Two Paws Up for “Life of Pi!”

Posted October 29, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal presence, animals, furry, furry sidekicks, furry spirits, movies
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– – Described as “visually stunning” and “the next Avatar,” an upcoming November 21st movie Life of Pi is a 3D magical adventure tale based on the best-selling 2001 novel by Yann Martel which centers on Pi Patel, the 16-year-old precocious son of a zoo keeper who has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal psychology and behavior.  The Indian teenager is the only human to survive the sinking of a freighter, and finds himself on a lifeboat with several animals that include an orangutan, a hyena, a wounded zebra, and a Bengal tiger.  While on the surface a tale of survival, Life of Pi holds spiritual dimensions as well, although there is no preaching going on here, and more questions are raised about faith and belief than answered.  Pi himself practices not only his native Hinduism but also Christianity and Islam; paralleling the story of the young man and the tiger, this is a zen-like tale about coexistence, tolerance, and the reconciliation of opposites…something the world could use more of!

As one might suspect, the tiger by the name of Richard Parker dispatches all of the other life forms except for Pi, whose knowledge, fear, and cunning allow him to coexist with the tiger for 227 days lost at sea.  The film mixes real tigers with computer-generated effects almost seamlessly.  Through all of this, the tiger remains feral; this is not a Disneyesque movie about the “power of friendship.”  Upon reaching the Mexican coast, the tiger returns to the wild, never to be seen again.   Japaneses investigators don’t believe the tale of Pi’s survival, and compel him to tell another one; which will you believe?

Directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Life of Pi is one of the year’s most beautiful, original, and adventurous pictures that can be appreciated on a variety of levels, and is likely to be an Oscar contender…

Comments: 3 Comments

“Noc” Speaks!

Posted October 25, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal behavior, animals, aquatic, research, science
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– – We all know that parrots and mynah birds can mimic human speech.  A memorable Far Side cartoon depicted a carload of cows driving past a field of wandering humans, one cow leaning out the window and mocking the “yackety-yack” speech of people.  Well, it seems that we can add another species to the short list of those now know to be capable of speech mimicry..the beluga whale!

Whales are no slouches in the intelligence department, but a study recently published in Current Biology under the title “Spontaneous speech mimicry by a cetacean” really blew me away.  The whale of the study, named Noc, lived at San Diego’s National Marine Mammal Foundation for 30 years before dying in 2007.  It seems that handlers first heard mumbling in 1984 coming from a tank containing whales and dolphins that sounded like two people chatting far away.  One day after a diver surfaced from the tank and asked,  “Who told me to get out?” researchers realized that the garbled sounds came from a captive male Beluga whale.  For several years, they then recorded its spontaneous sounds while it was underwater and upon surfacing. 

An acoustic analysis revealed that the human-like sounds were several octaves lower than typical whale calls, and scientists think that the whale’s close proximity to people enabled it to listen to and mimic human speech by changing the pressure in its nasal cavities.  Now the whale appears to be saying the word “out” over and over, and some have said that it sounds like people singing in the shower or the Muppets’ Swedish Chef. 

Beluga whales, also known as white whales, are sometimes called “the canaries of the sea” because of how vocal they are.  Anecdotal reports have surfaced in the past of whales sounding like humans.  At Vancouver Aquarium, keepers had suggested that a white whale about 15 years of age had uttered his name, “Lagosi.”  While people should not think from these results that whales can communicate with us on a conversational level, it’s an intriguing possibility for future research…

Comments: 4 Comments

The Hawk of Achill…

Posted October 23, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, fantasy, feathered friends, furry commercials, television
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– – I, for one, worry about extremely large whiskey-swilling birds of prey terrorizing the neighborhood; they might, for example, lower already-depressed property values, to say nothing of discouraging tourism.

