Episode 1: Everything About Animals: Show Notes

Mirror Self Recognition Test (MSR)

Like many animals, until a child is about 18 months, they don’t understand that the image in the mirror is a reflection.

Magpies are one of the few animals that seems to pass the MSR test. The bird in this vidoe has a yellow sticker placed under it’s beak on the chest. It can only see the sticker in the mirror.

A little more in depth of Dr, GG. Gallup Jr. article and self recognition in chimpanzees:Nature magazine

Featherless Chickens

Researchers, led by Avigdor Cahaner bred the featherless chicken at the genetics faculty of the Rehovot Agronomy Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel.

• 50 years of breeding
• Not genetically modified
• Taste the same
• Same nutritional value

• Advantages:

  • Faster growth
  • Their meat is lower in fat
  • They are energy efficient and require less food to produce the same amount of meat
  • They can adapt better in hot climates
  • The breed is more ecofriendly, as there is no need for plucking, a process that contaminates large quantities of water with feathers and fat tissues.

• Disadvantages

  • Hard time surviving in cool and cold areas
  • More prone to parasites, mosquitoes and sunburns
  • Males sometimes fail to mate,
    • as the feathers are required in certain mating rituals (flapping wings, showing them off etc.)
  • Females are routinely injured during mating
    • by the rooster’s nails and beak, as they have no feathers to protect their skin. For this reason, breeders commonly remove the male’s nails.

A number of other hairless, featherless animals:

• Hairless guinea pigs called skinny pigs
• Crossbreed of hairless lab animal and regular guinea pig created hairless mutation
• Hairless Hamster
• Genetic mutation
• Hairless Cats
• 
  • image: Linnea Sandbakk
• Featherless birds
  • Can pluck out feathers due to stress

• https://owlcation.com/agriculture/Featherless-Chickens

Goliath Bird Eating Spider

GIANT SPIDER!!!!!!!  AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I gotta go lay down.

AKA giant bird-eating spider,

giant bird-eating tarantula,

giant tarantula,

Size- One Hand, two hands

Heaviest

Second Larget-Huntsman largest

^{Doesn’t actually usually eat birds.}

^{Largely insects, invertebrates such as earth worm.}

^{Will also catch small vertebrates like lizards and frogs}

^{Poor eyesight}

^{mostly nocturnal}

^{hunts close to burrow}

^{NOT GOOD BIRD HABITAT}

^{What it’s got going for it:}

^{2 centimeter fang, but bite only a bit worse than a wasp for humans.}

• ^{scare off an attacker by rubbing together bristles on its first and second pair of legs, producing a hissing sound}
• ^{barbed, irritating hairs on its abdomen,}
  • ^{can flick at an attacker,}
    • ^{potentially causing severe irritation to the skin, eyes, nose and mouth}
• ^{may also rear up on its hind legs, showing its large fangs}
• ^{the female has been known to add irritating hairs from its abdomen to the egg sac.}
• ^{Wicked strong fangs can puncture a mouse skull}
• ^{secretes venom into punctures to liquefy, then it eats.}
• ^{Will attack whatever they encounter pretty much.}

Platypus: Who Needs a Stomach Anyway?

National Geographic and the loss of the stomach

image: Duck-Billed Platypus by R. Bruce Horsfall. From “College Zoology,” by Robert W. Hegner. Published by MacMillan, 1951.

Some places you can go for more info:

https://mrsgrensp.weebly.com/nutrition.html

https://theglyptodon.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/the-platypus-has-no-stomach/

https://www.livescience.com/41661-why-platypus-wont-regain-stomach.html