Sorry for disappearing. Things have been hectic and I've just been feeling pretty run-down overall, so I haven't had the energy to remember to do this most of the time. Sorry.
I've got lots of plans moving forward and lots of ideas about things, but I don't know when I'll be able to do this. I'll try when I can, but no promises. I'm just tired and it's hard to do the things I really need to do, I don't have the energy to do more. Sorry.
Christmas takes a lot more everything than anyone actually plans for. It's annoying. Even more annoying is that my oven decided to die literally mid-cookie-bake. I had a pan of Hawaiian Butter Mochi in it, along with a tray of gluten-free almond sugar cookies, and the oven lost heat enough that neither actually finished baking. I had to get everything baked up in my tiny toaster oven, which I actually have the oven version of that because it's so much more useful than a pop-up toaster. It was annoying, but that was my option.
Since that's been on my mind a lot recently, I've got two things for amusement here. Well, one recent story and what I think of it.
The story first, is that there was a thing done in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recently with 83,000 cookies put together in a cookie swap, to try to break a world record. I'm not entirely certain what record was attempted to be broken, or who with, but...well, it's a pretty big event. 83,427 cookies to be more exact, baked by 583 bakers in 67 teams from 14 states and New Zealand. They provided evidence for the Guinness book of world records in hopes that they could get the record for the largest cookies swap.
This is...an interesting story. It involves a lot of people and moving parts and could be very impressive sounding.
Except...well, I'm me.
I'm not particularly religious, but I do have affiliations with a church that I've been going to at least twice a year for my entire life. It used to be a lot more, but lately, I can only guarantee two days that I'd be there, and now I'm not even sure about that. The first day was the Shrove Tuesday Pancake Feed that my family put together because my brother makes the best pancakes. The other was the Cookie Faire in December, but apparently the Health Department says that a bake-sale type thing is no longer allowed because there's too much risk that someone could get sick and blame the church or a baker. To keep this even vaguely child-friendly, I'm going to skip entirely over my opinion of that and those people.
The Cookie Faire was something that my Church put together every December, for the community. We'd bake up all sorts of cookies and homemade candies and donate them, then people would come in and pick out their favorites from the selection to put in their personal boxes. We sold them by the pound, cookies 6 dollars a pound and candy 8, then we'd donate all the money to the local food bank.
This is the part where I'm really not impressed by that 80,000 cookie count.
The last time we were able to put that on before the Health Department got too upset about it, I baked about 15,000 cookies for it, of 60 different types. I also made about two dozen different kinds of candy. In my home kitchen, over the course of a month, a few hours a day most days. They'd get made, then put into a freezer until the day of. The list of planned bakes for me was three pages long, single space, over 100 planned cookie types. Most of them I made about 200 of.
So, if I want to challenge that, I just need about 6-7 people as enthused about it as me, and a lot of people to come eat them. The number of people they had there, they could have just baked 100 apiece and gotten there pretty easily. I can do that in less than two hours, if you don't count frosting them. 67 teams, yeah, one days work for each of them and all's good.
This boils down to: Very impressive act.
Hold My Beer.
Sources:
Go look it up yourself. Pittsburgh, 80,000 cookies, world record.
P.S. Might not actually try to break their record, just giving it some serious consideration to try.
As above, Happy National Cat Herder's Day.
You might know that the phrase 'it's like herding cats' means that it's a chaotic and impossible task. I've also heard a similar phrase of 'nailing jello to a tree', which I find hilarious in so many ways. Today is the day that we celebrate those that have to do impossible tasks, or somehow succeed at controlling the chaos. Cats are not required, but they're always welcome.
In case you're curious, I have tried herding cats and it's actually kinda workable as long as you're inside a house and using a squirt bottle to do the herding. Kinda. Maybe. I mean, I got them out of the area I didn't want them in, and I count that as enough of a win.
Today is the day to celebrate the people that do the impossible. People like project managers that have to get everyone to work together on a project with deadlines and possible interpersonal conflicts. People like office managers (or assistants, receptionists, whoever the miracle worker is in the office) that make sure paperwork is done on time and correctly, and things run smoothly. People like caretakers that help their clients make sense of what can be a pretty big mess in their lives. People like parents and teachers who have to somehow manage to herd actual kids for years on end. People who manage to tame the chaos and keep lives on track. Those people are not just worthy of appreciating, but worth having their own day to thank them and make sure they know that you appreciate the herculean tasks they manage to perform every day.
