Tag: animals

The Giraffebu

Today produzentin.com is bringing you another guest blogger in the favourite animal series, please welcome Alex W. (meet Oppebu after the jump):

When Ms Produzentin asked me for my favorite animal, I wasn”™t sure what to say. My favorite species I knew, without question, was the giraffe ““ what”™s not to love, their long necks, spotted fur, and understated attitude. My favorite creature however is my cat, Oppebu, not at all a giraffe, but also with spotted fur. Which would I choose, especially as Oppebu has problems with peoples and species from North Africa or the Middle East, the home of my beloved giraffes?

I thought I”™d do a test and put some of my giraffe memorabilia together with Oppebu, and see who came out on top?
First, here is a small sample of the giraffe paraphernalia that I decided to use as the test:

Giraffebu

Item: Giraffe three-touch lamp (broken).
Item: Giraffe toys (four plastic, one wooden, of various shapes and sizes).
Item: Giraffe pillow.
Item: Giraffe hand-puppet.
Item: Giraffe over-sized t-shirt.
Although I had left out some of my favorite giraffe broaches, reading materials, and other such stuff, I still thought it would do fine.

Continue reading “The Giraffebu”

Half Cheese, Half Bunny

Yummy Bunny

We’re continuing with animal week at produzentin.com, here are Oliver’s most cherished creatures:

My favourite animals are cheddar bunnies. And my favourite bunny is Bernie, the Rabbit of Approval. Do I love cheddar bunnies because of Bernie, the Rabbit of Approval, or do I love Bernie because of the Cheddar Bunnies he approves? Yes and Yes! Plus I secretly identify with Bernie.

Want it: Rabbit of Approval

p.s.: My other favourite animal is the Giant Peccary, a new forest pig discovered in Brazil in 2004.

Old Compass – New Kate

“there is a world
where witches rule the northern sky
where ice bears are the bravest of warriors
and where every human is joined with an animal spirit
who is as close to them as their own human heart
this world is dominated by the majesterium
which seeks to control all humanity
and whose greatest threat is a golden compass
and the one child destined to posses it”

Obviously, this is taken from the trailer to the movie The Golden Compass. I just watched 2 min of the Daemon featurette (youtube), focusing on the animal spirits that live with every person. Nicole Kidman has a golden monkey.
Now I want my dwarf manatee to float right beside me.

Anyway, Kate Bush has recorded a new song for the soundtrack of The Golden Compass, called Lyra, named after the child that wants to posses The Golden Compass. (source)

The Cutest Manatee

Manatee: Want it

While I was on vacation in Florida I took a stop at Homosassa Springs, a wildlife park where you can observe manatees (some just call them sea cows). Sadly, this was before the digital camera age and the photos are now tucked away in a storage room in Germany. Anyway, I adore manatees. And these are just a couple of reasons why:

“Manatees are gentle and slow-moving. Most of their time is spent eating, resting, and in travel. They eat aquatic plants and can consume 10-15% of their body weight daily in vegetation.” (source)

Check the manatee cam

Just recently, I found out about the dwarf manatee, which was discovered in the Brazilian Amazonas in 2002 through a skull. 2 years later, the first living dwarf manatee could be photographed. With only 130 cm in length they are the smallest sirenas. The species was named Trichechus Bernardi after the late HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, founding father of the World Wide Fund.

Get your dwarf manatee fix over here.

Cutest manatee
by Marc Van Roosmalen

Okapi Bebe

Okapi Bebe
Source: Berliner Zeitung

I’m not sure if I ever told you about one of my favourite animals, the okapi. My dear friend Sabs sent me the newspaper clipping above. That reminded me on how bad I want to see an okapi baby.

Need to know facts about okapis (source, source):

  • The tongue of an okapi is long enough for the animal to wash its eyelids and clean its ears: it is one of the few mammals that can lick its own ears.
  • Until the beginning of the 20th century, okapis were known to the native people only
  • The okapi was known to the ancient Egyptians; shortly after its discovery by Europeans, an ancient carved image of the animal was discovered in Egypt. For years, Europeans in Africa had heard of an animal that they came to call ‘the African unicorn’.
  • The okapi is the symbol of cryptozoology – the search for animals that are rumoured to exist, but for which conclusive proof is missing.

Don’t you wish you had a tongue as long as an okapi tongue? You could lick some nuts off of the table with minimal motion. Evenings on the couch would never be the same.

Have a look at a long okapi tongue in action.

Okapi
I took this photo of an okapi at the Frankfurt Zoo.
Supposedly, there was a baby but it was too shy to come out. I was smad.

When Do We Get Zo-ger or Li-rse?

Hybrids caught my attention when I watched Napoleon Dynamite drawing a liger. The cross between a male lion and a female tiger is pretty much Napoleon’s favourite animal. Supposedly, they are the biggest cats in the world. I’m really intrigued by the whole wiki entry on ligers:

While male ligers are sterile, female ligers are fertile, and they can reproduce. Because only female ligers and tigons are fertile, a liger cannot reproduce with a tigon.
If a liger were to reproduce with a tiger, it would be called a ti-liger, and if it were to reproduce with a lion, it would be called a li-liger.

Call me liger
Napoleon’s drawing of a liger

Recently, I discovered the Zorse, you guessed it, a cross between a zebra stallion and a horse mare. An extremely hybrid Zorse called Eclyse lives at Safaripark Stukenbrock near Bielefeld, Germany.
Of course there is a video of Eclyse. Watch it, please.

Hi, I'm a Zorse
A Zorse named Eclyse
After the mother Eclipse and the father Ulysses