8 Strange Animal Stuff I Learned The Past Few Days

If you are a follower of mine you have probably noticed how I like posting about strange animals on a daily basis. Today, I want to present you a quick compilation of some of the weirdest animal-related stuff I stumbled upon this week:

1. Orca Semen Collector 

People do all kinds of weird stuff to make a living. Jerking an orca is just one of them:

That's a good boy!

2. Penguins Are Getting Raped by Seals In Antarctica

Apparently there is an increasing problem in Antarctica of penguins are getting raped by seals! Usually, these sexual encounters leave the penguins "unharmed", minus their dignity, although there was a case of one bleeding by his cloaca (something like a bird's anus) and one that was murdered and eaten after the rape! 

What's even more peculiar is that there are scientific papers published on this issue! Why exactly seals go on a penguin-rape-spree is still unknown. In the first paper, the authors hypothesized that "the sexual coercion event was a result of the seal’s predatory behavior towards the penguin being redirected into sexual arousal". However, in the second paper the researchers noted how one penguin was eaten after the rape which makes the whole thing a bit unclear. [1,2]

Here is the video footage that accompanied the second paper:

3.  Jellyfish Don't Have Brains, But They Do Sleep

Do you like sleeping? I bet you do. And so do Cassiopea jellyfish, according to a new study. Why is this so important? Well, because this is the first study to report an animal with no central nervous system that actually sleeps!

"The real novelty of what we've shown is that this animal that is almost as far away, evolutionarily, from humans and higher animals as you can go, also seems to have this conserved behavioral state" of sleep, said study co-author Claire Bedbrook"  said study co-author Claire Bedbrook . [3]

These jellies pulse less and become less responsive to external stimuli during the night. Specifically,  these jellies pulse 39 times per minute in the night, compared to about 58 times per minute during the day.  The study found that jellies deprived of sleep pulsed sluggishly the next day. 

In case you wonder, to keep the jellies awake the researchers "pulsed water at the animals every 10 seconds for 20 minutes, effectively "poking" them to keep them awake." [4]

This and some other findings suggest that jellyfish actually sleep! [4]

Cassiopea Jellyfish (credit)

4. There Was Once a Frog That Ate Dinosaurs!

A study [6] examining the immense bite force of the Ceratophrys cranwelli frog, commonly known as Cranwell's horned frog, suggests that a large, now extinct frog called Beelzebufo may have actually been capable of eating small dinosaurs! 

Beelzebufo ampinga was a particularly large species of prehistoric frog that  lived about 68 million years ago in Madagascar.  The researchers estimate that this frog's bite was comparable in strength to wolves and female tigers. 

"At this bite force, Beelzebufo would have been capable of subduing the small and juvenile dinosaurs that shared its environment."  said Dr Jones. [5]

 I wish I had a time machine to watch this guy eating an actual dinosaur. That would be so funny!

Cranwell's horned frog (Credit: Kristopher Lappin)

5. Somewhere in Brazil There Are Frogs Deaf to Their Own Calls

Have you heard of  Pumpkin toadlets? In case you haven't they are amongst the world's smallest and cutest frogs and they look something like this:

Adult Brazilian Frog (Credit: Sandra Goutte)

Now, a new research has found that two species of these tiny orange frogs cannot actually hear the sound of their own calls! In case you didn't get it, these frogs use mating calls for no reason at all. It's not only pointless, but also very dangerous since the mating call attracts predators and uses up energy and time. 

Here are some comments by the authors of the study:

 "We have never seen this before. These frogs make sounds that they cannot hear themselves!" said Associate Professor, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, University of Southern Denmark. [7]

"One would think that if a signal is not perceived by its target audience, it would be lost through evolution." said Dr. Sandra Goutte. [7]

6. This Video

I really don't know what to comment about this video other than that the insect appears to be a true Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules) and not some kind of robot or toy. Fun fact, the hercules beetle holds the record for world's longest extant species of beetle!

Here's a video showing the life-cycle of the hercules beetle. Mind-blowing stuff:

7.  New Cave Dwelling Animal Discovered With The Help Of Smelly Cheese 

I made a whole post about it yesterday so just click here to read it! Did you like my shameless self-promotion?

8. Glowing massive alien-like creature is just a mass of eggs

While diving off Queensland, Australia, Jay Wink, owner and operator of Abc Scuba Diving Port Douglas, captured an amazing photo of a massive, glowing, alien-like creature:

Credit: Jay Wink

Disappointingly, it's just a mass of strings of squid eggs, probably from a  diamond squid. Having said that, this is an ultra rare sight! Any scuba diver that happens to encounter something like this should consider themselves very lucky!

The End

So that's pretty much my compilation of the weirdest animal-related stuff I came across the past few days. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :)

References

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10164-007-0073-9
2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00300-014-1618-3
3. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170921141252.htm
4. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0960982217310230
5. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170920131755.htm
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-11968-6
7. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170921090304.htm
8. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12145-5
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_beetle
10. https://www.livescience.com/60427-glowing-slinky-creature-is-egg-mass.html

 My dear readers, thank you for reading today's article. Hopefully, you found it interesting enough to follow me, @trumpman. You may also want to check my strange animal series where you get to discover some of the world's weirdest animals!  Here are the last 3 weirdos of the series: 

1. New Cave Dwelling Animal Discovered With The Help Of Smelly Cheese
2. This Alien-like Worm Will Freak You Out!
3. Meet the Platypus a Very Strange Mammal That Lays Eggs!

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