Peanut worm (Sipunculida)—Sipunculid worm jelly (土笋冻) is a delicacy in the town of Xiamen in Fujian province of China. Above: Sipinculus nudus

Jeremy Alban Dorman, in the Telegraph, reminisces about his gustatory adventures in the further reaches of Chinese dining.

While in China, I often felt I was rather like William Buckland, the 19th-century naturalist, who was noted, among other eccentricities, for attempting to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom. There seemed to be nothing the Chinese wouldn’t ingest. I never came across stir-fried sponge, though I won’t eliminate the possibility of there being a sponge restaurant somewhere in Guangdong province. All other members of major, or in the case of the sipunculids, minor, animal phyla find themselves on to Chinese menus, occasionally unwanted, of course, like the nematodes I once discovered wriggling on top of a bowl of noodles.

Over my years in China I added jellyfish, sea cucumber, silk worm pupae, cicada, scorpion, frog, snake, turtle and, I am ashamed to say, dog, as well as the sipunculids, to my list of new gustatory experiences. I also tried various odd parts of vertebrates that we wouldn’t normally eat such as bull’s aorta, pig’s lungs, pigs’ feet tendons and chickens’ feet.

The Chinese place extraordinary value on some foods which we consider worthless, like the unfortunate sharks’ fins, and sea cucumbers, which can sell for up to four hundred pounds per half kilo, yet have no taste and little nutritional value at all. I was so impressed by the demand for these humble marine vacuum cleaners that I made vague plans to begin farming them in east Africa. Perhaps fortunately, no-one else considered it a worthwhile endeavour, so I became a teacher instead.

The Chinese appear to derive more pleasure from the texture of their food than the actual taste. An army colonel I once taught told me that he loved nothing more than to munch on a plate of ducks’ beaks while having his evening beer. A shop near my last apartment sold nothing but ducks’ beaks, necks and feet and assorted internal organs – a sort of duck spare part shop. Similarly I was once taken to a fish-head restaurant. The head is considered to be by far the best part of the fish, and I got a sudden vision of fishermen filleting their catch on the way home from sea, tossing the heads and vertebrae into their baskets, and hurling the juicy fillets to the gulls.

Some Chinese dishes are remarkable for the sheer incongruity of their ingredients. A Sichuan dish I once tried consisted of eel, tripe, blood pudding, bean sprouts and noodles – any possible taste was obliterated by the hundreds of burning chillies. Another unlikely concoction I tried only once was baby squid fried with green peppers and pig’s heart. A Shandong speciality is made up of pork pieces (mostly bone), fish pieces (likewise), seaweed and chickens’ heads.

Trying to replicate such dishes in one’s own kitchen, should one wish to, is always doomed to failure. I well remember my first encounter with a packet of jellyfish. I chose the particular brand because the instructions were written in English, of sorts.

“It is nutritional foods of you and dainty dish of perfect daily”, it read helpfully. “Stir-fry is put jellyfish in boiler when added meat, shallot, ginger, garlic and stir-fried”. I followed the instructions, and not surprisingly, the jellyfish turned into water and evaporated.

The sipunculids, by the way, tasted only of soy sauce and ginger. I have since become a vegetarian.

An hospitable Leopard Seal (Hydrurga leptonyx) makes every effort to feed National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen, but is frustrated by the strange incompetence of the clueless biped at the simple feat of eating penguin.

1:48 video

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

photo:Vaclav Silha

London Times:

Czech photographer Vaclav Silha shooting on the banks of the Grumeti River in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania happened to be in the right place at the right time to record a crocodile’s untimely end.

(An) incautious croc (Crocodylus niloticus) got too close to a female (Hippopotamus amphibius) who had calves and the whole group gathered into a defensive circle.

“The crocodile suddenly raced across the backs of the hippos. It might have panicked and thought it was an escape route. It was the worst choice the reptile could ever have made. And it was definitely its last.

“The island of hippos erupted with teeth and all I could see was the crocodile being repeatedly crushed in their huge mouths. His body slipped below the water and I didn’t see him again.”

Cropped and enlarged “Boa” photo

Despite the “internet sensation” claim, Ananova is really the only news source on this one.

A photograph purporting to show a 55ft snake found in a forest in China has become an internet sensation.

It was originally posted in a thread on the website of the People’s Daily, the official Communist Party newspaper in China.

The thread claimed the snake was one of two enormous boas found by workers clearing forest for a new road outside Guping city, Jiangxi province.

They apparently woke up the sleeping snakes during attempts to bulldoze a huge mound of earth.

“On the third dig, the operator found there was blood amongst the soil, and with a further dig, a dying snake appeared,” said the post.

“At the same time, another gold coloured giant boa appeared with its mouth wide open. The driver was paralysed with fear, while the other workers ran for their lives.

