Hoax Museum Blog: Animals

Liger On Display — I know that Ligers are Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal, but I didn't think they were real. Apparently they are. One of them is on display at a Siberian zoo. Its father was a lion. Its mother was a tiger:

"This was not the result of a scientific experiment," RIA Novosti quoted zoo director Rostislav Shilo as saying at the time. "It's just that the lion and the tiger live in neighboring caves in the Novosibirsk zoo, and got used to each other. It's practically impossible in the wild."

The Zonkey — I believe that I may have a new creature to add to my tall-tale creature gallery: The Zonkey. It's a cross between a zebra and a donkey. Except it's real, so therefore it doesn't actually qualify for entry into the gallery. The zonkey's name is Alex, and he was born on Barbados. And exactly how did he get sired? Well, apparently there were only two zebras on this farm in Barbados, a male and a female. The male got sick, so the female "became friendly with a donkey". The result was Alex, the zonkey. They just had to name him Alex, didn't they. (thanks to Teddy for the link)

Spider Milkshake — Here's a lovely set of images that's going around. I really wish I hadn't seen it, but too late now. It's totally safe for work, but if you have any kind of fear of spiders you might not want to look at it. The question is, is it real? Well, I suppose someone easily could have sacrificed a spider for the sake of creating the images. I don't know how else they'd create the picture with the chopped up spider bits. But in the final image it doesn't look like the guy is actually drinking the milkshake. He's just holding it up to his mouth.

Mouth-to-Beak Resuscitation — A guy in Colorado, Uegene Safken, is making headlines because of his claim that he resuscitated a chicken who had fallen into a tub of water and seemed to be dead. He says he gave it mouth-to-beak resuscitation.

Safken said he first swung the chicken by the feet to revive it. When that failed, he continued swinging and blowing into its beak. "Then one eye opened. I thought it was an involuntary response," Safken said. The chicken's beak opened a little wider, and Safken started yelling at it: "You're too young to die!" "Every time I'd yell at him, he'd chirp," Safken said.

Nice story. I have no idea about the likelihood of it being true.

Octopus Camouflages Itself — Luc emailed me a link to this clip of an octopus camouflaging itself, wondering if the footage is real. The camera approaches what looks like an underwater bush, and then out of nowhere this octopus appears, squirts ink, and races away across the ocean floor. I actually remember this clip doing the rounds a year or two ago, and although the octopus's camouflage seems to be some kind of Hollywood special effect, I believe that it's real. According to a version of the clip that can be found on efootage.com, the footage was taken by biologist Roger Hammer (I think I'm hearing that last name correctly, but the sound on the efootage clip is awful). I have no idea who Roger Hammer is, but it might be the same Roger Hammer who works at the Miami-Dade Parks Department and is a specialist on Florida plants (author of Everglades Wildflowers). I'm trying to find a picture of the Miami-Dade Roger Hammer to compare him with the guy in the news clip.

Bovine Unite — The cows are plotting something. They're meeting in secret COWncils. They're even keeping blogs. I'm not sure what it's all about, but it seems that 05.05.05 is the date when the cows will show their hand (or hoof, as it may be). (via Metafilter)

Pet Pillows — I love my cat, but the idea of making a pillow out of her seems a bit ghoulish to me. But those who fancy the idea can have pet pillows prepared by Jeanette's Taxidermy. However, you have to make sure you follow the instructions carefully: "Please freeze your pet immediately upon passing to insure there will be no hair slippage.  Double bag to insure no freezerburn." This is similar to VIP Fibers, the company that will make a sweater out of your pet's fur, which I posted about last year. The difference is that VIP Fibers doesn't require your pet to be dead first.

Spoon-Shaped Egg — Since I posted a story last week about an egg with a tail, when I came across this other story about a spoon-shaped egg, I knew I had to post it as well. Both eggs come from China. Could it be something they're feeding the hens over there?

A Chinese hen has produced a spoon-shaped egg. The hen is owned by Huang Yazhou, a railway worker from Huaibei city, Anhui province, reports Chinanews.com. One morning, Huang awoke to hear the hen, which he bought from a market two months ago, making weird noises. When he checked, Huang found the hen had laid a spoon-shaped egg, 8.5 centimeters long and 35 grammes in weight.

Canine Behavior Modification Plug-in — Comfort Zone® with D.A.P.® Canine Behavior Modification Plug-in. Is there any chance this thing would actually work? It's a plug-in unit that will diffuse "natural pheromones of the lactating female [dog]" within a room. These pheromones give puppies "a sense of well-being and reassurance" and supposedly they'll do the same for over-anxious adult dogs. Within a couple of days your stressed-out pooch will be as mellow as can be. My parents have had some dogs with nervous-type personalities. Whenever there was a thunder storm one of their dogs, Mollie, would spend hours pacing back and forth and panting, no matter what we did to try and comfort her. Somehow I can't see that a plug-in room freshener would have made any difference. (via Snarky Malarkey)

Tall Tail Egg — Ananova brings us the 'Tall-Tail' Egg:

An egg in China has been found with a tail. The egg, found by chef Wang of at his restaurant in Anyang city, Henan province, is normal size, but has a tail that is 3 cm long. It is not known why the egg has the tail reports Dahe Daily. Wang says he wants to hatch the egg and see what will come out.

