It's Alive: Peruvian Terrors

Futurechimp will be on the skids for the next two weeks. I'm flying to Peru tomorrow and will be spending much of my time in the rainforest without electricity, let alone internet. So what would be more fitting for this week's "It's Alive" than a couple of the creatures I might find there?



Scolopendra Gigantea
Here we see the Peruvian Yellow Legged Centipede catching and eating a bat. Yes, an entire bat. It's the world's largest centipede, and very aggressive. The venom can cause feverish symptoms and vomiting in a non-allergic adult, making it almost as horrifying as the death worm (this week's cryptid).





Candiru
Surely you've had this conversation before: "Dude, in the amazon there's this fish that swims up your urine stream, into your schlong, then clamps down and lives off your blood!" and then everyone says, "Yeah, we've all heard of it already, so shut up". For this reason, I have nothing to add, other than this: if you want to see photos and videos of them being surgically extracted from men, be my guest. I haven't (for the same reason I haven't watched "two girls one cup"). They're even linked from the candiru wikipedia page. I won't link that for you either. You're on your own.

The fun will resume around June 9. Until then, browse the archives, and make sure to subscribe (hit one of those icons on the top right of this page) to stay updated on chimpy goodness. Mahalo.

Vestigial Organs

There's an interesting article in today's news about human vestigial organs (leftover body parts, like the appendix). It's a quick read. I also recommend this, which is better written and includes vestigials in animals.

This is a contentious issue between evolutionary scientists and creationists. So in fairness, Here is the other side of the fence. This is honestly the most convincing source I could find. But be warned before reading it: creationism stacks the deck in its favor by (1) doing what they accuse evolutionists of doing (but don't): promoting theory as fact. (2) Defining the terms incorrectly. For example: a vestigial organ is not necessarily a worthless organ; it can currently have a secondary use, but no longer its primary use (think "tailbone"). It's not that difficult of a concept. Get it straight, Bible-thumpers. And stop sayin' dumb stuff.

(one more note: the first cited article claims the appendix is "open to question" as to whether it's vestigial. This is giving the theories too much credit. The appendix has yet to be scientifically proven to have a purpose in modern humankind).

Futurechimp Theater: White Wilderness

from wikipedia:
"While many people believe that lemmings commit mass suicide when they migrate, this is not the case.... the suicide myth was propagated by the Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness in 1958 which includes footage of lemmings migrating and running head-long over a ledge. An investigation in 1983 showed that the Disney film makers faked the entire sequence using imported lemmings (bought from Inuit children), a snow covered turntable on which a few dozen lemmings were forced to run, and literally throwing lemmings into the sea..."

Cryptid Corner: Mongolian Death Worm

A native of the Gobi Desert, the Death Worm measures up to five feet in length and is likened to a cow's intestine in color and texture. It spends most of its time buried under the hot, dry desert sand, but when on the surface (at night or after it rains), it can kill at a range of several feet by spraying an acidic liquid. Contact with this venom causes instant decay of the skin or corrosion of metal. It's also believed to paralyze victims with electrocution, like an eel. The Mongolians don't even mention its name, due to superstition, and it especially has a tendency to kill anyone who tries to observe it, which is maybe why it's here in the Cryptid Corner and not in your animal encyclopedia. Even the cryptozoologists admit there are no confirmed sightings, and you wouldn't believe some of the things they qualify as "evidence".

A recent (2005) expedition led by the Center for Fortean Zoology to search out the elusive worm is detailed here.

3D Viscera

Stereoscopic photos of Clemente Susini's 18th century anatomical waxworks can now be seen here, on a flickr.com site. There are just a few of them for now, but...
"These first six images represent a pilot for a larger program that will be launched in the fall of 2008. The goal is to bring these waxworks to a larger audience that includes medical students and art enthusiasts alike. Viewing these images with blue-red 3D glasses will render the waxworks in stunning detail."
Hopefully they'll be published in print, or at least online. Until then, get Encyclopedia Anatomica. The content may disturb, but the artistry is unbelievable. It's worlds away from those ugly plastinated corpses currently being exploited the world over.

Futurechimp has posted and referred many items in 3D, and will continue to do so. Be prepared: get glasses. Buy them here for seventeen cents each, big spender.

