What the Hell is a...?

Originally posted May 3, 2006

Yesterday I set about doing my Wonderword puzzle, as I do every day. Wonderword is a word-search game where you're given a grid of letters and a list of words to search for. When you find the word, you circle the letters -- it can be forwards, backwards, up-and-down or diagonal. When you're done finding all the words, the letters left over spell out an "answer" to the puzzle.

Each puzzle also has a theme. Yesterday's was "nocturnal animals." But as I was working through the list, I found myself repeatedly saying, "What the hell is that?!"

Jerboa, loris, quoll, tarsier. Have you heard of these things before? Out of curiosity, I looked them up on wikipedia. Here we go:

Jerboa: A small jumping desert rodent of Asia and northern Africa that resembles a mouse with a long tufted tail and very long hind legs. The small forelegs are not used for locomotion. In general, Asiatic jerboas have five toes on their hind feet and African jerboas have three; the shapes of their ears vary widely between species. Jerboa fur is long, soft and silky. Diet varies considerably: some are specialist seed, insect or plant eaters, others are omnivores.

Here's a picture:





Loris: Loris is the common name for the strepsirrhine primates of the subfamily Lorinae in family Lorisidae. Loris is one genus in this subfamily and represents the slender lorirses, while Nycticebus is the genus for the slow loris.

OK, yeah, very informative. From the picture, I deduce that it's some sort of sloth/monkey thing.





Quoll: Quolls (genus Dasyurus) are carnivorous marsupials, native to Australia and Papua New Guinea. Adults are between 25 and 75 cm long, with hairy tails about 20-35 cm long. Females have six to eight nipples and develop a pouch which opens towards the tail only during the breeding season, when they are rearing young. Quolls live both in forests and in open valley land. Though primarily ground-dwelling, they have developed secondary arboreal characteristics. Their molars and canines are strongly developed.

Wow, somewhat of a racy entry! Here's what they look like:





Tarsier: The tarsiers are the members of the Tarsius genus of prosimian primates, monotypic in the Tarsiidae family and Tarsiiformes infraorder. The entire infraorder was previously classified in the Strepsirhini suborder, but now classified in the Haplorrhini suborder, although they are not considered to be monkeys. Evidence for the position of Tarsier in the primate tree came for example from Retrotransposon presence/absence data. Tarsiers have enormous eyes and long feet. Their feet have extremely elongated tarsus bones, which is how they got their name, and most are nocturnal. They are primarily insectivorous, and catch insects by jumping at them. They are also known to prey on birds and snakes. Gestation takes about six months, and tarsiers give birth to single offspring. Once found in Asia, Europe and North America, tarsiers are now only found on several Southeast Asian islands including the Philippines, Sulawesi, Borneo and Sumatra.

All that to basically say they're not monkeys. Although they do look a bit monkeyish. And kind of cute, in a weird way. I suspect this may be what Paco is (www.pacostravels.com).





Lastly, lobster was in the word list. I didn't know lobsters are nocturnal. A wikipedia search did not confirm this info, but I did find that the largest lobster ever recorded by Guinness World Records was 44.4 pounds, in Nova Scotia, Canada. That is a freakin' big lobster. I also learned that lobsters have very poor vision because their eyes lack lenses and have convex retinas, whereas more complex eyes have lenses and concave retinas. Instead, lobsters use their antennae to help them "see." Yeah right...see this pot of boiling water!





Well, there ya go. Your lesson for the day on strange nocturnal animals, courtesy of the daily Wonderword. Don't you feel enlightened? You bet your quoll you do.

Dom commented: how dare you talk about my quoll like that! pervert! anyways, as i was reading the "tarsier" one, i was thinking to myself, "hey! that kinda sounds like paco!" and you thought it too... must be true. and i would like to say for the record, that i DID know what a loris was... but that's the only one... unless we are including the lobster. "HEY! HEY!" (finding nemo)

Mrs. Duhamel commented: YOU NEED A HOBBY! The fact that you have the time to not only look up these creepy looking things but to find pictures and post them on here means you need something to do! If anyone has any suggestions please feel freely to let Kim and I know! NO KUDOS FOR YOU!

Kim commented: Hey, what about you?! You had time to read AND comment on it!! Hahaha. ;0)