In the spirit of winter moles!

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!

Awwwww yea, Time for some epic animal fun!

Now some of you might of heard of this little guy, but its time to have a good look and go in depth, lets start with this sneezingly sexy picture:

That's right, this disgusting looking verminy hole face - which makes me want to choke on my tongue is called a...

WAIT FOR IT!

Star-nosed Mole! (or Condylura cristata whatevs)

and they're pretty cool - if only because it is one of the ugliest thing's I have ever seen.

They have 22 little appendages called Eiser's organs, which contain 25,000 (a metric crap tonne) of tiny microscopic sensors, which allows the mole to chill out and feel itself around underground.

The cool thing is that these guys don't dig very deep and they often dig straight into little ponds and streams and are often seen foraging underwater... even in an iced over winter pond of cold and uncomfortableness.

(uncomfortableness is a word now.)

Something that you might not suspect of this blind excuse for an animal is that its most probably the fastest eater of all the animal kingdom! It takes on average 227 milliseconds (also known as 0.227 seconds or 227x10^-3 seconds if your that way inclined - I'm not judging.) to identify and gobble down a single food item! with the fastest recorded feeding frenzy being at a mere 120 milliseconds! It takes ~8ms for its brain to decide if something is worth eating or not - AMAZING!

I would like to see a blindfolded human gobble down a toffee pop in that time...
Heck I would like to see a fully optical functional person attempt that too...

Additionally this little badass can smell UNDERWATER - this initially seems trivial until you realise that smelling requires air and you can smell water (tasting doesn't count)
This amazing ability is achieved by blowing bubbles onto what it wants to smell and then inhaling those bubbles back through its nose and smelling the air inside the bubbles! INCREDIBLE!

I'm kinda disappointed actually - I originally wanted to have a rant about a useless ugly looking pathetic animal but I suppose I'll have to save that for next week - this critter turned out to be too Bad-Ass.

Leprosy?

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!

Test, test 1 2 3 check TEST.... yup - the keyboard is working. EVEN CAPS LOCK
...
...
...
LEPROSY! 

Many people when thinking 'leprosy' words come to their minds - such as ew, gross or highly contagious skin disease.

Leprosy is in fact a disease that affects your nerves, limbs, skin and eyes - and contrary to popular belief - doesn't make your bits fall off. - and by bits I mean fingers, or other small protruding bits.

What you might be surprised to learn is that the exact method of contraction of leprosy is uncertain - its actually not as contagious as what you might of assumed... , although there's some probably correct ideas about respiratory droplets 
(tiny bits of water that you breath out and some else breaths in which act as little micro organism taxi's)
which take the bacteria that cause leprosy from one host to another..

In OTHER news there is also a bit of evidence of armadillo's transmitting leprosy to humans.
This basically means be careful of armadillo's - no matter how cute.

Another interesting bit about leprosy is that its been around for AGES!
something like over 4000 years ish!

 I have heard rumour of our ancient dinosaur ancestors making leprosy with the sole purpose to plague the human race so as to prepare us for the imminent return of their rightful place as our rulers.


Anyway, you do not really need to worry about contracting leprosy and having to live in a leper colony (yes these still exist, there's like over 1000 in India) these day's because it can easily be cured, 12 months of taking 3 drugs will not only cure you - but after the first 2 weeks your not even contagious anymore! SWEET!
 infact - hug all the armadillo's you want cause 95% of the human population (more or less) is actually immune naturally to leprosy, which is again, really useful.

Thanks Immune system - you rock.

on a final note:
Today's Word of the week is "January" - hahahahah good luck using that!

Additionally January 30th is Leprosy day. (that's my use of the word, your're not allowed to use it)

Generic Sign off!

This weeks Random Wicked Weekly Wednesday Fact of the Week!


What's on the agenda this time?

Take a look at this image, it's is a lovely example of something that is - Silly. (Silly is also this weeks word) 

Did you know, that you have a nerve, that travels down your neck, underneath your aortic arch (just a heart artery thing), and then back up your neck to terminate (at the Larynx) a few centimetres away from where it originated?

Ya wanna know what's even funnier - all the other animals - er well vertebrates... have it too!!!
This means that Giraffes are not only silly because they are tall and drink like dorks, but also because of their

"Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve" Which literally travels approximately 4.57 metres (yea that's right, metric system first!) or 15 feet to get to a place that was a few centimetres from where it started!  Silly!

Ya wanna know what else? Because Dinosaurs are vertebrates - they would of had it too! Which means that Sauropods like Brachiosaurus would of had incredibly long recurrent nerves - which is - Even Sillier!

A real Brachiosaurus that I keep for occasions like this.

Wanna know more science about Laryngeal nerves?
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve  - Boom wikipedia link.

Thanks for stopping by and remember to use the word Silly - preferably in italics - until it looks weird to read and looses its meaning.