Nightscrawlers

This is now VERY old in news and scientific terms, but I thought it was awesome:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/0 ... y_arm.html

We learned in bio about how only female cats are tri-colored calicos because the color determining factor is in the X chromosome and they (of course) are XX. So, white is absence of pigment and depending on which X is activated per cell the female cat will show different colors.

But, when I was at work the other day on of the visiting vets showed me something she said I would probably never see again, a male calico! She'd just neutered him, so she was sure that he was a normal male, but when I asked her how that was, she didn't know!

This may not actually be weird science, but I thought it was kind of different.

[Edited on 26/2/06 by chicory]

I heard that only 30% of calicos are male, and that calicos also have mood swings (so says the vet). I have three cats, all female, one tabby, one blue, one calico. Two have angelic personalities, and the 3rd (calico) purrs one minute then scratches the next.

Anyway... for those interested in cryptozoology, there will be opening a bigfoot museum in Maine, run by Loren Coleman.

calicos and torts (tortishell) who are male are actually XXY cats - so while some have testicals they are usually sterile due to the extra up chromosome.

I have seen one possibly tortie male in all my years, and it had ambigious genitalia.

Paws

OMG! I guessed something like that with the XXY chromosomes! I didn't know I was right

The vet said the genitalia was normal - how strange :

Cats are strange anyway!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4785482.stm

not just a new species, a whole new taxonomic family. incredibly bizarre crabish critter that lives around volcanic hydrothermic vents.

[Edited on 8/3/06 by Bamfette]

Wow... now that is wild. New species are being discovered all the time.

reviving this thread again after seeing a show on TV about a crocodile that is 6 meters long, one ton in weight and has killed THREE HUNDRED people... i went looking for a news article about it, and found this, a few years old... but the same croc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2520815.stm

amazing. he's enormous. on TV, you should ahve seen the cage they built to hold this monster, it was insane. they showed him hunting adult HIPPOS! it doesn't say in the article, but on the show they estimate his age between 60 and nearly 100 years. they say the size points closer to 100, but he has a full set of teet which indicates he is younger. in any case, he's a survivor, has survived being shot by machine guns, stabbed with spears, he just killed his attackers... however at the end of the show they say that after they failed to capture him (and he busted up the cage) there have been no sightings of Gustave, and no reports of attacks on people. he may have injured himself while busting up the cage and died of his injuries, or finally fallen prey to poachers.

Wow. That...wow, he's something.

I hope he just learned to stay *far* away from people and is alive somewhere.

why the hell does it need to remain free if it kills people. If you can afford to build a bloody cage you can afford to get a elephant rifle and shoot it.
"yeah well we will let it rampage there while we try to make another strategic plan"

It's killing people because people are in his territory. If it gets away from people and lives somewhere else, let him alone. If he can be captured and live in a nice big safe enclosure in a zoo? That's cool too.
*shrug*
We don't own the planet and we aren't the top of the food chain.


Edited because spelling correctly and my brain don't get along.

[Edited on 22-4-2006 by LadyErin]

hey, if people are interested in Cryptozoology here, you should take a look at this educational material ive been making on it...

http://www.digital-titan.co.uk/xav/cryptozoology.html

Its only very basic. What does anyone think?

There is a cryptozoology.com website with all kinds of good stuff. Check it out. Also there is a great website called the "Thylacine Museum" which has great cryptozoological stuff.

[Edited on 23/4/06 by thylacine]

Originally posted by fourpawsonthefloor
calicos and torts (tortishell) who are male are actually XXY cats - so while some have testicals they are usually sterile due to the extra up chromosome.

There was a big uproar two years ago in my anatomy class in vet schoot because one of the groups thought they had a female calico who turned out to be a male. He had tiny undeveloped testicles that hadn't descended.

I have seen one possibly tortie male in all my years, and it had ambigious genitalia.

The tortishell trait also seems to behaviorally linked. Lots of people who work with cats use the term "tortitude" to describe the particular tortishell attitude towards the world (and vets in particular). They are generally tiny cats who hang out at the back of the carrier (or cage) and get very very very angry very very very quickly and then they don't hold back with the clawing and the biting.

Though, when things are the way they like it, they are very loving and friendly cats. (At a vet's though, nothing is the way they like it though.)

I've never seen a male, though I grew up with a little tortie female who regularly kicked our 80 pound labrador's ass.

-e

My tortishell calico definitely has a tortitude -- ouch! She doesn't bite the vet, she bites me instead.

Geeze Louise its a bat eating centipede. And yes I mean a bat eating centipede, not a centipede eating bat.

http://gprime.net/video.php/bateatingcentipede

Am I glad I live in Canada. We may freeze our asses off 6 mnths of the year(ish) but our insects stay reasonable sized.

Paws

Originally posted by fourpawsonthefloor
Am I glad I live in Canada. We may freeze our asses off 6 mnths of the year(ish) but our insects stay reasonable sized.

Paws

One more reason I gotta move to Canada....

That's...just...wow...

[Edited on 13-5-06 by LadyErin]

Ah...David Attenbourogh...he shows us the most wonderfully, frightening things...but 35cm is just not the size a centipede should be...

It's a gangsta bigfoot!

http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/ok-photos/

ack! that centepede... hope i never encounter one of them. one of the small variety can give you a nasty bite,i wouldn't want to think what something that size could do....


and HAH! I dunno, I'm leaning towards 'badly done fake' ont hat bigfoot footage

Originally posted by Bamfette
ack! that centepede... hope i never encounter one of them. one of the small variety can give you a nasty bite,i wouldn't want to think what something that size could do....

They bite?! ... How did anyone ever get close enough to one to find that out? I'm shuddering just thinking of looking at them.

Originally posted by The Drastic Spastic

Originally posted by Bamfette
ack! that centepede... hope i never encounter one of them. one of the small variety can give you a nasty bite,i wouldn't want to think what something that size could do....

They bite?! ... How did anyone ever get close enough to one to find that out? I'm shuddering just thinking of looking at them.

I was thinking that...

They are about the only thing that will make me sceam and run away....

This is probably too much of a stretch of "weird science" to fit here properly.

But I felt this was important to post as a PSA.

Don't mix Mentos mints with Diet Coke

rofl. Seen it and done it. Fun stuff!