September Heaved a Sigh

The following sentence is the abstract from an article on MSN.com:

"Wildlife numbers have plunged by more than half in just 40 years as Earth's human population has nearly doubled, a survey revealed Tuesday."

Are you able to read that sentence and not feel the bottom drop out of your stomach? If so, we envy you.

This is the part where we would link to the MSN piece, but in digging around, we found the survey was done by the London Zoo, so here's the BBC piece on the findings, if for no other reason than the BBC is ostensibly closer to the source.

Is there hope? There is no hope. There is hope. Is there hope? Mm. We've already pulled all the petals off the daisy. Time to pick another one.

Let's take a breath and recalibrate our brains with a bold idea from evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, who recently told Smithsonian Magazine that "people haven’t been thinking big enough -- even conservationists."

What then, does Mr. Wilson propose? Half of the world should be returned to wildlife. Oh you sweet, 85-year-old dreamer of golden dreams. If only, Mr. Wilson. It's a wonderful thought.

Read the interview here.

Now, here's your reward:

photo © Brian W. Schaller / License: CC BY-NA-SA 3.0

This frog lives in the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont. She gives zero fucks about your social media presence.

We'll be right back after these messages.

Please take some time to look at Albrecht Dürer's "Rhinoceros." It's a woodcut the artist made in 1515. We are mildly curious about the text above the illustration, but that's a distant second to the detail of the rhino's "armor."

Look at:

Really, look at it. And know that it sold at auction in 2013 for $866,500. LOOK AT IT. You can't put a price tag on that. But someone did and now they have it, hanging somewhere, or in storage. But we can see it here, rendered in ones and zeros.

Naked Came the Sasquatch

Bigfoot's about as scary as Bela Lugosi's bunion cream, but as lasting bit of folklore and the poster beast of cryptozoology, the hairy bastard's charm is irresistible.

Therefore, it's entirely possible that the news of an "explanation" for the Yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman, has already made it's way to you.

The diet version of the tale is that a bit of fur, thought to be sloughed off from the Snowsquatch, is probably that of a rare polar bear that once wandered the Himalayas, the mountainous region of Asia that gave rise to the legend of the Yeti. Read all about that here.

But a far more interesting bit of Sasquatch news broke this past week as well, and didn't stir up nearly the attention that it should have.

A naked 20-year-old man attacked a 58-year-old man with a rock in the backwoods of Oregon and it took police 90 minutes to find the victim and his attacker. All the while, the victim held the dude in the nude at bay with his hunting rifle.

The cherry on this sundae? The clothing-optional assailant claimed he was descended from Sasquatch. Despite his self-proclaimed lineage, he was still arrested like any other human who strips and assaults people in the forest.

Art From a Film That Never Was

Hans Bacher and Andreas Deja are artists and animators who have worked for Disney as well as other studios. Some time ago (2004 per one source) they were put to work doing character and design work for a proposed animated feature for Disney called Fraidy Cat.

As is usually the case, the project was shelved and will likely never come back. And as is sometimes the case, giving up on the project is a big loss. The film was "a charming crime story taking place in London of the sixties, a bit of HITCHCOCK’S ‘REAR WINDOW’ with animals," said Bacher. [caps and emphasis his]

Alas, Fraidy Cat will never be. But Deja and Bacher have posted some of their early concept art and oh boy, does it look like it would have been fun.

Deja worked on character design for Oscar and Corrina, a cat and a bird who were to be the film's protagonists. He also did a sizeable gallery of the various supporting cast:

Bacher worked on background and style designs that show off the script's proposed settings:

And is it just us, or does that cat look a little like Cary Grant?

See everything they posted here and here. And read Bleeding Cool's post about the abandoned project, because that's where we read about it.

The Smallest of All Living Crocodilians

Curvier's dwarf caiman, aka the musky caiman, only reach about 4.5 feet in length on average. All caimans are known as alligatorid crocodylians, which is really fun to say out loud.

Cuvier's dwarf caiman, (Paleosuchus palpebrosus) in Prague sea aquarium “Sea world”, Czech Republic
Photo: Karel Jakubec

[Dept. of corrections: The correct unit of measure has been added to the figure "4.5" after initially being published without any indication of how long the Curvier's caiman grows beyond a meaningless figure. We deeply regret this error and will send both the writer and editor on a shopping trip to Costco on a Satruday afternoon as punishment.]

Your Dead Are Safe Until Winter

The corpse-eating fly, thought to be extinct, and possibly apocryphal, is alive ... and hungry.

Oh Honey, We're Ridiculous

As the solstice approaches and each day we eagerly rise and pad down to the TMI corporate p-patch to see if the artichoke is still alive, we try to encourage all Typing Monkey staffers to take a moment and let the amazing wonder of the natural world grab hold.

That's not difficult, since most of them are drunk and/or high most of the time, but if that makes them more suggestible to the precise beauty of those pale-green spiders that climb nimbly over the stones in the fake river-bed, so be it.

