The Spirit Bear

There is so much freakin' neatness in the NAOTW this week!  The Spirit Bear or the Kermode Bear is literally an inside-out Oreo: black on the inside, white on the outside. The Spirit Bear is like "Free Willy" Michael Jackson not "ABC" Michael Jackson, and minus the creepy kid touching and propofol stuff which is super not neat. By that I mean the Spirit Bear is actually a black bear but presents with white fur. (For the record Michael Jackson is generally not neat.) Kermode bears are NOT albino, their nose, eyes, lips, and paws are dark colored. 

Spirit bears carry a double recessive mutation at the melanocortin gene, the same gene associated with ginger-ism (yes it's a disorder) in humans. To be born white, a bear needs to inherit the mutation from both parents. Both parents can be black but each carry one copy of the recessive gene to create a white baby. In the rainforests of coastal British Columbia spirit bears and regular black bears live in harmony and spirit bears are a great mixture of both white and black bear cultures. That's pretty neat. I bet if a brown bear came to hang out and in coastal BC they'd be like, "Hey you brown bear, you're different from us and you look weird but that's cool, let's go get some smoothies." Someone should inform the Donald of the spirit bear. 

Scientists believe the gene mutation was a result of the last ice age and bears adapting to better camouflage. But why hasn't the trait disappeared in the last 11,000 years? Researchers have recently found that the spirit bear's white fur gives them an advantage when fishing. Although white and black bears tend to have the same success rate after dark during the day spirit bears catch salmon in 1 out of 3 attempts while their black counterparts catch them in 1 out of 4 attempts. 

The spirit bear's ability to catch more salmon, their primary fat and protein source, may account for one reason the recessive gene has prevailed since their able to raise more healthy offspring is increased. In addition, local tribes have also resisted hunting the spirit bear throughout the millennia due to their sacred nature and availability of other sources of fur and meat.  

Geedanggit I want to see a spirit bear! According to Native American folklore, the spirit bear is a reminder of times past and the hardships during the ice age and is a symbol of peace and harmony.  Have a neat week and please channel the neatness of the holy spirit bear.  

The Bearded Vulture

This weeks Neat Animal of the Week is the bearded vulture. Bearded vultures take many forms for example as the dirty hippy woman from Bend, OR that scavenges through the trash and refuses to shave any body hair in protest of Nair's testing on baby endangered black rhinoceros fetuses.  Or in the form of a very clever yet disgusting name a man gives to his au naturel meat popsicle. Regardless of those other manifestations of the bearded vulture, this week we're talking about the bird of prey, the Lammergeier, the neat bearded vulture.  The BV's diet is nearly 90% bone.  They are one of the only animals that will even eat bone, let alone survive on a strictly boner diet. They can digest the bone by having an incredibly caustic gastric acid in their stomach.  Human gastric acid is between 1 and 1.5 on the pH scale. Bearded vultures maintain a gastric acid pH of nearly 0.7, about 6 times as strong as human acid (pH scale is log based). How neat is that super strong stomach acid? 

 

 

When possible the bearded vulture will try and deep-throat the whole bone, and when it can't it usually calls their friend Candice who had a lot of experience with this type of thing in college at ASU for advice.  But seriously the pieces it can't swallow it takes into the air propelled by thermal updrafts and drops onto rocks, shattering them into pieces it can manage to swallow.  Though only between 15-20lbs maximum, these neat animals can pick up an 8lb water buffalo femur and carry it into the air.

Their interesting feather colors are actually manicured. They apply it by rubbing themselves against cliffs and rolling in the mud with high iron oxide content in the soil that stains the feathers. The coloring is a status symbol.  Birds with the most intense and deeply stained feathers demonstrate to mates and competition that they are fit and fed enough to get their hair did all the time (see: Salt N Pepa song "Boom I Got Your Boyfriend") 

These beasts of the bone live in the mountainous regions spanning Europe, Asia and Africa. God and neatness willing, they will make like Prince Akeem of Zamunda and come to America! 

The Christmas Ass

Neatness is Christmas themed this week as we visit inside the ass. And after your journey deep into the ass you'll be forever changed, question why you never did it before, and you might even consider drinking ass milk straight from the source.  How neat is that! 

As I alluded to previously the NAOTW this week is the original beast of burden, also known as the burro, jackstock, donkey and fittingly the animal that carried Mary and Joseph into Bethlehem on December 25th before the birth of the second most famous Jew behind Barbara Streisand, Jesus.  Merry Christmas!  

