An Interesting Equid

This is what an albino zebra looks like (click to embiggen):

Something Interesting About Fish

Something to remember when fishing - if you land a fish that's undersized, or you're a catch-and-release fisher:

If a hook is deeply embedded, cut the line. Fish have strong digestive acids that will dissolve metal. Studies have shown fish released in this manner have a higher survival than fish which have the hooks torn from their throats or stomach.

You Don't Mess With The Orca

As a recreational writer with the occasional journalistic tendency (that is, I blog every now and then), I am often bothered by the way news is reported, whether in written form or on the six o'clock bulletin. In my opinion, the two biggest errors in journalism are over-sensationalisation of stories, and misleading headlines. Especially when the two are combined, usually with scientifically inaccurate statements and illogical assumptiosn from misunderstood statistical data. That's what really irks me. But anyway. I found an example of this on Thursday in the following article:

Whale makes meal of orca and calf

When I saw that headline, I was quite surprised. The accepted models of cetacean behaviour usually dictate that orca (Orcinus orca) prey on whales, not the other way around. The term "killer whale" for orca actually came from the name "whale killer", which arose from the fact that they... kill whales.  Groups of orca can take down blue whales, the world's largest animals, by working as a team and ripping out their tongues. There's not a lot that can stand up to an orca. Seals, sharks and dolphins are all fair game for them.

So I wondered what sort of whale would "make a meal" of an orca. I clicked the link to find out and was dissapointed by the opening sentence/paragraph:

"A boatload of tourists got to witness nature at its most brutal when a killer whale flicked a pseudo orca high into the air, broke its back and ate both it and its calf in the Bay of Islands yesterday."

Now, that headline said that a whale killed an orca.

No it didn't!

An orca killed a whale!

That's an important distinction!

Pseudo orca (Pseudorca crassidens, or false killer whales) are fairly average-looking porpoise-like critters, smaller than orca but bigger than dolphins. Sort of black in colour. Like real orca, they're members of the dolphin family (Delphinidae). No matter what you define a "whale" as, orca and pseudo orca have the same degree of whaleness. You can't refer to pseudo orca as "orca" if there are real orca in the same situation! That's like telling a story about a sea lion being attacked by a real lion, and saying that "a cat attacked a lion. Although lions are cats, sea lions are not lions, and pseudo orca are not orca.

The moral of the story is that I really, really dislike inaccurate, misleading or ambiguous reporting of facts. Not just in journalism. People do it all the time. My request to those of you that do: stop it.

There's one more lesson to be taken away from this though, and that is that orca (Orcinus orca) are quite good at killing stuff. Don't try to pick a fight with one.

Dangerous Animals in Boxes

My friend Andi has, among a varied and interesting list of interests, a penchant for wild food and unusual pets. My other friend Alex - although there are far more interesting things about him than this - makes beehives for a living. So when Andi and Alex met, they got talking about bees. I was sort of half-listening to the talk of bees, until Alex said something along the lines of:

To get yourself some bees, find a swarm in a tree and take a cardboard box. Bang on the tree so that the queen falls into the box, and the other bees will follow her in. Then close the box. And then you've got a swarm in a box.

SWARM IN A BOX!
I was very entertained by the prospect of a SWARM OF BEES in a CARDBOARD BOX - much to the confusion of Andi and Alex I suspect - and what immediately sprang to mind was a trebuchet. Dead cows used to be flung over the walls of castles and cities under siege to spread disease and lower moral - flinging a box of bees would do much the same thing! (why a trebuchet, you ask? It's a cool word, and they're more accurate than catapults. My brother calls them trench buckets). Even if one didn't have a trebuchet, a box of bees would still be a deadly weapon. If it were a particularly flimsy or simply damp cardboard box, one could simply throw it at an opponent and run like mad.

All of which brought me to thinking... what other animals would be equally dangerous when packaged in cardboard? Here's an example of one from xkcd:

Bobcat in a box. Beautiful in its simplicity. Although the cat shown above has a long tail, and not the "bobtail" of a bobcat. Perhaps the buyer mistook a simple housecat, infuriated by containment in a cardboard box, for a bobcat by its wrath? Housecats in boxes can be very dangerous indeed.

Although...

Has anyone else read this?

My cat certainly likes to hide in boxes.

So dangerous animals in boxes. We have already established bees, bobcats and housecats. What else?

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  Anything feline at all. We're not limited to bobcats and housecats. Think servals* and caracals, tigers and snow leopards. As long as the box is big enough. There's a pretty big box in my bedroom  (I don't know what it's from, but I use it as a bedside table) that would fit a clouded leopard. I'm not sure what sort of box you could get a Barbary Lion or Siberian Tiger into. Maybe the ones that fridges come in? Remember - the smaller the box, the more pissed-off the cat! (please read disclaimer regarding comments like this one).
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  Moray eels. Moray eels are dangerous anyway, and putting one in a cardboard box would make it angry - not a good combination with the moray eel's teeth, which are long and sharp and angled inwards (thanks for the biology lesson, Thomas Harris!). Once a moray eel bites you, there is no getting it off.
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  Wasps. Even more dangerous than bees, as wasps can sting multiple times, making a swarm of wasps more dangerous than a swarm of bees of an equal size.
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  Wolverines. Well, the name just says it all.
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  Cockatoos. They bite. Palm Cockatoos in particular have terrifying beaks.
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  Waterfowl. Ducks aren't so bad, but geese and swans? They will bite you. Their beaks are not so sharp as those of the cockatoo, but they are hard and give you bruises and are on the ends of long necks that can seemingly extend to get you just when you think you're out of reach.
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  Box jellyfish. They're called box because they're box-shaped... just the right shape to hide in a box and then leap out and kill you! Seriously, even without boxes they kill people. I always wondered why they didn't have a more deadly name - now I know. Boxes are deadly.
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  Spitting cobras. Duh.
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  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeagles.

I am starting to run out of ideas, however I am sure the list does not end there. Feel free to add to it!

Disclaimer: However much I may be amused by the thought of flinging an animal in a box at someone using a trebuchet (or any other means), it is only the idea I find entertaining and the reality would be sick, twisted and cruel. I do not advocate cruelty of any sort towards any living thing, and do not recommend that anyone attempt to force any animal into a cardboard box against its will. Any outlandish claims in this blog are for the purposes of humour and do not reflect my own beliefs (unless I state otherwise).

*The late Sam, the serval formerly of Franklin Zoo was the only serval I ever met, but he was a grumpy critter. May he rest in peace.

Something Interesting Happened In Tauranga

Cat warns owner of fire

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The thing I find interesting about this is that the cat was "making noises like a fire alarm". Do they mean that he was wailing like a siren, or beeping like a smoke detector? Was it simply just coincidence that the cat was making fire alarm noises for a fire, or does he make different noises for different emergencies? If the cat made a "WeeeeoooooooOOOOOooooOOO" noise like an air raid siren, would that be a sign that the house was being bombed? Did Julie Woodhouse immediately think "Fire!" upon hearing the cat's fire alarm noise, or did she only describe it as a fire alarm noise after seeing that her house was actually on fire?

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If it were a dog making fire alarm noises, I would infer that the dog had learnt the fire alarm noise and learnt to associate it with fire, and so was making the noise in response to the fire. That's how dog intelligence works - although I'm less surprised about fire alarm noises coming from a cat than a dog (cats are inherently much more capable of the wailing noise than dogs). Cats are intelligent too, but not so eager to please, so although they're capable of being trained, they don't tend to "train themselves" as often as dogs do.

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If you're in Tauranga and their church asks you for money for their fund for the Woodhouses, you should give them some. If only because they have a cool cat.