RANKED: Top Ten Moar Animals that are Cool!

Theme: Zoo - Swallow

Another Tuesday finds me characteristically unprepared with a b└ögg post, so, whilst I compose my thoughts like Beethoven at his Moog synthesizer, here's another turbo-low-effort listicle about animals.

Tentacled Snake

Noone knows why Vietnam's tentacled snake has tentacles, nor why what look more like the rhinophores on a good sea slug are considered tentacles at all. By that logic I might well call myself a tentacled bloğğer, but let's not go there. What is of more direct import is that it exists, and coolly trips up and down its watery abode looking for things to eat. Perhaps the real reason it has those things is that it's an metalhead throwing the \m/.

Bat-Eared Fox

Both adorable and deadly, if you're something very small, like a termite, because, honestly, these things are about the size of a comical terrier. One thing I've been told about the bat-eared fox is that they're apparently chill with porcupines, unlike the fabled honey badger, which will maul and eat the spiny bros despite the cost in perforation this inevitably incurs. Bat-eared foxes are found in southern and eastern parts of Africa, where they are every bit as cool as rhinos and other megafauna that are better-known.

Wilson's Bird of Paradise

There are many bird of paradises to be found in the mysterious lands of Indonesia, but no one's ever been there or knows anything about it, despite its having a population of 427 thousand billion people. Wilson's one has this cool tail that curls inwards, perhaps to mimic the impression of a young lady doing her mandatory-under-Pat-Bastard's-dictatorship regime of squats.

Mandarin Duck

Imagine, if you will, a species so alien to the human experience that the men were cool to look at and the women visually dull. The mandarin duck is just such a species, with the male mogging the shit out of his lady friend, which must drive her insane. Fortunately, the male deigns to date down instead of being an homosexual, for which, let's be honest, we couldn't blame him (no homo, no furfag, no bird-botherer). Plumage of his caliber is so patrician that it scarcely seems of this world, but God put him there just to make us happy, and that is an encouraging thought.

Painted Bat

As orange is the colour of Halloween, and bats its patron animal, you might think the bright orange painted bat would be well-known, except to think that you'd have to know about it, but now you do, so now you do.

Golden Poison Dart Frog

In the crowded field of cool frogs, one stands out both by virtue of being bright yellow and also adorably small. The fact these things will kill you deader than a schoolgirl in a country Laura Loomer doesn't like puts them quite strictly in the look-don't-touch category beside roadkill and women who like Beyonce.

Bright Blue Stick Insect

Named achrioptera manga after Japanese cartoons, the bright blue stick insect misses the point of looking like a stick by being bright blue, but by the same token lands a slot on my prestigious list, because bright blue things are cool. When I was but a mere changeling, I had pet stick insects purchased from a classmate at the Yookay workhouse I attended, but they all managed to drown themselves in the water dish provided. Given that the noble stick insect lives in the fucking rainforest, and is therefore conversant with the concept of H2O, I can only conclude this uniform demise was the result of suicide.

Oblong Winged Katydid

What did Katy do? Science may never know, but all katydids resemble leaves, so one theory is that she made like a tree. The oblong winged katydid, however, katydid it wrong by being bright pink (sometimes yellow). Like the above mentioned stick insect, their survival chances' loss is our gain, although I'm sure their predators probably don't see the same colour spectrum we do, so it might not make any difference.

Nilgai

Most people think of antelopes as dainty, springy, sprightly little things. Not so the nilgai, which is ripped af as fuck and will murder you with its roid rage should you get too close. This Indian antelope has never once skipped neck day and is hunted in routine culls because it's been known to total vehicles that presume to trespass on its rightful territory, like the roads. I saw one out the window on an Indian road trip once, but I didn't get a picture, so I'm free to wax one-that-got-away about its brutish physique, even though it was actually fairly medium.

Gibbons

Normally I'd be more specific, but all gibbons are cool. Their exclusion from the title "great ape" strikes me as a travesty of justice, with their funny long hands and arms and ghostly, mournful whooping. Yet none can deny them the epithet "great troll", as evidenced by this four-minute clip of one fucking with tigers for the lulz. Even the humans with the densest scrotum-stretchers in the human kingdom will typically do so only with a steel cage for protection, but the gibbon just does it au naturel for the love of the game, making it the GOAT troll out of all the fauna on the Earth.

