Tag: animal video

Giant Squids (You Didn’t Ask for It)

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu. These fantasies feature giant squids, or something very like them.

I like a plate of fried calamari. But the giant squid–50 feet long, sometimes longer: nobody really knows for sure–well, that’s another story. A very dramatic one: here’s a clip from the movie.

Anyhow, we don’t know how many gigantic squids there might be in the ocean, how they live, how big they get to be, etc., etc. Sperm whales eat them. Big squids wash up on the shore, dead as doornails. I don’t think anyone has ever seen a live one…

And lived to tell about it.

Don’t Let This Happen to You!

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The tiger salamander is one of the largest salamanders in North America; and if you find one, and insist on feeding it an earthworm, you may find he’ll bite the hand that feeds him.

Y’know, for the hundreds of hours of my boyhood that  I spent looking for salamanders, I never once found a tiger salamander, although they’re supposed to be not that uncommon in New Jersey. Mostly I found just those little redbacks; a tiger must be as big as 20 of those guys.

So I’ve never been bitten by a salamander, but I’ll bet the tiger’s bite packs a wallop. It just might be worth getting bitten if you can have a close encounter with one of these impressive critters. Like, how bad can it be?

Bonus Video: How Fast Can a Hippo Run?

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You’d think a hippo would be way too fat to generate any speed. Boy, would you be wrong.

The hippo in this video hasn’t yet opened his throttle all the way, but he’s already much faster than you will ever run. Hippos also tend to be irritable if they think you’re encroaching on their territory. Believe it or not, statistically hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa.

Sanity Break: Baby Okapi

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Before the news inundates us, a glimpse of some of God’s stuff…

This baby okapi was born at the Brookfield Zoo, Chicago, in 2011. Isn’t she beautiful? And remember, we’re looking at an animal that Western scientists didn’t know existed at the start of the 20th century. In 1899, the okapi would have been a subject for cryptozoology. In 1901, it became part of just plain zoology.

I have a lot of sympathy for cryptozoologists. As soon as they discover something, it isn’t crypto anymore.

Get a Load of This

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https://nypost.com/video/giant-hogzilla-invades-hong-kong/

Dumpster-diving, anyone?

Well, first get a look at the competition. This gigantic wild pig, filmed behind a school in Hong Kong, is almost as big as the dumpster. Her babies aren’t exactly little, either. Imagine looking out the window and seeing this!

By Popular Demand: Painted Turtle’s Courtship Dislay

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Hi, Mr. Nature here. And I promised “Unknowable” he would see a turtle’s courtship dance today, so here it is. There’s actually quite a lot of video on this subject, but most of it’s a little muddled.

The male painted turtle has the long claws for gently caressing the female. The female is larger than the male in this species.

Most North American water turtles are closely related, even if they look very different from one species to another, so it’s not unusual to see a young, inexperienced painted turtle trying to court a false map turtle or a red-eared slider.

Our poor turtle was trying to court a ceramic turtle, which produced from him a very long and drawn-out courtship ritual during which he tried every trick in the book. We did not foresee this when we thought this would be a nice little decorative touch for his surroundings, and installed the fake turtle. He couldn’t tell it from the real thing, and it must have been a trying experience for him.

Not a Tame Lion

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Jesus Christ Our Lord, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5), is not always safe to be around. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “He’s not a tame lion!”

In this video, a male lion–totally ignoring the cars and the gawking onlookers who don’t understand what they’re seeing–takes down and kills an adult wildebeest all by himself. Our pop culture likes to present male lions as lazy duffers: but watch how this lion moves. That could be you, instead of the wildebeest.

To have no fear of Jesus Christ the Son of God is to have no sense. Even the gnus are wiser than that. For He will come again and claim His kingdom on the earth, and He will judge us all. Those who had no fear before will have it then… but it will be too late.

Seek God’s mercy and forgiveness now. His grace is inexhaustible.

But his power is much, much more than any lion’s.

Sanity Break: Sweet Ducklings

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See these babies following a dog, a cat, or human being? They have a very strong instinct to bond to whoever or whatever they learn to regard as their mother.

I once met a man who had raised two Canada geese from chicks. They were by then full-grown, and they still followed him everywhere he went. Didn’t fly south for the winter, either–not if it meant leaving Daddy!

Do you ever wonder, sometimes, what our pets see in us? If we could only live up to it! But we can try…

Sanity Break: Squirrel at Play

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Hi, Mr. Nature here!

I’ve seen this going on in my yard many, many times, but I still get a kick out of it–a squirrel playing with a stick. Maybe you’ve seen it, too. They do this when there don’t happen to be any other squirrels around to play with. This little game with the stick argues for imagination, intelligence, and a certain joy in living on the squirrel’s part.

God’s stuff works!

Sanity Break: Cats and Parrots

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The title of this video is Funny Parrots  Annoying Cats. The mystery here is why the cats allow the parrots to annoy them. Somehow these birds know that these cats won’t really hurt them, even if they peck at the tail or steal the cat’s food. I know parrots are awfully smart, but how did they ever figure out how far you can push a cat and get away with it?