It's a Tamarin monkey. I stole this picture from Wikipedia.

This article on animal cannibalism and evolution has it all: Cane toads. Eating offspring and mates. Penises breaking off inside vaginas. Faking death in a sexual context. Basically, the ingredients of a good weekend. But that’s not all: mustached tamarians. They’re monkeys that have handlebar mustaches.

And that’s where it gets even more weird.

A mother tamarin holding her infant son was foraging for fruit with her adult daughter. One moment the charming tableau looked fine, baby monkey clinging adorably to mother’s fur. The next, the researchers watched as the mother bit through the baby’s skull and ate out its brain. And once the mother had polished off the entire head, her adult daughter partook of some shoulder.

[...]

The researchers propose that, in a way, the grisly act was an expression of maternal love. The adult daughter turned out to be pregnant at the time. Tamarin infants are so demanding that rearing them is a group affair, and if the mother’s infant survived, the daughter’s wouldn’t have a chance. Through a shared act of cannibalism, mother and daughter made their pact.

GRANDMA IS CRAZY. So you see, menopause is a good thing.

There are instructions on how to hypnotize a chicken on Instructables. It looks like it’s pretty easy. However, not everyone is cool with the idea of hypnotizing a chicken. Instructables user “kalmurat” says, “this instructable is sick. making fun of a living creature i would say even demonic. becoz these kind of things release negative energy.”

Well there you have it. That chicken is going to put a curse on you and you’ll have to buy soap from the store that sells Mexican occult stuff to wash it off.

This is a panda cub. I also stole this picture from Wikipedia.

There’s been a lot of effort to get giant pandas knocked up so that they won’t go extinct, but the animals don’t want to mate. There’s something about being in captivity that doesn’t make them want to mate. Like I don’t know, maybe the fact that they’re in an enclosure and everyone is watching them? They just aren’t into that sort of thing, I guess.

Anyway, the Edinburgh Zoo couldn’t get their pandas to bang this year. (They were “just friends” and wanted to do somersaults instead.) There was more luck in Japan.

“During the three days they spent together, the two pandas mated four times.”
That’s sort of TMI but it doesn’t sound like they’re really into each other. It’s not like pandas have anything to do all day.

“‘They make a nice couple,’ the official added.”
They’re PANDAS. Can you find me an ugly pair of pandas?

Various flora in the Sonoran Desert, taken at Saguaro National Park in Arizona.

Cactus at sunset in Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona.

Prickly pear cactus during sunset at Sagauro National Park in Tucson, Arizona.

Interior of a dead saguaro cactus, or maybe it was a prickly pear cactus—I can’t remember. Taken in Sagauro National Park in Tucson, Arizona.

I am completely fascinated by these foreign flora, the cactus. I’ve never experienced them except as small houseplants or exotic greenhouse plants in Minnesota. This is Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona. The saguaro is the (stereotypical?) cactus with the arms sticking up. It is completely alien to me that these should simply grow out of the ground and even tower high above me. I also find them biologically bizarre.

You could find me crouching and lying on the sidewalk along Lake Street and Chicago Avenue to take this.