7th Grade Synth-Rock Fantasy

Futurechimp Theater: Mars and Beyond

Bike To Work Day

Futurechimp.com is dedicated to continue being a resource of science and technology for you, the modern chimp. But May 16 is bike-to-work day, so I'm breaking the vibe to get on the soapbox. Just for today.
Start here for some general (sometimes obvious) reasons to start cycling. And here is today's article in wired.com (they do some inappropriate product promotion, though; you don't need a special $800 bike for cargo, just get a fast, lightweight bike, a rack, and some pannier bags; I haul a change of clothes and lunch to my workplace in them, and loads of groceries on the way home).
Half the population of Los Angeles drives five miles or less to their jobs. Anyone can bike five miles. I do 15 miles each way, and that includes climbing the hollywood hills, beverly hills, and the santa monica mountains. And I'm no exception; a couple weekends ago, I took my 70-year old mother on a 10-mile bike ride. Absolutely anyone can do it.
Cars burn oil. Global warming is largely due to oil. We're in Iraq for oil. Reduce your dependence, alleviate your conscience, enjoy the outdoors, get some exercise to live longer and healthier, ride a bike to work. Thanks.

Monkey Love

Yesterday I overheard a ridiculous conversation between a couple of security guards on their coffee break: "Scientists are now injecting monkeys with human sperm. They're making half-ape, half-human creatures." After fighting the impulse to laugh out loud, My first thought was, "why inject them? Why not just do it the traditional way? It's more fun!" My second thought was, "before we understood genetics, some sick bastard must have tried this." Sure enough, it was all going down in 1920's Soviet Russia, the same country and era that brought us the reanimated dog head.

Dr. Il'ya Ivanov, a veterinary biologist of world renown, artificially inseminated at least three female chimpanzees with human sperm (not his own). Nothing happened. Undeterred, he acquired a male orangutan and successfully found some human female volunteers to be impregnated. Before he could get to work, the monkey died. Then the doctor was exiled by the government, halting research.

A perk of writing this blog is that I sometimes discover something I never expected to find. This post was supposed to conclude with, "and that's why humans and apes can't bear children together. The end." But amazingly, evidence doesn't support it: in 1977, under laboratory conditions, human spermatazoa successfully penetrated the egg membrane of a gibbon. Among apes, the gibbon is the most distant relative to humans. So we must assume that pregnancy of gorillas, orangutans and chimps from human fathers are also possible. But it should be stressed that no confirmed humanzees are known to currently exist (you might recall last month's post about Oliver, a suspected hybrid who was later genetically proven to be 100% monkey),

So there you have it. Inter-species procreation isn't as crazy as it sounds. In fact, recent advancements in the study of DNA have provided hard evidence that, after diverging into seperate species five or six million years ago, chimps and humans continued to mate for over a million years. And there was enough of it going on to affect our respective gene pools. What did our Humanzee children look like? It's subject to speculation, but I would guess something like this.

Human Saponification

Most bar soap is made of little more than animal fat, lye, and some fragrance. That's it. The lye, which is a powerful alkali, hydrolyzes the fat into glycerin. You can do it at home with some lard, cold water, and drano. So what do you get when a fat person is buried in soil which is highly alkaline? Literally, a giant bar of soap.

In the early 19th century, an obese woman died of yellow fever and was buried in a Philadelphia cemetery. She was unearthed in the 1940's, when bodies had to be removed from the yard during construction. The copious fat on her body had been rendered into adipocere, hardly different from a bar of irish spring. She's on permanent display at - where else - the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Plan your visit today.

(a note to fellow vegetarians: if you're sufficiently disturbed by the idea of having dead animals in the shower with you, look at the soap's ingredients before you buy it. If you see "sodium tallowate", that's means it's rendered fat (usually from cows). Nearly all of them have it. Stick with castille soap, like Dr. Bronners, available in bars or liquid. Shampoos, on the other hand, are generally cruelty-free, made out of chemical detergents.)

