Lepidopteraphiles: Relationship Advice

'Relationship advice' is a general term. If you came here for the best ways to break up with your boyfriend, firstly, I don't really care about your personal life, and secondly, you're not a butterfly. A Common Mormon, to be precise.

Here is the extent of my relationship advice:
If you're a male Common Mormon then basically my only suggestion is to flap your wings at the female you have a crush on. Seriously, it should work. At least, that's what everyone else does, right? Go with the flow. (Actually, the Blobfish and I are both strong advocates of breaking out of the flow, diverting its course, and if still people think they want to be the same as each other, hitting them over the head.) Well, whether you go with the flow at once, you're probably going to end up desperately trying to stay in the same place in mid-air next to a female that is sunning herself/preparing for mating on a leaf. It's a huge contrast. Male: Frantic flapping. Female: Total relaxation. The Blobfish and I saw this behavior exhibited this weekend at Bukit Brown (whole 'nother story). Followed are some pictures, with their Project Noah links (please create an account and favorite!)
Here is the link to the photos since STUPID BLOGGER won't let me UPLOAD the pics! *shakes fist angrily* *regrets hyperventilating*
https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/24568243

Eeeeeemmmmmmuuuuu

Dromaius novaehollandiae

The Emu. Such a glorious creature. Such a charming face.

Or maybe not.

To celebrate my first post in this blog, here are ten facts about this somewhat magnificent bird that you may find interesting*.

1. Emus’ bones and joints are very similar to dinosaurs’.
2. The emu has a knife-like nail on their toes which is used in kicking away predators
3. Emus are the only birds with calf muscles
4. Emus have two sets of eyelids, one for blinking and one to keep the dust out.
5. The first occurrence of genetically identical bird twins was discovered in the emu.
6. More than 600 places in Australia are named after the emu.
7. The name emu is, surprisingly, not an Aboriginal word. It appears to come from an old Arabic word that means "large bird."
8. Emus are the second largest bird in the world after the ostrich.
9. Emus check their droppings for undigested seeds, which they pick out and eat again.
10. The male emu’s call is said to sound like “e-mooooo”.

That’s all for today, I guess. Watching Glasswing Butterfly and Blobfish’s little rivalry unfold entertains me, so I’ll probably be back eventually.

*Then again, you may not.

sources:

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-emu.html

http://www.10-facts-about.com/Emus/id/1024

http://www.findfast.org/facts-about-emus.htm

http://switchzoo.com/profiles/emu.htm

http://www.planetozkids.com/oban/animals/facts-emu.htm

The Emu

Blogging Challenge Day 7: Rediscovery?

I'm going to end with not a species, but cloning.
No, it's not a Jurassic Park fantasy. And it has been done. Scientists recently cloned an extinct frog, but while none of the embryos actually survived, they were created, so it is possible. Another extinct animal- the bucardo, a mountain goat- was also cloned, and survived longer: ten minutes after the surrogate mother gave birth to it, it died from a lump in its body. But some are skeptical of its moral and ethical implications. Are we 'playing God' too much? I dunno. Personally, I think cloning species that WE have destroyed is a great idea. I'm not in favor of cloning dinos though. But the thing is, if we clone species, where will they go? Most of their habitat has been destroyed. They would just be zoological oddities- forever. Or would they? Scientists are also currently trying to resurrect the wooly mammoth, which would graze over the Siberian tundra and return this barren isolated place to its former ecological glory. We might find new medicines from old plants. There are advantages, but what about the moral and ethical consequences?
Wow, this is deep. What do you think? Please comment, especially if you want me to do another challenge!

Blogging Challenge Day 6: The Sad Tale of the Quagga

People thought this was the quagga. Go figure.

This animal was, at least in looks, quite hilarious to look at. With a zebra head and a horse body, some may say it looks like one of those games when you mix and match body parts. This appeal was also evident to zoos in Europe, and it was found in huge herds in the African Karoo and parts of the former Orange Free State. What extinguished this quirky creature?
(You know, if anyone's thinking of doing a guest post, this would be a GREAT animal pseudonym.)