The donkey is a super neat creature that doesn't get much credit.  But let me tell you, I am definitely an ass man.  Asses have an incredibly good memory - they can recognize areas they were at, other asses they were with and a bad batch of Indian curry up to 25 years before.  That's a smart ass!  

All asses originate from the desert and are all descendants of the African Wild Ass, which is critically endangered.  It is our duty as preservers of the neatness to protect, covet and cherish the Wild Asses that we still have left on this planet.  Because food is scarce in the desert, donkeys utilize 95% of what they eat on account of their tough digestive system that can break down inedible vegetation and extract moisture from food more efficiently than other mammals.  They do this primarily through hind gut fermentation, microbial action in the cecum and large intestine, a decrease in the rate of renal urea filtration combined with an increase in the fraction reabsorbed and the ability to recycle nitrogen in the gut. Thus ass manure is not a very good fertilizer with little nitrogenous contents.  

Donkey's ears are neat because they allow them to hear the call of another donkey nearly 60 miles away.  Their large ears also prevent asses from getting too sweaty and act as a vent for ass heat to release.

Finally, we get to the main event: ass milk.  You might be thinking at this moment, "Max, I've never thought about drinking ass milk and as far as I know none of my friends drink ass milk.  It seems foreign and backwards and what would my parents or coworkers say if they found out."  That's a natural reaction to the prospect of chugging down on some ass milk but let me tell you ass milk is the best substitute for human milk for its context in lactose (sugar), proteins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids.  If that wasn't enough to convince you to try ass milk research has also shown that ass milk my be useful in the prevention of atherosclerosis, treatment of immune related diseases, act as an effective antimicrobial agent, AND Cleopatra bathed in ass milk every damn day.  

Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you preserve and spread the neatness this holiday season

NAOTW Hanukkah edition: The Jewfish

Photo credit: ABC news

In honor of 2175 years since the rededication of the 2nd Temple of Israel by the Maccabees following their neat victory over their non-neat Greek-Syrian oppressors we visit an animal whose common name is most likely a result of centuries of anti-Semitism and jabronis not knowing shit about fish: the Jewfish. 

 

The Epinephelus itajara, or the Atlantic goliath grouper or the Jewfish which it was commonly known as for centuries is a large saltwater fish found primarily in shallow tropical waters in the Caribbean.  Although they fit into the caricature of an Ashkenazi Jew, these neat groupers feed largely on crustaceans (in particular spiny lobsters, shrimps and crabs), fishes (including stingrays and parrotfishes), octopus, and young sea turtles, which is far from the typical Hebrew diet of bagels, brisket, and matzo ball soup. Their prey is ambushed with a quick snap of their jaw and they have sharp-ass teeth to capture them eternally although they usually just swallow and engulf them whole. I assume many of them also begin their day reading the New York Times in between bouts of Teffilin.

Photo credit: National Geographic

The Jewfish has the unique ability to produce a distinctly audible rumbling sound by the contraction of their swim bladder. This sound travels great distances underwater and is also used to locate other Jewfish.  Yet when Jewfish get older and they have an enlarged prostates they resort to a higher pitch nagging sound until they get what they want. 

 

Jewfish's widest point is more than half its total length, they can grow to lengths of over 8 feet and can weigh as much as 800 pounds.  That's a lot of Jewfish!!!

Finally, the Jewfish is listed as a critically endangered species because of overfishing and much like the Jewish people has been a protected species in the U.S. and Caribbean waters since the early 1990s.

 

Happy Hanukkah!!!  Have a neat 8 crazy nights. 

 

Here's a neat video of Jewfish eating a Nazi shark:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37HI_AX9nY

 

And here's a 450lbs Jewfish in 1976 caught by fisherman Buddy Jenks in Florida. 

Photo credit: Florida Museum of Natural History

 

 

Wild Turkey

Neatness this week is Pilgrim-ish, Native American-ish, Mexican-ish as we visit with the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) on this Día de Acción de Gracias.  It is fitting to use the Spanish name for Thanksgiving since the story of the wild turkey begins in Mexico much like tacos, mariachi and bacterial bouts of explosive diarrhea.  In the early 1500s, Spanish explorers (non-preservers of the neatness in the universe) brought back wild turkeys from the new world and by 1530 Spanish farms were gut deep turkey with cocks.  By the time the 1620 gang set sail they carried domesticated turkeys on the Mayflower. And in 1621 when the governor sent out 4 men to hunt for fowl for the meal with the Wampanoag Indians they returned with presumably wild turkeys which were the distant cousins of the ones they brought over from Europe. 

