Compliments of Matt Stark

Tigger would be jealous

These springboks (jumping goats), a type of gazelle, are found in southwest Africa, and can jump up to 13 feet in the air!  The jumping behavior is known as "stotting" or in Afrikaans, "pronking", and is thought to be a predator evasion tactic. The gazelles jump into the air when a predator is around in order to demonstrate their "uncatchability". The reasoning behind this is that predators may not waste their time with certain springboks that jump higher and thus may require more energy to catch than weaker ones that can not jump as high or as much. Other ungulates, such as deer, also employ stotting behavior to deter predators.
Another interesting feature of the springbok is that they hardly ever drink water. In fact, in extreme cases, this animal can go an entire lifetime without drinking once. Instead, these animals get the water they need by eating succulent flowers, seeds, and leaves of shrubs.

Sneaky cephalopods

I know, I haven't posted in a while...
Here is an awesome  TED talk about cephalopods. Specifically, cephalopods include squids, octopuses and cuttlefish as well as the nautilus and allonautilus. We have already seen a friggin' awesome cephalopod the Humboldt Squid. Here, the host of the talk, David Gallo, known best for his work mapping the ocean world with manned submersibles and robots discusses the use of cephalopod cromatophores for evading predators, intimidating competitors, and pandering to the ladies. The camouflage in these videos is incredible. 

The legends behind JAWS

What if 5 of the people in the picture below were viciously attacked by a 9 foot long bull shark while at the beach and 4 of them died?

Some of you would be sad, others of you would celebrate. And others still would think "hey! what a great idea for a movie!".

At least this is what Steven Spielberg thought when adapting the film Jaws from Peter Benchley's novel inspired by the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks. Well, aside from the guidos and guidettes that is- I think those are a modern addition to soceity. Instead the victims were Charles Vansant (25), Charles Bruder (27), Lester Stillwell (12), Watson Fisher (24), and Joseph Dunn (14). Only Joseph survived. The attacks occurred during a 12 day period in July and the last three victims were attacked within the same hour in Matawan Creek. 

For a while, scientists and the general population blamed the great white shark, which is an extremely aggressive shark that can sometimes weigh over two tons and be more than 20 feet long. And the man-eater in Spielberg's film is represented as one of these enormous beasts.

But another theory exists: that the attacks were the responsibility of a Zambezi River shark, or "Bull shark" since three of the attacks occurred in a creek where great whites are not found. Also, Great Whites are pickier eaters than bull sharks and prefer not to eat humans. Most great white attacks are due to "mistaken identity" as one of their preferred prey, marine mammals, or territory defense. Bull sharks, however, eat almost any animal they can.

This guy may look a little less scary, but is still one of the three most aggressive sharks in the world, alongside the great whites and tiger sharks. Bull sharks live all over the world in oceans, rivers, lakes, and salt as well as freshwater streams. They are known for a "bump and bite" approach and will often unpredictably accelerate to attack an animal. 

Check out this video to see some people with sweet jobs working with this badass cartilagenous fish.

Straight out of Jurassic Park

Very few people have been killed directly by bird attacks. One of these instances involved a 16 year old Australian boy, Phillip Mclean, who died from an attack by a cassowary in the 20s. The boy and his brother were chasing down the bird and hitting it repeatedly with clubs. Driven to defend itself, the cassowary kicked Phillip's brother who ran away, and then kicked Phillip who fell to the ground. Phillip's neck was sliced open after another kick, and the boy died shortly afterward from hemorrhaging.
150 cassowary attacks on humans have been recorded, and at least one other on a zookeeper has resulted in death of the person.
These flightless birds, coming from 3 extant species, live in northern Australia and parts of New Guinea. Usually they are shy and harmless creatures eating mostly berries. But when provoked, they have a variety of hardcore defenses that could do serious harm to their attackers. They weigh up to 130 pounds, can run 30 mph, are great swimmers, can jump 5 feet high, have a "helmet" to protect their heads and have 5 inch long claws on their 3 toes. Essentially, they are modern-day Velociraptors.

P.I.M.P.

I am ultra-busy with schoolwork and research for the next two weeks, so I'll be taking a brief break from posting. But, enjoy this video of a real man; the elephant seal. (or did I mean Sir David?)

Octopuses, octopi, octopodes

Chances are, you are familiar with the overall structure with these 8-legged sea mollusks; a hard parrot-like beak, practically no internal skeleton, and suction-cup arms make these animals pretty bad ass to begin with. 

The picture above depicts the only octopus with a venom deadly enough to kill humans, the Blue-ringed Octopus, but all are venomous.

You may have also heard that octopuses are smart, and generally they are accepted as the smartest invertebrates around. In fact, many nations deem these animals "honorary vertebrates" and as such are protected by their vertebrate animal rights laws.  However, this is just a general concept... how smart are these creatures? Studies have shown that they posses long- and short- term memory thru maze and problem-solving tests. They also have been known to easily escape aquarium tanks and move to feeder tanks to feast on fish. Some octopuses have boarded fishing boats, opened crab holds, and nom'd on fisherman goodies before jumping back in the ocean.
They also posses some pretty awesome defense mechanisms. They hide with camouflage by changing color with their chromatophore cells, and eject ink to make a cloud to lose predators. The mimic octopus has a remarkable ability to confuse predators by changing structure, movement, and color to look like more dangerous fish.

These octopuses have been known to imitate 15 other fish.
Unfortunately, octopuses have a short life span, which limits their intellectual capacity. Some live only 6 months, while others can live for 5 years. But, males and females die shortly after reproduction. The male implants its sperm packet into the female and will die shortly after, whereas the female, when her eggs have matured, tends to her egg nest for months. She blows air on the eggs to keep enough oxygen in their  environment and guards the nest for the entirety of their development which can take months. After the babies, around 60,000 of them, have hatched, she is very weak and is sometimes attacked and consumed by predators, dies from starvation, or dies from an endocrine-signaled programmed death.