Cryptozoological Monsters

[Blue Frost]

Best evidence is no evidence at all when caused by a boat. even the biggest, and smallest boats the ripples will travel to the edge of a lake, or river in the same way as the photo.

[Gary Oak]

Could it be that these creatures are related somehow to what some people refer to as reptilians ?

[Blue Frost]

Zohar, king of garbage discoveries, don't put to much faith in this being real.

[Renee]

Zohar, king of garbage discoveries, don't put to much faith in this being real.

Looks like plaster of paris to me.

Too much Hollyweird influence in that sculpture to be believable. Looks just like the alien at the end of "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind".

[Blue Frost]

He is known for his hoaxes, so anything that was possibly real how can you believe him.
Anyhow, I would bet if something out there is so advanced they would stay away from the little blue planet full of balding monkeys .

[Gary Oak]

A new species of marsupials is quite cool. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/cons ... Y5vT1LzkVU

[Blue Frost]

Looks like your average sugar glider to me, but hey, it's still so damn cute

[Renee]

Looks like your average sugar glider to me, but hey, it's still so damn cute

As a kid I always wanted a sugar glider or a bush baby. But instead I ended up with a flying squirrel and a pair of black pygmy goats...

[Blue Frost]

I wanted one myself, but didn't really get anything.
Even the dogs I talk about on here never was legally my dogs, they just chose to be mine even if someone else was suppose to own them.
My two favorite dogs one belonged to my sister, the other her dead ex husbands.
The dogs took up with me, and me them as most do if they are around. Kids do also for some reason even though i'm quite a grump.

[Gary Oak]

You had a pet flying squirrel ? Did it fly to you occasionally ? How was it as a pet ?

Looks like your average sugar glider to me, but hey, it's still so damn cute

As a kid I always wanted a sugar glider or a bush baby. But instead I ended up with a flying squirrel and a pair of black pygmy goats...

[Blue Frost]

I'm just wondering if there was a goofy moose there also.

[Renee]

You had a pet flying squirrel ? Did it fly to you occasionally ? How was it as a pet ?

Looks like your average sugar glider to me, but hey, it's still so damn cute

As a kid I always wanted a sugar glider or a bush baby. But instead I ended up with a flying squirrel and a pair of black pygmy goats...

Yes a flying squirrel. We had a lot of animals when I was growing up. Goats, cats, dogs, ducks, chickens and an occasional turkey. It was a good thing my parents had property with two adjoining 5 acre plots because with two daughters in 4H, it was like a farm at times...

When I was around 8 a mother flying squirrel got into our attic and had babies. No one knew she was there until we started hearing noises at night, like something small running across the living room ceiling. My dad checked the attic several times and found nothing until one day he saw something small going in and out of the ridge vent. So he found the hole and put new screening on it.

Unfortunately that didn't stop the noise because one of the little ones was still inside the attic and couldn't get out. So we put a have-a-heart trap with some peanut butter in the attic. Within a day we had something in the trap...It was a baby flying squirrel. He was starving, and scared. We took him to the our vet who kept exotic animals and he told us that flying squirrels were very docile and could make good pets. So we kept him and named him "Parker".

Over time he became socialized and used to people. My dad built a large, tall enclosure for him in the corner of the garage. It had a tall piece of drift wood with branches on it to climb and a bird house for him to sleep. He ate pine nuts, seeds, calcium rich squirrel feed, an occasional duck egg. He was quite friendly, never bit any one and would come when he was called (sometimes). He would climb my leg and would ride on my shoulder or sleep in the pocket of my hoodie. He was good with the family but never quite got used to strangers. He lived about 12 years. Parker was a cool pet. A lot more interesting than a hamster or a gerbil.

Flying squirrels are small, not much bigger than a chipmunk. They are nocturnal and the sleep most of the day....They don't really fly, they glide because they have a web of fur covered skin between their front and back legs. They jump from high tree branches and glide down to the lower ones or to the ground. Its basically a controlled fall.... Their life span is about 10 to 15 years in captivity, much less in the wild, only around 8 years on average. They love to get into homes in the fall were it is warm. They don't truely hibernate but they are a lot less active in the winter.

And no, he didn't come with a goofy moose....

[Blue Frost]

Well a turkey is smarter than a moose anyhow.

[Renee]

Well a turkey is smarter than a moose anyhow.

They taste pretty good too.

Fresh turkey is a lot better than the frozen birds you get at the supermarket.

[Blue Frost]

I guess so, they are not farmed, and feed crap like they are starting to do to us.
Beef, pork, and chickens from the market today is feed stuff nothing should be eating besides a bug maybe.

[Odinson]

They are farmed to some extent..

You are gonna need half a billion turkeys for thanksgiving day alone.


