Striped and solid bolt

Nope, not fabric but a zebra and a pony that escaped from a Staten Island petting zoo. Casper the 14-year-old pony and Razzi the 4-month-old male zebra foal (image above, more photos here) escaped from an apparently unlicensed facility when the owner, Giovanni Schirripa, left the gate open after feeding them. It happened last Wednesday and soon they were off, down the neighborhood street. They made a good escape - Casper has gotten loose twice before and Razzi (short for "Paparazzi") follows him everywhere - but were corralled and brought home. Their gallop lasted only a few blocks, but was captured on video (watch it here) by Zachary Osher, who remarked to the New York Times, “They ran past me, and then they made a loop around the parking lot. I thought they were circus animals.” Said another witness to the brief adventure, “You live in New York long enough, nothing really weirds you out.”

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On the loose:

Australian animals

Ape escape

Old penguin found, new penguin lost

Escapees

Monkeys in Florida

Circus animals on the lam

Pigs given a reprieve

Killer chimpanzees

Bears in the news
Bull in a boutique

A trick locked in stone

I've chosen to blog about a fossil again, because of camouflage in which a fly masquerades as a plant 165 million years ago (image above). An extinct 1.5" (38.5mm) scorpionfly (Juracimbrophlebia ginkgofolia) that mimicked the leaves of a tree much like a ginkgo (Yimaia capituliformis) was found in northeastern China's Inner Mongolia region. Paleoentomologist Dong Ren at Capital Normal University in Beijing and his colleagues realized the mistake 1 1/2 years ago and published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The mere occurrence of this type of mimicry approximately 40 million years before the appearance of flowering plants is the most important implication," said Conrad Labandeira, paleoecologist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

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Bugs, but no spiders:

Butterfly surgery

Fireflies

Amber arthropods

Insect headgear in the headlines

Antsy

Land lobster

Big bugs

Insect identified

Praying mantis

Beetle brooches

Let them eat...snakehead

I was still living in Washington, D.C., when I first heard of the northern snakehead fish (images above). One was discovered in Maryland's Crofton Pond, which was quickly drained for fear that the invasive predator (watch another video here, caution: language) had reproduced. "A second fear, based on the fish's ability to breathe out of water and travel across land, is that the snakehead could leave the pond and travel the 75' (23m) or so to the Little Patuxent River, and from there invade the state's river system," writes Hillary Mayell on the National Geographic site. "Yup, these nasty suckers can breath atmospheric air and can live outside of water for up to four days, using their fins to primitively crawl on the ground to find other bodies of water," confirms In the Capital. Sad to say that the snakehead did make it to the Patuxent and from there to the Potomac River, where it has fluorished (see record-breaking catch here) to the detriment of native populations of shad and bass. The answer to the proliferation of the "frankenfish" is to fight them with a fork, and according to David Stein, the executive chef at Tony & Joe's Seafood Place in Washington, they are ideal for anything from grilling to sauteing; have minimal shrinkage; and have a dense, meaty, white flesh with a mild taste. Turnabout, as they say, is fair play, and humans can be just as voracious...

Hi Steve!

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Invaders:

Cooking the encroachers

Washed up

Hazards of remote exploration

Proliferating pythons

Weedrobes

Hogs and helicopters

Snails

Ethiopian lions

The Ethiopian lion is depicted on the country's flag and currency as symbolic of Haile Selassie I (1892–1975). Now there is proof, through DNA analysis, that 15 offspring of lions from the emperor's private menagerie are genetically distinct from other lions. The Ethiopian lion in the flesh - of which there may be less than a few hundred - is distinguished by a dark mane and a more compact frame than other African lions. The lions in the Addis Ababa Zoo (video here) are the direct descendants of a group of 7 males and 2 females taken from the wild in 1948. “We therefore believe the Addis Ababa lions should be treated as a distinct conservation management unit and are urging immediate conservation actions, including a captive breeding programme, to preserve this unique lion population,” says researcher Michael Hofreiter of the University of York. The goal is to conserve lions in general, since their numbers have dwindled and the 2 populations that shared the dark brown mane of the Ethiopian lion have already gone extinct in the wild. “A great amount of genetic diversity in lions has most likely already been lost, largely due to human influences. Every effort should be made to preserve as much of the lion's genetic heritage as possible,” says Susann Bruche of Imperial College London, lead author of the study published in the European Journal of Wildlife Research.

