A Compendium and Bestiary of the Unusual and Bizarre

September 9, 2009 12:23 PM

The Ever So Strange Animal Almanac
posted by anastasiav (9 comments total)

I say!
posted by leotrotsky at 1:21 PM on September 9, 2009

I kinda like the angora rabbit (scroll down).

This fluffy creature looks like a science experiment crossing a Sasquatch and a kitten gone wrong. It’s just a rabbit, however. They were exceptionally popular in the 17th and 18th centuries among European nobility as lap pets, and many different hybrids were bred to suit changing tastes of different royalty.

I'm sure none of those snooty royals asked the rabbit's opinion.
posted by netbros at 1:27 PM on September 9, 2009

Bally interesting blog, but I seem to have come over all Bertie Wooster. Dashed if I can think why.
posted by darksasami at 1:35 PM on September 9, 2009

Just climb outside of another W&S and it'll all come right, darksasami, there's a good chap, or lass as it were.
posted by rusty at 1:57 PM on September 9, 2009

"The Black Swallower isn’t a title of one of the Major’s more esoteric collections of etchings."

Priceless. Great link, thanks for helping me waste my employers' time and money this afternoon!
posted by brand-gnu at 2:28 PM on September 9, 2009

The article says that leopard slugs eat one another's penises because they get tangled up. This is false. Leopard slugs, like many of us, get cravings after sex. For leopard slugs, that craving is usually the craving to eat a penis. This behavior is rewarded evolutionarily, because the more penises you eat, the smaller the penis / vagina ratio in your area (you are "surgically" turning your hermaphroditic peers into "females", practically speaking), therefore, if you have a penis still, the more successfully you will reproduce. But the craving is a blind one. Usually the most convenient penis to eat after is the one belonging to another slug, but if they notice their own penis first, they will often eat that instead, because really, they don't think about reproductive success, they just really really want to eat some penis after sex. I imagine it must be really satisfying for a slug, like a cigarette and a nap and quality snuggle time and crying all wrapped up in one.
posted by idiopath at 4:03 PM on September 9, 2009 [16 favorites]

Ah, the Ocean Sunfish. I'd always wondered about those...
Nice post, thanks.
posted by Minus215Cee at 2:38 PM on September 10, 2009

Well, idiopath, thanks for the insight.
posted by From Bklyn at 8:10 AM on September 11, 2009

Any time. Something delights me about the idea of an animal for which "eat a bowl of dicks" would be more of a friendly gesture than a non-sequitur or an insult.
posted by idiopath at 8:18 AM on September 11, 2009 [2 favorites]