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The big bad wolf

By Animals

While drawing this cartoon I was reminded of my favourite cartoonist as a child – Jeff Hook.  His cartoons appeared daily in the local newspaper and were topical and political – not that I was interested in that part. It was having to find that teeny-weeny little hook he always hid in his cartoons. Our school teacher used to cut it out from the paper and stick it in a scrap-book for us all to look at daily.  He still works too (born 1928), but officially retired. You can see his old and new cartoons by checking out his website

May 16, 2012
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Evil aliens

By Evil aliens, Space and Aliens

It was time for some new aliens – evil ones – dressed is hot pink with bright purple feathers and a cigarette hanging half out their mouth.

And did you know Jupiter is a giant gas planet? I used to think all planets were just giant rocks, some with water if you were lucky like earth.  Jupiter is made up predominantly of hydrogen (about 90%) and helium (9%) with a few sprinklings of some other elements.

And for those scientifically minded people out there, I know there are some errors in science within the making of this cartoon, but hey, that’s what’s great cartooning is all about – bending of the truth!

So, here’s the puzzle for the day. I can think of 2 obvious scientific errors – can you guess what they are? (I’ll post the answer, next time I post the adventures of these two new characters)

May 14, 2012
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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
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Let sleeping teenagers lie

By Insects

During adverse conditions, such as drought, snails have the ability to sleep for long periods of time.  Perhaps the better description is that they estivate (the summer equivalent to winter hibernation).

The Cambridge Natural History 1895 compendium cites an incident involving the ‘sleeping’ of snails. Whilst travelling in Egypt a Mr. Vernedi discovered a bush covered with snails. He plucked a few and decided to keep them in his desk drawer.  Somehow, four years later, two of them ended up in the British museum, alive and kicking (or should I say ‘alive’ and ‘slipping’).

May 10, 2012
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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
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What do Darwin and the singing fat lady have in common?

By Dinosaurs

And now for 3 things you mightn’t know about Chuck:

  • On his 25th birthday, Captain FitzRoy named a mountain in honour of Charles. Mt Darwin is the tallest mountain in Tierra del Fuego (in the Andes). And if that wasn’t enough, a year earlier FitzRoy had named an expanse of water next to the then unnamed Mt Darwin, the Darwin Sound, to commemorate Darwin’s quick wit and courage. He saved them all from being marooned when giant waves created from a mass of ice split from a glacier and loomed towards their boat.
  • Darwin created a pros and cons list to help him determine if marriage was the right thing for him to pursue. Apparently it was, with one of the ‘pros’ for marriage ‘Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow’
  • Taking the latter point into account, this may be why he decided to keep marriage within the family. He wedded his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood (as in the fine china manufacturer).
May 8, 2012
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and the April winner is….

By Competitions, That's life

Congratulations to Froggwell on winning the April ‘How many jelly beans’ competition.

You can visit Froggwell at their blog site – it’s all about ‘Great art, in a great setting’

And the answer to the jelly bean question is 178 (‘My gosh! -That’s a lot. You are very industrious creating all those images.’ I hear you cry. And my response is ‘Yes, it is. I’m still recovering’).

As always, thanks for all your entries. If you missed out this time, not to worry – enter the May competition and try again.

May 7, 2012
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Couch potatoes

By Pot Luck

Couch potatoes must be too good a source for humour – even Weird Al Yankovic had a go. Here’s a You tube upload of a live performance of his song Couch potato (image isn’t the best on this one, but it didn’t come with ads)

May 4, 2012
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That’s just cheesy

By Pot Luck

I came up with the cartoon drawing before thinking of cheese names. I then found out that not all cheeses fit in text wise into the teeny, weeny sign I created.  So off the Wiki I went, in search of cheese names. True to Wiki form, I found a list of different cheeses (why someone would go to the trouble of creating something like this, I don’t know). Anyway, I learnt two new cheeses:

Skyr and Oka. The Ukraines came through with the former cheese, their version of a cottage type cheese. The latter is Canadian, and has origins back to the Tappist monks from Oka, Quebec.

May 3, 2012
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