Observe the head: that of a zebras? Move down, and it's a horse.

Hunting, competition with European colonizers for grass. Food. Leather. And also the fact that no one was really sure what a quagga was.
Yes, that's right. The quagga died because no one knew what it was.
You see, the quagga really isn't a separate species, but merely a genetic variation of the plains zebra. This genetic mutation was passed on and that's why it looks so individual, but really it IS a plains zebra, just with a different coat. That's a key factor in its extinction, believe it or not. The term 'quagga' was basically used to apply to any plains zebra, and when the last quagga died, no one really realized it was the last of its kind. Because no one knew what it was. A quagga could have been any zebra, so there were no last-ditch conservation efforts. It was only years after anyone actually looked around and said, "Hey, remember that weirdly-colored zebra? Where's that gone?" That's when they realized they had driven it to extinction, unwittingly. Then they accorded it the honor of being the first extinct animal whose DNA was analyzed, and they realized, that while it wasn't a separate species from the plains zebra, it was pretty darn close, and that now it was gone.
Tomorrow's the last day of the blogging challenge!
Comment if you think you'd like to use the quagga as a pseudonym for a guest post.

Pawsome Scribbles

Hello, everyone.  The Glasswing Butterfly and I have decided to make a new page for you: Pawsome Scribbles.  In other words, drawing of the week.  So we'd be happy if you could send in a pawsome scribble to this email adress: amazinganimalssociety@gmail.com.  And here we have it, the first Pawsome Scribble ever to be created:

The Blobfish

Blogging Challenge Day 5: The Return of the Cliche

Hopefully in this post I'll depart from the deprecatory tone of last few, since I'm dealing with an animal that went extinct millions of years ago, and no one exactly knows why. So I can't moan about how it was our fault that they all died and there's no recovering them now, etc. etc. etc. Etc. These 'tyrant lizards' are so cliched that I don't think any explanation of their hugely over-sized heads, small forelegs, and vicious natures are needed. But what you didn't know is that some are are gracile and and some are robust. This difference was noticed in their skeletons, originally it was thought to be sexual dimorphism but then it was noticed that one skeleton with very very very disintegrated flesh (but still flesh, with protein cells!) was found to be a female and wasn't really that different. So even that was refuted. I have nothing new to say about the T-Rex. Everything has been said so many times, even the stuff said against T-Rexes is cliched. So I can't say anything that'll make you cry, shout, or post angry/nice comments. Unfortunately. I like watching people blow up (figuratively). So T-Rexes are extinct. But no one knows why. Maybe it was a meteroid, an Ice Age, or a combination of both.
Maybe it was my amazingly awesome dog. (He has secret powers...)

The Glasswing Butterfly

Please Don't Crush Me

     Okay, okay, I now.  I've been pretty lazy lately.  I haven't written a lot of posts.  But give me some credit!  The Glasswing Butterfly is OBSESSED with writing posts.  I wanted to tell you about something very simple.  Something very boring.  Something very common.  Ants.  There are one million ants for every human in the world. These creatures also never sleep and do not have lungs.  Imagine that!  No sleep.  My God, I would die!  How can these ants survive?
     So imagine being a worker ant.  Your mother is the queen of the colony.  (Usually, the queen is the mother of ALL of the ants in the colony).  Everyday you march out your anthill, gather food, dodge human swatting and stomping (most of them don't survive), come back home, and share it with everyone else.  Now that is what I call a tough life.  I'm telling you folks right now.  I am here, and I am giving the ants a voice.

     I can't deny that ants are pretty annoying.  And no, they aren't anywhere NEAR extinction.  But guess how animals actually become extinct.  We crush them.  We take their homes, we eat their meat, we even take their FUR.  And after a little while of this, poof!  There goes another species.
     So maybe this blog post isn't just about ants.  In truth, I'm just trying to get out to all of you people out there that don't just protect nearly extinct animals, protect the survivors.  Now, don't turn all of your focus onto the existing species, but take into care the fact that someday they may not be there.

The Blobfish.