It's been suggested that you might celebrate this day by using your favorite cat meme or video to draw attention to it and spread word so that, in the future, more people will know the holiday, along with trying to make your own cat herders feel appreciated.
Naturally, I like this day just for the job of herding cats because, as you know, I have a few of them. For a random fun thing though, here's a video of my silly kittens. The bigger one, Emu, doesn't like sharing her can of wet food, but little Pan would like some too. I just find Emu's reaction hilarious.
Sources:
National Day Calendar-- Cat Herders Day
National Today-- Cat Herders Day
This is a really weird language, but also very interesting. Buusuu apparently has a course in it if you really need to try to learn it.
So, here's how it's weird.
Silbo Gomero is a whistle-language, where the speakers 'whistle in Spanish' so that they can be heard across canyons and stuff on the Canary Island that this language originates from.
If you know Spanish, you can kinda figure it out, but it is still very weird. The one time I heard it, admittedly on an episode of QI, it sounded a bit like a cringy high voice was speaking through a napkin, for lack of a better comparison.
Considering that it's all done in whistles, they did have to break down the language to only a few sounds so that it can survive distortion from the surroundings better, turning the entire language into two sounds for vowels and five for consonants, give or take. The interesting thing is that the language used to have a basis in another language, but it got adopted into Spanish when the conquistadors came around
Even with phones and whatnot, there are a lot of people working to keep around the only whistled language in the world, which I totally support. If I were better at whistling, I might try to learn it myself.
I don't know how to put the sounds here, so I'm adding a few Youtube sources that you can listen to and learn more. I just got reminded of this and thought it was something really cool to share. I hope you enjoyed learning and I hope that I'll be back soon, despite my recent issues with things.
Sources;
Language Museum-- Silbo Gomero
Unesco-- Intangible Heritage-- Silbo Gomero
Youtube--Euromaxx-- The Ancient Whistle Language of Silbo Gomero
Oops? I could have sworn I posted something just yesterday, but I guess I just thought about it.
Ok, so, this is going to be another short one, but it's going to revisit an old...topic that I stay aware of for purely scientific reasons. Australia.
That's a Green Birdflower plant that grows Hummingbirds. It's gorgeous and awesome and I totally want one and am simultaneously terrified of what way it'll kill me if I actually get the seeds to try to grow it inside. It's Australian, it obviously wants to kill me somehow.
But it's still so cool. Tell me this isn't awesome:
There is a lot of debate around why this plant grew in this particular way, including a suggestion that it's just humans seeing things, so it's still up for debate, but what isn't is that that is a bunch of hummingbirds on a stick. The general consensus is that it's just coincidence because the flower is in the right proportions for it's pollinators, and that just happens to look like a hummingbird.
Unfortunately, this is another one of those times where I have to say...there's not a lot of research about it. It's been getting a lot of attention over the last few years, so it will soon, but it's sap has been used by Aboriginals to treat eye infections, so there's probably some kind of medicinal value that will be figured out later, when it's become more common and more studied.
This picture is from Florida Seeds, seen below.
The Latin name for this lovely bird-flower is Crotalaria cunninghamii, named after the Australian Botanist Alan Cunningham who first described this flower somewhere between 1816 and 1839. It's a legume, like a bean, but still very different from the green beans you get in the store.
As someone who has an enduring love of the zippy birds from times when I've been buzzed by them for walking outside, who has planted countless flowers in an attempt to get their attention, and who has actually held a hummingbird nest and egg shell, I tend to get really excited about things like this even if it's in Australia, so I kinda want to try growing some (I probably could, theoretically), but Australia...
Sources:
Audubon- Did this plant evolve to look like Birds?
Hobby Farms- A different Kind of Hummingbird Plant
Florida Seeds- Green Birdflower-- Mostly this for the pictures, it's got some fun ones.
Sorry. Life is kinda chaos right now, and I'm trying to figure out Christmas presents for my family, who all have no idea what they want for Christmas so I'm having to come up with ideas they don't have, and trying to share the ideas so we don't end up just exchanging gift cards for the holiday, and trying to find a few other ideas just in case. Plus cleaning up my house from the mess of several kittens and to prepare for the holidays, and volunteering with CASS, which is my local community art studio, more because of holiday events, and juggling everything that comes with normal life still.
Back to the fun facts though:
Mangelwurzel
Frankly, the only thing really cool about this is the name that sounds like something made up but isn't. it's a type of beet, also called a fodder beet because it was often grown to feed to cattle. It was often seen as peasant food and only really eaten when there wasn't anything else to eat, so it never really got the attention it deserved, but the name makes it worth growing now.