(via Liquito)

Roommates, Roaches, and Armadillos — Here's an unusual urban legend that I haven't heard before. It involves a group of students at Texas A&M University who are sharing a house together. It's in the genre of 'roommate horror stories'. According to the story, one of the students is an entomology major and keeps a collection of giant Africanized cockroaches in a terrarium. But during a party the terrarium breaks and the roaches escape, only to start breeding like crazy in the house. To solve this roach problem the students set loose some baby armadillos (since armadillos eat roaches). But soon the armadillos start breeding, without making much of a dent in the roach population, until eventually the house is full of a lot of roaches and a lot of armadillos. At this point the roommates decide to get some shotguns and shoot all the roaches and armadillos, but only succeed in busting up the house. And to make a long story short, the armadillos eventually start tunneling beneath the house, creating a sink hole that causes the entire building to collapse and fall into the ground. So in other words, the animals win in the end. The students are left with a bill for $25,000 in damages, courtesy of the landlord.

Do Dogs Commit Suicide? — In the past six months five dogs have fallen to their death off a bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland. This fact does not seem to be disputed. What is controversial is whether or not the dogs fell because they committed suicide. Or did they think they saw something and accidentally leapt? In the most recent case a woman claims that she was out walking her dog when it suddenly ran away from her "vaulted over the parapet and plunged 40ft to its death."

Some animal behaviorists are dismissing the notion that suicide was the cause of the dogs' deaths, arguing that dogs never commit suicide. Personally, I'm not sure what to think. I did once hear about a dog who was so despondent after its master died that it walked out to some train tracks and lay there until a train ran it over. However, I'll concede that this story may be an urban legend because I can't remember where I heard it. And I doubt that five dogs in a row would commit suicide in the same place. However, this bridge in Dumbarton does have a spooky history. In 1994 a guy threw his two-week-old son off of it, believing that the child was the Antichrist. So believers in the supernatural are having a field day with this case.

Big Dog — I've seen big dogs before. But this is ridiculous. There's no way it can be real. I say photoshop. (via Liquito)

Elephant Toilet — A series of pictures (click to enlarge) shows an elephant using an oversized toilet. Supposedly this potty-trained elephant, named Diew, lives in an elephant camp in Thailand. His handlers have taught him and a few other elephants to use flush toilets in order to cut down on the waste problem. Of course, it's hard to know if the elephant is really using the toilet, or if it's simply sitting down on it and then pulling a cord. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that these images first appeared in Bangkok's The Nation in January, and have been circulating around the internet ever since then. (via Image of the Day)

Hippo Eats Dwarf — I came across this peculiar news story about a hippo eating a dwarf. It's been floating around the internet for a while, though I'm not sure exactly how long. Google 'hippo eats dwarf' and you'll pull up a bunch of pages. There's even a band named Hippo Eats Dwarf. The article has been circulating as an image file of a scanned article (click the thumbnail), but here's the text of it:

A hippopotamus has swallowed a dwarf in a circus accident in northern Thailand. "A dwarf, nicknamed Od, died when he bounced sideways from a trampoline and was swallowed by a yawning hippopotamus, which was waiting to appear in the next act," the Pattaya Mail reported. "Vets on the scene said Hilda the Hippo had a gag reflex which automatically caused her to swallow." The vets said it was the first time the hefty vegetarian had ever eaten a circus performer. "Unfortunately, the 1000 plus spectators continued to applaud wildly until common sense dictated there had been a tragic mistake. Police said the trampoline has been sent for forensic analysis."

The one true detail in the story is that the Pattaya Mail did indeed report this. However, everything else seems far too outlandish to possibly be true. Though, who knows. Weird things can happen.

Oldest Cat in the World? — My cat is approaching 11. But Diane Sleeman's cat, Amber, is approaching 30. Or so Sleeman claims. If true, Amber would be the oldest cat in the world. However, Amber is missing most of her teeth, so researchers have no way to verify her age. I'd like to believe this is true, but it's a little hard to swallow. A 30-year-old cat would be like the equivalent of a 140-year-old person.

The Gay Penguin Sex Test — Here's a story that I would have thought for sure was an April Fool's Day hoax, except that it's not April Fools. It involves four female penguins being brought from Sweden to the Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany in order to test whether the male penguins there are gay or straight. Apparently the males seem a little confused about their sexuality: "The males have been observed trying to mate with each other and trying to hatch offspring out of stones." So the zoo will add the females and see what happens. But reportedly gay activists are outraged by this, arguing that "penguins had a right to form couples without human interference." A more recent article reports that after a month the 'Swedish temptresses' have failed to turn the heads of the males. But are gay activists seriously protesting this, or are the protests tongue-in-cheek? Not being able to read the German sources, I'm not sure. If the Bremerhaven penguins really do turn out to be gay, then perhaps they can run for president.

Photos of Snouters — A Japanese artist, whose name (I think) is Takiwa, has an amazing collection of photographs of Snouters up on his website. Snouters, of course, is the popular term for Rhinogrades. If you have no idea what these creatures are, you can read more about them on the page I have devoted to them here. (via Liquito)

Save Toby — If we all don't cough up $50,000 by June 30 then Toby, who happens to be 'the cutest little bunny on the planet', is going to die. His owner will kill him and eat him. Does this all sound familiar? Why, yes! It's a shameless rip-off of Save Bernd. Just as European movies are remade by Hollywood for American audiences, it now seems that European hoaxes are being remade for American audiences as well. However, the American version of the rabbit-killing hoax feels compelled to put a little notice at the bottom of the page telling us that it's all a joke. If you can't get savetoby.com to load, try the google cache version of it. The guy's site seems to be having bandwidth issues. (Thanks to Lawrence for the link)

Pigeon Religion — Pigeon Religion extolls the divine virtues of the oft-maligned pigeon. It's hard to tell if this is meant to be taken seriously. The text seems serious enough. Maybe. But the picture of a pigeon on the cross seems a bit over the top. However, I ran the phone number at the bottom of the page through a reverse phone directory and discovered that it was the number of the Companion Bird Club of Manhattan. Therefore, I'm concluding that Pigeon Religion is quite serious. (via Bifurcated Rivets)