Blogging Challenge Day 4: Solar Eclipse

I really am flooding you with posts, ain't I.
Don't worry, come Monday, this endless barrage of posts and reminders of how many species we have destroyed will cease. If you don't post five comments from at least two different people, that is.
Anyway, I'm going to talk about a species that regularly caused solar eclipses. Just flocks reached up into the millions, blocking the sun totally from sight. They represented up to 40% of the bird population of North America, with numbers sometimes estimated at 6 billion. If you live in Singapore, you'll know how common mynahs are. Just multiply that commonness by about a 1000. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.
The passenger pigeon seemed destined for survival, and survival in almost annoying numbers, to probably pest levels. Twas not to be. Some enterprising hunter somewhere shot one down and ate it in the 1800s. That was its killing. It always been used for food, but somehow this flavorful revelation was greater than all those before. It was discovered to have great culinary flavor and instantly people all over the US were demanding it and hunters were more than happy to comply. It was a pigeon killing spree. Since they flocked, and nested, in such large numbers, it was easy for hunters to come in and just kill, kill, kill them. Break their eggs, strangle the babies, shoot the adults. Vicious. It was easy to lay huge nets and watch as a huge flock flew into it, entangling it, and trapping it, and instant fodder for the city markets. No one noticed when numbers started decreasing in the mid 1800s. No one noticed as the huge flocks covering the sun slowly decreased. No one noticed but a couple of government officials and conservationists who passed a bill forbidding the netting of passenger pigeons within 2 miles of nesting areas. Was that bill obeyed? You take a guess.
No one noticed at all till there was only a couple of lone passenger pigeons left, scattered in zoos. Then people tried to get them to breed, but passenger pigeons rely on their huge flock numbers for breeding.
People noticed when the last passenger pigeon named Martha died in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on the 1st of September, 1914. People noticed. But it was too late. It was far too late.

The Glasswing Butterfly

Safari Zoo Run Money (Yes, again)

The Glasswing Butterfly

Blogging Challenge Day 3: The Stephen Island Wren

This post I am doing to highlight the danger of introducing foreign species anywhere. I'm quite aware that my last one was way, way, way, way, way too long, and that many of you despaired of reading it. Ah well. I'll try to keep this one short.
The Stephen Island Wren. It used to be only one of three flightless songbirds in the world. Once a widespread inhabitant of New Zealand, the arrival of the Maori drove it to only one small population on an isolated island: you guessed it, Stephen Island. This was the fault of another introduced species, the Polynesian riat, or kiore. Using the IUCN Red List rating, it would probably already have been Critically Endangered by then. It did have one thing in its favor, though: Stephen Island was totally isolated. Until the lighthouse came. Boats kept passing by, and they needed some way to guide them. So they built a lighthouse on Stephen Island in 1894, and some people came to live there as lighthouse keeper. Innocent enough, except the problem is, they brought Tibbles.

Tibbles can go down in history as the cat that vanquished a species. If Tibbles could talk to us now, what she would probably say was: "Veni, Vidi, Vici." (I came, I saw, I conquered) And conquer she did. Pregnant when she came to the island, allowed to roam wild, a single year after she arrived the Stephen Island wren was extinct, and there was quite a healthy colony (but not healthy for other species) of feral cats, all descendents of the great Tibbles, thriving on the island.
It was 1925 before they managed to exterminate all the cats from the island.
Can you see the dangers of foreign species? If one day, you ever venture to an alien place: just one warning. Don't bring your cat. Or your rat. Or your dog. Or your hog. Or your lice. Or your mice. Cause then you just might exterminate a race. Like Tibbles did.