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The Cabinet roars on occasion:

Leonardo's lion

Leopard and lions

Biting and bones

Once a zoo...

New digs for Detroit lions

Lifeless lions

Crittercam

Filipino provenance

Last week Vilma Bautista, personal secretary to former First Lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, was charged with conspiring to sell art masterpieces acquired by the infamous symbol of excess. The paintings in question include the following:

• Claude Monet’s “L’Église et La Seine à Vétheuil” (1881)
• Alfred Sisley’s “Langland Bay” (1887)
• Claude Monet’s “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” (1899)*
• Albert Marquet’s “Le Cyprès de Djenan Sidi Said” (1946)

But none of Imelda's infamous collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes (pictured above, caption and more photos here), now that she has reentered politics and parked them in a museum.

*Sold in 2009 for $32 million.

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To browse the shoe aisle in the Cabinet,

start here

Masquerading as victims

If you are familiar with the stereoscopic image entitled "General Wreck" by George Barker of the 1889 flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania (above, from my own collection), you are probably aware that the body in the foreground is not a victim of the disaster, but a man playing the part for dramatic effect. And you may therefore be interested to know that bodies have been found in the wreckage after Hurricane Sandy that aren't victims of the storm, although they are dead. They are victims of murder whose killers are taking advantage of the wreckage as a dump site. The bodies of 2 individuals have been found:

• Shawn Rucker, 32, of Baltimore on Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, with signs of blunt force trauma and bruises
• Thomas Dudley, 21, of Brooklyn in Forest Park, Queens, with stab wounds to the neck and a footprint mark on his back

The full story can be found here in the New York Times.

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Related posts:

House where it happened

Smuttynose

Acquitted

Gentlemen?

Murderer/murderess

600 years apart

Homicidal somnambulism

Cruentation

Retinal image of murderer

Mexican mummy-dog

This 1,000-year-old dog was discovered in Candelaria Cave in Coahuila, Mexico (more photos and video here). In the semi-arid region it mummified naturally, but was buried deliberately. "This is the first mummified canine that has an archaeological context," explains archaeologist Yuri De La Rosa, not to mention it's the only mummified dog ever found in Mexico, others having been found in Peru and Egypt. It was among hundreds of human remains and thousands of ancient artifacts, including textiles, baskets, and bows and arrows, and will soon be measured, x-rayed, and carbon tested to determine its exact age and breed. “It reinforces the idea that dogs were placed as companions in the funerary traditions of the region’s nomads, it also presents the possibility that these animals were domesticated,” said archaeologist Alejandro Bautista Valdespino.

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Preserved:

Animal mummies

Ibis bellies

Cat mummies

Cave canem
Rat bastard

Rats!

Bookworms

S. Blair Hedges, a biologist at Pennsylvania State University, has just published a remarkable piece of research in the journal Biology Letters entitled "Wormholes record species history in space and time." He has figured out that the detailed history of 2 species of invasive wood-boring beetles is contained within the covers of books published between the early 15th c. and the early 19th c. The beetles left their wormholes in the wood used to carve block prints that illustrate texts printed in western Europe. Hedges has gleaned details from these precisely dated and located wormholes that show rare books and artwork to be a largely untapped resource several million strong for studying distributional changes through time. The wormhole record existed long before species were described and museum collections were assembled. Hedges writes, "Knowledge of the wormhole record will allow biologists to trace the recent biogeographic history of species, including invasives of economic importance, and historians to evaluate the place of origin and movement of a woodblock, book, document or art print." From the wormholes, which appear as white and uninked areas, researchers can discern species based on the width and shape of the track and may be able to corroborate if they can obtain DNA from the samples. 