"LOL YOLO" - A. Gibbon.

Join me next week for more haphazard filler straight off the top of my head!!!

a little upd8

Theme: Skeletons in the Closet - Alice Cooper

Lately I've been working hard remastering my classic comic strips, which I intend to drop next week in one big package for your Christmas present. If you've been good, I might even throw in a bonus page but no promises. Anyway, this has left me time for either a well-thought-out article or sleeping in ridiculously late so in lieu of your article, here are some interesting facts about skulls:

The giraffe's ossicones are part of its skull!!!1 This means giraffe Hamlet would have convenient handles by which to hold giraffe Yorrick.

Snakes' lower jaws are separated into two mandibles that don't meet in the middle. This looks weird when viewed.

The hammerhead shark has the most metal of all skulls in the animal kingdom.

The toucan's skull is very tiny compared to its beak, and most of it is eye socket, leaving very little room for its brain. What's YOUR excuse?

Finally, the anteater's long face is in fact skull all the way through. I didn't know that, did EWE?

Tune in next week to see if I can meet my deadline! The suspense is out of control.

RANKED: The Top Ten Moar Animals! (Nudibranch Edition!)!

Theme: The Mollusk - Ween

It's that time of year again: Tuesday.

Spanish Shawl Nudibranch

Nudibranchs are psychedelic-looking sea-slugs that eat small cnidarians, absorb their stinging nematocysts, and repurpose them for their own defence against larger predators, sort of like you with donuts, minus the last part. The Spanish shawl one is purple and orange, and kind of looks like Sanic the Hedge Hog OC.

Blue Sea Dragon Nudibranch

The blue sea dragon is also a nudibranch, despite looking nothing like the Spanish shawl. This is a recurring theme with nudibranchs, which come in many shapes and sizes, from four millimeters to 23 inches long, according to the summary of the first result on Bing. They are also found all around the world where there are oceans. Nudibranchs can't swim for shit and simply drift where the tide takes them.

Anna's Chromodoris (Nudibranch)

This one is blue and yellow. The orange things on the front are rhinophores, while those on the back are gills, or vice versa; idk.

This one

Found off Dahab in the Red Sea, this one looks really cool. IDK what it's called though.

Opalescent Nudibranch

This one has perhaps the coolest name of any animal. I want to use "opalescent" more in conversation, but I'm not sure how. Enter the opalescent nudibranch; problem solved.

Green one

Some nudibranchs can photosynthesise. Note that this is in stark contrast to you, who can't do anything right.

Blue Velvet Nudibranch

No doubt named for David Lunch's kino of the same name, the Blue Velvet (1986) nudibranch also appears to be impossible to photograph in focus. I went through like three pictures of this thing on Bing Dot Com Image Search and it's a point of principle I never click a fourth.

Hopkin's Rose Nudibranch

This one makes the cut in part because it doesn't even look like a sea slug at all, looking more like an anemone unless you catch it at the right angle to spot the rhinophores. Hopkin must have been so stoked to coin this rose, holy shit bro.

Variable Neon

This lil bro kind of reminds me of the dragon on the Welsh flag, which is by far the best flag and prompts the question: why don't more flags have cool dragons on them instead of lame blank slabs of colour like some bullshit you'd go see in the Tate Modern?

Vexillology is a solved game, you can all go home.

Cole's Nudibranch

All nudibranchs are hermaphroditic. Some have been known to eat one another. Most live in shallower waters but deep sea ones have been known. I hope you've learned something today, because you sure haven't reading my takes on B movies and shooting whipped cream directly down your gullet.

RANKED: The Top 10 Animals!!!

"That's all very well, Pat", you muse, fresh off yet another binge of my superlative blôggue because it's the only thing worth reading on the internet, "but what exactly are the top ten animals? For I, a plebeian fuck, know only maybe dogs, cats, hamsters, birds - all of which I just call birds - and perhaps goldfish. Tell me more about the wonders of nature". OK.