Blogging Challenge Day 2: A Farewall 'Auk' to the Great Auk

Penguins in the UK? Nah, most people would say. Yet there were penguins there, till about 200 years ago. The Great Auk.
A flightless bird with no natural fear of humans, who was very picky in where they lived (only rocky islands, please, somewhere in the northern hemisphere, must be isolated, must have a plentiful food supply, oh and must not be near polar bears) some might say that this bird was not destined to survive. It's been around for ages: there's evidence of them being eaten by Neanderthals, and in a 20,000 year old cave painting in Spain they are depicted. So, I would say to 'some' people, these birds had survived for a long time. They didn't lack survival instincts.
We killed them, not natural selection.
There's a long tradition of Great Auk hunting in some Native American cultures: it was a cultural icon. They ate it, too. Another extinct race, the Beothuks also made a practice of eating them. At their peak, Great Auk numbers were estimated in the millions so it's no wonder they were a popular food source.
It's also a bad survival trait as a bird to have very soft feathers. Unfortunately, the Great Auk did, and it was hunted for its down, since it was so soft. Some used eider for a while but then on that island their numbers grew low and they fell back on the reliable Great Auk. Of course. And European settlers were no less discriminatory. One expedition, running out of food, simply herded a huge flock of Great Auk onto the boat and slaughtered them mercilessly. They were easy food for the starving. Why wouldn't they kill them? And as they grew rarer, so did their popularity with collectors. And so there was yet another person hunting them, the eager man ready for some easy money.
With all odds against it, what was there to do?
The last Great Auk in the British Isles was captured by villagers in Scotland. After keeping it for a couple days, a huge storm rose up, and believing the Auk to have waved a magic wand of doom and created it, they executed it for being a witch. Talk about dumb reasons to make a species extinct.
In the Americas, the last Great Auks were killed by ón Brandsson, Sigurður Ísleifsson, and Ketill Ketilsson for a merchant wanting to show off this rarity. I won't tell you their story. Let them.
"The rocks were covered with blackbirds and there were the Geirfugles ... They walked slowly. Jón Brandsson crept up with his arms open. The bird that Jón got went into a corner but [mine] was going to the edge of the cliff. [I] caught it close to the edge – a precipice many fathoms deep. The black birds were flying off. I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him."-Sigurður Ísleifsson, as told to John Wolley, Great Auk specialist
Ketill Ketilsson ground his boot into the last Great Auk egg and crushed it. Currently, a preserved Great Auk egg sells for 11 times the amount a skilled worker earns in a year.
Remember the Great Auk. See its story as a representation of the ruthlessness of humans if you will. See it as a reminder of how we need to redeem ourselves. I don't care. Remember, though. Remember.
The Glasswing Butterfly
P.S. Sorry for such a long post, and probably a depressing one too. I'll try to keep it short next time.

Blogging Challenge Day 1: The Baiji Dolphin

I have to say, this extinct animal is the closest to my heart. When I heard that it had gone extinct, I cried. I'm saying that unashamedly now, but really, in 2007, it affected me that deeply that an entire species has disappeared, and only through our actions. And I would still cry now, if I heard it. The baiji dolphin lived only in the Yangtze. However, through recent years, the longest river in Asia, and third longest in the world, has become more and more polluted through human activities. The lakes dried up. Water became filthy. This once pristine river, the domain of the emperor's barges, is now- well, I'll let the picture say it all. How could the baiji river dolphin, partially blind, and sometimes called the Goddess of the Yangtze survive? A traditional Chinese folktale believes the baiji to be the reincarnation of a princess who drowned herself when her family forced her to marry someone she didn't love. The baiji's white skin is valued for handbags. In the 1950s itself, its population was estimated at only 5,000 individuals. Finally, in 2006, a research expedition from the Baiji Foundation traveled the 2,000 miles of the Yangtze river with all sorts of fancy equipment and couldn't find a single specimen. They declared this beautiful white dolphin functionally extinct. That means that even if a few individuals were left, as they probably were, they were either too old or too few or too far apart to regrow the population. In 2007 a businessman reported a video of a large white creature that was later confirmed to be a baiji. However, as I said previously, there are probably too few individuals left. A whole species is about to disappear, has disappeared, or something like that. No one can know for sure.
There might not be hope for the baiji dolphin, but that doesn't mean hope should be given up. There's another unique cetacean of the Yangtze: the finless porpoise. Let's not be too late this time. If we all work at it, let's make sure that the Yangtze river is not robbed of yet another priceless treasure.


The Glasswing Butterfly

She Needs Her Fur More Than YOU Do

"In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish."

