Episode 236: Updates 4 and a Mystery Snake!

Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo! It's our fourth annual updates and corrections episode! I've already had to make a correction to this episode! Further reading: Cassowary, a rare emu-like bird, attacks and kills Florida man, officials say The dog Bunny's Facebook page 3D printed replicas reveal swimming capabilities of ancient cephalopods Enormous ancient fish discovered by accident A rare observation of a vampire bat adopting an unrelated pup Pandemic paleo: A wayward skull, at-home fossil analyses, a first for Antarctic amphibians Neanderthals and Homo sapiens used identical Nubian technology Entire genome from Pestera Muierii 1 sequenced Animal Species Named from Photos Cryptophidion, named from photos: The sunbeam snake showing off that iridescence: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.   It’s our fourth annual updates and corrections episode, and to keep it especially interesting we’ll also learn about a mystery snake. Make sure to check the show notes for lots of links if you want to learn more about these updates.   First, we have a small correction from episode 222. G emailed with a link about a Florida man who was killed by a cassowary in 2019, so cassowaries continue to be dangerous.   We also have a correction from episode 188, about the hyena. I called hyenas canids at one point, and although they resemble canids like dogs and wolves, they’re not canids at all. In fact, they’re more closely related to cats than dogs. Thanks to Bal for the correction!   In response to the talking animals episode, Merike told about a dog who uses computer buttons to communicate. The dog is called Bunny and she’s completely adorable. I’ll link to her facebook page. I have my doubts that she’s actually communicating the way it looks like she is. She’s obviously a clever dog but I don’t think she understands the English language so well that she can choose verbs like “is” from her list of words. I think she’s probably mostly taking unconscious cues from her owner. But I would be happy to be proven wrong.   Following up from our recent deep-sea squid episode, a team of paleontologists studying ancient cephalopods 3-D printed some replicas of what the animals would have looked like while alive. Then they took the models into a swimming pool and other water sources to study how their shells affected the way they could move through the water. They discovered that a type of cephalopod with a straight shell, called an orthocone, probably mostly moved up and down in the water to find food and could have moved extremely fast in an upwa...