mental_floss Blog » 6 Animals That Show Mother Nature’s Sense of Humor

6 Animals That Show Mother Nature’s Sense of Humor
by Miss Cellania - December 22, 2009 - 8:12 AM

You’ve heard jokes like these all your life: What do you get if you cross an octopus with a cow? An animal that can milk itself. I didn’t find such an animal, but the world has plenty of strange species that at first glance appear to be hybrids of unrelated species because they have attributes that surprise us. However, we are only surprised because our personal experiences don’t encompass all that nature offers.

1. Turtle + Hedgehog = Armadillo

Rudyard Kipling wrote the story The Beginning of the Armadillos, in which the animal came from a tortoise and a hedgehog. They didn’t join to give birth to armadillos; instead, they taught each other their talents. The hedgehog helped the tortoise learn to curl into a ball, and the tortoise taught the hedgehog to swim, which toughened up his spines into armor. Before they knew it, both had turned into armadillos.

Here in the real world, armadillos are related to both sloths and anteaters and are native to Latin America except for the nine-banded armadillo we see in the US. In certain states they are called “speed bumps”. Armadillo image by Flickr user Ben Cooper.

2. Giraffe + Zebra = Okapi

The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) appears to be a short giraffe with a zebra’s legs tacked as an afterthought. The animal, which lives only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (and in zoos), is actually related to the giraffe but was “shorted” in the neck department. To make up for that oversight, the okapi has a tongue long enough to lick its own ears! The zebra stripes are thought to be used as camouflage, and to make it easy for okapi young to follow their mothers through the rain forest. Okapi image by Raul654.

via mentalfloss.com

hehe... To see the other four you'll have to go to the site: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs//archives/43622#

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Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. - Pew Social & Demographic Trends

Pew Social Research has brought us yet another informative study of the demographics in the United States and how the population and priorities are evolving.


Check out the sample below, and if it's your "cup of tea" then check out the whole article at pewsocialtrends.org.  There is also a detailed .pdf available at their site.

Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

February 24, 2010

Executive Summary

Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials -- the American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium -- have begun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.
They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They're less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.
Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own economic futures as well as about the overall state of the nation.(See chapter 4 in the full report)

They embrace multiple modes of self-expression. Three-quarters have created a profile on a social networking site. One-in-five have posted a video of themselves online. Nearly four-in-ten have a tattoo (and for most who do, one is not enough: about half of those with tattoos have two to five and 18% have six or more). Nearly one-in-four have a piercing in some place other than an earlobe -- about six times the share of older adults who've done this. But their look-at-me tendencies are not without limits. Most Millennials have placed privacy boundaries on their social media profiles. And 70% say their tattoos are hidden beneath clothing. (See chapters 4 and 7 in the full report)
Despite struggling (and often failing) to find jobs in the teeth of a recession, about nine-in-ten either say that they currently have enough money or that they will eventually meet their long-term financial goals. But at the moment, fully 37% of 18- to 29-year-olds are unemployed or out of the workforce, the highest share among this age group in more than three decades. Research shows that young people who graduate from college in a bad economy typically suffer long-term consequences -- with effects on their careers and earnings that linger as long as 15 years.¹ (See chapter 5 in the full report)

via pewsocialtrends.org

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