The caption for the set of illustrations reproduced above is as follows: "Details of European prints (a, northern; b, southern) showing printed wormholes, and woodblocks (c, northern; d, southern) showing actual wormholes (scale, 1 : 1). (a) Netherlandish woodcut art print de Rijke Man (1541) by Anthoniszoon (Rijksmuseum). (b) Italian woodcut (1606) by Ramusio (Library of Congress). (c) Netherlandish woodblock The wedding of Mopsus and Nisa (1566) by Bruegel (Metropolitan Museum of Art). (d) Bois Protat (1370–1380) from Saône-et-Loire, France (Bibliothèque national de France). Yellow arrows indicate wormhole tracks. Diagrams showing (e) position of typical woodblock (110 mm wide) in log from hardwood tree, (f) cross section showing grain, and the position of tunnels produced by (g) northern and (h) southern woodborers. The wood-boring larvae are shown in tunnels, and adults are shown emerging from flight holes (wormholes) following pupation." 

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The Cabinet has a large library:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Brian's books

Library leavings

Book reviews in the news

Bookmobile!

Marginalia

Biblioclasm

Jack Kerouac's house

George Gaylord Simpson

Big book, little book

Pathologist authors

Bibles placed and misplaced

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Them are some funny turkeys," says my Dad, laughingly describing the above video of the sandhill cranes he captured this morning (be sure to turn your sound up). He is visiting for the holiday.

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Thanksgiving posts past:

2011

2010

2009

2008

and Macy's mishap

Crime against culture

 

 

"There’s a special place in hell for the people responsible for this," denounces the Sierra Journal, referring to the vandalism of petroglyphs at the Volcano Tablelands near Bishop, California. At least 4 of the ancient stone carvings have been removed from the site, a 5th was defaced with deep saw cuts on three sides, a 6th was broken during the theft and left propped up against a boulder, and dozens of others were scarred by hammer strikes and saw cuts. Greg Haverstock, archaeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management which manages 750,000 acres, says, “The individuals who did this were not surgeons, they were smashing and grabbing,” and called it the worst act of vandalism he had ever seen. They left scars along a 650-foot cliff band and extracted petroglyph panels as large as 20" x 40" x 6" and as much as 15' off the ground. To carry out this vile crime, which robs all of us of culture and the members of the Native American Paiute people (that is tribal historic preservation officer Raymond Andrews of the Bishop Paiute Tribe in the 3rd image) of a sacred link with their past, the thieves drove into the remote site equipped with ladders, electric generators, and power saws. It took them only a few hours to cut down and haul away the artifacts which stood for more than 3,500 years, and they will likely get only $500-$1,500 each for petroglyphs that are priceless when they remain in place. There is a $1,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of the felons, who will receive up to a year in prison and a fine of as much as $20,000 for a first offense or a prison sentence of up to 5 years and a fine of as much as $100,000 for a second offense. I hope they are caught and given the maximum punishment. As ArtInfo puts it, "The missing petroglyphs have left gaping holes in history."

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Hall of shame:

"TRENT"

Soils spoils

The mummies in question

Christmas kidnapping

Dislodged

Roman vandalism

Jan Karski statue

Dali donation

I skip the weird news stories about the purchase of valuable paintings at thrift stores and garage sales - for instance “Vertical Diamond” by abstract painter Ilya Bolotowsky bought at a North Carolina store in April for $9.99 and auctioned for more than $27,000 - because it happens so regularly. But the most recent instance is especially noteworthy. A Goodwill store in Tacoma, Washington, received the anonymous donation of signed and numbered print. "Any time we get an art piece with a signature or a number, we set it aside," said e-sales manager Dylan Lippert. A good policy, since in this case it was a limited edition etching (126 of 150) entitled "Reflection" (pictured above) from the "Cycles of Life Suite" by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali (1904-1989). "These items really boost our mission services. It funds our job-training services," said Lippert, who listed the print on-line. The auction ended yesterday and Goodwill Industries is $21,000 richer.

