know, whatever haggis is.

What is haggis, anyways?



If Cthulhu grew honeydew melons, we are pretty sure that they would look something like haggis. Haggis also comes in sausage form, where it looks...well, just about as pleasant as any other sausage. (Now, you can read into this all you like, but I am not posting a sausage on this blog. You all had your fun with hagfish and lampreys.) Other sausages are just as disgusting in terms of what they look like inside.

It gets worse. You know that sausage is the combination of all the parts of the animal that nobody wants to eat, right? Well, haggis has some disturbingly specific ingredients. As per Wikipedia:

"Haggis is a dish containing sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours." The version that looks more like a sausage than Hell's melon substitutes "intestine" for "stomach," but that does not make it sound any less like an offering to the eldritch gods. IA SHRUB-NIGGURATH!

They Actually Eat That?! 

Yes, and they love it. Haggis is the national dish of Scotland for a reason: Despite how gross it looks and sounds, it is delicious. This is not like dog in Korea; there are countless stories of "haggis virgins" being converted overnight. Apparently it really is that damn good. (Sorry, I have never been to Scotland, nor do I eat sausage. No offense to any Scots reading this.) Haggis sounds like it is worth a try if sausage is up your alley. If you like turnips and mashed potatoes, so much the better.



Haggis looks slightly less disgusting as mush (like everything else on the plate).

Haggis is so popular that it has its own holiday in Scotland. Part of its fame is due to the poetry of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, who wrote Address to a Haggis. If you thought writing to a Grecian urn was stupid, at least the urn was not about to be eaten; regardless of his poetry's premise, the poem was popular enough to warrant a fresh haggis-cutting on Burns' Day (January 25th).



As this video says, haggis was created to use up more of the animal. They went the extra mile to make it taste good as well. The need to use up unpleasant parts of the animal created almost all sausages, as well as the "mystery meat" that used to go into McDonald's chicken nuggets. People eat what's around them and tend to make the most of whatever it is. That said, haggis has an undeserved reputation for being gross. Just wait until you see what's in a hot dog; it's just as bad.

Creature Feature: Colossal Squid.

OH MY GOD A COLOSSAL SQUID! It's a squid and it's colossal!

The Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) is one of the rarest cephalopods known. It lives in a nice, wide ring around Antarctica, which leads it to sometimes being called the "Antarctic Squid." This creature and the giant squids of the genus Architeuthis are probably what inspired tales of sea monsters like the Norse kraken.


The Greeks had other sea monsters  and a million crazy little islands to pick on.

The term "kraken" should ring a few bells if you have seen any crappy CGI flick at all.  It has become a generic modern term for "that giant-ass cephalopod," regardless of whether or not it should really be part of that particular mythological canon. Sometimes, all we see of a kraken are those giant tentacles wrapping around a ship.

Both the giant squids and Colossal Squid owe their massive size to abyssal gigantism. Because the deep-sea abyss is a high-pressure, isolated region, some creatures have evolved to massive sizes. The exact reasons for this phenomenon are unknown, but some theories include pressure resistance, scarcity or abundance of energy, delayed sexual maturity and/or slower metabolisms. Whatever the reason, the deep-sea abyss has yielded many creatures far bigger than their shallow water counterparts, including sperm whales, spider crabs, and of course giant squids.


Or you can blame Cthulhu, take your pick.

That said, how colossal is "colossal" according to science?



The most complete Colossal Squid is 14 meters long and weighs half a ton. In relative terms, that is at longer than a school bus. In squid terms, the giant squid still gives it a run for its money at 13 meters. "Colossal" is still a better name than "that squid only slightly bigger than the giant squid, but still large enough to make us wet ourselves," so let's forgive science on this one.

Creature Feature: Cerastes.

So I went to the reptile store yesterday. A young lady was there with her boyfriend; she was one of those people that was scared of snakes, even if they looked like cotton candy. I can't really pinpoint what freaks people out about them; it could be the way they move, that a good chunk of them are poisonous, their forked tongues, or that, in Western culture, they are pretty much cemented as avatars of Satan. Do snakes really need any more fodder to be considered "evil?"

Apparently, yes:

HAIL SATAN!

No, somebody did not just go in there and PhotoShop horns on. The whole genus Cerastes (as well as Pseudocerastes) sports small, devilish horns above its eyes. The horns of Cerastes are really just one scale; Pseudocerastes horns contain many scales. Horned vipers are generally spread across Africa and the Middle East with plenty of mythology to go with the territory. Before you ask, yes, they range all the way into Israel.



The Egyptians used the horned viper as one of their hieroglyphs. The "f" sound as in their word "fy" for viper (which is onomatopoeic of the viper's hissing and scale-rustling) and as a possessive. (Using a snake as a possessive has its own interesting implications.) Every snake was treated as some form of divine manifestation in Egypt, and they had very good records on how to treat snakebite. Desert horned vipers (Cerastes cerastes) were among the animals that they mummified, even though they were also among the most feared snakes in the area. They certainly look the part.



The generic name "cerastes" comes from a horned, spineless serpent in Greek mythology. According to the Greeks (and, later, DaVinci) the serpent possessed either four horns or the horns of a ram. It would lie in the sand with only these horns exposed, tricking other animals into thinking that there were worms poking up from beneath the sand. Then, the flexible snake would strike.

The real snake is far less imposing. Although the horned face, spadelike head, and cat's-eye pupils all look legitimately intimidating, those images are close-ups of a very small snake. The longest member of Cerastes gets less than 3 feet long (less than a mater for metric people). These are not roaring dragons from the bowels of Hell; they are small, secretive ambush predators that only have a chance of killing you.

Cerastes sounds like one of the better beginner hots. When asked about how potent the Sahara Sand Viper's venom was, a user called Viperkeeper on YouTube responded "ruin your week.""Ruin your week" is a LOT better than "ruin your life," which is what most other venomous snakes will do to you. (I do not condone handling ANY venomous snakes. Hooks, not hands!) Most of the symptoms of horned viper bites involve the circulatory system, including the rather nasty side-effect of urinating some red blood cells. Again, this is not considered lethal; a rattlesnake bite is much worse. Venom aside, desert animals are usually very easy to keep, and horned vipers are no exception.

Plus, they've made awesome monsters for centuries. Prince of Persia recently had a few 'trained' horned vipers. Snakes do not do that; they have no social structure to speak of, do not come when called, and certainly will not swallow knives for their masters. Don't try it at home, kids!