My favorite Fortean story of the day

Wallabies get high in poppy fields, make crop circles

Wallabies are breaking into Tasmania's poppy fields and getting high.

The strange occurrence, revealed in a State Government Budget Estimates hearing, has also solved what some growers say has spurred a campfire legend about mysterious crop circles that appear in northern Tasmania's poppy paddocks.

In true X-Files-style, Attorney-General Lara Giddings said the drugged out wallabies had been found hopping around in circles squashing the poppies, creating the formations -- and hence solving the mystery.

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"It's a madhouse!"

I really want to know if I can get that tune as a ringtone.

Meanwhile, on a nominally related "Planet of the Apes" note . . .

(Thanks: Future Blogger.)

Do kidney patients dream of transgenic sheep?

Introducing the strangely plausible human-animal interfaces of designer Revital Cohen:



Revital Cohen's Pecha Kucha at Design Indaba 2009 from Design Indaba on Vimeo.


There's an unacknowledged element of surrealism at work here; I find Cohen's marriage of empathy and pragmatism pleasantly disturbing and unintentionally cautionary.

Dezeen has more.

Charles Platt on animal intelligence

Communication with Cats

In my experience, if you treat a cat as "just an animal," that's how he will behave. He will sense that you are not really trying to understand him, and naturally enough, he will give up trying to communicate. The more you engage with him as an equal and try to understand his perspective on the world, the more he will respond to you, and the closer your relationship may become.

This creature and many more right here.

(Thanks: The Keyhoe Report.)

Beware of the freaky fractal felines!

This sleeping sphinx kitten looks deceptively extraterrestrial.

It's cat video time.




More here.

Every once in a while I post a cat video here on Posthuman Blues.



Why? Because I can.

The Wildcats of Foreclosure

Repurposed McMansions, emptied of their human inhabitants, are filled in later by a troupe of mountain lions.

I sense a children's film here.

Cat with four ears

Yoda is a Chicago cat with four ears. Valerie and Ted Rock found him in a local pub being "passed round by curious drinkers," hopefully not like that scene in Lynch's The Elephant Man.

Monster octopi with scores of extra tentacles

In nature, it is quite rare to encounter octopi with extra tentacles (or "arms," for the purists), but a pair of aquariums in Japan's Mie prefecture have some extraordinary specimens on hand.

Lovecraft hadn't seen anything.

Men find dolphin in inland garden

Mystery surrounds the discovery of a dead dolphin in the garden of two sailors in Dorset who live on a steep hill half a mile (0.8km) from the sea.

Mike Elliott, 28, and housemate Gary Harvey, woke to find the 3ft (0.9m) dolphin in Portland on Thursday.

The mammal appeared to have two puncture wounds in its stomach as if it had been speared.

Also:

Hundreds of baby penguins found dead in Brazil

I like the way Cliff Pickover describes this amazing footage: "A large flock of birds behave as one group brain, flowing like sentient lava in a space of three dimensions."

Burrowing muskrat causes levee to fail in Missouri

This quote reads like something out of The Onion:

"It's so disappointing," said Linda Wilmesherr as she peered through binoculars at water pouring through a gap that appeared to be 30 feet wide. "With all the guns in this county, couldn't we kill a muskrat?"

Video: Sako Kojima Becomes Hamster

We first saw this video about a year ago, but couldn't find a way to put it into the print magazine. Sako Kojima is a sculptor, painter, and the most convincing hamster we've ever seen. Her installation/performance "Why I Became a Hamster" included treats, housing, chew toys, and food, all scaled to her size. Kinda makes you want to pet her behind the ears.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Kojima has the hamster thing down to a science; you have to wonder if she's the victim of some truly tragic transgenic experiment.

Battlebot aficionados might not take to Pleo, but dolphins certainly do.



(Thanks: Reality Carnival.)

William Gibson scores another point.

Mongooses 'can sniff-out landmines'

This headline evokes some delightfully morbid imagery. I wonder if PETA's on the case . . .