It's Alive: Mammal-Eating Plant

Found only in Borneo, The Nepenthes Rajah is the World's largest carnivorous plant. Working as a pitfall trap, the pitcher can grow up to seven inches in diameter, capturing insects (particularly ants, as it stays on the ground). Lizards, frogs, and birds have been found in them. Digested remains of rats and mice have also turned up, but these are assumed to have been sick animals that drowned in the bottom of the pitchers, which can hold up to 3.5 liters of water.
There is an unfounded rumor that the plant can capture small monkeys. Actually, "monkey cups" is a common name for the pitchers, but this refers to the fact that monkeys drink rainwater from them.
If you don't plan on visiting the Malaysian rainforest anytime soon, you can buy a plant here and grow it at home. But have patience; it takes ten years for this species of Nepenthes to reach flowering size, and about 100 years to grow to full size. In theory, if the climate is consistent, it can live indefinitely.

Cryptid Corner: Der Tatzelwurm

The Tatzelwurm (German for "clawed worm") has been reported in the Alps of Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland. It has two small front legs, with rear legs either nonexistent or vestigial. It's two to six feet long, with a snakelike body and a feline head, albeit with a scaly texture. Unlike the snakes and lizards of the Alps, the Tatzelwurm is highly aggressive. It moves by coiling its body and jumping long distances, upwards of 15 meters at a time. They tend to jump directly towards their targets, so it is recommended that you escape in a zigzag path if you ever encounter one. In the two instances which they were shot, they were reported to have green blood, making them physiologically distinctive from all mammals and reptiles.

Sightings have been infrequent for the last two hundred years. Some believe it to be extinct, others think it's a naturally aquatic creature, like a salamander, capable of surviving short periods on land. Still others believe the lack of sightings is explained by its slow metabolism; it spends most of its time hibernating deep within the cold rocky crevices of the mountains, making brief appearances only to feed.

Cabaret Voltaire: 1978-1982

Futurechimp Theater: My Japan

Aqua-Primates

Comic Book: "WORLD-FAMOUS Sea-Monkeys are SO full of surprises you can't stop watching them. They Swim, play, scoot, race and do comical tricks and stunts. Raise a Sea-Monkey family consisting of Mom, Dad and their babies in an ordinary glass! They hardly need any care although they LOVE attention. If YOU like pets, you will LOVE owning SEA-Monkeys!"






Textbook: "Brine shrimp are species of aquatic crustaceans of the genus Artemia. They have existed since the Triassic period (250 million years ago), and have evolved little since."





Comic Book: "Sea-Monkeys are real Time-Travelers asleep in biological time capsules for their strange journey into the future!"

Textbook: "Brine shrimp eggs are metabolically inactive and can remain in total stasis for several years while in a dry, oxygen-free environment, even at temperatures below freezing. This characteristic is called cryptobiosis."


Comic Book: "Monkeys like bananas, and Sea-Monkeys are no exception. So here's a TREAT for your favorite pets and a wonderful way to REWARD them for the FUN they give you! A long-lasting supply of tasty "dessert" for your aquatic pets that provides health-giving vitamins, minerals and LOVE!"

Textbook: "They eat micro-algae, but will also eat yeast, wheat flour, or soybean flour."







Comic Book: "Best of all, we show you how to make them appear to obey your commands, follow a beam of light, do loop-the-loops and seem to dance when you play a record or tape!"

Textbook: "The nutritional properties of brine shrimp make them particularly suitable to be sold as aquarium food."

Monkey Chow

Maybe you happened across Tarzan the Ape Man on cable last night, as I did, and were reminded of what a powerhouse of entertainment it is. I probably like the softcore porno sequel (Tarzan and His Mate) a little more, but this, the first film of the series, has more action. How many dozens of animals does he lay to waste with his bare hands in this movie? It's like a catalog of animal cruelty, not recommended for sensitive viewers.
It's also borderline politically incorrect, like in this scene where they meet a hostile tribe. Funniest exchange in the movie? "Are they pygmies?" "No, they're dwarves." More specificially, some look to be caucasoid dwarves wearing shoe-polish-body-paint, but I digress.



And the "monkey chow" scene which follows it is so crazy, it steps beyond the line of being just a weird sequence in a movie to some kind of surreal, feverish hallucination, magically recorded to film:



The less said about the 1981 John Derek remake the better, other than that I actually prefer the beatific blissful beauty of "Bo" over the annoying, histrionic Maureen Sullivan in the "Jane" Role.