On top of that all the other turkey holidays and turkey products in stores.

[Blue Frost]

A billion turkeys, where you think we are, China
Ham is a big Thanks giving dinner item instead of turkey a lot of times, other things also.
Turkey might be the majority, but ham is the next.

Free range animal meat is best, but your big Tyson, and Butterball turkeys isn't raised for healthy eating.
They are in big warehouses, and feed stuff they shouldn't be eating including each other.

[Odinson]

A billion turkeys, where you think we are, China
Ham is a big Thanks giving dinner item instead of turkey a lot of times, other things also.
Turkey might be the majority, but ham is the next.

Free range animal meat is best, but your big Tyson, and Butterball turkeys isn't raised for healthy eating.
They are in big warehouses, and feed stuff they shouldn't be eating including each other.

The supply needs to be way larger than the actual demand in order to keep the flow of fresh turkeys constant..

46 million turkeys are eaten during thanksgiving...

They are making sure that the supply is several times that amount.


Half a billion turkeys isnt totally ridiculous amount...

[Blue Frost]

Spackle is what I cal them, hadn't had a good turkey in years.
I rather have a good pizza, salmon, or steak.
Yeah they need a lot of extras, many get sick, or some outbreak takes them out every few years. Wouldn't happen so much if the birds where healthy.

[Gary Oak]

Check out the blanket octopus. https://www.australiangeographic.com.au ... FgptazmVh0



IMAGE CREDIT: Joseph Elayani/YouTube
The blanket octopus looks like a rainbow ghost alien
By Bec Crew | July 1, 2019
Honestly, how are any of us supposed to get anything done when there are animals like this cruising above in the ocean like it’s no big deal?
Contributor
Bec Crew

Becky Crew is a Sydney-based science communicator with a love for weird and wonderful animals. From strange behaviours and special adaptations to newly discovered species and the researchers who find them, her topics celebrate how alien yet relatable so many of the creatures that live amongst us can be.

WE’VE GOT technicolour ghosts down there doing… whatever technicolour ghosts do, and we’re just out here living our lives. Blast that thing into space so it can finally be with its people.

Okay, fine, it can stay, but let’s take a moment to truly appreciate how bonkers this creature is.

Meet the blanket octopus (Tremoctopus violaceus), a bizarre, impressive, gorgeous feat of evolution that might actually be even weirder than it looks.

How is that even possible, you might ask? Go with me here, because there’s a lot to this “beautiful scarf of living flesh”, as one scientist put it.

First thing’s first: the most notable thing about the blanket octopus is its sexual dimorphism – a term used to describe how the males and females of many species of animals (and some plants) possess different physical characteristics beyond their sexual organs.

Sexual dimorphism can manifest in many different ways. For example, only the male pink robin is pink, and you can count the bands on the blue-banded bee to tell the sexes apart: males have five blue bands and the females have four.

Size is another common one: New Zealand’s katipo females are larger than the males (like our red back spiders), as are the female Annam flying frogs.

This is also the case for the blanket octopus, but it just so happens to exhibit one of the most extreme cases of sexual size-dimorphism known to science.

The females, which can stretch up to 2 metres long and 10 kg in weight, grow to be 40,000 times heavier and 100 times larger than the males, which are – wait for it – 2.4 cm.

Look at this little guy:


(Image credit: Comingio Merculiano in Jatta Giuseppe/Wikimedia)

Now compare it with THIS, filmed off the coast of the Philippines by diver Joseph Elayani:

“Imagine a female the size of a person and the male a size of a walnut,” evolutionary biologist Tom Tregenza told John Pickrell back in 2003, when the first ever sighting of a live male blanket octopus was reported from the Great Barrier Reef.

Now, back to the females, for obvious reasons.

The females use their fleshy cape to make themselves appear intimidating to predators. These capes are detachable in case of emergencies, which result in moments like this, when a diver encounters an octopus-less blanket:

The cape conceals the female’s tentacles, which are also conveniently detachable. In fact, when a male finally finds a female in the open ocean, he will fill one of his tentacles up with sperm like a sock, tear it off, present it to her, and then float away to die.

The female will accept this disembodied tentacle, store it in a specialised cavity in his body, and when her eggs are ready, squeeze its contents out onto them.

Detached tentacles are not only key to the blanket octopus’s reproductive success – they’re key to its survival, too. Only it’s not their own tentacles they’re waving about in a battle – it’s the Portuguese man o’ war’s.

As marine biologist, Rebecca Helm, puts it, they tear off the venomous man o’ war tentacles and “use them like little octopus nunchuks”.

Blanket octopuses are found all over the world, including off the north, east, and south-western coast of Australia, so if you’re a diver, keep an eye out for these otherworldly beauties.