Oooooo! fun thread!



Here's some stuff as best I can remember it.



The left handed species you heard of was probably a type of frog. I read about them years ago. They clean out their stomachs if they ingest anything "unwanted" by spitting out their stomach and scraping it out with their left arm. Their left arm is slightly longer than their right arm. Thus, they are all left handed.



I also remember a fish that changed genders part-way through its life. When it did this, it also changed from a horizontal to vertical fish (not sure how to explain it....one eye slowly moved to the other side of its body and it now swam upright like a goldfish instead of flat like a manta ray).



There was another fish that swam in schools where there was only 1 male and the rest were female. When the male fish died, one of the females would change genders (and coloring) and would be able to reproduce as if male!



I watched a show on animals and sexual habits that was VERY interesting. I've since forgotten some of the nice facts, but here are a few:



When in heat, tigers mate up to 70 some odd times per day (ouch).



Some slugs are hermaphroditic and have sex with both sets of sex organs at the same time while mating with another slug.



There was a male wasp of some kind that would use deception to gain access to a nearby female it wanted to mate with. If another male wasp came along to mate with the female, this wasp would take on a submissive posture, tricking the other male into thinking it was female. It would allow the male to mate with him and then when the male was done and left, he would go back to trying to court the female!!



There were many more, but that's all I can remember for now.

Hey, that's an awesome post, Kelson!!!!!!!!



So you can be the resident animal-sex expert, lol!!



The one I never get is how birds mate. I mean I've seen roosters jump onto the back of a hen but I'm pretty sure her opening isn't in her back and his thingy can't be that long. But they work it out somehow.



Anyway, my amazing animal for this post is actually two amazing critters working together. The ant and the aphid. Aphids feed on plants by sucking juice from them. Ants have actually figured out that if they rub the back end of an aphid they (the aphids) will secrete a sweet kind of nectar from their mouths. The ants use this as a food and will move the aphids to other plants if the present plants are no longer healthy enough to support giving enough juice to the aphids. And the ants will protect the aphids from attackers.



I just want to know when the first ant dicovered that rubbing an aphid will give them a source of food and how did that ant tell the other ants how to do it.



ANTS ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!!

Oh god, I can see my reputation at VB forming now...




Yeah, wow....very interesting!

I used to have a hen, and rooster. My parents had gotten them at an Easter sale thing. We had this wooden fence thing around our house, and the hen went to the neighbors yard through a little ditch underneath the fence. The rooster started crying almost, and my mother heard. She went outside and saw the situation. The rooster was too afraid to go into the ditch, but was calling someone for help, and my mom got on the ground, and , kind of, motioned the hen through the ditch again, she came through, and then they were safe.

[QUOTE=Kelson]Oh god, I can see my reputation at VB forming now...





Does this mean you are not going to tell me how chickens mate? lol



Weird2twiggy tells a nice story of chickens but she won't reveal their mating secret either.



Ok, my amazing animals for this post are fast.

Information coming from my 1969 set of encyclopedias:



The cheetah is the fastest land animal hitting a top speed of 65 mph. Can you imagine driving on the highway at 55 mph and suddenly a cheetah decides to take of and actually passes you?



The ostrich at full speed can run 50t mph and the gazelle is right behind at 50 mph. A jack rabbit can actually top out at 45 mph which is the same speed as a race horse with a rider.



A greyhound (the dog, not the bus) can go 40 mph, an african elephant 25 mph and a human being 20 mph (but the fastest human is probably faster now with steroids, lol).

chickens organs are on the inside other than at breeding time. The male does climb onto the hens back and then lowers himself so their cloaca's are touching and mating takes place. Same as for any type of bird.

I used to have a few chickens for several years and read up on them.

Yes. Birds basically have two all purpose holes with all the relevent apparati (sp?) inside. Something that puzzled me, too.



And according to this some birds have penises, but many do not.



ETA- I love The Parrot's Lament and The Octopus and the Orangutan by Eugene Linden. They are packed full of amazing animal stories.

Hey, thanks for the info on chicken mating. I'm not sure if I totally get it but the picture is much clearer now.



Now if someone could do me another favor I would really appreciate it.



On May 11, 2005 the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reported that researchers have discovered that Rainbow Trout can experience fear. My dialup connection doesn't afford me the greatest access to websites and I tried getting some info on said report but was unsuccessful. So if someone could search "Rainbow Trout, study, fear" and find that report and post it in here I would be so very happy.







Oh, I did get this far in my search:

Publications & Theses <http://www.aps.uoguelph.ca/aquacentre/aars/pubs-theses.html>

Found this:



Novel object test: examining nociception and fear in the rainbow trout.



Sneddon LU, Braithwaite VA, Gentle MJ.



Welfare Biology, Roslin Institute, Roslin, Midlothian, United Kingdom. [email protected]



This study aimed to assess fear responses to a novel object while experiencing a noxious event to determine whether nociception or fear will dominate attention in a fish in novel object testing paradigm. This experimentally tractable animal model was used to investigate (1) the degree of neophobia to a novel object while experiencing noxious stimulation, (2) the response of the fish after removing the fear-causing event by using a familiar object, and (3) the effects of removing the nociceptive response by morphine administration and examining the response to a novel object. Control animals displayed a classic fear response to the novel objects and spent most of their time moving away from this stimulus, as well as showing an increase in respiration rate when the novel object was presented. In contrast, noxiously stimulated animals spent most of their time in close proximity to the novel object and showed no additional increase in respiration rate to novel object presentation. There was evidence of a slight hypoalgesia in noxiously stimulated animals. The responses to familiar objects demonstrated that by familiarizing the animal with the object, fear was removed from the experiment. Both control and noxiously treated animals responded in similar ways to a novel object by spending the majority of their time in close proximity. Treatment with morphine reduced effects of noxious stimulation and appears to be an effective analgesic. After morphine administration, the acid-injected animals showed a neophobic response to a novel object and this was similar to the response of the control fish, with a similar amount of time spent moving away from the object and an increase in ventilation in response to the novel object. Morphine affected the fear response because both groups approached the novel object more quickly than the non-morphine controls. These results suggest that nociception captures the animal's attention with only a relatively small amount of attention directed at responding to the fear of the novel object.

Hey, thanks soooooo much PortableKitten.



That's awesome information even though I hate testing on animals. It's so clear that fish have a fully fuctional nervous system and therefore feel pain. But hopefully "vegetarians" will stop eating fish knowing that they also experience fear.