          -Karl Lagerfeld                           '

THIS QUOTE ROCKS!!!!  Sorry, readers, I just had a mental breakdown (I pulled out some hair, kicked some chairs, you know the usual stuff).  So, I was wondering- do YOU wear fur.  Because if you do I'm going to RIP OF YOUR HEAD, SHOVE IT DOWN THE SEWER- my friend says that I'm being too angry.  Maybe a little bit.  But either way, angry or not, I am passionate about this topic.  How can you let someone club an animal to death, skin it, turn the fur into a coat, and then actually WEAR it.  It's insanity!  Imagine this.  Animals (no- humans aren't considered animals in this story) are smarter than humans.  They are the ones who wash the dishes, eat with forks and knives, drink coca-cola, and most importantly- wear clothes.  Now imagine that YOU are the one who is beaten, skinned, turned into a coat, and then worn by a fox!  Eat THAT- Fur wearers (if you don't wear fur then none of these angry comments apply to you).  

But the truth is, I am begging you.  Don't wear fur!  It just isn't humane.

The Blobfish

(And let's hope that our fragile little 'Glasswing Butterfly' can deal with all of my passionate and artistic capitalization shouting)

(NOT LIKELY)

Extinct Animal Blogging Challenge

Because I am to up to the challenge.
No matter what you say, Blobfish, I believe- at least hope- that our very small band of readers CAN read a blog post everyday for a week.
I BELIEVE!!!!
Now, just the subject of this belief I will need to explain.
So, for a week, I will write a blog post everyday on an extinct animal, to pay homage to all the animals that have died out within human history and beyond, so that we can remember how much we have to save. If I get five comments, from at least two different people, on these posts, I'll do it for another week. If you want. I don't HAVE to do it for two weeks. Only if you- you, dear reader, you one or two people who continue to persevere with our blundering efforts to depict the amazingness of the animal kingdom (mostly in glasswing butterflies).
All you have to do is read.
And I BELIEVE you can.

(Unlike one cute little deep ocean slimy creature that I could name)
Glasswing butterflies... FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guest Blogs!

Hello our very small band of followers!
If you like what we're doing but think you can do it better, feel free to write a post and email it to us at amazinganimalssociety@gmail.com . (I'm not sure whether putting a fullstop next to an email will neutralize the link or not.)
If you write five guest posts, we might give you editing rights.
What are you waiting for?
WRITE WRITE WRITE! Anything goes. A charity you want to tell us about, a story of a cool animal you saw (common birdwing, anyone?), some news you heard about animals, anything that is basically living proof of the amazing animals that surround us!
The Glasswing Butterfly

WOLVERINE!

Only recently did I find out that Wolverines aren't just superheroes.  And if you didn't know, well then- they aren't.  Wolverines are on the Endangered Species List as there are very few left (the exact number is unknown).  So, why should we care?  Why should we care about vicious animals that can kill creatures three times their size?  Because, they are OUR problem.  It's humans who've made this mess.  I know this makes no sense, so let me talk you through it.  Why are they endangered?  Because there aren't many of them.  Why aren't there many?  Because many were killed.  Why were they killed?  Because humans want their fur, that's why!  So it doesn't really matter whether or not they scare you, it is our job to preserve their lives.  Besides, no human has ever actually been killed by a wolverine.

Here's a problem: how are YOU supposed to help?  Well, you can help out by spreading awareness and telling your friends not to by wolverine fur, or any animal fur at all.