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Several posts mention Salvador:

Evelyn Waugh

Follow-ups

Mona Lisa(s)

Dali and Disney

Another anatomy dream

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Machu Picchu megapixels

 

They intended to photograph the Inca citadel at 30 gigapixels, but even at about half that, the resulting image of Machu Picchu (HERE) is the highest resolution of any of the ancient site ever captured. "In 2008, the World Monuments Fund placed Machu Picchu on its Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world because of environmental degradation due to tourism. Beautiful, historical and threatened, I believe that this remarkable site deserved a remarkable photo.  I think that this image can help preserve this amazing place and bring more awareness to the site, its history and its endangered state." Here are the details:

Size: 15.9 gigapixels (297,500 x 87,500 pixels)
Camera (photos and videos here, "Making of..." video here) : A GigaPan robotic camera mount, Canon 7D camera, and Canon 400mm lens for the panorama, which consists of 1,920 individual photographs. Taken with a low ISO, but a fast shutter speed of 1/640. "Visitors [to the website] will be able to zoom in and out and move up or down, change their view – similar to Google Street View maps - but with tons more resolution."
Photographer: Jeff Cremer, photo tour director of Rainforest Expeditions  (1st image), who pinpoints his favorite detail as the person standing on top of a mountain in the background. “Before I explored the image I never even knew that it was possible to climb up there.” He was assisted by Destin of Smarter Every Day and sound engineer Gordon McGladdery (2nd image), plus additional help. "My friend Eric Hanson from Xrez Studios did the stitching for me.  Paul Heckbert uploaded the picture for me and Susan Thesing was a great help by coordinating everything with gigapan. Without these people the image would not have been possible."

Hi Ellen!

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Peruvian posts:

Huge

The Empire of Death

Peruvian pyramid

Lost languages

Mummy exhibit

Machu Picchu

Trepanation

More scary paths

Pishtaco

Skellies*

*This post refers to Paul Koudounaris, who wrote The Empire of Death.

Not the end of the Lonesome line

Adalgisa “Gisella” Caccone, senior research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and her colleagues coauthored a study in the journal Biological Conservation
about our friend Lonesome George (pictured). The Galapagos tortoise (Chelonoidis abingdoni) never mated, so his genetic line would have come to an end, but DNA analysis has revealed 17 hybrid tortoises whose ages suggest that purebred individuals may still alive. The researchers suggest that they may be the ancestors of tortoises thrown overboard by 19th century sailors and are going to Isabela Island for a look. “Our goal is to go back this spring to look for surviving individuals of this species and to collect hybrids. We hope that with a selective breeding program, we can reintroduce this tortoise species to its native home,” said Caccone.

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Related posts:

Animal obituaries

Diego does it

Ancient animals

Moby Dicks

"Swimming almost simultaneously with a mighty volition of ungraduated instantaneous swiftness the White Whale darted through the weltering sea."~Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

A few days ago, a white humpback whale dubbed "Willow" and believed to have leucism was spotted off the coast of Spitsbergen, Norway, swimming in a pod of regular gray-pigmented whales. Although the condition is said to be quite rare, another humpback with white pigmentation nicknamed "Migaloo" was seen most recently in September off the eastern coast of Australia. In February 2008, NOAA spotted (but did not name) a mostly white killer whale (image above) swimming with a pod about 2mi off the coast of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. All 3 accounts reference Herman Melville's legendary white whale, although it was a sperm whale. Coincidentally, a reading of Moby Dick began in New York on Friday.

Albino animals: Raccoon, Squirrel, Hummingbird, Dolphin, Seal, Seal.

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Blogworthy albinos:

Albinos

Follow-ups

White Bengal tiger

Humpback whales

Gatorland!

