Xolo Dog Breed: ughck! Chupacabra!

http://www.thirdday.com/boards/showthread.php?p=1899053

I'd heard about these dogs, but wow, I'd never seen them in pictures, not like this.

E-mail Notifications

wow, after 7 months, it was really annoying me that people could comment on my blogs without me receiving some sort of notification, and I finally found it in settings. Well, it takes a while for my annoyance to build up to take the form of action! I hope this works not the way I want it to.

Moment of Zen: Homevideo of Bristol Zoo

This uTube video includes a portion showing a very interesting tourist home-video of the Bristol Zoo in England, it seems within the month.
That's the only part of the video I'm confident about recommending. Anything else seems either questionable or appeals to specific naturalist interests, although I personally found it all worth watching. In fact, it was calming, and thus my titular moment of zen.

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-track-of-unknown-animals-episode-32.html

This website I am linking to (and from) has a focus on "cryptozoology" the study of unknown animals mostly via the study of local legends and mysterious "sightings". A lot of it is hogwash, but even when it IS hogwash these people do a pretty good job of giving the matter thoughtful serious analysis to show in what way it is hogwash. Some of it is legitimate amateur naturalists studying invasive species, or unexpected migrations, or accidental releases from private collections, etc.

Axolotl

I considered calling this blog :"A Lotl Axcitement" but I thought better of it.

It takes a special person to appreciate the humor in this online video, or rather to even know what it is referring to.

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/05/song-about-neoteny-in-tailed-amphibians.html

If you have no idea what an axolotl is, don't feel badly.
It's a mudpuppy-type creature related closely to the tiger salamanders, and native to Mexico.
Even as a relatively wide-read zoo enthusiast, I just found about about the axolotl this year, at age 27.
I recall seeing an axolotl exhibit before I had learned about them, and at the time didn't realize what I was looking at.

http://www.axolotl.org/tiger_salamander.htm

Giant Salamanders and Hellbenders

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/04/yet-another-in-ongoing-sexy-animals-i.html

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/04/glen-vaudrey-jumping-on-hellbender.html

This is one of my favorite cryptozoological mysteries, although it needs to be explained that correct identification is as important as the discovery of "unknown" animals.

Willy Ley in his books has mentioned Giant Salamanders of the American West, known to early settlers, but extinct by the time that scientific minds had moved to that region.
He suggests that there are many references to giant salamanders of the Rocky Mountains area written by dubious first-hand settler accounts. I want to find some of these, some day.

There are species of documented very large salamanders in Asia. It is not without precedent that they could have had a North American cousin.

On the other hand, misidentification and hearsay and legend and exotic nonnative species are also very real possibilities that need to be examined. Further, some instances may have been legitimate while others not.

River Monsters!

Ah-ha!

One of the few perks on my current job, I'm privy to late-night cable programming, something I am generally skeptical if not dismissive of. Aside from the Daily Show and it's subsidiaries, of course. Anyway...

Not too long ago, I found River Monsters, a fun fun fun show on Animal Planet. Well, it's fun fun fun for me anyway. My favorite episode so far happens to be the first I got to watch, about the goliath tigerfish of the Congo River. If anyone isn't clear on what that is, Google it. I'm in a hurry.

Anyway, the season 2 premeire was last night, and features the Giant Freshwater Ray of Southeast Asia (Thailand, etc.). Wow! 400 pounds, 17 feet across AFAIK or can remember. If anyone recalls (except for me), I blogged on this very creature a tiny bit back about half a year ago or so. I forget the exact blog title; I can look it up later. Maybe. I had tried to figure out the natural history of this creature, to ID the animal I found in pictures, but I wasn't quite sure. Now I am.

It was only been known to science about 20 years, says the show, and is still little known, AFAIK. And I can believe it, to an extent, judging from the shallow information I have seen online.

Now I know what I was looking at before. Whee!

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate

What do Korea and James Brown have in common? they both have Seoul.