Tarantulas stolen from Arizona pet store

Frog Poison

This is a great video that I found about poison found in frogs.  

World's Smallest Frog Found

The world's smallest known vertebrate is a frog the size of a housefly, a new study says.

At an average of 7.7 millimeters long, the newfound Paedophryne amauensis is a hair smaller than the previous record holder, the Southeast Asian fishspecies Paedocypris progenetica, whose females measure about 7.9 millimeters.

During recent field surveys in southern Papua New Guinea, scientists found P. amauensis and  another new species of tiny frog, Paedophryne swiftorum, which measures about 8.6 millimeters.

"I think it's amazing that they're continuing to find smaller and smaller frogs," said Robin Moore, an amphibian expert with Conservation International, who was not involved in the study.

It's obvious "they're adapting to fill a niche that nothing else is filling," he said.

Indeed, the frogs likely evolved their tiny sizes to eat tiny invertebrates, such as mites, that are ignored by bigger predators, said study co-author Christopher Austin, a biologist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Tiny Frogs Hard to Catch

Discovered in 2010 but announced on Wednesday, all the species of the Paedophyrne genus are tiny and seem to live solely amid leaf litter on New Guinea's rain forest floor.

Click here to go to full article

funny Animal Video

Kansas man reeling from netting 94-inch halibut that weighed in at 466 pounds

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Kent Carmichael of Kansas has made fishing trips to Alaska with his dad and his brother for more than a decade before this summer but had yet to catch the big one.

"The big joke has always been: I'm the one that never caught the 100-pound halibut," Carmichael said.

The joking will have to stop from now on, because the 62-year-old hardware store owner from Ulysses, Kan., blew past the century mark — and then some — Tuesday, when he caught a 466-pound halibut in the Gulf of Alaska.

The catch won't top the official state sport-fishing record of 459 pounds, because a certified scale was not available to weigh the fish in Pelican. Instead, a conversion table in the Alaska Tide Book was used to determine the weight of the 94-inch fish. Carmichael said he was a little disappointed about not making the record book, but he's thrilled to have a story to tell his grandkids about.

"It took four guys to get the fish on the floor," he said. "It covered the back end of the boat."

Since 2006, the Carmichaels have made their annual fishing trip to the Highliner Lodge in Pelican, a small commercial fishing town west of Juneau.

"This is basically the only time we go fishing, when we go to Alaska," Carmichael said.

The buzz when they arrived at the lodge was about an angler who caught a 375-pound halibut on June 24, breaking the lodge record by more than 100 pounds. Lodge owner Steve Daniels said he thought it was the biggest fish he would ever see.

Then Carmichael's monster showed up.

When Carmichael hooked the fish, he thought he may have caught his line on the ocean floor.

"I hooked this thing that I could not move," he said.

After a few minutes of testing the line, the boat captain told Carmichael it was probably a 200-pounder. Forty-five minutes later, Carmichael managed to get the fish in sight for the first time.

"It didn't even look like a halibut, it was so huge," he said.

The fish dove and worked its way under the boat, where it tangled itself in the line of Elmo Carmichael, Kent's 89-year-old father, who has been coming to Alaska to fish for almost 30 years.

"As luck would have it, it tangled up right at the weights," said Carmichael. "There was a lot of luck in this deal."

The halibut started diving for the bottom, causing each fisherman's reel to smoke, and the father and son teamed to slow the fish down and prevent it from diving.

After wrestling with the fish for another 30 minutes, it appeared again and the boat captain was ready with a harpoon that turned out to be too puny for the monstrous fish.

When he struck the halibut in the head, the harpoon shaft was too short to go through to the other side. When the fish started thrashing, it bent the shaft of the harpoon about 45 degrees. To avoid losing the fish, the captain pushed a shark hook through the fish's lower jaw.

Halibut charters in Southeast Alaska face new regulations this year that restrict the size and number of flatfish clients can keep. Carmichael got to keep his big fish because the Highliner Lodge owns permits to fish both sides of a boundary line near Cape Spencer where the regulations change. On one side, people on guided trips can keep one halibut a day if it is no longer than 37 inches. On the other side, they can keep two a day of any size. Daniels said GPS tracking shows which side of the line the boat is on.

The fish was processed and packaged at the Highliner Lodge, Carmichael said it costs around $110 to ship six 50-pound boxes of halibut back to Kansas, two boxes for himself, two for his dad, who lives in Hays, Kan., and two for brother Craig, who lives in Kansas City.

All expect friends to start inviting themselves over for dinner.

"They called us the 'Fish House' at one time, because people loved to come by our house," said Elmo's wife, Lee Carmichael. "You can't find good halibut in Kansas. We'll be the Fish House again."

Kent Carmichael said Kansas is known for good fishing, but it doesn't compare with what he experienced in Alaska.

"It was the catch of a lifetime," he said. "There aren't even fish in my county that would be bait for this fish."

Contribute to this blog

We are looking to add contributers to this blog.  If you have interesting news that involves animals than we want to feature you in this blog.  We get views from all over the world so any news from anywhere is great.

Grand Jury Indicts Lab Workers of Felony Cruelty-to-Animal Charges

Former workers at a product testing lab in North Carolina were indicted Tuesday by a grand jury with felony cruelty charges, on the basis of video evidence of animal abuse captured on tape during an undercover investigation.

The investigation – undertaken by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal welfare group – produced video footage of lab workers slamming cats into cages, grabbing rabbits by the ears and throwing dogs, the AP reports.

We’ve written before about animal activists getting crafty with the law (here and here), but this is the first time lab workers have faced felony-level charges for animal abuse, PETA lab investigator Kathy Guillermo told the Law Blog.

The lab facility – formerly known as Professional Laboratory and Research Services, Inc. – shut down soon after PETA filed a formal complaint in late 2010. The group tested products such as tick and flea medications for various companies.

In most animal cruelty cases, local authorities are “content” to leave the oversight of labs to the relevant federal bodies, which in this case was the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Guillermo explained.

“It’s truly groundbreaking…to get this kind of response from the District Attorney’s office,” she said.

The owner of the lab, Helen Sonenshine of Virginia, declined comment on Wednesday.