The only other really interesting thing about them is that they're one of the beets/turnips that was an original Jack o' Lantern, before pumpkins.
I know they aren't as interesting as a lot of what I bring in, but...you're definitely going to have fun talking about it with people. It's a really fun word to say. And if it gets you to eat more veggies to have you try it, this time is well spent. Have fun, I'll see you again soon I hope.
Sources:
Slow Food Foundation-- Mangelwurzel
Medium-- Roots Refined; Mangelwurzel
Now that you've all eaten your traditional turkey, if you're in America at least, let me tell you about it's cousin. I recently found out about these guys because I was painting a little turkey statue and Google told me about them. Ocellated Turkeys.
They're only found in a small part of Mexico, but I'm still a bit surprised that I didn't know about this bird that looks like a cross between a turkey and a peacock. Seriously. The picture below is from ABC birds, link at the bottom, and should show why I called them that and why I expected more people to know about this fabulous bird. Should I bring him up next year at Pride? Because he's colorful enough to fit their rainbow, almost.
The term Ocellated, used to describe this turkey, refers to it having 'eye spots' on it's feathers. The orange and blue, supposedly, but I don't really see it unless the tail is spread, in which case...maybe. The orange part kinda kills it for me, but what do I know?
According to some people, Ancient Mayans revered this colorful turkey and would trade for it's domesticated cousins to raise and eat, but these guys were seen as a badge of honor or something, to have them live around you or to be compared to them. I'm not sure about this entirely, but it sounds like one Mayan got the title of 'Great Turkey' inscribed on his tombstone, and it might be something like the way we sometimes call people the 'Big Dog'. I can think of worse critters to be compared to...
For the most part, they're just like the 'Wild' Turkey we all know and love to eat, but they're also rather different. They mostly share a diet, neither one migrates, and they have the same build, but they are very different for coloration, Ocellated Turkeys have a smaller range, and the well known 'Gobble' of Wild Turkeys is replaced by a drumming sound from their southern cousins. Just like any family tree, we've all got the weirdo who likes sparkly things and acts snooty, and we just have to deal with them.
The Wild Turkeys might have it easier because they don't have to deal with said snooty cousin at the Holidays.
Which, I hope you had an awesome Thanksgiving, and I look forward to figuring out what I want to do about Christmas, if I'm going to make it a theme for things at all.
Seeya again soon, I hope. If not, blame the internet company that I'm giving serious considerations to trying a voodoo hex or wicca curse on. If I do, I'll let you know my research that led me to those choices and how it goes.
Sources:
ADW-- Ocellated TurkeyRainforest Alliance-- Ocellated Turkey
So, if I disappear entirely, it's probably because I'm in jail for doing something entirely justified to my internet provider. Or rather, lack of provider. Technically, they're not breaking any rules because I technically have access, but the fact that I couldn't load this site well enough to actually post anything means that I'm not going to say I actually had access.
This is a short one, because I want to get it done before my internet disappears again, which could be any second now.
Tortitude. It's the attitude that tortoiseshell cats have. Their 'diva' personalities.
Torties are generally female, only males about 1 in 3,000, give or take, so there are some interesting beliefs about the males. I only got that from one site, the Ingrid King link below, so I'll just copy/paste it over here and you can investigate if you want.
Tortoiseshell cats have a mythical folklore in many cultures, much of it centered around the rare male tortoiseshell. The Celts considered it a good omen if a male tortoiseshell stayed in their home. English folklore has it that warts could be healed if rubbed by the tail of a male tortoiseshell’s tail during the month of May. Japanese fishermen believed that male tortoiseshells protected their ships from storms and ghosts. A Khmer legend in South East Asia has it that the first tortoiseshell arose from the menstrual blood of a goddess born of a lotus flower.
Torties are thought to bring good luck in many cultures. They are sometimes referred to as the money cat.
Tortoiseshell cats were believed to have psychic abilities and see into the future. It is said that those who dream of a tortoiseshell cat will be lucky in love.
For those that aren't sure about it, Tortoiseshell patterning is a mix of black and brown, or some other color, with little to no white. They range from large patches to speckles mixed in, but both are awesome and adorable.
What got me choosing this word for now is that I've actually broke down and finally created a social media page to post all my kitten pictures. Lots of pictures. Not all the pictures, because I'm up at around 15,000 of them, but the cute ones...or at least the ones I think are cute or fun. I'm on Bluesky, with the handle of CrazySkaKittens. I planned to link that also, but it's being mean to me right now. Hopefully I can add it later.
