The Dr. Sun-Yat-Sen Memorial Rollerblade Rink

A few selections from a thoroughly entertaining slide show of past stars of the Berlin zoo. In order: one of the Rolands, Balthasar and Methusalem and their mysteriously unnamed mother, and finally Evi.

See the whole things at Der Spiegel.

My Sweet Sun Bear

It makes me happy.


I first saw this image on a comment from Lela on Sanam's MySpace profile, then saw it again moments afterward when Dina sent me a link to a page on the World's Weirdest Animals that also included this very image of a sun bear. I suppose it makes sense, seeing as how sun bears aren't the most-photographed animal in the world. Plus there's the fact that if you wanted to use an image of a sun bear, the above one if, like, the best one ever.

Regarding the list of strange animals Dina forwarded to me, she did so with the note that a few of them haven't even showed up on my blog yet. That's true. Specifically, the following purportedly weird animals have already been fawned over here: the red panda, the sloth, the axolotl, the alpaca, the narwhal, the blobfish, the platypus, and, now, the sun bear. That means the World's Weirdest Animals page offers a few new ones worth mentioning.

Read all about...

The flapjack octopus, a.k.a. the far-less cute-sounding Opisthoteuthis.


The Leafy Seadragon, a.k.a. the Australian seahorse.


The Yeti crab, a.k.a. kiwa hirsuta.


And the Aye-Aye, a.k.a. Omigod-Keep-That-Thing-Away-From-Me.


The most noteworthy of this new batch of freaks, at least according to my opinion? It's the guy who graces this t-shirt from McSweeney's.