By Lalinda De La Fuente

I know we’re pet lovers here but as far as I’m concerned, pet lovers are also animal lovers and there were a few recent findings in the animal kingdom that were just too interesting to pass up. So, let’s talk wild animals.

Genome Decoded
I somewhat relate with our first animal. It’s a menagerie of this and that; a little odd because of its distinctions. According to an AFP article, this creature was so strange that when the first stuffed specimens arrived in Europe during the late 18th century, biologists thought they were at the receiving end of a taxidermist’s hoax.

This animal is classified as a mammal. It is covered with a thick fur coat. It produces milk and nurses its young but lack teats, rather nursing their pups through the skin that covers their abdomen.

This animal’s pups are not the product of a live birth though, but rather are hatched from eggs laid by the females. The males of this species have a trick up their sleeves. They can stab antagonists with a spur tucked under its hind feet, injecting snake-like venom into their system.

But it doesn’t stop there for this animal. Bird-like qualities include webbed feet and a duck-like bill. And unlike humans who have two sex chromosomes, this animal, like birds, has 10.

According to a recent Oxford University study, this critter is a “genetic potpourri”, as the AFP article described it, part bird, part reptile and part lactating mammal. If you guessed the platypus, you’re right.

The AFP article spoke with Oxford’s Chris Ponting who said, “The platypus genome is extremely important, because it is the missing link in our understanding of how we and other mammals first evolved.”

He continued, “This is our ticket back in time to when all mammals laid eggs while suckling their young on milk.”

Calamari Fit for a Banquet
According to an AP article, the largest eye in the animal kingdom now belongs to a giant squid. Marine scientists in New Zealand studying the carcass of a rare colossal squid said that the animal’s eyes measure in at about 11 inches across. Larger than a dinner plate, this animal owns the largest eye on earth.

The animal’s carcass was originally caught in the Ross Sea off Antarctic’s northern coast last year and has been slowly defrosting at New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa.

One of the squid’s eyes was found intact and had a lens as big as an orange. It is the only intact eye of a colossal squid ever to be found. When caught, the squid weighed in at 1,000 pounds and measured 26 feet in length.

Sloths Rejoice
Calling someone a sloth due to their laziness may soon be unreasonable. According to a Max Planck Institute for Ornithology study in Starnberg, Germany, sloths in the wild sleep a lot less than previously thought.

According to a BBC news article, sloths observed in captivity slept more than 16 hours a day. Scientists studying the animal in the rainforests of Panama have uncovered a very different pattern. After fitting the animals with a device that monitors sleep, the scientists found that when in the wild the sloth exists of less than 10 hours of sleep.

The study, which demonstrates the first time it was possible to record sleep in a wild animal, may help shed light on human sleep disorders, the BBC article stated.

Although these animals can are still sloth-like in terms of speed, they were found to only sleep 9.6 hours a day. According to Dr. Neil Stanley in the article, a sleep expert at Norwich University Hospital in the UK, animals tend to sleep much more captivity where all their needs are being met.