The Blobfish

COMMON BIRDWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG.
OMG.
OMG.
I'm not usually one in favor of that particular acronym but for this situation it could not be more appropriate.
Sunday morning, I get up as usual. Regular day, ready to be freakishly hot (as always in Singapore). Then Kaladidi calls me from the kitchen. I come. She brings me to the back. And there, fluttering very weakly in a plastic, is a beautiful black and yellow 'moth'.
And that was when I started hyperventilating. Because you see, it wasn't a moth at all. It was a butterfly. And not just any butterfly. A COMMON BIRDWING!!!!
That's plain gibberish to you in-initiated lepidopteraphiles. So I will put it plainly. The Common Birdwing is Singapore's largest butterfly. Despite its name, it is not common at all. A popular prize for collectors, it is listed by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) and is threatened in Singapore.
Yes, an EXTREMELY rare species came to my house.
I would like to give a huge thank you to Kaladidi. She saw it while she was walking our extremely awesome dog and took it home to show me. Thank you so much!
So after taking loads of pictures of it, we gently placed it on some plants outside my window. And it kind of flopped to the side, like it was dead. But it wasn't. If you blew a little on it, its wings fluttered, very weakly. Its lower abdomen was faded, and some of its yellow on the wings was dirtied. Its colors were still quite vibrant, but otherwise it was not doing well. I thought it would die.
Then I went to have breakfast, but every two minutes or so I came to check on it. Finally one time its wings were fluttering really fast, like a hummingbird's. Slowly it rose up- and up- and then it fell. Then it tried again- up- flop. Finally up- up- up- up- up- a circle around the roof of the car park, and my cousin and I watched awestruck as it flew off behind the building, the image of the yellow and black body against the brilliant blue sky imprinted in our minds forever.

The Glasswing Butterfly

Safari Zoo Run Money

Quite plainly, we have $500 hanging around collected on us running 6 km and we're wondering what to do with it?
Should we....
Stay local with the animal shelter the Glasswing Butterfly's awesome dog came from, ASD? (asdsingapore.com)
Or sponsor WWF's efforts to save the tiger (this year's conservation focus animal for us? (http://worldwildlife.org/species/tiger)
Support the Global Tiger Initiative? (http://globaltigerinitiative.org/)
Or something else we haven't though of yet?
Let us know in the comments.

The Cutest Animals

I regularly, in school, see people going gaga over a kitten picture or gif or almost moaning with delight over a baby penguin. Therefore, this post is devoted to the cuties. The usual suspects, almost dominating the genre of cute animals, are kittens.

A

B

Personally, I have never been very comfortable around cats. There is one that hangs around our house, belonging to someone else, regularly hiding under cars, and hissing if you get too near. I haven't had any traumatizing experiences with cat claws or anything but have read about enough and therefore have always been quite wary of them.

C

D

Dogs, on the other hand. Dogs I love. I have one myself, a total mongrel from a shelter, who is absolutely adorable but usually his cuteness is only visible to my family. There are plenty of cute dogs hanging around too.

E

Usually, it's the babies. Once they grow up, they grow broody, ugly, unlovable. That is a definite flaw in our perception of things. However, today I will honor the babies, or other cute animals, with a short quiz.

The Glasswing Butterfly

Now that the Blobfish has gone and deleted my previous post on Glasswing Butterflies (boo to Blobfishes!) I shall have to reorganize my argument all over again. Anyway, the Blobfish was probably just jealous of how amazing the Glasswing Butterfly is. And here are the arguments for it:
The Glasswing Butterfly only inhabits areas in Panama. It's barely visible, the ultimate camouflage by Mother Nature. Invisible. I hope I can see one of them one day. By now, I'll expect you will have searched it up on Google, and seen them on the internet. At least, I hope you have.
You better have, because I am NOT going on a wild goose chase through Creative Commons to find a picture of a Glasswing Butterfly.
Anyway, back to arguing with a pixellated screen.
They are totally amazing. Yes, delicate, yes, pretty, yes, cliched, but still pretty amazing. They are a daily reminder for me of the wonders Nature can achieve and thus our responsibility to protect those wonders.

The Glasswing Butterfly

A Rant Against Pandas (with no offence intended)

OK, yes, pandas are absolutely adorable. And that is the only reason they have survived till now. Seriously: they express no intention to adapt to any circumstance, they gobble up millions of dollars every year, and they only eat bamboo, despite having a stomach adapted to meat. I like pandas. I realize that they need saving. But economically, it's really not worth a lot. Millions of dollars on captive breeding programs? What the money should really be going towards is conserving the Chinese forests, then not only will pandas be saved, but countless other species, maybe even some we don't even know exist yet! But I will give one thing about these furry creatures: they have bucked up the interest in animal conservation, but they are still absolutely amazing in how lazy, unvaried, and lethargic they are.

