What Lies Beneath

January 11, 2017 10:10 PM

People Just Realized What Owls Look Like Without Feathers And OMG (SLBuzzfeed). Includes other disturbing uncovered creatures. (h/t Miss Cellania)
posted by Johnny Wallflower (50 comments total)

Now imagine a Rowlet ...
posted by kafziel at 10:16 PM on January 11, 2017

I feel bad about laughing at these poor, featherless (and later) hairless animals. Bad, but still laughing. Except for the bear. The hairless bear is scarier than regular bear. Like hound is to hell hound, bear is to hairless bear. I think it smelled my soul, and it is hungry.

the hairless bear is always hungry. always hunting.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:21 PM on January 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

Hairless bear could easily be the origin of werewolf mythology.
posted by fings at 10:25 PM on January 11, 2017 [8 favorites]

Anyway, cast my vote for der edle Waschbär.
posted by kafziel at 10:28 PM on January 11, 2017

Owlopecia.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:29 PM on January 11, 2017 [32 favorites]

wife says: "now we know why no one ever eats owls"
posted by iamck at 10:34 PM on January 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Dinosaurs, yo.

Google "peregrine eyas" and behold the uncanny valley of adorable fuzzy dinosaurs.
posted by rtha at 10:56 PM on January 11, 2017

Sure, they look weird. But not actually creepy?
The testicle hedgehog is too funny, though.
posted by Omnomnom at 11:07 PM on January 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

Hairy racoon (Waschbär) is like "dude, stop staring! It's rude!"
posted by Harald74 at 11:13 PM on January 11, 2017

No owls were plucked, I trust.
posted by Segundus at 11:20 PM on January 11, 2017

The owl one is a museum model, while those featherless chickens are living breathing creatures, and I think they look really awesome. Also they forgot the classic example , the Sphynx cat which is nearly hairless. So adorbs.
posted by polymodus at 11:31 PM on January 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

The bear...

The bear looks like a man on all hours wearing an ill-fitting hairless bear suit.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:54 PM on January 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

Going the other direction, we can't prove they weren't huge fatbirds.
posted by ckape at 12:02 AM on January 12, 2017 [19 favorites]

the thing about the way birds look with out feathers is - their feathers are much more integral to their minute-to-minute functioning than say, the hair on out heads. Temperature regulation, camouflage, communication, flight are just some of their functions. Every feather is connected to it's own muscle fiber so it's position can be precisely controlled! so to say a bird looks ugly without it's feathers is like saying we are ugly without our skin.

feathers are amazing!
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:28 AM on January 12, 2017 [18 favorites]

Who shaved these creatures and why?
posted by Captain Fetid at 1:26 AM on January 12, 2017

because of this I googled "Chickens Without Feathers" and it is equally horrifying

I'm so making the DiCaprio Inception Face meme right now.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:15 AM on January 12, 2017

Yeah I'm like, wut, to the "horrifying" chickens without feathers. Do people not buy whole chicken to cook any more?

I do realize this could have another, sad explanation: having seen what American chickens look like now (when I went looking for tips on how to carve a raw bird), it is also possible that y'all in the States no longer know what a healthy chicken looks like. The ones I saw online had fat in places our free-range ones don't, and looked twice as heavy all told. Happy chickens are pretty lean.
posted by fraula at 2:29 AM on January 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Somewhere in all these feathers is a joke involving boned owls, the Bohemian Club & the Donald's combover.
posted by chavenet at 3:13 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ah yes, the magnificent nopebear.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 3:18 AM on January 12, 2017 [11 favorites]

Yeah I'm like, wut, to the "horrifying" chickens without feathers. Do people not buy whole chicken to cook any more?

It's the color. I was not aware that chickens had psoriasis.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:22 AM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

"You're not much of a much without your clothes, sunshine."
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:32 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

cool, now do a skinless human. that would b so GROSS YOU GUYS!!1
posted by Zerowensboring at 4:34 AM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

My favorite stage of chicken rearing is when they're just starting to come into their adult feathers and they're all patchy and awkward and dumb and they come running at you like a herd of tiny velociraptors. We're getting some new peeps in a couple weeks and I can't waaaaiiit! They're so cute when they're just borned and so hideous a few weeks later, it's hilarious.

But yeah, uhh, I'm pretty sure everyone has seen a chicken without feathers before. Normally referred to as "dinner."
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:41 AM on January 12, 2017 [8 favorites]

Sphynx cat totally looks like Lying Cat.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 4:43 AM on January 12, 2017

The owls are not what they seem.
posted by acb at 5:00 AM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

him legy
posted by FirstMateKate at 5:13 AM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Obligatory Rhea.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:47 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

bald hedgehogs are not just a testicle with a face - they are a scrotum with a sphincter, and when they get shy the whole animal crawls inside the sphincter.
posted by idiopath at 6:01 AM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

it is also possible that y'all in the States no longer know what a healthy chicken looks like. The ones I saw online had fat in places our free-range ones don't, and looked twice as heavy all told.

