Skip to main content
search
Category

Animals

Elephant tight rope walking – not as hard as you would imagine

By Animals

I remembered being taught about the 5 senses at school. I was surprised to discover that in the mean time scientists have added another 5 to the list.

  1. Balance and acceleration
  2. Temperature
  3. Kinesthetic sense
  4. Pain
  5. Other internal senses – a sense which is stimulated within the body
And to top that off, some animals have some really cool senses, we humans lack
  1. Electroreception – able to detect electric fields (some fish, sharks and dolphins)
  2. Magnetoception – able to detect direction using the earth’s magnetic field (typically observed in birds – so that’s how migratory birds do it!)
  3. Pressure detection – within the gas bladder organ of a fish to help it regulate buoyancy
  4. Current detection – enables fish to navigate, hunt and hang around in schools
  5. Polarized light direction – an orientation ability found in bees, helping them to navigate on cloudy days
  6. Slit sensillae – enables a spider to detect mechanical strain in the exoskeleton, helping them to sense force and vibration

Check out Wiki for definitions and examples

May 11, 2012
Love0

Lemming depression management

By Animals

Although I have used the poor lemming in a few cartoons now, it would be remiss of me not to do my bit for this adorable little rodent and put an end to the myth that lemmings have a predisposition to jumping off cliffs. Well, it’s just not true.

The origin of this misunderstanding is believed to have come from the Walt Disney 1958 animal documentary White Wilderness. Filmed in remote Canada, where lemmings are nowhere to be found, producers decided to bring in some imports for filming purposes. To illustrate the cliff plunge scene, a group of lemmings were pushed via a rotating platform, forcing them to run off a small cliff into a river, and so the myth began. Apparently the movie didn’t suggest it was a mass suicide attempt, but rather a migration undertaking, but the myth still remains today.

May 9, 2012
Love0

Baaaa! Baaaa! Zzzzzz!

By Animals

I typed ‘sleeping sheep’ into Google to see what would pop up.

I found a game called ‘Sheep Dash’ on a BBC website. It tests your reaction time to tranquillising the fleeing sheep. If you hit them, they go to sleep. It then gives you a result. I didn’t fare too well. Apart from a woeful speed statistic of 0.87 seconds average speed response time, I was given the badge “sluggish snail”.

Let me know how you fared?

May 2, 2012
Love0

Joey on board

By Animals

Three kangaroo facts to amaze your friends with:

  • They are the largest marsupial, with the big red species standing over 2 metres
  • Kangaroos belong to the animal family Macropus, meaning “big foot.” 
  • They are like Superman and can leap a tall building in a single bound (well, perhaps not a building, but they can jump 9 metres reaching speeds of 48 km/hr)
April 25, 2012
Love0

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

By Animals

I wanted to create a cartoon with three animals deprived of hearing, seeing and speaking.  The former two were easy to come up with suitable candidates, but the latter was a tad more difficult. I mean, is it possible to be born without a mouth? Well, yes it is, if you are the gnat of the glow-worm.  The humble glow-worm starts its life as an egg (3 weeks), it then becomes a larvae (9 months – as the glow-worm), followed by a pupa (2 weeks), to finally emerge as a gnat.  And the gnat doesn’t have a mouth! This probably explains why it only lives long enough to lay eggs and that’s it (about 3 days).

April 17, 2012
Love0

Morning commute

By Animals

Don’t think this train is aerodynamic enough to beat the current world train speed records.  During trials, the French V150 clocked 574 km/hr in 2007 (conventional rail) and the Japanese MLX01 clocked 581km/hr in 2003 (unconventional train – it’s that whizz bang magnetic one).

April 10, 2012
Love0

Forecasting fine and sunny

By Animals

I was very excited to receive a free upgrade for my iPad app (Sketchbook pro) a few weeks ago. It included the provision of bubble drawing!

In my excitement I had to find some excuse to give it a whirl.

April 4, 2012
Love0

Dead elephant

By Animals

I don’t know where the myth concerning elephants standing after they die came from. Various theories are out there, but I couldn’t find any evidence on Google. Here is Tyler’s theory on the subject.

March 29, 2012
Love0
Close Menu