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!

Echidna, mon amour

Ahh yes. Another reader nominated creature, this time from my friend Jaina. This week's update features a questionably cute (Is it? I just can't decide. I have to go with "yes". His funny, stumpy lil' arms and legs just make me want to visualize him having a tea party, or going sailing in a toy boat with a frog and a pygmy jerboa, or something that British animals do.), but 100% smart little dude known as the echidna. This photo (and this info)come from the NY Times, who chose to caption the image with the quote "Muse Opiang was working as a field research officer when he became seized by a passion for the long-beaked echidna," which for some reason strikes me as really funny. "Passion," maybe. Like, dude's all into painting the echidna's toenails for her or turning up sappy love songs that remind him of echidnas when he's in his car.

So why is this interesting? For one thing, echidnas have a larger capacity for reasoning and remembering than humans. "Among humans, the neocortex that allows us to reason and remember accounts for 30 percent of the brain; in echidnas, that figure is 50 percent," the article says. Also they lay eggs, which strikes me as kind of wacky for some reason. Check out the article here. It's worth it for the line about echidnas being made up of Babar and a boatload of other creatures. Babar! He made Arby's fun.