Fishing Cats

Not long ago I was talking with some of the members of the group about fishing cats, a type of cat found in Asia that hunts fish, it is a skillful swimmer and excellent fish catcher, partly due to the fact that its paws are webbed. I'm making this post mostly because several people claimed that this weird but wonderful creature didn't really exist and was some sort of hoax along the lines of the pacific northwest arboreal octopus. Well it does exist, its pretty cool and also very cute. With those obvious adaptions for living and hunting in water its also a nice little example of the effect of evolutionary pressures.

Check out the wikipedia article as well as this one from the smithsonian national zoological park. Head here to see them in action. Oh and because I'm nice here's another youtube video of one wandering about.

More Unusual Nature

After yesterdays story about the gay flamingos acting as surrogate parents the BBC seems to be trying to outdo itself, now they have a story about a shark which has undergone (?) parthenogenesis, that's a virgin birth to the more religiously minded. The shark had become pregnant, despite being kept separate from any males for at least 3 years, genetic testing has since proven that the offspring was produced without any genetic material from a male.

It just goes to prove Jeff Goldblums (as Ian Malcolm) line from Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way", or words to that effect.

Flamingos

The BBC has a great story up now, about a couple of gay male Flamingos acting as surrogate parents to a chick. You can find the story here. Apparently they had been trying to steal other birds eggs to raise, and after seeing a nest abandoned the keepers decided to give them the abandoned egg to raise. In another curious part of the tale it turns out that male Flamingos can also produce milk, from their throats, so they can feed the chick until its beak develops enough for it to filter feed.