White elephants

Snake farm stand-off

Weird deer

Pale penguins

Beware of wolves

The animal rights organization PETA objected to the presence of wolves at the November 12th premiere after-party for the film "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2. What would they think of Russian grandmother Aishat Maksudov, who killed a wolf with an ax the week before? The 56-year-old lives in the village of Novy Biryuzyak in the Republic of Dagestan, the Caucasus region of Russia. She heard a calf being mauled in the pen she was repairing. Maksudov was attacked by a wolf and fought back. She won (bloody wolf photo here, video here). She received  numerous bites to her right limbs which required hospital attention. She recounts the ordeal.:

"I was not even frightened. I stood holding the axe, and the wolf with an open mouth suddenly jumped on me. The wolf clawed into my leg, and I wanted to hit him with the axe.When I raised my arm up the wolf was just holding my hand, trying to claw my hand. I wanted to open his mouth and put my fist all the way there, all the way to his throat, but I could not open him. So I just left my hand, and the wolf was just clawing into it, pulling on it, pulling away. And then I took the axe and hit him on his head."

Aishat is now nicknamed "Wolfhound" by her friends...

Read more: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00055480.html#ixzz2COO0xoSr

Read more: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00055480.html#ixzz2COO0xoSr

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Related posts:

Of two minds about wolves

Sheep's clothing

Deadwood Dick and Stagecoach Mary

"The Girl in the Window"

The tally in Zanesville

Lone wolf

Frozen fauna

Two about the tower

There are 2 stories in the weird news that involve the Tower of London:

The bones...

English monarch Richard III (1st image) has had a legacy of evil and violence that dates back to his Tudor successors more than 500 years ago and was made concrete by Shakespeare in his play about the king. One example is the alleged murder of the 2 princes, his nephews Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, in the Tower of London to rid himself of potential rivals. Richard's reputation may be reassessed after thorough examination of a skeleton believed to be his, which was found at the site of an ancient priory and has been excavated by archaeologist, Jo Appleby of the University of Leicester. Characteristics of the skeleton - a deformed spine, a mortal battlefield wound in the back of the skull, and an arrowhead lodged in the backbone - are consistent with the king. If DNA testing, carbon dating, and isotope analysis are conclusive, his scoliosis may be at the root of the negative character traits with which he has been saddled, and may lead for calls for his remains to be entombed in Westminster Abbey.

The keys...

Earlier this month, a lapse in security in the Tower allowed a man to trespass in the early hours. He also stole a set of keys (2nd image, a keyring held by a Yeoman Warder or "Beefeater"), although not those used in the Ceremony of the Keys, the traditional locking up of the Tower of London that has taken place every night for the last 700 years. Nor did the keys unlock the the room holding the crown jewels, which include a 2kg (4.4lb) solid gold crown and the 105-carat Koh-i-Nur diamond. "Our well-established security systems and procedures are robust. However on this occasion, these procedures were not carried out to the expected standard," read a royal palaces statement. Locks to the Tower's drawbridges and other rooms have been changed, staff has been disciplined, and the incident is under investigation.

Hi Sue!

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Royalty:

Head of Henri IV

Rat Bastard

Ramesses' repatriation

Le sang d'un rois

Court dwarfs

Souliers historiques

Red squirrels

Death masks

Bat for breakfast

If you happen to be eating a bowl of cereal, put down your spoon. An unnamed German man found a bat in his box of Mini-Zimties (pictured), although it's not yet clear whether it flew into the plastic packaging at the factory or into the box after it was opened at home in Stuttgart . In any case, it was unintended. The bat apparently suffocated and is being described as "mummified." Health officials are investigating and food safety officer Jorg Sturmer says, "I have never seen anything like it. This really is an unusual case."

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Bats!

