Hedgehogs spines are specialized hairs, and it looks like baby hedgehogs are born with hair where it counts.

Photo credit unknown. Thanks Wess!

If you don’t know what I look like, you’ll just have to imagine how I must look.

Pigmentation deserves to be the topic of a great series of posts. Albinism is the relative lack of a specific common pigmentation, melanin. Leucism is the relative lack of all pigmentation. This bison appears not to be an albino, but a leuc— a leuco? Leucic? Leucist? Well, this post has been derailed. Leucid? Euclid? Lucario?

You can read more about white bison on the Wikipedia article titled “White Buffalo“.

Photo credit found by clicking on photos. Thanks Matt!
Apologies to anyone who googled “euclid lucario.” This is not what you wanted. I doubt what you want exists anywhere.

I can’t find a YouTube video at all so I can’t embed it, so I will just have to link to the site that has them.

Anyway, my friend sent me this video, and I just had to post it.

The music selection is odd. I wrote a song about moose once, and those who know what I’m talking about probably hate me now for bringing it up… It probably would have worked a little better for this video, besides the fact that it’s annoying and, well, I wrote it, if you can even call it writing. It’s essentially a line containing 12 words repeated over and over again.
This video is much better than my moose song though. The quality isn’t the best, and the music choice is odd, but how can you go wrong with three moose and a sprinkler?

I’ve been on a mission to post my favorite local bat, the Myotis evotis, but have so far been unable to find a picture that I like and have the rights to use. So I settled on a different local Myotis, the Myotis lucifugus. I do believe we caught some of these during the training I was on, though I don’t think I personally caught any (I mostly got evotis and volans).

Via Sophro’s photostream

I can’t help but wonder how they IDed them as Lucis, since lucifugus and californicus are pretty much indistinguishable.

Blue-tongued skinks are named after them.

Via Bill Hughes’s Flickr photostream.

Some rattlesnakes have them.

Via The Horned Jack Lizard’s Flickr photostream.

The members of giraffidae, the okapi and the giraffe, have them.

Via djhinrich Flickr photostream.

Via zeandroid’s Flickr photostream.

And it’s one of the most notable features of the chow chow.

Via budak’s Flickr photostream.

I doubt there is a common explanation for all instance of blue tongues. The Wikipedia article on Northern Blue-Tongued Skinks says that they “have a bright blue tongue that is often used to warn off or startle predators.” While it’s clear they’re not closely related at all, it seems like a plausible explanation for the rattlesnake as well, as their “rattles” are also used to warn off predators.

It’s hard to imagine that’s true for the members of giraffidae and the chow chow though, giraffes being so tall it’s difficult to imagine any predators even seeing the tongue, and dogs usually being predators not prey. The page on giraffes on the San Diego Zoo’s website says “some people think the color is to keep the tongue from getting sunburned,” which I guess might be possible, but it doesn’t seem to explain its relative the okapi, which I imagine wouldn’t have too much risk of getting sunburns, as its short enough to get shade from tree cover, and lives in the rainforest, where there often isn’t too much sunlight that reaches the ground anyway. I wasn’t able to find an explanation for the okapi’s tongue color, most sources were more interested in the fact that they were able to lick their own ears.

I wasn’t able to find an explanation for the chow chow either, but I imagine that it’s due to human controlled breeding.

My favorite explanation for all of these tongues though is that they just eat blueberries.

AP Photo

A deer with a single horn has been spotted in Italy. Quote from an AP story:

Single-horned deer are rare but not unheard of — but even more unusual is the central positioning of the horn, experts said.

“Generally, the horn is on one side (of the head) rather than being at the center. This looks like a complex case,” said Fulvio Fraticelli, scientific director of Rome’s zoo. He said the position of the horn could also be the result of a trauma early in the animal’s life.

(Why does Yahoo! News have an “Animals and Insects” sections?)

Yahoo! News story link.
Via BoingBoing!.