“By the time the workers came back, the wounded boa had died, while the other snake had disappeared. The bulldozer operator was so sick that he couldn’t even stand up.”

The post claimed that the digger driver was so traumatised that he suffered a heart attack on his way to hospital and later died.

The dead snake was 55ft (16.7m) long, weighed 300kg and was estimated to be 140 years old, according to the post.

However, local government officials in Guiping say the story and photograph are almost certainly a hoax as giant boas are not native to the area.

Anannova seems to have gotten the story from QuirkyChina, which claims to be quoting the People’s Daily for November 11th, but no such story turn up in a search of the English language edition of the paper’s web-site.

The use of the term “boa” is obviously inaccurate. Boa constrictors are native to the New World. The visible markings on the snake’s back, I think, identify it clearly enough as a reticulated python. And Chinese English news reports do clearly routinely refer to pythons (native to Asia) as “boas.”

This 40 k. (88 lbs.), 4 m. (13’) long reticulated python found by Yunnan villagers in this October 22, 2006 story is referred to as a “giant boa.”

There is a problem with range. Guping is a bit north of the generally described range of Python reticulatus.

Wikipedia estimated range of Reticulated Python (Python reticulatus)

Jiangxi Province, China

And there is a problem with the size. The photograph is obviously calculated to mislead. The snake is hanging from the bucket in the extreme foreground in an effort to induce viewers to take the people and cab behind as an indication of scale. If someone could identify the model of the backhoe, and could determine the actual size of the digging bucket, it would be pretty easy to come up with a more accurate estimate of the actual size of the snake.

Estimates of how large reticulated pythons can grow vary. Wikipedia says “more than 28 feet (8.7 m),” quoting Murphy/Henderson (1997). Wall (1926) proposes 30’ (9.14 m.). Oliver (1958) goes all the way up to 33’ (10.06 m.).

Yet, there is a news agency account, dated January 8, 2004, describing the capture in Indonesia of a nearly 49 foot (14.9 m.), 990 pound (450 k.) monster reticulated python, complete with 0:33 video.

Humans… They’re what’s for dinner.

One of the participants on a bamboo fly rod list forwarded the link to this 2007 YouTube video of a mountain lion looking into the window of a Colorado home in very much the manner of a house cat sitting patiently outside a mouse hole.

The lady doing most of the filming seems a bit overconfident in the ability of window glass to serve as an impenetrable barrier to wildlife. One can see the lion giving some serious consideration to having a try. Fortunately he decides in favor of prudence, or I expect we’d have never seen this video.

Apparently, the lion had been seen hanging around the vicinity of these people’s house before the video was made. The sensible thing to do would have been to shoot this particular lion.

Asiatic black bear (Selenarctos thibetanus)

Strategy Page reports that a formidable new ally, a powerful fighter particularly skilled in mountain warfare, recently joined the Western Anti-Jihadist Coalition.

In Indian Kashmir, an Islamic terrorist leader, and one of his followers was killed by a black bear. Two other terrorists were wounded, but were able to flee to a nearby village. Although the terrorists were armed with assault rifles, the bear attacked quickly, and at night, and the men were unable to use their weapons in the restricted confines of the cave. Apparently the bear was going to use the cave to hibernate in, and was upset to find that the terrorists had moved in. The four terrorists thought the cave was abandoned, and a good place to hide out in.

The Asiatic Black Bear is related to the American black bear, but is larger (up to 400 pounds for an older male), and is much more aggressive towards humans. The Asiatic bear has a more powerful jaw, and bigger claws.

Here is a short 0:53 video from Finland showing a Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) attacking and killing a reindeer calf (Rangifer tarandus).

BBC:

A BBC natural history film crew gathered the extraordinary footage along a reindeer migration route in northern Finland.

It finally proves this eagle species does occasionally hunt reindeer, something suggested by forensic evidence and the local Sami people.

The crew filmed the behaviour while capturing footage of the reindeer migration for the BBC natural history series Life, though the images were shot at too far a distance to be included in the final cut of the high definition programme.

In the last 100 yards it went into a low powerful glide and hit the back of a calf

Television producer Dr Ted Oakes, cameraman Mr Barrie Britton and scientist Mr Harri Norberg set out to film the hunt along the northern edge of Finland.

For his PhD thesis Mr Norberg has spent the past few years studying how predators interact with the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), which are known as caribou in North America.

Mr Norberg would tag calves, then search out those that had stopped moving to find out what had killed them.

By examining the bodies and the size and shape of claw, bite or talon marks, he ascertained that the majority of reindeer calves killed in the region had been attacked by eagles. ...

More often than not the golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) appeared to attack white calves, rather than tan or brown ones, though the crew did not know why.

