All good things (and some silly things too)

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

-- Holden Caulfield,The Catcher in the Rye

To round up, this week's headlines ... at least the ones worth remembering anyway. Another week, another colorful dinosaur, ho hum. If you think you've had a slow week, take a look at these spectacular sloths. Then read all about one of the biggest amphibians in the world, the one called the hanzaki -- whatever it is, it's no crunchy frog ! If that has whetted your appetite, watch a frog jump in slow motion, find out how rotting fish can give off clues about fossilization, how to talk prairie-dog Latin, why hyena families are no laughing matter and how Pluto is turning red.

Meanwhile, our planet continues to cycle on according to the fixed law of gravity, and has gone almost full circle around the sun since this blog began blathering into the void. So, dear readers (if any there be), the time has come to let this ex-llama pine for the fjords. If you've tagged along all this while, remember to collect your free hug, and bookmark this collection of websites to help you stay abreast of the latest:

BBC Science & Nature
Quirks and Quarks
Not Exactly Rocket Science
Smithsonian Magazine

So long and thanks to all ye fish.

Purple prose

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

-- The Walrus and the Carpenter

Some primates have learnt that brevity is the soul of wit, but at least one particular ape seems to keep rambling on. In this week's ramble, find out why monarch butterflies have king-size wings and why bats and dolphins echo each other on a deeper level than we imagined.

In what has to be the story of the week, definitive evidence of colorful dinosaurs ! Some theropods were browny-orange, or so the experts say. But don't be disappointed, all those of you who were counting on them to be yellow with purple spots. Who knows what new colors we'll unearth as we dig deeper ? They were all birds of a feather after all. And those maniraptors do have some lovely plumage.

If that leaves you hungry for more colorful tales, here is one reminding us that it's not just reptiles and beetles ... frogs can do it too ! As well as build some rather resilient cradles of froth when they're finished putting their colors to lurid use.

Finally, a riddle: when is an asteroid like a chameleon ?
Answer: read on and find out, it's out of this world.

The night is fine, you ought to admire the view ... rise high, and enjoy the loveliest moon shine of the year !

A system, very much like yours

If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

-- Tuco, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

First off, scramble through a noxious world, all just to find a caveful of crystals. Then for a sequel, dive into some photographs of the good, the bad and the beautiful animals inhabiting the sea. Then round it off by trawling through these videos from the deep trenches and sea a few creatures more.

In other tales, how to float a lemur (this is not a Python sketch), those utterly promiscuous New England birds, fur seals going after king-size snacks (and some fur seal audio clips, if you fancy a bit of cold desert afterwards).

This one is not really about living, burping things but there is a fruit involved so that's my excuse: read the original hand-written first version of a famously apple-cryphal tale. Finally, if you've always believed that evolution is just another silly game, here is an article showing that games can evolve too.

There are two kinds of people in this world, my friends, so play fair and may the funniest genes win.

Have limbs, will travel

千里の道も一歩から
(A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.)

-- Japanese proverb

More like a single flap, for some. Such as those wanderlust-iest of migrators, arctic terns. It isn't just terns that do it though, here is another article this week about some not-so-well-known travelers: puffin peregrinations. Undersea tales of the fish police, what gills are good for and wait for it ... tool-using stingrays ! And in other news, orchid-pollinating crickets and why Neanderthals were just made up.

In pictures, find out how aircraft contrails can form clouds, and why identifying narwhals is anything but a fin-ished task. Two video gems that I came across recently -- a wild tribute to my favorite Kurosawa: Riparian Rashomon, and a wonderful talk by someone who has been an inspiration for a very long time: Rom Whitaker on gharials and cobras. The epilogue to the talk is this case of the crocodile blues from back before the llamasaurit - watch the video clip of gharial hatchlings, and for good measure pay a visit to the gharial in Romer Hall. Round it off with an article that KT sent in, about new research showing that birds breathe like crocodiles (here is a Quirks & Quarks interview with Dr. C G Farmer, for more about one-way lungs).

Finally, a couple of excellent science blogs that I stumbled across:
Tetrapod Zoology and Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Bookmark them, stray forth and explore !

Footloose and fancy free

A week of weird and wonderful tales. Mudsucker whales, the giant Amazonian pirarucu (fish for it in the galleries), the adaptive radiation of orcas, toads with an inflated sense of self, and another reminder that

plants are designed
to mess with an insect's mind:
ant not just acacia-nally.

After reading that last one, if you need to be reassured that animals aren't all idiotic, here is a roundup of 2009's brainiest.

If a mammal can stand on its own two feet, why shouldn't a fish stand on its four ? Tomorrow's issue of Nature carries a report about four-footed fossil trackways from Poland dating back about 397 million years. Yes, that's 20 million years older than our beloved Arctic half-burbot Tiktaalik -- so much for neatly wrapped bundles and happily ever after. Whatever it was, it was bigger than Ichthyostega, it had five fingers. And walking along a tidal flat on a balmy day in the early Devonian, it left behind one heck of an ancient carbon footprint.

This just might turn out to be a perfect year for walkingfish.