We got frogs with retractable claws now. Just think about that! These frogs have the potential to make a cool horror film, and it can be scientifically accurate! SciFi Channel, take note. This is another example of how there are many cool things still out there waiting to be discovered. And then exploited by mad scientists like I, for I am currently working on a way to incorporate these giant clawed frogs into an army to use to take over swampland worldwide. Then I will sell the swampland in bogus real estate deals, making millions! MuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Make Way for Superfrog

By Lauren Cahoon
ScienceNOW Daily News
28 May 2008
X-Men fans rejoice: Wolverine has come to life, as a frog. When the comic book warrior faces a fight, metallic blades spring forth from his hand. A new study concludes that certain African frogs are similarly equipped, having sharp, claw-shaped bones that pierce through their own fingertips when the animal is threatened.

More than 100 years ago, scientists observed the mysterious bony appendages in museum specimens of the Arthroleptidae frog family, but they had no idea what to make of them. Some speculated that the protrusions were an artifact of the preservation process. Harvard University biologists David Blackburn decided to solve the mystery once and for all after having the frequent misfortune of being injured by the amphibians while doing field research in Cameroon. “The frogs will start kicking and drag these claws against your skin,” he says. “I’ve gotten bloody scratches from them many a time.”

Due to strict government regulations on removing live animals from Cameroon, Blackburn’s team had to do their anatomical studies on preserved museum specimens. In addition to the talon-shaped finger bones others had seen, the researchers found a small bony nodule nestled in the tissue just beyond the frog’s fingertip. When sheathed, each claw is anchored to the nodule with tough strands of collagen, but, as Blackburn had discovered firsthand, when the frog is grabbed or attacked, the frog breaks the nodule connection and forces its sharpened bones through the skin.

This bizarre skeletal feature is found in only 12 species within the Arthroleptidae family,

Just when you thought SciFi Channel had run out of animals to use in their movies, we get a giant peccary. As someone who has a hobby making large versions of animals, I am ashamed that I did not think to create a giant peccary, and now it bites me in the butt. So now I will make up for lost time, and hunt down some of these creatures to use in growth experiments, thus making these giant peccaries look like dwarves compared to what I will cook up! MuHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

New Species Of Peccary — Pig-like Animal — Discovered In Amazon Region

ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2007) — Dutch biologist Marc van Roosmalen has discovered a new species of peccary, a member of the pig family, in the basin of the Rio Aripuanã in the south-eastern Amazon region. The divergence time from the already known peccary species (the time which has passed since the evolutionary division) has been set at one to 1.2 million years.

This species has been christened giant peccary (Pecari maximus) by the researchers on account of its size. The holotype of the species can be found in the museum of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA) in Manaus. The giant peccary was known by the local Tupi Indians as Caitetú Mundè, which means ‘great peccary which lives in pairs’.

It’s not just hospitals that have antibiotic resistant bacteria, now seabirds are getting in on the action! Maybe if seagulls weren’t so damn greedy all the time they wouldn’t be eating all sorts of bad crap. But they do. In addition to eating up things loaded with antibiotics, seabirds are also eating lots of plastic debris, as the ocean is rapidly becoming a swirling mass of plastic particles. I totally have nothing to do with that, and neither does my plastic debris factories operating out of Vietnam and Cambodia! Just keep Captain Planet off my back. And what the Hell kind of power is “love”? How lame can you get?

High Degree Of Antibiotic Resistance Found In Wild Arctic Birds

ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2008) — Swedish researchers report that birds captured in the hyperboreal tundra, in connection with the tundra expedition “Beringia 2005,” were carriers of antibiotics-resistant bacteria. These findings indicate that resistance to antibiotics has spread into nature, which is an alarming prospect for future health care.

The scientists took samples from 97 birds in northeastern Siberia, northern Alaska, and northern Greenland. These samples were cultivated directly in special laboratories that the researchers had installed onboard the icebreaker Oden and were further analyzed at the microbiological laboratory at the Central Hospital in Växjö, Sweden.

“We were extremely surprised,” says Björn Olsen, professor of infectious diseases at Uppsala University and at the Laboratory for Zoonosis Research at the University of Kalmar.

“We took samples from birds living far out on the tundra and had no contact with people. This further confirms that resistance to antibiotics has become a global phenomenon and that virtually no region of the earth, with the possible exception of the Antarctic, is unaffected.”

The researchers’ hypothesis is that immigrating birds have passed through regions in Southeast Asia, for example, where there is a great deal of antibiotics pressure and carried with them the resistant bacteria to the tundra.

“We already knew that birds in the Western world can be carriers of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, but it’s alarming to find that these bacteria exist among birds out on the tundra,” says Jonas Bonnedahl, a physician infectious specializing in infectious diseases in Kalmar and one of those participating in the expedition.

“Our findings show that resistance to antibiotics is not limited to society and hospitals but is now spreading into the wild. Escalating resistance to antibiotics over the last few years has crystallized into one of the greatest threats to well-functioning health care in the future.”

This research is published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Adapted from materials provided by Uppsala University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.