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David Mizejewski
Life-long nature lover who is working his dream job at the National Wildlife Federation.
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It's not quite bogus. The recordings are indeed real. However, the composer does seem to have arranged them to achieve the harmony. The post has been updated with the correct information (see above).
Thanks for your diligence in researching this and for pointing out the error.
Cricket Song Slowed Down Sounds Like Angels Singing
Musical composer Jim Wilson took the chirping song of crickets and slowed it way down, and the result it truly fantastic. When slowed down, the cricket song sounds like a chorus of tiny human singers, or probably more accurately the best acapela group in the universe, since the gentle harmonie...
That, at least, you might be right about. Based on the drawing it's clearly identical to a blue jay except for the coloring. I think it's more likely due to what you describe (inability to see the reflected blue light due to the angle) than a mutation or hybrid. We'll probably never know for sure.
Help Identify This Mystery Bird
Well, animal lovers, I've got a bit of a mystery here and can use your help trying to figure it out. My friend Ryan had an odd animal sighting and sent me the following message on my Facebook page: "Hi David, I need help in identifying a bird I saw today. I can't find it online. It was about th...
@Manticore Pinion -- Uuuuuhhhm, no.
All artists use references, and it's quite possible that Ryan Browne did look at a photo reference of a blue jay in profile when creating his sighting sketch. Nothing odd about that.
That doesn't mean he traced it.
If you clicked on the links to Mr. Browne's work that I put into the post (3 times), you'd see that he is quite capable of sketching a bird without needing to trace.
Here it is again, since you seemed to have missed it. http://ryanedwardbrowne.tumblr.com/
Help Identify This Mystery Bird
Well, animal lovers, I've got a bit of a mystery here and can use your help trying to figure it out. My friend Ryan had an odd animal sighting and sent me the following message on my Facebook page: "Hi David, I need help in identifying a bird I saw today. I can't find it online. It was about th...
Well, that was quick! rc6750, send me your mailing address at mizejewski@nwf.org and I'll get your book in the mail next week after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Earth Insect or SciFi Creature?
In my last post I shared some pictures of a cute mystery creature. Today's post is another odd animal that looks like it could be out of a fictional story. This time it's an insect and I can easily see it terrorizing people in any number of SciFi films. Can you identify it? I'll send a signe...
Nicole is the winner!! Congrats. Send me your mailing address to mizejewski@nwf.org and I'll send your book out next week.
Here's more info on the northern short-tailed shrew:
http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/information/?s=050012
What is this Mystery Creature That Sits Like a Person?
I received these photos of a tiny and adorable woodland creature from one of my colleagues at the National Wildlife Federation. The way it's sitting on its little bottom just like a person immediately conjures up images of characters from beloved childhood tales such as The Wind in the Willows,...
We have a winner! Dave Busby was the first one to correctly guess that is an Eastern Hercules Beetle. Even better, he got the scientific name AND the gender correct too.
Dave, send your mailing address to mizejewski@nwf.org and I'll send you a copy of my book.
Here's more info on these cool beetles:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/2877
http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/eastern_hercules_beetle.htm
Can You Guess the Giant Beetle Species?
One of the reasons I love working for National Wildlife Federation is that it's pretty much a daily occurrence that one of my colleagues sends around an email with a cool animal photo. Today, someone sent a photo showing an odd insect. It's odd because it's a rarely seen species, and also, sad...
Thanks for your comment Lee. This is a fun, light-hearted blog focusing on odd animal stories, not a hard news site. As I mentioned in the post, I did see the story on several other sites, and while I cannot verify 100% that is true, the possibility of it being so was worthy of sharing it here. As I also mentioned in the post, the behavior the zookeeper was mimicking is certainly a biologically accurate way of dealing with a constipated baby mammal.
If it ends up being a joke, that's fair game for this blog too. Should I find out that's the case, I will definitely update the post to make the correction. In the meantime, I hope you can appreciate (the admittedly juvenile) humor in the story.
Zookeeper Licks Monkey's Butt to Save Its Life
I have no idea if this story is true or just a joke, but it's being reported on several news sites and blogs, and it's too bizarre not to share here. According to chinasmack.com, it all started when keepers allowed a young Francois' Leaf Monkey into a public exhibit. Zoo visitors in their ignor...
Thanks everyone for pointing out that Guy Combes is primarily a painter. I've updated the post to reflect that.
Rare Spotless Cheetah Photographed
One of the most defining characteristics of the cheetah, after its legendary speed, is its spotted coat. That fact makes the photos recently taken by wildlife artist Guy Combes strange and fascinating. Combes captured images of a very rare, spotless cheetah in Kenya. Dubbed the "lesser-spotted ...