Indian Giant Squirrel

I once travelled to the wilds of Maharashtra in search of this squirrel, which most of the twenty billion Indians don't seem to be aware exists. Well your humble blogguiste can confirm they're real, and they come in a wild variety of colours and patterns from reddish brown and white to full purple and orange. If I were Indian I would never shut the fuck up about these S-tier squirrels.

Binturong

The second greatest animal looks like a combination of so many other animals it might have been mashed together by an overly broad AI prompt. Often known as a bear-cat, to me it looks more like a raccoon-spidermonkey, complete with prehensile tail. Based on videos where they wrap themselves around people's shoulders, a binturong would be an excellent accessory for a pirate in some period adventurekino set in Indonesia, if anyone made good movies I want to see anymore.

Giant Oarfish

Every source you will find on the giant oarfish spins with a straight face that they may have "been mistaken for" or "inspired tales of" mythical sea serpents, instead of admitting that sea serpents are real and are simply a massive fish instead of a massive snake. Just look at this fucking thing.

Okapi

Once mistaken for a forest zebra due to its patterned hindquarters, the okapi is in fact a closer cousin of the giraffe. I'll take it over either, though, because it's great. The okapi has an extremely long prehensile tongue which it can wrap around a bunch of vegetation and rip it out for eating. If I had this, I would use it to steal ice cream cones from children, and then laugh in their stupid faces as they cried.

Resplendent Quetzal

The most /fa/ civilisation in history, the Aztecs, accessorised with the unparalelled plumage of this alien-looking bird, one of nature's most strikingly weird beauties, like Anya Tayylmao if she were of the avian persuasion.

Peacock Tarantula

Another kino animal almost unknown to its multitudinous countrymen, the peacock tarantula is endemic to a single forest in Andhra Pradesh. A bright blue spider is the most made-up-sounding thing you can imagine, but it's real. Even the most arachnophobic little baby bitch should celebrate this overlooked jewel in God's creation.

Yeti Crab

I gave my thoughts on the yeti crab one million years ago, and they have not changed. What an excellent animal.

Sun Bear

Like the okapi, the sun bear has an unusually long tongue, but unlike the okapi, it is a bear, and uses it to scoop out honey from beehives or some such nonsense. Sun bears may not be the biggest bear, but they're the coolest one. Perhaps had Timothy Treadwell been Sun Man instead of Grizzly Man, he wouldn't have had his face eaten as he screamed. Food for thought!

Superb Fruit Dove

As you can already tell by its name, the superb fruit dove is a cut above lesser fruit doves, with a bright pink patch on its head like "what are you going to do about it asshole?" - an attitude shared by all flight-proficient birds, but seldom with such self-justifying flair.

Rhinoceros Hornbill

All hornbills are cool but for my money, the rhinoceros one is the best. Named for the rhinoesque curvature of its casque, this bird is better than anything you've ever done or heard of in your pointless life. They can give off a majestic call with the amplificatory effect of the casque, and their eyes are colour-coded, with the males' being red and the females' white. I wish you'd go away.

But those are just my thoughts, what are yours? List your favourite animals in the comments and subscribe to EmptyHero on YouTube dot com.

Who would win: leucism zebra or quagga?

The quagga was/is a type of zebra that gave up halfway going backwards. That is to say, only its front half has the zebra stripes, whereas its back half is a horse.

The quagga became extinct in the 1880s, but zebras have now been bred to look like it, so at least quasi-quaggas can be found on Earth today. But wait: a challenger appears!

Due to leucism, a pigmentary condition often confused with albinism, this zebra is like the quagga in reverse. It's like you have enough for a full horse and a full zebra, but spread across two animals. Maybe they're both pantomime horses whose operators mixed up their costumes. Other examples of leucism include this toucan:

"Kick A Ginger Day is NOT funny" - this toucan

And this peacock:

"Remember the name you all had for me when I was at internal affairs? What was it, Gordon?" - this peacock

I think the leucism zebra would win, because it has a more ostentatious mohawk. What do YOUM think? Let me know down in the comments.

