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Strange Animals
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rax needs to know the names of more strange animals for Anthrocon. I gave her a long list but if you can further help her out that would be awesome.In other news, both of us woke up late this morning because we were awoken by a hideous animal screeching at around 4 am, coming from the backyard. We didn't bother getting up to see what it was; it sounded sort of like that time I heard a rabbit screaming while getting killed by an owl, but went on for longer in a repeating pattern, twice, so I think it was a bird. "Eastern Screech Owl" was my first thought too, but that is definitely not it; the Screech Owl is much too melodious. Any ideas?
Oolong, slightly less than a month after her well-cat visit to the vet, has hives and is licking all her fur off again. Her skin causes new problems approximately every 6 months. Selene, of course, seems fine. We're going to the new vet today. Yay?
Edit: Fleas. Now we get to mop and vaccum everything! And I need to find somewhere less expensive to buy the special by-prescription cat food!
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chameleons have a pretty good assortment of special features, as do cuttlefish.
many of the extant rhinoceros species are weird in one way or another - here are examples of three: the one-horned Javan and Indian varieties are among the animals historically most mistaken for unicorns (in this connection the narwhal also deserves special consideration), and that may be the basis of some classical accounts of unicorns (certainly the one-horned beast described in Pliny the Elder's natural history sounds more like an Indian rhinoceros than like anything else we know about), and they both have (different) ridiculous skin textures giving them a mythic feel. the Sumatran rhinoceros, meanwhile, is prettymuch the dwarfed version of the extinct woolly rhinoceros.
the last point brings us to the various extinct dwarf mammoths associated with various islands. the population on Wrangel Island in Siberia is believed to have survived until less than 4000 years ago, which really shockingly recent.
armadillos are always good. aside from their inherent weirdness, some varieties have a reproductive biology that involves always bearing litters of identical quadruplets, which must be good for some extra weird points. there's also the special case of the pink fairy armadillo, which has a ridiculous name and which is genuinely very small and sort of pink.
kiwis are a classic, of course.
prosimians generally are pretty good. the excellent aye-aye has already been mentioned, and the mouse lemurs get some points for being tiny.
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Gerenuk
Pronghorn (actually not that weird but funny anyway)
Lyrebird
Tamaraw
Jerboa
Zorro
Spiny Dog Fish
Sea Slug
Spectacled Bear
Daphnia
Aye-aye
Slow Loris
Dik-dik
Mythical animals:
Monocerus
Camahueto (mythological bull-unicorn)
Indrik
Qilin
Shadhavar
Quinotaur
Rompo
Lamashtu
Really anything here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mythological_hybrids) or here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Legendary_mammals) or here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Legendary_birds).
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