Thanks for your comment, Guy, and for going through the effort to document this amazing and rare creature.
I think some of the hunting comments are just people being snarky and they're probably unaware of the protections that Kenya provides to wildlife and the punishments doled out for poaching.
Rare Spotless Cheetah Photographed
One of the most defining characteristics of the cheetah, after its legendary speed, is its spotted coat. That fact makes the photos recently taken by wildlife artist Guy Combes strange and fascinating. Combes captured images of a very rare, spotless cheetah in Kenya. Dubbed the "lesser-spotted ...
Oops - that should be 100,000 acre wilderness! I just corrected it.
Rare Spotless Cheetah Photographed
One of the most defining characteristics of the cheetah, after its legendary speed, is its spotted coat. That fact makes the photos recently taken by wildlife artist Guy Combes strange and fascinating. Combes captured images of a very rare, spotless cheetah in Kenya. Dubbed the "lesser-spotted ...
Sorry folks if it seemed I was talking down by sharing info about sea stars and gulls. As a Naturalist, I'm an educator first and foremost and part of my job is to dispel myths and misconceptions about wildlife, and I recognized my own "nature-nerdiness." But this is a fun, light-hearted blog that focuses on odd things in the animal world, so I try not to take it too seriously. You shouldn't either.
Starfish Runs from Seagull
The title of this post is a misnomer. Technically speaking, there are no such things as "starfish" and "seagulls." The real name for these animals are sea stars and gulls and there are dozens of species of each. In the case of the former, these animals are not fish but belong to a group of in...
Coyotes are native to North America, so unless someone released one in Belgium, it's unlikely. If they did, it would be just as much of an "animals in odd places" kind of story. To my eye, this is not a coyote.
It's also possible that this is a feral dog. That's harder to know without actually capturing it and really looking at its DNA. Since dogs and wolves are the exact same species, they can look very similar. That said, this animal looks very wolfish in my opinion.
Wolf Caught on Video in Odd Place
Recently a wolf was captured on video in Belgium, the first of its species to be documented there in over a century. The animal was caught on video when the crew of a television series called Animals in Trouble set up a camera trap to get footage of a predator the had recently killed some she...
Thanks for pointing this out @Bill Burns. While it does seem that the behavior in this film clip was staged animals do indeed get drunk on fermenting fruit. I'll update the post though to make this point.
Animals Get Drunk Too
As a Naturalist, I often get questions from friends and family about wildlife. That happened today when a friend sent me a rather interesting (and slightly anthropomorphized) video about African animals getting tipsy on overripe fruit. She wanted to know if it was true that this happened. ...
@Sonnie: I'm so glad you found my post! Sounds like you've got a lot of fans out there based on all the comments here verifying that you're the real deal. I think that's AWESOME!
@Tonya: I wasn't talking mean at all, just curious if Sonnie could truly produce those amazing animal sounds of if it was some kind of special effect.
Woman Sounds Exactly Like a Dog
A friend posted the video below to Facebook and I'm not sure what to make of it. In the video a woman who dubs herself an "animal impressionist" demonstrates a series of dog sounds that are so freakishly authentic-sounding that I can't help but wonder if she's just lipsyncing to recorded cani...
Black Tide: Voices from the Gulf Premieres TONIGHT
Posted Jul 28, 2011 at Animal Planet Gulf Oil Spill
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Sue - Thanks for pointing this out. The accepted common name for this breed is "fainting goats" but you are of course correct that they are not truly fainting. Maybe you could start a movement to change what people call these goats. What would you suggest as an alternative name?
Strange Smiling Goat
My friend Shea Gunther, who writes for a great website called Mother Nature Network, posted this most excellent photo of a goat that seems to flashing a huge grin. Of course goats don't smile to express happiness in the same way that humans do, but you'd never know it from looking at this odd p...
LOL, busted. I just corrected the typo. Sometimes my fingers get ahead of me when I type and I miss it in my proofread. Thanks for catching it.
Killer Fungus Eats Ant Brains!
Enjoy this amazing footage of ant having their brains eaten by parasitic fungus. I should have saved this one for Halloween, it's so creepy. But I couldn't resist. I sure don't ever want to end up like these ants. The natural world works in strange and macabre ways sometimes!
Hmmmm, there seems to be something wrong with the pink dolphin video. I just checked and the html code is there but for some reason it's not showing in the published post. Stay tuned and we'll get it fixed.
Hong Kong Has Pink Dolphins
I've posted about pink hippos and odd dolphin behavior before here at Animal Oddities, but I've never posted about pink dolphins. Check out the news report below on the rare Chinese white dolphin, which is less white and more pink. These dolphins are a popular attraction in the waters off Ho...