The Glasswing Butterfly

Project Noah

     One of the links that everyone in this world should know about is projectnoah.org.  Even though all SAS students get an account when they go into 7th grade, you should still check it out.  On Project Noah, you post pictures of different animals and bugs that you have spotted.  Then people can help you find out the species, favorite your pics, and do tons of other cool stuff.  It's like an animal Instagram, just better.  Here are some of the pics that the Glasswing Butterfly and I have taken:

Painted Jezebel (The Blobfish):

Mating Dragonflies (The Blobfish):

Common Lime Butterfly (The Glasswing Butterfly):

Juvenile Yello- Vented Bulbul (Glasswing Butterfly):

So if you want to experience all of these animals and open your eyes to a whole new world, then feel free to join Project Noah (I suggest taking pictures of UGLY animals- that ought to attract some people's attention).  By the way- my projectnoah account is: turqouisekillerwhale. Hope you guys enjoyed these pictures.  Go uglies!

www.projectnoah.org

The Blobfish

Top 10 Ugliest Animals

Here's a list I created of the Top 10 Ugliest Animals:

1. Blobfish (oh yeah!)

2. Aye-Aye

                                       












3. Wolf Spider

                                     



4. Naked Mole Rat

5. Alligator Snapping Turtle

6. Goblin Shark

7. Chikilidae (kind of worm)

8. Star-Nosed Mole

9. Purple Nosed Frog

10. Alimiqui

Support the uglies!

The Blobfish

The Blobfish

     Ok guys.  One of the things that you all are probably going to notice that we keep ending our posts with things like 'The Glasswing Butterfly' or 'The Blobfish' etc. These are the society's members' titles.  What I'm trying to  share with you is my title 'The Blobfish.' The first thing you should be doing right now is googling it. Google 'blobfish.' But since I know that the entire human race is EXTREMELY lazy, I'll do it for you, like the good blobfish I am.  Here's what a blobfish looks like:

     Now, why did I choose the Blobfish?  Not only do they have an awesome poker face and are super chubby, but... yes you guessed it (just kidding, humans aren't that smart) they are ugly!  Yes, they are ugly!  I want an ugly animal, because I want everyone to stop focusing on just the pretty animals.  Come on, what's so great about a fragile butterfly when a blobfish can make millions of girls puke (and a handful of boys too).  And did you guys ever think that maybe blobfish think that HUMANS are the ugly ones!  It's possible.
     So, I'm posting this to tell all of you guys out there that you should support ugly and creepy animals as much as pretty animals.

The Blobfish

The Lepidoptera Philes

So this is going to be part of a series on my ongoing obsession with butterflies to highlight the amount wildlife there is in Singapore. 'Lepidoptera' is the scientific name for butterfly, for those not in the know. I regularly go out on butterfly expeditions, armed only with my camera and a butterfly field guide to find as many of these winged beauties as possible. I might descend into technical terms at times though so please bear with me then.
Butterflies forever!
Glasswing Butterfly

Help!

Let's just start by putting it out there: Planet Earth is in a huge mess.
I mean, with disappearing rainforests, vanishing coral reefs, melting ice caps, there's really not much to look forward to in the near future. Unless we fix it. And guess who gets handed the duty? Oh, yes.
Us.
It's really not fair, but there's nothing we can do about it. Because it's our generation that's going to be in charge, that has to make the big decisions. Yippee. So we decided we might as well start making a change now. And we decided to make a change with animals, because they're going to suffer the most as humanity blunders along trying to keep itself alive.
I'm sorry if I've depressed you thoroughly. But as far as I can see (which is not very far at all) we are stuck in a big mess. All we're trying to do is clean it up a bit. So that's why the Amazing Animals Society was formed. Because animals are amazing, and they deserve to be saved. Despite the official sounding name, all we are are a bunch of kids who have got together, who all want to do something. Oh god. I sound so pretentious. But really that's it. Are we dreaming too big? Very likely. But who can stop the flow of hope? That's the only thing that can't be taken away. Please follow this blog, and help us along our journey.
Thanks!
The Amazing Animals Society