Unlikely bat roost

Pleased to meet you

Surviving rabies

Spider prey

Capture myopathy

Ancient giant

He would be no record-breaker today, when the tallest of the tall exceed 8' (244cm), but a man whose skeleton was excavated in 1991 stood head and shoulders above his peers. The resident of Fidenae, 5mi (20km) north of Rome, stood 6' 8" (202cm) at a time when men averaged 5' 6" (167cm) in height. He lived in the 2nd century and his remains (including the bone above compared to an average bone) are the subject of a study* by University of Pisa paleopathologist Simona Minozzi and team. His is the only complete ancient skeleton shown to have gigantism. The 1st indication of his size was his abnormally long tomb. The diagnosis was confirmed by examination of his bones:

• He had skull damage consistent with a pituitary tumor, which would have caused the gland to overproduce human growth hormone.
• His limbs were disproportionately long.
• At the time of his death, at an estimated age of 16-20 years, his bones were still growing.

Minozzi explains that almost nothing is known about the role or presence of giants in the Roman world, but given the taste for entertainment by dwarfs and others with physical anomalies, the giant's size would have generated plenty of curiosity.

*Published last month in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

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Big guys:

Big weddings

Eddie Carmel

Giants

James G. Mundie's cabinet

Tsantsa specifics

After blogging about a shrunken head in mid-September (see Testing a tsantsa), I sent the link to my friend James Castner, author of Shrunken Heads: Tsantsa Trophies and Human Exotica. He replied very quickly, but it has taken until now for me to post his response:

"Thanks for sending the link to your blog about the shrunken head that had served for DNA testing. I personally would not evaluate the head pictured as a tsantsa, although I'm sure that makes for a better story. Part of the shrinking preparations called for pegs to be put through the lips in order to keep the mouth closed. This was for the physical purpose of keeping the hot sand and pebbles poured into the head from falling out the mouth. Culturally it was to keep the avenging spirit or muisak from exiting the head through the mouth and seeking vengeance. I saw no evidence of holes left by such pegs in the upper lip of the pictured shrunken head. Also, part of the process of creating a tsantsa required that the skin of the head be rubbed with powdered charcoal so as to make it dark. This had the purpose of making it impossible for the muisak to see out. This head does not appear dark. My definition of a tsantsa is a shrunken human head made by one of the four Jivaroan tribes and used in a tsantsa ceremony. I have no doubt that this head is human, and the possibility exists that it was made by one of these tribes. [But] looking as it does, it would not have been used in a tsantsa ceremony. The one pictured might have been a head made by an Indian for exchange for a gun, but it is more likely that it was one of those mortuary heads that was sold to collectors. It just doesn't have the look or gestalt of an Indian-made shrunken head."

Topping the list with the 2 the characteristics mentioned by Dr. Castner, an article in Forensic Science International offers a total of 14 original morphological criteria for determining whether a shrunken head is indeed an authentic tsantsa used for ceremonial purposes:

	Dark or black or brown skin color due to impregnation with charcoal dust during shrinking
	Wooden pegs or vegetal fibers retained in the lips (if absent or removed post-production, sets of vertically aligned corresponding holes are present just behind both the upper and lower lips)
	Loop of wooden vine or fiber sewn into the neck (if absent or removed post-production, traces of suturing and/or sawing are present)
	Important thickness and leathery texture of the edge of the neck opening
	Oval shape of the neck in cross-section and/or lateral compression of the head
	From behind, neck and head tissues sewn together with fiber stitches
	Conserved anatomical details of the ear (with possibility of a earlobe hole, filled or not by a wooden tube or peg)
	Both eyes tightly closed (with possibility of sewing shut from the inside), skin in the surrounding cheek area being smooth with no facial down present
	Profusion of hairs in the nostrils
	Long dark hairs (or hairs which have been cut years after the shrinking process)
	Long suspension cord overhanging from the top of the head (or related hole)
	No facial painting or artistic/ethnic scar
	No remaining skull fragment
	Complete filling of internal head cavities by sand and/or charcoals

The shrunken head in the photo supplied to the journal by authors P. Charlier, I. Huynh-Charlier, L. Brun, C. Hervé, and G. Lorin de la Grandmaison (2nd image) fulfills all of the criteria.