Sorry for disappearing for a week, and I hope to see you soon but I can't guarantee that if I can't manage to load up this page again for days. I'll be back if I can though.
Sources:
Purrs of Wisdom with Ingrid King-- Tortitude
I'll probably do a post about Flamingoes later, but I wanted to do this one for reasons that are absolutely unrelated to a video I saw recently on Youtube that I'm going to link repeatedly.
What got me to the video in the first place is that Flamingoes don't have backwards knees, they have knees up against their body and ankles halfway down...and baby flamingoes are adorable, but especially when they're first learning to walk. There's also this one that is about them trying to learn to stand on one leg, which is hilarious also. I really like it that the larger baby just gave up and sat down a few times.
To continue the absolute adorableness of all things, these tiny adorables are often called chicks, but sometimes also flaminglets. That sounds both adorable and awkward, like them. They're often single children, with one large white egg that gets incubated for a bit less than a month, then the babies stay in the nest for a week as they get stronger, then they join the other flock babies because these birdies are social. More social than me at least.
It'll probably surprise you, but Flamingo parents actually feed their babies 'milk' that is very similar to mammal mother's milk, and is very red because it's got the proteins the little gray babies need to turn pink. It does mean that the mama turns a bit paler for a while, but being a parent drains everyone for a while anyway. As a kitten-mama, I'm allowed to say that. It takes a while for the babies to change colors though, so no bright-pink babies.
Another interesting thing is that everyone knows that Flamingoes have hooked beaks, but the babies have straight beaks. They start curving as they get older and less adorable, starting at about 11 weeks old. The picture below is also from the Fort Worth link below.
Hopefully I'll see you soon, though probably not with something quite this adorable again.
Sources:
YOUTUBE-- Baby Flamingo Learning to Walk
YOUTUBE-- Baby Flamingo Trying to Stand on One Leg
A-Z Animals-- Baby Flamingo Facts
Seaworld-- All About Flamingo Babies
Hi. Life's been a bit annoying lately, so I'm sorry that I'm a bit scattered. I'm still trying to post at least every other day, but....well, life.
Today is National Philanthropy Day, which I would normally ignore, but I thought it might be a good time to introduce Citizen Science, in case anyone doesn't know about it and has the time to be interested.
In short, Citizen Science is what it's called when part of a research project gets done by the normal people of the world instead of relying only on what the scientists know. This can be anything from bird watchers tracking what birds are in an area or when they migrate around, how many of a certain insect are around, or helping go through a bunch of scanned papers/letters/historical data to put it into text like this. It's mostly busy-work that's easy to do but takes time, or human eyes instead of computer analysis.
One particular example is that the National Archives are looking for people who can read cursive so that they can help translate old documents for easy references. (Here's a link to the article about it.)
NASA also has several programs that include volunteer options, if you want to look into them-- here.
Otherwise, you can check out the Zooniverse for possible crowd-science options, or The Association For Advancing Participatory Sciences, which used to be called The Citizen Science Association.
For proof that this does good stuff, there is an Academic (ish) journal that talks about the research done by the citizen science groups and what they have accomplished, called Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.
So, you might not have a lot of money to offer, but anyone can help somehow, and this is one way you could if you want. Hopefully these lists have somewhere you can volunteer some time to help Science and do something really cool. Please let me know if you do.
I'll see you again soon.
Picturesque, scenically wooded.
Depending on the source, it could mean a pretty picture with trees, or a pretty picture of trees. Two slightly different things, which the definitions of this really old word are iffy about. Since Phrontistery says that this word is used from 1734 to 1734, it's probably not something I'll ever be able to answer.
I think these three are good examples of it though, and I hope you agree. I, personally, think I'm pretty blessed to be able to be around such awesome views.
Whatever you did, that's what you planned.
So...me taking random breaks is for my mental health or something, not because life gets hectic. I totally planned those.
To apologize for the totally planned breaks, here's an adorable kitten;
Ok, when I reach 200 posts, I'm going to start a Patreon so that I can afford to subscribe to things like Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Live Science, and read as much as I want. I know it'll take me a forever to actually get the money to do so, but still. And now that I've told you, I'm going to forget it and go back to finding the free articles for everyone to read and find out about the ridiculous things I'm telling you about. I say ridiculous because if I'm going to tell you about Germany's Baby Derby, I can't call this a serious information blog, even if I'm being serious that I love these things and want you to know about them.
In this particular post, I'm going to tell you about Sea Angels.
