Why must they hold a press conference next Saturday? The luncheon had better be good.
Note to duck: please remember to shave. It's starting to prickle.
Note to self: collect parcel of unknown origin from post office. I sure hope it's something nice!
Update: The parcel turns out to be a supersized edition (over 600 pages and 28 colour plates!) of the Malayan Nature Journal, being part of an ongoing and magisterial survey by J.D. Holloway on the moths of Borneo. This edition covers merely the family Noctuidae, subfamily Catocalinae, outlining 591 species in 222 genera.
This subfamily of moths is marked by a penchant amongst many of its genera for feeding on fruit. One genus even seeks out mammalian prey to feed on blood! The fruit feeders bear robust probosci, some species featuring erectile barbs, that can penetrate the tough skins of fruits such as citrus, lychee and longan. About eight species in the genus Calyptra are known bloodsuckers which prey on large hoofed mammals and even elephants. Humans are also fair prey. I can't imagine how it would feel like to be pierced by a largish moth with barbed mouthparts that can penetrate a jumbo's hide!
On to more orderly topics, academic apes may be interested to know that in the apparently chaotic world of social simians, there is actually a vital role for monkeys who act as cops and conflict managers. You might say it takes a mature macaque to throw a monkey wrench into a fur fight.
Free-roaming furry anthropoids should also watch their backs these days. Raptors, including vulturine soarers, are in season. Maybe the Raffles franchise of elite instutitions of entitlement education might want to adopt this bald bird of deceased prey as the next best thing to a real Buckbeak.
Siva offers a further review of ecological research and hazards facing the region's remaining peat swamps. The future of these habitats, it seems, lies in the pits.
Hey cool, bloodsucking moths, who would have thought of that. I think it makes the theme for the next nature horror movie ala Jaws.
Posted by: Ted | 28 January 2006 at 08:03 AM