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Heads, shrunken and otherwise:

About face

Post-mortem make-up

Mokomokai

Heads

18th c. French hairstyles for women

Overmodeled skulls

Figureheads

Burqa

Shrunken heads

Chernobyl holdouts

 

It has been 25 years since the Chernobyl disaster (1st image is a deserted kindergarten, slideshow here). A horror movie has just been released about it, although the Ukrainian government deemed it safe enough to begin offering official tours last year. But the Telegraph highlights a sampling of the 250 people - a majority of them babushkas - who moved back into the area after the meltdown and remain there to this day, among them 80-year-old  Nadejda Gorbachenko (2nd image). "No health studies have been done, but anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the babushkas die of strokes rather than any obvious radiation-related illnesses, and they have dealt better with the psychological trauma. Toxic levels of strontium and cesium in the soil are real, but so are the tug of the ancestral home and the health benefits of determining one’s own destiny," writes Holly Morris, who is making a documentary about them.

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Radiation-related posts:

Fukushima dogs

Contaminated corpses

Sandy vs. the rats

Graffiti by Banksy in the SoHo district of Manhattan (Photo by Caruba on Flicker).

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the question of whether the flooding had any effect on the rat population has been raised. Here are some expert opinions:

"Most of the rats that are living there will actually drown....Rats will be carried away by the current and won't be strong enough to swim to the surface and breathe, or they'll be pushed to grates, they will get stuck there and they won't be strong enough to swim against the current."~Herwig Leirs, rodentologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium

 "Rats are incredibly good swimmers, and they can climb [so they will escape the floods and head for safer ground]."~ Rick Ostfeld, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Milbrook, N.Y.

"Baby rats will perish unless their mothers can carry them to safety."~Robert M. Corrigan, rodentologist who works with the City of New York

"The underground systems are the first things rats reach when breaking through the soil in search of sustenance. This perpetual hunger likely killed many as floodwaters washed back through their tunnels into their nests, probably killing the sick, the elderly, and new mothers with their young."~Benett Pearlman, exterminator with New York-based Positive Pest Management Corp.

"So, my guess is that most of the rats survived. But quite a large number of rats drowned – depending on exact location, depth, how much they know how to get to the surface at all, their exact route to the surface, and their status in the social hierarchy."~Bora Zivkovic, biology teacher and blog editor at Scientific American

The answers conflict, but then again so do the numbers, which range from a low of 8 million to a high of 32 million or more. One thing is assured: the old chestnut about one rat per person has been shown to be a myth.

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Infestation:

Ratten

Service animals

3 icky round things

Prehensile tails

Pied Piper of Hamelin

Rats!

Sculptural sponge

Yep, you read that title right. This is not a sculpture (or a musical instrument), but a newly discovered carnivorous creature dubbed, appropriately, the harp sponge. The story begins in 1995, when Jean Vacelet and Nicole Boury-Esnault from the Centre of Oceanology at France’s Aix-Marseille University identified a new species of deep-sea sponge living in a shallow Mediterranean sea cave that actively catches prey of small fish and crustaceans instead of absorbing bacteria and organic particles through their bodies. Since then, 24 new species of carnivorous sponges have been discovered. To learn about their behavior, including how they reproduce, 2 remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute descended...and made the latest discovery! The symmetrical sponge - given the scientific name Chondrocladia lyra - was living off the coast of California at depths of 3316–3399m. It can grow up to 37cm long with as many as 6 vanes (the basic vertical and horizontal structures projecting from the middle) that are covered in barbed hooks and spines that snare the prey. Each of the vertical branches ends in a round spermatophore that releases sperm in the hope that it will travel through the water and fertilize other harp sponges in the area.

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The real thing:

Harps, played and painted