In other news, despite snails being really slow on land, these guys can actually swim pretty well. They use their wings to direct themselves and are pretty maneuverable.
Happy Halloween!
Inspired by Alaska's Fat Bear Week, which I thought was also in a few other places, Texas decided to do a Fat Squirrel Week.
Normally, I'd skip something like this for a bit longer, but this time...I can't just ignore the puns.
The winner of the Fat Squirrel Week Contest is Chunkosaurus Rex.
Runner Ups include Chunk Norris, Stanley 'Texas Tank', and Nutella.
Again, I'd normally pull out pictures for you, but I haven't found any worth pulling up. They're just fluffy squirrels.
And lastly, I'd normally add sources, but if you Google 'Fat Squirrel Week', you'll get lots of information on your own. There are a lot of News sites covering it, and a lot of people talking about it and the votes.
So...I'm being lazy today, but just pointing out the existence of a contest I really want to make sure I vote on next time. Seeya soon though.
It's been a while since I told you about a cool source of things. So...here's a new one.
Encyclopedia Britannica has a page here that they call 'One Good Fact', where they ask a daily question and give you the answers. I came across it recently because I've been working on starting a project I call 'Smile Cards', where I do a bit of artwork on one side of a 3x5 card and on the other side I write 'I hope this made you smile, but in case it didn't, maybe this will;' and a random fact. Some of the cards I've made have facts related to things I wrote about here. Others might lead to their own posts later.
This particular page is pretty cool because some of the questions asked are...interesting. For examples...
What animal is often given beer as medicine?
Horses, apparently. It's unproven, but Vets apparently swear by it.
What common food item was once legally required to be 16 ounces?
Bread, in Britain.
When is it OK to throw cow dung at your neighbor?
I really wanted to know the answer to this one. Apparently, it's allowed in April in one village in Southern India, in celebration of a mythological marriage dispute ending. That's definitely going to come up again next April.
Why do some postal workers in Vanuatu require scuba gear?
They apparently have an underwater post office that sells waterproof post cards. This might also come up again later.
What rodent sometimes has red, orange, and purple fur?
Actually, I did write about this one. The Rainbow Squirrel, also known as the Malabar Giant Squirrel.
Why did a California court rule that a bee is a fish?
This is for a legal loophole. Basically, insects aren't considered part of the whole 'animal' thing by law in California, but they needed to get some protections in there, so they made a case that a bee is just as much a 'fish' as a shrimp is, so they're all animals and therefore bees get protected. Yay?
This might also get a post, just because it's hilarious.
Why did the Texas state legislature once honor a serial killer?
This is going to be the last one, and I'm going to copy straight from their page because you need all of it.
It also might get it's own post at some point.
As an April Fools’ Day prank in 1971, Texas Representative Tom Moore submitted a bill that would honor Albert DeSalvo for his efforts in population control. Inattentive legislators unanimously passed the measure, evidently not realizing DeSalvo had been convicted four years earlier as the infamous “Boston Strangler.”
Gotta love humans and the weird things we get up to. Please fight the urge to investigate serial killers to prank other though, because that's one of those pranks that makes everyone feel gross later, like when someone has to admit that the Nazis were right about something. (They hated people honking their horns, which I'll accept is valid. Everything else, no.)
I would suggest keeping this page around for some really fun little facts. I definitely will. I hope that you like it, and that you'll share if you find a really good one. Thanks for reading, I'll see you again soon.
Sorry, my brain has just not been cooperating today or yesterday. Yesterday, it was racing at 100 miles an hour trying to figure out how to set up a goat range to keep them safe and contained and what I needed for that, because my Mom wants goats and someone nearby apparently had some goats that they needed rehomed. Then they found a way to keep their goats, so I don't need that research, but my brain still wanted to run off and plan how much it would cost, immediate set up, monthly food, future costs, etc.
Then today, I was trying to figure out something to tell you about that goes with Halloween coming up, since I haven't talked about any of that but it is Halloween soon. My brain didn't want to do that though, because instead it wanted to run around thinking of Cinderella, which is easily explained because I was gifted a painted pumpkin that looks like a Cinderella Carriage, so I've been making the frame, wheels, horse, and coachman to go along with it. It's all a lot less pretty than the pumpkin, but I'm having fun with it.
So...I guess you get to hear about Cinderella today.
The history of the story goes back...a lot further than you think.
A lot of people know that Cinderella is older than Disney and goes back to the Brothers Grimm at least. Where, exactly, it starts is up for debate though. Some would say sixth century Greece, 6-8th century China, or 1st century Egypt. The point of all those stories is that a woman marries up because of a guy searching for the owner of a shoe.
