16th
October
2006
Designed by a fourth-grader?
posted by saurabh in Amamals, Biology |
Continuing our series, “Creatures that exist on this planet that you* never even fucking HEARD of”, I present the babirusa, the pig-deer of Indonesia. Check out this tusk arrangement! Spectacular. Those secondary tusks are actually their upper canines, which curve back and grow through their skulls. Ow! Impacted.
* Where by “you” I mean “me”.
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This reminds me a bit of my sixth grade picture. The braces were the best decision my parents ever made.
Posted by Mist 1
Pig-deer? Huh. That thing dosn’t look like Wilbur OR Bambi.
Posted by DearDarlingDidi
i don’t have my 3D glasses anymore. i had a pair that came with a free comic book in a fast food kid’s meal. can’t quite get the eyes crossed the right… way… ow!
Posted by hibiscus
my favorite part of the wiki entry:
“Because it is split-hooved and has a three-chambered stomach (and was thus thought to be a ruminant for a long time), there was some dispute in Halakha (Jewish law) as to whether the babirusa pig is, in fact, kosher (permitted according to Jewish dietary laws). Eventually it was found that the animal is not a true ruminant, and thus remains ‘trefe’ like other pigs.”
A close second was the part about how a male pig-deer had mated with a female pig in captivity and had hybrid babies. If I were more sensible, this would probably have been first.
Posted by sauravrc
I think i will change my nom de clavier to “pigdeer.”
Mist1: Learning that koi can have teeth like that does nothing to increase my enthusiasm for wading in freshwater ponds.
Posted by hedgehog
Learning that koi can have teeth like that does nothing to increase my enthusiasm for wading in freshwater ponds.
/snort. I have a sneaky suspicion you are way more enthusiastic about wading into freswhater ponds than the average rhodent.
Saurabh, is there any comprenehsive numerical genetic theory about when speecies can interbreed or not?
Posted by Saheli
So doing a search-and-replace in your article results in “Creatures that exist on this planet that me never even fucking HEARD of”…
I find this more amusing than the animal itself, save the part about his own teeth growing into his skull. I had headgear as a junior high schooler - talk about instant pariah status, this poor guy must never get laid. Actually, these things are still around, so that’s also wrong. Never mind.
Posted by Ben
Ya mon, me gon talk like a champion!
Posted by saurabh
Err, as to interbreeding: no, why would there be? There’s not even any general theory on speciation, and I don’t really expect there to be. Just as there’s a nigh-infinite number of ways to increase fitness, not all of which are immediately obvious, speciation really only involves creating genetic isolation, which can be achieved in so many bazillion ways that one wouldn’t expect to be able to describe it generally. Meaning: that pig’s dick could be too big, too small, or shaped funny, etc.
Posted by saurabh