Bonus movie trivia: the famous "tarzan yell" is trademarked and owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Star Johnny Weissmuller claimed to have done it himself, but the general agreement is that it's actually a recording of a yodeler, sped up and played backwards. Here's the notation:




Despite the copyright, the tarzan yell stands alongside the wilhelm scream as one of the most-used vocal sound effects.

Bonus chimp trivia: Cheeta, the world's oldest non-human primate and awesome painter, does not play the role of 'Cheeta' in this movie, but does appear in the film as the baby chimp riding on Cheeta's back.

Habitat for Zoomanity

Hominid Dwellings of the Second Millennium
by Bobo the Chimp, Professor Emeritus, Goodall University
Stardate May 5, 3008 AD

In the early 21st century, at the very beginning of human de-evolution and just before the world's crude oil was depleted, wealthy American homo sapiens began relocating from their comparatively self-sufficient living environments to retailer-owned storage facilities. The first of these was the Americana, a 15 acre, 400 million dollar shopping and housing center in Glendale California, located less than four miles from the historic Futurechimp headquarters in Hollywood. Opening ceremonies were on May 3rd, 2008. This day would forever be remembered as a watershed in the history of human engineering.

Visitors flocked to the new attraction on this fateful day. Stores with names like "Barney's" and "Tiffany's" lined the faux-cobblestone streets in different manners of early 20th century ersatz architecture. Palliative music, in the "american idol" style popular at the time, emanated from outdoor speakers throughout the environment. In addition to high-dollar shopping, closet-sized living units could be rented for $2000-5000 per month, and condominiums were available for upwards of two million dollars. No longer forced to divide time between the home and the shopping mall, hominids now had the opportunity to live within arm's reach above a neon sign glowing with the words "Juicy Couture".

For sustenance, the inhabitants had the convenience of walking to local restaurants, such as "The Cheesecake Factory" and "Panda Express". The food at such establishments was oversized and overpriced, and was composed largely of bleached and refined grains, reconstituted meat, air-injected tropical oils, and corn syrup. Some bravely attempted to assert their independence from the habitat by acquiring food from the outside world to cook in their own apartments. This entailed riding a passenger elevator to a deep, twisting underground network of parked sport utility vehicles. A mile of driving was required to negotiate out of this subterranean maze, followed by another two miles to the nearest grocery store. This became tiring, especially if it was to just to buy a single item, like a quart of milk or head of lettuce (such things were unavailable within the complex). The humans' spirits were eventually crushed by the mighty hammer of consumer-driven civic design; they learned to appreciate only what was provided within the Americana habitat, and relied upon the "personal shopper" services for retrieval of necessary items from outer society.

The Americana was a privately owned space. So although the inhabitants were lead to believe they owned property in the neighborhood, they were property themselves, owned by the neighborhood. No political or social demonstrations were allowed on the streets. No large dogs. No bicycles. It was an elective prison.

And yet, those who chose to live in such places were content. These habitats silenced the unexamined existential malaise of the bourgeoisie. The humans had developed in increasingly corporate-controlled environments for decades previous, and found the diminishment of their personal identities and free will to be comforting. They were no longer responsible for being an active part of a community; instead, they were willingly servile to it.

And so, everything turned out for the best, and the humans lived peacefully and happily. That is, of course, until the world economy collapse of the mid-21st century, quickly followed by the chimp uprising. But that's another story.

It's Alive: Termite Queen

Wait for it. The queen appears at 2:22. Her regal visage was the initial motivation for the entire insecta project.
(unrelated side note: Before this clip, I never realized the extent of the termites' incredible architectural abilities; as the narrator says at the end, if humans were to design a building to the same scale as a termite colony, it would be a mile high).

Volts

It's Alive: Hagfish

The hideous horrible Hagfish is sometimes known as the "slime eel", but doesn't belong in the eel family. Most scientists agree its morphology is too primitive to be considered a true fish. It's also generally agreed to be the most disgusting of all sea creatures.

Hagfish feed by entering a rotting corpse through its mouth and eating from the inside out. It has no bones, jaws, or stomach, but multiple hearts. Its defensive mechanism is an ability to produce enormous amounts of mucous, which combines with the surrounding water to create a thick slime (see a video of this process here), enabling it to slip away from the jaws of predators. It cleans off afterwards by tying itself into a knot.

They're eaten in Korea. But then, so are cats.

Futurechimp Theater: Carnivorous Plants