Now to the neatness:  It makes sense Benny Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national symbol because a wild turkey's bald head can change color in seconds due to changes in emotion. The birds’ heads can be red (fight), white/pink (normal) or blue (excited). 'Merica!!!  Adult male turkeys are called toms and females are called hens. Very young birds are poults and adolescents are called jakes.  And the one in my oven right now is called Sweet Caroline.
 

Wild turkeys sleep in trees. That's pretty NEAT! And are able to fly short distances at up to 55 mph. Most domestic turkeys however are unable to fly due to living in America and drinking copious amounts of Bud Light Lime for centuries. And the selective breeding thing has something to do with it as well...i think.  

Finally we return to Mexico where the turkey is believed to have been sacred in ancient cultures. The Mayans, Aztecs and Toltecs referred to the turkey as the ‘Great Xolotl’, viewing them as ‘jeweled birds.'  So on this Thanksgiving when you are doing neat things with your family, suck down a Bud Light Lime and reminisce of a time when us Americans were refugees in a strange land and sacred jeweled birds flew free and wide in the eastern skies like the bald eagle of yore. 

Jewel Wasp

Hide your kids, hide your wife!  Zombies are real and this mommy is a cold blooded zombifier!  Neatness is spooky this week with the parasitic emerald cockroach wasp (jewel wasp). The preggers she-wasp first injects venom between the front 2 legs of a regular non-zombie cockroach and paralyzes it. Then it switches positions and stings in the back of its neck. Basically this is zombification wasp foreplay and things are just getting caliente. Then the wasp employs the 3-strikes your out policy and uses specialized sensory organs on the tip of its stinger and injects a big load of venom into 2 precise locations in the roach's brain (the supra and sub-esophageal ganglion). The venom blocks a chemical substance called octopamine in the cock-a-roach's brain that controls its ability to walk, fight and talk (assuming cockroaches can talk). 

The primagravida wasp amputates the cockroach's antennae and drinks the roach's blood rich in sugar and protein.  She then bites down on the remaining stub of the antennae and leads the now zombie cockroach into a super secret death chamber where the wasp lays an egg on the zombie's abdomen and then covers the chamber and all the evidence with dirt.  Finally, the wasp larva hatches and eats the still alive zombie roach from the inside out.  The process takes around 7-8 days and it's important that the roach stays alive or else it would rot.  Best sexcapade ever! 

And to top it all off, there's a super neat video narrated by the sultan of neat, David Attenborough:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl_9kghmChw 

Cymothoa Exigua - the sex-changing parasitic tongue-eating louse

The neatness of this creature is kaleidoscopic: It seemingly goes on forever and if you look and think about it too much you'll get sick and confused. This neat creature is a sex-changing parasitic tongue-eating louse of the crustacean phylum (shrimp, lobster, crab).  An infant C. exigua lands in a fish's gills, infiltrates it and begins to develop into a male. Then when a second one appears in the gills it stimulates the first one to go all "lady boy" and turn from male into female (scientific term for Protandrous hermaphrodites I am pretty sure) and crawl up from the gills, through the throat and anchors herself to the tongue with her 7 pairs of legs. 

Then the 2nd creature is the male that impregnates the newly turned Betty. The neatness continues and the C. exigua that attached onto the tongue will not only suck blood and devour the tongue until it's a muscular stub, atrophies and falls off AND with the rose snapper fish it will replace the tongue with its body and provide the fish with a newly functional tongue. This is the only known instance in the animal kingdom of a parasite functionally replacing an organ of its host. How neat is that! 

Then after procreation is complete and it has released its freaky offspring and drained all the blood supply from the tongue, it is believed that the C. exigua does like Elsa and "let it go" from the stub that was once a tongue and gets swallowed by the fish.  Then the fish, with no tongue, eventually dies too.  

So let's sum up: a 14-legged hermaphroditic parasite get's all vampire-like and sucks the blood out the tongue of a fish, uses it for a bang pad, get's knocked up, kicks the kids out of the basement and forces them to find their own bang pad, then this things goes all Moby Dick gets swallowed when the well dries up.  NEAT!