Four times as heavy, if you're using a 1950s breed of chicken as your comparison point. And the difference isn't about lifestyle, or even primarily about fat, it's about artificial selection for cheaper meat production.

Interestingly, it wasn't as if the 2005 bird was simply fatter. The researchers found, in fact, that abdominal fat storage actually decreased thanks to genetic selection pressures over the 48-year period that the three models were popularly used.

However, unintentional consequences were also seen with the "improvements" of the 2005 breed. Bone, heart, and immune system problems were all seen in the modern animals, where that valuable "breast conversion rate" took precedence over even healthy physiology in breeding selection.

We're approaching Kornbluth's "Chicken Little" as a continuous process rather than as a single invention...
posted by roystgnr at 6:10 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

cool, now do a skinless human. that would b so GROSS YOU GUYS!!1

Who summoned me?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:31 AM on January 12, 2017

"My Lord Chamberlain, time to choose an emperor."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:41 AM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

We want the man who did this.
posted by lagomorphius at 6:46 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

The people who are shocked have never given a fluffy cat a bath.
posted by Karmakaze at 6:47 AM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hairless bear could easily be the origin of werewolf mythology.

Hairless bear definitely was the origin of pig faced women.
posted by dannyboybell at 6:48 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Look at the tiny lil' dinosaur owls! They are so cute!
posted by Frowner at 7:11 AM on January 12, 2017

bald hedgehogs are not just a testicle with a face - they are a scrotum with a sphincter, and when they get shy the whole animal crawls inside the sphincter.

"They also took in bald hedgehog 'Betty' in 2010, who arrived at the centre weighing only 124 grams but is now a healthy 700 pounds."

Holy fuck, I need to see this 700 pound hedgehog!!!
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:34 AM on January 12, 2017 [8 favorites]

Hairless bunny does look like a tiny little wizened Gandalf.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:37 AM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Hairless Shar Pei puppy (maybe Sphinx kitty?) has a brain for a face.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:39 AM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've had hairless rats as pets before. They were described by my husband as feeling like horse noses or warm peaches. One of them, Stewie, would wait until my cat got close enough so he could reach over and yank hair out of his coat, which only makes sense, really.
posted by PussKillian at 7:51 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm sorry, but what the heck did they think they looked like??
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 8:50 AM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'm sorry, but what the heck did they think they looked like??

I expected shorter legs and a torso you could fit an entire mouse into.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:21 AM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Really? I'd expect a crop that fits a whole mouse. They don't have them, but that's what I'd expect.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:37 AM on January 12, 2017

The fun part about this is using it as a basis for reverse extrapolation from their skeletons as to what dinosaurs actually looked like. Maybe they just looked like big fat birbs themselves!
posted by praemunire at 10:13 AM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

There's some great speculative art of dinosaurs who are not just feathered, but fluffy like owls are. I love the velociraptor and the vulture-like t-rex in this post, it makes total sense since they're now thought to have been scavengers. This wooly brachiosaur is also cool, and this deinonychus. The book All Yesterdays also has some, including these ADORABLE little polar dinos, plus snarky takes on the idea that dinosaurs were surely just skeleton-shaped with a few inches of padding all over, as in these nightmare-fuel reconstructions of baboons and ostriches in dino-style.

I can't stand it when people are like 'oh em gee you're ruining dinosaurs!!' Like, god forbid we expand our scientific knowledge of the past and instead cling to outdated ideas of what dinosaurs looked like because they happen to have been featherless in a blockbuster movie we liked when we were kids. (It wouldn't even be hard to retcon this in my dream Jurassic Park feathered-dino movie - it's already established that the original ones were spliced with frog DNA, that's why they didn't have feathers, problem solved.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:37 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

They did find an actual dinosaur feathers recently.

The First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber is Covered in Feathers
posted by Jalliah at 11:50 AM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

The people who are shocked have never given a fluffy cat a bath.

I heard that giving your cat a bath is a way to get shocked regardless.
posted by polymodus at 12:02 PM on January 12, 2017

I can't stand it when people are like 'oh em gee you're ruining dinosaurs!!'

I think you're going to the wrong part of the internet.
posted by bongo_x at 1:02 PM on January 12, 2017

Really? I'd expect a crop that fits a whole mouse. They don't have them, but that's what I'd expect.

Fortunately I don't know enough above avians to have expected the wrong thing.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:02 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

A common problem, I suspect. :P
posted by tobascodagama at 5:48 PM on January 12, 2017

him legy

I googled this because I craved memes, and forgive me Daniel Day-Lewis but the sixth result is My Left Foot and now the only title my brain will accept is... Him Legy
posted by notquitemaryann at 7:46 PM on January 12, 2017