According to Mr Norberg, it is usually immature golden eagles that kill the calves.

However, he also believes the birds occasionally hunt adult reindeer.

Another larger species of eagle lives in the region, the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), but this bird is less aggressive than the golden eagle, and will often be chased off a reindeer carcass by its smaller relative.

The Sami people that live in the area say they have seen white-tailed eagles also killing reindeer, but this behaviour has yet to be scientifically documented.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

Southern flying squirrel emerges from beneath dog dish (Photographs: Karen L. Myers)

Karen heard activity in the dining room ceiling yesterday evening, and the cats were definitely interested.

When I came downstairs this morning, I found the white cat, Petra, had managed to enter the off-limits living room by leaping over the cat gate and had trapped herself inside. A little while later, Karen found the source of all the nocturnal activity.

A flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans—the Southern variety) had gotten itself cornered by the housecats at the dining room fireplace.

We herded the squirrel into the kitchen and in the direction of the backdoor. While it was considering making a break for it, instead of turning the corner, to hide under the Hoosier cabinet, Karen cleverly popped a metal dog dish over it.

All we had to do then was slide the 2010 Master of Foxhounds calendar (still wrapped in cellophane) under the dog dish, and voilá! the squirrel was safely confined and portable.

We took him out to an old stone foundation in the backyard, where I slid the calendar aside just enough to allow an exit.

This is actually the second flying squirrel successfully evicted unharmed in the three years we’ve been here.

Released from captivity, and not permitted to climb my trouser leg, the prisoner bounds away

Spider cloth displayed at the American Museum of Natural History

Wired:

“To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.”

The project was modeled on the work of a Victorian-era French missionary, Jacob Paul Camboué, who invented a machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at a time.

AMNH 3:29 video

Golden silk orb-weavers (Nephila madagascariensis)

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

John Lichfield reports that Asterix’s beloved sanglier has multiplied five times over the last two decades.

In the forest close to our house in Normandy, we have neighbours that we never see. Occasionally, you might spot one sprinting across the road late at night. Each autumn, brutal-looking men in paramilitary uniforms invade the forest with dogs and horns to try to shoot them.

The other morning, for the first time in 11 years, I saw one of our neighbours in broad daylight. He was loitering in the middle of the road. When my car came along, he stared at me insolently and then trotted off into a field of almost-ripe maize.

Our neighbours are sangliers, or wild boar. Their population is exploding. Despite the best efforts of the men in paramilitary uniforms (who often seem to end up shooting one another), the wild boar population of France has increased five-fold in the last 20 years to reach an estimated one million.

Several reasons are given for their proliferation. The great hurricane of Christmas 1999 left French forests in such a jumble that the boar have many more places to hide from the hunters. The spread of cereal fields into traditional beef and dairy country (like Normandy) has given them a new food supply. They are especially partial to maize.

Last week, the wild boar, sanglier or Sus scrofa was officially declared a public menace. Over 15,000 road accidents a year – two-thirds of all French road accidents are attributable to animals – are caused by wild boar dashing across roads at night without looking both ways. The environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, has ordered an anti-boar campaign, including official culls and, possibly, a longer hunting season.

I found this on Pat Burns’s blog today. The original source seems to be Comedy.com back in February.

Donna Munson

Since I have black bear walking regularly through my yard at my home atop the Blue Ridge, stories like today’s do make me reflect upon our current complacency about sharing our neighborhoods with potentially lethal large predators.

Mrs. Munson’s case was different from most of ours. She was living in a remote wilderness location. In California and the Eastern US, though, bears or mountain lions commonly reside in the midst of residential suburbs.

We rely on our belief that a long tradition of hunting (now very much in desuetude as far as our large predator neighbors are concerned) suffices to assure their fear of man as the better-armed and more dangerous predator.

Our reliance on that established status has worked well enough in the Eastern US so far, but, of course, the bear have only returned to most places very recently. The mountain lion, here in the East, is mostly just a rumor.

Denver News:

An autopsy showed a 74-year-old Ouray County (Colorado) woman whose body was found being eaten by a bear (Black bear – Ursus americanus) was attacked and killed by that same bear after she attempted to help a smaller bear that had been hurt in a fight.

The son-in-law of Donna Munson told 7NEWS that Munson was trying to help a smaller bear that had gotten into a fight with an older bear on Aug 7. The smaller bear suffered broken teeth in the brawl, Munson told her family.

Munson told her brother by telephone that she was putting out hard-boiled eggs and milk for the younger bear to eat, said the victim’s son-in-law, Bruce Milne.

Munson told her brother Thursday night that the older bear was back and said, “I’m going to chase it off with a broom.”