We are introduced to such a creature in Jameson Whiskey’s third commercial in a series that celebrates the supposed exploits of the brand’s founder.  Now the “Hawk of Achill” is an enormous fowl with a habit of terrorizing the island’s inhabitants, and worse yet, stealing Jameson’s Irish whiskey!  It’s somewhat reminiscent of the Giant Roc, and appears like something which might have been celebrated in an episode of MonsterQuest.  We catch only glimpses of the hawk, but are told that it has carried off both the mason’s daughter and whiskey.  Now Jameson as portrayed will do just about anything to recover a barrel of his brew, so he stows away in one of his own barrels, and is carried off by the hawk to the great bird’s nest, where he encounters the comely lass who’s another victim of the bird’s thievery.   While we are not shown how Jameson accomplishes the feat, we next see the alcohol avenger back home at a feast for the townspeople where the hawk has been prepared like a gigantic Thanksgiving turkey!- -It’s bird and brew for everyone!  And hawk leftovers for the next several weeks, undoubtedly…

Thus be it ever to alcoholic avians!  The commercial has a rich atmospheric feel, and an appropriately haunting musical score of Danse Macabre…

Comments: 2 Comments

That Great, Prehistoric Taste!

Posted October 21, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, furry, prehistoric life, strange
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  – – I, for one, do not relish the thought of eating long-dead things.  Let’s face it, however, some people will eat almost anything!  So for the strong of stomach and to dovetail onto the previous mammoth post, we will consider tales of those who reportedly have tasted mammoth flesh, and for the less adventurous we will consider simply what mammoth is reported to taste like by the few contemporary people who have sampled it.  

To put things into proper perspective, only several mammoths have been found in anywhere near an intact state.  Most were already scavenged, preyed upon, or decayed to some degree before their freezing in permafrost, leaving little soft tissue behind.  When the corpse becomes exposed, usually through erosion, it quickly starts to rot.  Additionally, modern scavengers will consume exposed thawed soft tissue.  Mummified frozen fossilized animals also tend to be found in frozen silt, not as giant ice cubes; it’s hardly a tasty smorgasbord.  What meat that does survive is nearly always revolting.

Frozen mammoth meat has been eaten, however, and is described as tasting like meat left in the freezer for way too long.  It’s tough and bland, and has no flavor.  Now The Explorers Club, an association of heavy-duty scientists and adventurers, did according to reports include  mammoth meat at a 1951 gathering; these were hardly large juicy steaks, but rather odd edible chunks or two supposedly recovered from Akutan Island in the Aleutians.   Now old-time paleontology lore is full of tales in which half-starved hunters or explorers defrost and consume an icebound mammoth carcass, but most of these accounts are impossible to verify. 

So in summation, finding a frozen mammoth is exhuming an icy grave, not walking into a meat locker.  If you were an early human and needed to feed your tribe for a month, however, a mammoth wasn’t something that you would pass up quickly…

Comments: 3 Comments

To Clone A Mammoth?

Posted October 19, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, furry, research, science
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– – A not-so giant mammoth excavated from the Siberian permafrost in late September 2,200 miles northeast of Moscow near the Sopochnaya Karga cape was a 16-year-old at the time of his death who stood two meters tall (6’6″) and weighed 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs).  He was named Jenya after the 11-year-old Russian boy who found the animal’s limbs sticking out of the frozen mud.  Jenya was missing a left tusk, a fact which handicapped him for fighting and may have contributed to his early death tens of thousands of years ago.

While Jenya’s carcass is the best preserved one since a 1901 discovery of a giant mammoth, the DNA has been damaged by low temperatures which rendered it unsuitable for possible cloning.  A summer expedition’s discovery of mammoth hair, soft tissues, and bone marrow holds more promise for cloning, however, with much of the genetic code of the wooly mammoth already deciphered from balls of mammoth hair found frozen in the Siberian permafrost… 

 

Comments: 2 Comments

Giant Mystery Eyeball Discovered!

Posted October 15, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal oddities, animals, aquatic, cool things, strange, strange happenings, unidentified

– – I’m always glad when giant eyeballs wash up on beaches, bringing to mind as they do such vintage sci-fi classics as 1958’s The Crawling Eye.  Eyeballs by nature tend to make people squeamish, especially disembodied ones…and in time for Halloween, too!- -What a gift from the sea!