After all, it doesn't matter that you've risen later than intended and are watching fast-talking dames on Turner Classic Movies via the break room television while you eat leftovers for breakfast. What matters is that you saw a hummingbird pause by the window and be-damned if the emerald beauty didn't seem like he stopped to look back at you.

With all that in mind, take a look at this list from Wikipedia of the crop plants that bees pollinate. (Bats get a few nods too in the non-bee items.)

Bees of the honey, bumble, solitary, and stingless variety all come into play, and if we could, we'd high-five them or send them a thank-you note because we eat most of the items on that list.

Oh, and the word for what those bees are doing? Entomophily.

[Image courtesy of PD Photo]

The Elder Moss, Pink Slugs and Cannibal Snails

A University of Alberta biologist has grown fresh moss from a 400-year-old specimen found after Arctic ice melted away. We repeat: Moss, buried under polar ice for centuries, was ground up and placed in fresh soil. Seven out of 24 samples grew green and new moss.

Yes, the polar ice is melting and that’s horrible. We are not here to diminish the wailing of the klaxons that herald the end of humanity’s “dominion” over this planet.

Having recently read H.P. Lovecraft’s excellent novella At the Mountains of Madness, and then this article from the Edmonton Journal about Catherine La Farge’s resuscitation of dormant moss, the immediate, and we feel, appropriate, question is: What else is under the ice caps?

We don’t doubt the tenacity of moss. Cockroaches and rats have nothing on moss, lichens and fungus, in terms of survival skill. No animal will ever best a plant in that department, until the skies rain ammonia. Then we’re all done for.

But if moss can creep out from beneath the thaw, it’s only a matter of time before somebody accidentally wakes up a shoggoth.

La Farge herself says: “’Now we have to think there may be populations of land plants that survived that freezing. It makes you wonder what’s under the big ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic and alpine glaciers.’”

She goes on to call glacial ice an “`Unrecognized genetic reservoir ... We really have not examined all the biological systems that exist in the world; we don’t know it all.’"

While we’re on the topic of slimy things that lurk in dark, little-explored corners of the globe, we direct your attention to New South Wales, Australia.

From the misty heights of Mount Kaputar, a rainforest peak and National Park amidst New South Wales’ generally dry landscape, comes news of new species of invertebrates once only rumored to exist.

One of the confirmed new creatures is a retina-frying pink slug that feeds on moss and mold while the world sleeps. It’s a pretty thing with the kind of coloring we’d expect to come from Laffy Taffy.

The other big discovery at Kaputar is a snail that feeds on other snails, particularly snails that follow a strict vegetarian diet. And if bumper stickers have taught us anything, it’s that vegetarians taste better. Good work, cannibal snail.

[Incantations of ancient thank-yous to Edmonton Journal, The Age, and Pahko]

Journey Round His Skull

Will Schofield's astounding art blog 50 Watts will eat up all your spare time. You have been warned.

[Selection from the gallery "Children's Books in Poland: The 1960s." The '70s collection is every bit as good.]

And So It Begins

Here we are three days into October and you probably feel like we've left you at T-ball practice and it's starting to rain. Relax, get yourself a beverage and grab a donut -- you know the drill.

Welcome to the 5th annual Typing Monkey Halloween Frenzy. For the next 30 27 days we'll do our best to pollute your innocent eyes with as much seasonal evil as possible.

However, we will stick with tradition by easing you into things with a video from filmmaker we featured last  year. This one's not Halloween related, but might scare you and your cats.


Catnip: Egress to Oblivion? [Classroom Drug Educational Film] from Jason Willis on Vimeo.

The Great Frognosticator

Imbolc arrives a little later than usual this year. February 4 will mark the arrival of pagan spring in the Northern hemisphere. As regular Typing Monkey readers know, the United States pays obtuse respect to Imbolc via Groundhog Day every Feb 2.

In the spirit of perfectly delightful ways to stave off late winter angst, the citizens of Snohomish, WA have come up with a bit of pre-emptive Imbolc-inspired fun in the form of GroundFrog Day. The 7th annual celebration happened on Jan 28 and we're quite put out that we missed the occasion, a mistake we do not intend to repeat next year.

The mascot of GroundFrog Day is a bullfrog named Snohomish Slew. He's a handsome devil and this year the grand amphibian claims warm weather is ahead. Our fingers are crossed Mr. Slew.

[Photo: Dean Rutz/Seattle Times]

A Squirrel on Water Skis, and the Squirrel Has a Machine Gun

First we must wish Kermit the Frog a happy 56th birthday. That Muppet is an inspiration for life.

And in the spirit of juxtaposition that often fueled Kermit's comedy we bring you this slightly stale news item that's worth seeing if you haven't already:


[Courtesy of our news partner KING 5]

In case that video renders weird, here's a link. Despite our usual distaste for animals-as-weapons and/or espionage agents, it would have been pretty badass to have a spy network of crows. It could go so horribly, biblically wrong.