Roar: The Most Insane Film Ever Made

You all remember Timothy Treadwell, from the greatest docukino, Grizzly Man? Well now imagine he had fuckoff money and was married to a classic Hollywood A-lister, and made his own little Apocalypse Now, except set entirely in the Kurtz compound and starring himself as Dennis Hopper's spaced-out photographer character, and instead of people the inhabitants of the compound were lions.

Yes.

That is, roughly speaking, what Roar is. Noel Marshall was the nutter, Tippi Hedren his equally deranged wife, and a young Melanie Griffith their IRL daughter. Along with two sons from a previous marriage, they form the family at the heart (of darkness) of the most window-licking movie venture ever funded. If Aguirre-era Herzog and Kinski had been pitched this idea, they would have thought it was too nuts. The picture proudly proclaims in its opening credits that no animals were harmed (which I doubt), but cheerfully omits to mention that seventy members of the cast and crew were injured by the said felines, including DP Jan de Bont (who would go on to do Die Hard and Speed) who was fucking scalped by one of the beasts.

U N T R A I N E D

Marshall plays a version of himself called Hank, and Hedren plays a version of herself named Madeleine. This version of her evidently doesn't remember The Birds, which should have given her a healthy fear and loathing of nature on its own. Their kids, however, all play themselves, or at least use their IRL names, possibly in case they needed to keep in any personalised screams for help that might have occurred during filming.

*Record scratch* *freeze frame* I bet you're wondering how I got into this position...

I'd like to think it goes without saying that getting up close and personal with lions (and tigers, and various other dangerous beasts) is one of the worse ideas you can come up with, but this has never occurred to Hank, who goes off on a boat trip leaving his family to arrive unsuspecting at his compound which is now empty except for the hundred and fifty ravenous predators he likes to pal around with.

What's the worst that could happen?

His way back is further complicated when a couple of his tiger friends hop on the boat and capsize it, which I'm not sure was meant to happen, which is something I can say for most of the events in this film. I say this because the animals literally get writing credits for their improv skills, because Noel "One Flew Over The Lion's Den" Marshall doesn't know the difference between improv and the fact that a fucking animal doesn't know it's on a movie set and is only interested in food, rutting, and mayhem.

Except this one which is really into skateboarding.

Meanwhile, Hedren et al spend a lot of time running and hiding from the lions. The sons lock themselves in various things and Hedren loses her top, tries to pull a lion off her daughter by its TAIL, and gets a jar of honey or something drop on her face. I thought this was going to be a plot point that would lead to one of the animals trying to lick/eat it off her, but it never pays off, so it's just another small moment of inexplicable derangement in the midst of what is certainly the best movie no one should have ever even thought of making.

After this she steps on a rake nine times and falls into a cactus.

There's a subplot about two guys who get mauled at the start of the picture coming back to shoot some lions and tigers, which takes care of itself when the one antisocial lion, Togar, whom we can recognise because he's always covered in blood, shows up and mauls them to death. If they weren't in the movie at all it would make absolutely no difference.

"Yes, this looks like a sensible animal to put in a home movie with my family" - Noel

In case getting chased, sliced up and otherwise harassed by the pride wasn't enough, Tippi Hedren then gets in a fight with an elephant.

The woman has no luck at all with animals.

It's worth noting that the film score seems to have been grafted on from an entirely different project, as it's all feel-good family comedy stuff, bookended by two utterly emetic hippy type pop/folk/rock songs about harmony and loving one another and suchlike, all of which is so tonally dissonant with what we're watching, which is definitely funny, but like the Darwin Awards are funny, and laced with a healthy dose of cringe as at any moment you're afraid one of the improv stars is going to improv biting the face off a cast member. Apparently Griffith actually sustained a facial injury and needed reconstructive surgery. Bet you don't think your parents were so mean now (unless you were molested).

Ceiling Cat fucking told you not to masturbate. Now he's sending in the big guns.

Fortunately Roar is never boring and if you look at it as a sort of surrealistic satire it's a pretty great work of art. If you look at it as 100% sincere it's kind of even better because it's a glimpse into madness at the opposite end of the social spectrum to the guy that sits next to you on the bus. Either way, check out Roar.

Here is an article that goes into a bit more detail on the film's background.