Considering shoe sizes and people, it would probably only take about 20 or 30 young women to find one that fits the shoe well enough, unless actual magic is involved, or the lovely damsel has extremely weird shaped feet, like tiny or giant or very narrow or wide. Considering the usual standards of beauty, I'd say tiny or narrow are more likely than wide or giant, but still.
The wicked stepmother thing doesn't appear until the 17th century in Italy, but it does involve a rather horrible twist of the girl not wanting to marry the king but being forced to. Eek.
Around the same time comes the 'glass' part of the slipper, possibly because it was misheard and someone wrote it down as verre instead of vair. Not a big difference in that language, but a big difference when you consider what would happen if you actually tried to walk in an actual glass slipper. If, for some reason, you're not convinced by the danger, there have been actual studies on it and how bad it would be, and how dangerous even breathing in those shoes could be. That's all assuming you can put them on and stand in them, which is very unlikely.
All told, there are over 100 stories that could probably be recognized as a variant of Cinderella. A lot of them, especially the older ones, are a bit, ah, grimmer than you'd think. The sources below have some of those, but I'll leave that to you to investigate if you're actually worried. They also have a lot of the names of historic 'Cinderella's, if you're curious.
I'm going to stop here though, because there's alot of information I could share and I'm starting to get a little lost in it, so I'll be back later with something else. I hope you learned something interesting from this though, and I'll see you again soon.
Sources:
Radio Times-- The Science of Cinderella's Slippers
Metro Opera-- A Brief History of Cinderella
Pook Press- Cinderella's History
NPR-- A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince; The Endlessly Evolving Story of Cinderella (This one talks about a 150 year old book with 345 variations on the Cinderella story.)
Book Riot-- History of Cinderella
Lit Reactor-- The Strange History of Cinderella
Eden Valley Enterprises-- Cinderella Around the World
University of Rochester-- Cinderella Bibliography (This is a compilation of everything Cinderella that the authors could find, including some things that are just paintings or something.)
Got reminded of these recently because I was watching a late night talk show, the kind that does a bit of news and a bit of celebrity interview. I like them because they give me a bit of news without making me feel like the world is ending, so I can watch them without getting depressed or something. This particular time, the celebrity being interviewed was playing an ornithologist and they tested her knowledge about some birds. The first was a puffin, which was kinda 'duh' and I was disappointed she didn't get. This guy was second, then third was a cardinal, which was very 'duh', an Andean Cock-Of-The-Rock, which I know because it's part of my ongoing theory about ornithologists being massive trolls, then a white-breasted nuthatch, which I'm more than ok with the lady not getting because it's (sorry ornithologist) a very generic looking small white bird.
Here's why you'll always remember what the Magnificent Frigate Bird looks like.
Because they aren't waterproof, these guys tend to steal food from other birds, or hunt in tidepools and shallow things like that. Their main strategy of stealing from others is actually a strategy called 'Kleptoparasitism', where they grab other birds and shake them until they regurgitate their food, and the frigatebird steals that.
That giant red pouch you see above is something the males have to impress the ladies. Apparently, they inflate them to show off and can hum in a way that makes a drumming sound, which they accompany with shrieks. That's not the coolest thing about them-- the guys actually stick around for the first while, taking turns incubating the egg, then helping mom raise the baby for the first three months. The moms stick around for another 6 months, then the baby is mostly on their own. That makes them better fathers than alot of animals.
As awesome as these guys are, I have something to say that might make you grumpy at them. One of the things listed as part of their diet, therefore something they eat enough to justify adding it here, is baby green turtles. Meanies.
Ok, I'm being ridiculous here and it's not technically things you need to know, but things that I find absolutely awesome and want a record of anyway.
New York has a yearly Halloween Dog Parade.
And people put a lot of effort into these costumes, so they deserve to be kept around.
I know some of these are pretty simple, but still. I know people have opinions about dogs in clothes, but my stance on it is basically that I object if the dog is just used as an accessory, I object if the dog really objects, but it's ok if the dog doesn't mind and gets lots of scritches and cuddles before/during/after this. Considering the smiles on some of these dogs' faces, I prefer to just be happy at seeing so many awesome puppers.
I hope you enjoyed at least a few of these, and that your pupper is as agreeable should you decide to try to copy any of these or come up with your own creation. Seeya soon.
Sources for all my pictures:
Hyperallergic-- The Goodest Boys of NYC
