My hamster wants to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tiiiiime

First of all, sorry for the Eddie Murphy song reference. But hey it's half an hour before I'm done with work for the Thanksgiving holiday and you know what? To hell with it. I am putting my brain on pause for the rest of the weekend.

And so let's get to it. From the people who brought you "the real Boomtown Rats" (namely, The Daily Mail) comes the rat pack!!!! Although really they're not rats; they're hamsters.

If The Daily Mail continues to do stories on rodent bands, I would be the happiest person on earth. It never gets old. In spite of the inherent magic of wee rodents cranking out crucial jams, however, it does seem that our "journalist" friends are having a hard time keeping the hamster band jokes aflowing. Which is just too bad. Witness this gem of a line (it's the only really quality one):

A spokeswoman said the hamsters were initially reluctant to play their instruments without receiving payment up front.

She said: 'We used quite a bit of peanut butter and chocolate spread to get the hamsters to play with the instruments and pose.'


GROAN!!!! But in the best way possible. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate it, and happy Wednesday to the rest of you. (What?? It's halfway through the week! CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES COME ON IT'S A CELEBRATION.)

Puggle VS Puggle

It's a slow week here in the world of weird animals. I've been looking all week and finding NAUGHT, and so this is it. The only post of the week. Suggested by my BFF Sarah!

So Zooborns this week had some photos of newborn puggles. If you're anything like me--always on the lookout for hybrid creatures/obsessed with finding freaky stuff on the internet--then you're probably imagining this kind of puggle, a heartwrenchingly cute combination of beagle + pug.



He's just begging someone to put him on an inspirational workplace poster.
(Unfortunately I was unable to come up with an inspirational slogan that a puppy might say, but I did find out this fascinating piece of information from Wikipedia:

Hang in there, Baby was a popular catchphrase made by a motivational poster. The poster featured a picture of a small kitten, hanging on to a tree branch. . . . A copy of the poster was famously presented to Spiro Agnew by 100 of his supporters in Congress when he was under pressure to resign in 1973.

HA HA HA!!!! What a bunch of elected nerdos.)

Um, anyways, there is another kind of puggle and it looks like (get ready) THIS:



It's a baby echidna. The adult of the species was covered "extensively" in this "article," Echidna, mon amour. (Yes, it still cracks me up that the researcher was "seized by a passion" for echidnas. I mean, HUBBA HUBBA, am I right???? "If you're not busy, take ME to lunch," yeaaaaah???)

The Zooborns pix are considerably cuter. They look slightly more charming, slightly less OH MY GOD PUT THAT AWAY BEFORE I CALL THE COPS. Check out these two, telling secrets to their best puggle BFF. Just like me and the previously mentioned Sarah. Or, on second thought, wait--not at all.



Puggles=love!

4EVA Quolls

Quolls are the best. Like many of their Antipodean kin, they have a totally awesome name that's either disgustingly cute ("numbat") or close to unpronounceable (ahem, "quoll"). I mean, I can say it, being a hyper-gifted online animal finder and supremely advanced pronouncer of words of all kinds, but you know not everyone is as gifted, am I right?

I also love quolls (sure I just discovered them a couple days ago, but love comes quickly, right? To quote the Pet Shop Boys.) for the following reasons, all of which I gleaned from a very casual scanning of Wikipedia:

1. They are referred to as "native cats." YET THEY LOOK NOTHING LIKE CATS!!!!!!! Insanity!

2. They develop a pouch, but only at certain times of the year. That is just weird. Don't try to argue with me, scientists. It's weird. It comes and goes? Like maybe my arm could just come and go, depending on whether I need to say, text message people all day when I'm at work or, like when I need to high five someone?

3. This little gem of information: "Their molars and canines smell strongly of gasoline." Oh also, the article wants to stress that they don't have prehensile tails. This is probably for the best, as who wants something that can just grow body parts and also lift up stuff with their tail. It'd just be too much! Imagine the power they would possess. Beyond that they already possess: the power to make us love. Ahhhhh....

Presenting...the numbat

I had the worst day yesterday. It was straight up horrible. It was one of those days when you're all like "Ohhhhh my God I just want to go home and drink my bottle of wine and watch 30 Rock and wait for the weekend to come" and then when you're on your way to buy yourself flowers, your muffler falls off and you're trapped at an upscale grocery store parking lot for the next 40 minutes.

Those are the type of days that make you even more grateful for weird Australian animals. They've got such caaaarazy names! They look like drawings little kids/my crazy hippie ex-roommate who believed in alien cults would make! And so let's all take a moment, in these last few hours before we can all go to happy hour, and celebrate


NUMBATS


This s#&* is so good, it don't even need a caption.





If you want to learn more about these long-tongued little fellows, check out Project Numbat. You can purchase numbat earrings from them! (For me...you can purchase them for me.)

Just in time for Halloween: baby bats!!!!

What would Halloween be without my annual baby bat roundup?? I know you guys love pictures of baby bats in blankets, and this year I found a whole new heartwarming crop of them. I am gonna go ahead and say that this concludes my very special Halloween edition of OMG What Is That.Blogspot.com. HAPPY HALLOWEEKEND EVERYBODY!!!!

Halloween party animals!

YES. Trust the UK tabloid media to provide me with a veritable FLURRY of Animals Enjoying Halloween stories. Well, OK! Magazine inspired me with this piece, complete with really splendid pictures of lemurs hangin' out with a pumpkin. (Definitely click on it: I couldn't link to any of the photos.) And then, something magical happened. The more I googled, the more media outlets appeared to be doing similar stories. Apparently this is a "thing," a trend that is sweeping zoos across the world, this serving zoo denizens a spooooky Halloween meal out of a pumpkin. So let's enjoy, shall we, seeing how our animal friends across the globe celebrate Halloween.

SCOTLAND

The best part is that the marmoset's name is Princess Leia.


AUSTRIA



USA

Halloweekend Special: Tasmanian Devils!!!!

For those of us (me) in the Central Time Zone, Halloweekend starts in just over 2.5 hours. And of course, the waiting is UNBEARABLE. I mean, what could be better? It's Halloween, and it's the weekend. Together at last! So in that spirit of waiting for work to be over/it being Halloween, here is one of however many I end up coming up with Halloweekend Special animals. And so without any further ado, here is the inaugural animal (and also perhaps the only one I will think up, I mean come on, I always talk about bats, it seems)...the strangely cute (considering its name and the disproportionately high number of rough and tumble mailroom employees I have seen with "Taz" tattoos) Tasmanian Devil!


Baby Taz=so cute!


"Heeeeey guys!" That's what he's saying.