@ignatz - Good questions. There was indeed photography 113 years ago but these apparently the first photos ever taken of this species. That said, people were identifying and classifying species before photography and DNA testing. This is a documented species that is pretty distinctive in appearance, so identification based on just these photos is probably a safe bet. But to be sure a specimen would have to be tested.
Odd Rodent Rediscovered!
Conservationists in Colombia, South America recently had an unexpected surprise: the rediscovery of a mammal that hadn't been seen for 113 years! Known as the red-crested tree rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis), the guinea pig-sized rodent was throught to be extinct until one randomly emerged fr...
Hi Roger - I've updated the post to credit you and included links to your site. Thanks for sharing your great footage!
Lions Steal Camera and Make Film
Wildlife cinematographer Roger de la Harpe was in for a surprise when a lioness decided to steal his camera and shoot some footage of her own. The video shows first one then two lionesses who appear shortly after de la Harpe deposited his camera alongside a road. Curiousity must have gotten t...
@Robin, I think you're last sentence sums what's "off" about this nicely. A lot of people have freaked out over the child's behavior, the parents' reactions and the fact that the little girl is shirtless. I actually have no issue with any of these things. If you watch the video closely, the child is simply curious. While she understands that the squirrel is dead and not alive like, say, her dog, she clearly doesn't have any of the negative associations that we are taught to have regarding death. I don't think that's a bad thing. If the squirrel were 5 days dead and the parents let the girl carry it around, that would be sick. But it was fresh killed minutes before, and if it were me I wouldn't worry too much about diseases either. I think it was totally healthy way for the parents to react to the incident so as to not freak out the girl or teach her to overreact to death. As for the girl's lack of clothing, I was surprised that people are so offended over it. Don't all toddlers run around like this in their own homes? Suddenly parents that don't have their small children completely wrapped in clothing all the time have nefarious sexual intentions? That attitude seems crazy to me.
That said, going back to @Robin's comments above, I think it's a little weird that they decided to post this video on Youtube for the world to see, judge, and possibly sexually exploit the now public image of their near-naked toddler. The combo of these things was probably not the best judgment, but I can't imagine any of that was going through the dad's head when he recorded and posted the video.
Little Girl has Dead Squirrel as Pet
The video below shows a little girl gleefully carrying around the body of a dead gray squirrel while her parents nonchalantly record the incident on camera. If that's not an Animal Oddity, I don't know what is! I was a little freaked out when I first started watching the video and my head fille...
@dogdoc and @KylieAnne - I'm a naturalist, not a vet, so I wasn't aware of the condition of hyperesthesia. While I think it would be difficult to make a diagnosis simply from this short video, everyone reading these comments is better off for being aware that it could be due to a not-so-funny condition. Thanks for sharing.
Here is some more information on the condition:
http://www.cathealth.com/hyperesthesia.htm
http://www.purelypets.com/articles/felinehyperesthesia.htm
Cat Talk
One of the things that differentiates big cats from little cats is the noises they make. Little cats such as bobcats, ocelots and domestic cats can purr but lack the ability to roar. Big cats, including lions, tigers and jaguars, can roar but not purr (there are exceptions of course; mountai...
Gulf Oil Disaster: One Year Later
Posted Apr 20, 2011 at Animal Planet Gulf Oil Spill
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@Jenn is correct that one of the big differences between storks and ostriches or emus is that storks are predatory and carnivorous. Ostriches and emus are omnivores and do eat some animal matter, but it's mostly insects and tiny vertebrates.
Humans, even with our technology, weapons and large brains, don't ALWAYS have the advantage. Beyond our brains and technology, we're pretty ill-equipped to fight or flee other living things or survive in the wilderness for any length of time (at least those of us living in modern urban environments). Other animals clearly have the advantage over humans in those scenarios.
The size of a young H. floresiensis would be well within the size of the normal prey items of this giant stork, and if caught alone, without the protection of adults, it's possible that a juvenile could be killed and eaten by this bird. Of course this is just a theory that, however plausible, needs a lot more evidence to prove it.
@Julian, you might be interested to read another blog post I've written about other bird species that fed on people: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-mizejewski/animal-oddities-birds-tha_b_797815.html
Giant, Hobbit-Eating Stork Discovered
Scientists have discovered fossils of a giant, hobbit-eating stork. This is definitely one of the oddest ledes I've had the pleasure of writing for this blog. Here's the explanation. This odd story started several years ago, when fossils of a previously unknown human species were discovered by...
New Maps Show Wildlife Impacts of Gulf Oil Disaster
Posted Dec 16, 2010 at Animal Planet Gulf Oil Spill
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