Anyways, this treasure was found Wednesday by a beachcomber on Pompano Beach, Florida.  The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is preserving the eyeball, termed the “mystery eyeball,” which is slightly larger than a baseball.  Speculations as to what kind of species the orb hails from include a bigeye thresher shark, a whale, and of course, a giant squid. 

It will be several days before a precise identification is made by the agency’s research lab in St. Petersburg, so we’ll just have to wait and see…ahahahahaha!

Update:  It would now appear that experts are tending to believe that the eyeball was hacked out of a swordfish by an angler.  This determination was made based on a consideration of the eye’s size, color, and structure…

Comments: 3 Comments

Swimming With Tigers…

Posted October 12, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, controversial, furry, furry stories
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– – There’s a rather controversial and disconcerting experience that’s becoming quite the rage in some circles; swimming with tigers!

For a fee of $200 for a half hour romp, a private Florida zoo is offering the public a chance to swim, play in the grass, and bottle feed Tony, an eight-week-old tiger cub at Dade City’s Wild Things zoo outside of Tampa, Florida.  Now tigers like Tony are only allowed to swim with visitors until they weigh 40 pounds, and once they hit 25 pounds, must be on leashes.  At least one of the trainers is also in the water with the visitor.  As an option, visitors can also swim with alligators who have had their mouths taped shut.

Some animal rights activists are not amused, finding it abusive and dangerous to the animals’ health since they can be awakened repeatedly for anyone who will “pay to play”…and in Congress, two pieces of legislation are pending that would prohibit the private possession and breeding of big cats.

 

Comments: 3 Comments

Of DNA Degradation and Dinosaurs…

Posted October 11, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: extinct species, scalies, science
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– – Just when the Jurassic Park films had us hoping for such a real-life scenario, it turns out to be virtually impossible owing to the calculated half-life of DNA, which figures out to be only around 521 years. 

A team of paleogeneticists tested 158 leg bones belonging to three species of extinct giant moa birds which ranged from 600 to 8,000 years old, running a series of comparisons between the age of the various bones and DNA degradation within each specimen.  The DNA half-life worked out to about 521 years in specimens kept at swamp temperatures.  Even a more ideal preservation temperature of minus 5 degrees Celsius would only result in readable DNA from specimens up to 1.5 million years old, far less than would be required to reconstitute a T-Rex or raptor…

Comments: 3 Comments

Cat Fight!

Posted October 9, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, cartoons, famous furries
Tags: ,

– – You’ve probably seen Kit-Cat Klocks,which have been made continuously by the California Clock Company in Oregon for over 70 years.  The iconic art deco style wall clock is traditionally in the shape of a grinning black cat with cartoon-styled eyes that move horizontally in sync with a pendulum tail that swings beneath.  From the 1930’s through the 1950’s the clocks had only two paws, features which expanded to four paws and a bow tie in more recent years.  The clocks were also originally plug-in, while models sold since the late 1980’s use batteries and are also available in multiple colors, some for a limited time only. 

Now Felix the Cat‘s production company has sued Kit-Cat Klocks in federal court in 2004 for copyright infringement, claiming that Kit-Cat was a blatant knockoff of Felix, who first appeared in the 1920’s.  Apparently even Felix couldn’t pull the copyright infringement case out of his bag of tricks…

Comments: 2 Comments

Street Fight!

Posted October 7, 2012 by vulpesffb
Categories: absurdities, animal spokepersons, animals, feathered friends, television
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– – It came as rather a surprise when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the first presidential debate declared that he would cut funding to the PBS network, while maintaining that he liked the PBS monitor of the debate, and also loved PBS Sesame Street icon, Big Bird.  Apparently, this is tough love.

Now the U.S. federal government contributes about 15% of the PBS operating budget, an amount equal to .01% of the federal budget.  It’s an amount that the Pentagon burns through in a mere six hours!  At least Big Bird found out that he has a lot of friends, at one point during the debate generating 17,000 tweets per second, which I guess is appropriate.  As the Trashmen prophetically told us in the Surfin’ Bird song, “The bird is the word!”  

Comments: 4 Comments

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