According to the county coroner, Munson was grabbed by the bear and it slashed her head and neck with such penetrating force that Munson would have bled out in 90 seconds.

Sheriff’s investigators said that the bear “clubbed” her through the wire fence that she had built around her porch, rendering her unconscious. It then grabbed her, pulled her underneath the fence to the back yard and then slashed her to death, the sheriff’s office said.

Later that day, a witness found a large bear feeding on Munson’s body as it lay outside her home.

Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital staff holding snake (Tampa Bay Online)

Dallas Examiner:

Since July 17, authorities in Florida have allowed reptile hunters with special permits to capture and euthanize pythons that are thriving in the Everglades and other parts of the state, living off native species and harming the fragile ecosystem.

The largest python (a Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus – DZ) so far was captured on Thursday. It was a 207-pound (94.09 k.) male that measured more than 17-feet (5.18 m.) long and 26 inches (66 cm.) in diameter; however, it was not captured by one of the permitted hunters. Instead, it was shot on the 20-acre (8.09 h.) compound of the Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital by one of the vets who was alerted to its presence by his nephew. It is illegal to shoot pythons in Florida wildlife management areas or federal lands, but the snakes can be legally shot on private property.

The now-deceased snake is believed to be one of more than 100,000 pythons living in the Florida wilds. The snakes are often abandoned by disgruntled pet owners when they become too large to handle and too expensive to feed. They can reproduce rapidly with female pythons laying up to 80 eggs at a time, and they have no natural predators in Florida.

Hat tip to PBurns via Karen L. Myers.

This hawk chases mailmen

A nesting Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni) in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan has shut down mail delivery in its local neighborhood by making a habit of stooping upon local carriers.

CBC:

Canada Post has temporarily suspended door-to-door mail delivery for a neighbourhood in Moose Jaw, Sask., because of threatening swoops from a protective bird of prey.

Letter carriers had recently become the target of a Swainson’s hawk nesting in the area. The common prairie hawk, which can grow to 50 centimetres (19.7”) in length and weigh up to 1.1 kilograms (2.42 lbs.), is known to be quite territorial when caring for young.

The fierce moves of the Moose Jaw bird have disrupted mail delivery since late May.

“What they do is just try to intimidate you,” Janet Ng, a bird expert from the Saskatchewan Burrowing Owl Interpretive Centre, told CBC News on Friday.

Janet Ng, a bird expert from the Saskatchewan Burrowing Owl Interpretive Centre, says the hawk is merely protecting its young. Janet Ng, a bird expert from the Saskatchewan Burrowing Owl Interpretive Centre, says the hawk is merely protecting its young.

“They’re trying to protect their nests. They want to protect their young, and they want to scare you off because they don’t know what your intentions are.”

Canada Post said mail delivery will resume as soon as the birds have moved on.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Foxhounds are large (65-70 lbs. – 29-32 kilos.) and powerful animals. They are astonishingly muscular, and a hound pack is fully capable of running for many miles, pulling down, tearing to pieces and devouring its quarry rapidly and on the spot.

Yet, those familiar with hounds often describe the hound temperament as “sweet.” Hounds will eagerly jump up on strangers to lick their faces and be petted, and it is a routine practice as exhibitions to release a pack to be petted and roll around with small children.

Hounds traditionally hunted deer before they hunted foxes. Consequently, the return of the white-tail deer to much of its original range in the Eastern United States in the 1950s and 1960s had a tremendous impact on hunting and hound breeding.

Ben Hardaway, the renowned and colorful Master of Georgia’s Midland Foxhounds, often recounts how, when deer arrived in his territory, he found he could not stop his beloved July-strain American foxhounds from chasing deer, and successfully running them down and eating them.

Hardaway found himself obliged to travel to Britain and Ireland in search of deer-proof strains of foxhounds, and he proceeded to blend appropriate British foxhound strains with American, adding a soupçon of Penn Marydel, to produce what became recognized as a new, very widely used category of foxhound, the Crossbred.

Hardaway’s impact on hound breeding has been so great that he was recently honored by the North American Museum of Hounds and Hunting by admission to its Hall of Fame Huntsman’s Room, an honor rarely conferred on a living sportsman.

It is, therefore, interesting to find that the 30 couple (60) of foxhounds of the Chiddingfield, Leconfield and Cowdray Hunt, whose territory is in Surrey and Sussex, recently adopted a ten-week old fallow deer (Dama dama) fawn, allowing him to accompany the pack on its off-season walks.

Huntsman Adrian Thompson, however, expressed a disinclination to allow the fawn to hunt with his hounds next Autumn. He does not think the young deer would have the stamina to keep up with hounds. (Maybe someone will offer him a ride, and BamBam will be able to car follow.)

Daily Mail

Telegraph

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.