The Humane Society of Pagosa Springs (Colorado) has a created a series of bumper stickers that read: “My Child Is A Beggar”, “My Child Eats Bugs” and finally, “My Child Drinks Out Of The Toilet”. Thankfully, the children referenced are pets.

These 3 fun bumper stickers are the perfect little gift to share with a friend. For one low price you will receive three darling bumper stickers.

via Molly Kiely and Gary L. Mackender

At the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, a two person Papier-mâché rhinoceros costume rampaged out of its pen and trampled zookeepers until it was tranquilized. The rhino was part of the yearly safety drill at Tokyo area zoos. Last year, the nearby Tama Zoo was menaced by a man in a tiger mascot costume.

via The Telegraph

Stephen Wildish created this informative Venn diagram showing the various intersections of Rude Birds by habitat.

Should you wish to virtually transfer a kiss to someone over the internet, Singapore-based research study Lovotics (Love + Robotics) may hold the answer. The Kissenger: Kiss Messenger is a set of googly-eyed robotic pigs (or are they rabbits?) that can long-distance emulate and deliver a kiss. One person kisses the robot animal, where it molds its animal lips around that person’s lips, and then the kiss information is sent to the kiss recipient. The recipient then takes their own robot animal and receives the virtual kiss.

Artificial intelligence researcher Hooman Samani is behind the Lovotics study and has also developed the Mini-Surrogate, “small cute, believable and acceptable surrogates of humans for telecommunication.”

Kissenger enables three modes of interaction:

1. Human to Human tele-kiss through the device: bridges the physical gap between two intimately connected individuals. Kissenger plays the mediating role in the kiss interaction by imitating and recreating the lip movement of both users in real time using two digitally connected artificial lips.

2. Human to Robot kiss: enabling an intimate relationship with a robot, such technology provides a new facility for closer and more realistic interactions between humans and robots. In this scenario, one set of artificial lips is integrated in a humanoid robot.

3. Human to Virtual character physical/virtual kiss: provides a link between the virtual and real worlds. Here, humans can kiss virtual characters while playing games and receive physical kisses from their favorite virtual characters. Further, Kissenger can be integrated into modern communication devices to facilitate the interactive communication between natural and technologically mediated environments and enhance human tele-presence.

via Geekologie and CBCnews

Filmmaker Marilu O’lyaryz is producing a documentary about cheetah conservation efforts in South Africa, and in particular, the work of the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre. She is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

Archie McPhee has just released a line of awesome uniquely-shaped flavored candy suckers. The full line includes: a strawberry-flavored Lobster Claw Lollipop, an orange-flavored freshly-plucked Chicken Sucker, a cherry-flavored T-Bone Steak Sucker, a sour-lemon-flavored Fish Head Sucker, a cinnamon-flavored coiled Snake Lollipop, and a banana-flavored Banana Slug Sucker.

MakerBot’s Project Shellter, a community initiative to create environmentally friendly 3D printed shells for pet hermit crabs, has succeeded in convincing three hermit crabs to adopt printed shells. Hermit crab “Paris Shellton” investigates and ultimately adopts a 3D printed shell in this video. We wrote about Project Shellter back in October 2011.

An adorable hazel dormouse, a small rodent that hibernates for long periods, was captured snoring in the video titled Snoring Dormouse posted by thamesditton46. The video was shot by The Surrey Wildlife Trust Mammal Project Officer, Dave Williams, as part of The Surrey Dormouse project based in England. The Surrey Wildlife Trust is taking donations to help fund this project and others.

Surrey Wildlife Trust actively monitors dormice in 22 woodlands around Surrey. Mammal officer Dave Williams and a group of volunteers and ecologists monitor these sites on certain days each month from April to October. The monitoring teams carefully check 25 – 50 boxes in each woodland to look for dormice; each box and any contents (including species other than dormice!) are recorded.

via Viral Viral Videos

Russian photographer Alexander Semenov takes beautiful underwater photos of sea creatures. Semenov studied zoology as a college student (specifically squid brains—really) and works as a diver and project manager at the White Sea Biological Station in Russia.

via Colossal & Lost at E Minor

Mike Rankin of birdhouse-making Etsy store, Wudwerx, has made the Toast Bird Feeder, a clever hanging outdoor bird feeder that “is ideal for using up that leftover toast from breakfast”.

Simple and functional, with a roof to stop the toast from going soggy, this feeder is perfect for any garden, or would work well outside an apartment window. Comes with a chain for hanging. Hanger and bit of toast not included.

via swissmiss

Kanzi, a captive bonobo ape, has taught himself how to light a fire and cook food over it (video). Kanzi lives at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where he is studied by researcher Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.

via The Daily What

photos by Laurentiu Garofeanu/Barcroft USA via The Telegraph

It won’t surprise you that we at Laughing Squid like animals with tentacles. Usually that means cephalopods, of course. But the peculiar case of the Star-nosed Mole deserves a mention for its exceptional tentactular protuberances.

The mole’s most distinctive feature is a circle of 22 mobile, pink, fleshy tentacles at the end of the snout, from which they derive their name. These are used to identify food by touch, such as worms, insects and crustaceans.

This 2008 video by Animal Planet gives an extreme closeup of the mole’s eponymous feature. The handy schnoz is more useful than you might think. Its 11-fingered nose-hands provide the mole incredible detail of what’s right… under its nose.

Earlier this year, a troop of lemurs at the San Francisco Zoo ate their Thanksgiving feast at a specially appointed table of lemur-friendly snacks. Now the animals at two New York City zoos, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo, are getting wrapped gifts of their favorite food treats through the Presents to the Animals program administered by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Watch as the dwarf mongooses at Prospect Park Zoo dig through brightly colored wrapping to uncover their mealworm treat and then take a look at Spangles and Cisco, the andean bears at Queens Zoo rummage through a box of peanut butter. For more fun, Prospect Park Zoo has posted several videos of animals from various years opening gifts.

Presents for the animals are a form of enrichment. Prospect Park Zoo provides this and other types of mental and physical stimulation to keep the animals’ minds and bodies healthy and active.

via Gothamist

photo by Suzanne Bolduc for Wildlife Conservation Society

Nadav Bagim, aka Aimishboy, has photographed WonderLand, a beautiful work-in-progress series of up-close images that he describes as a “…visit to a miniature fantasy”. He uses no digital manipulation to create these colorful images of insects, lizards and other critters found near his apartment and mainly uses his kitchen table studio as the stage for the surreal macro shots. Nadav has posted the entire online gallery of WonderLand.

My Modern Met interviewed Nadav recently where he discussed some of the nuts and bolts of working with insects:

Directing the insects requires understanding of their behaviors. Once you do understand, you’ll know how to make them feel comfortable so they won’t run away and how to make them stand and pose the way you want them to. The trick is to “convince” them that they were the ones who chose what to do and where to stand. Taking the insect and placing it at the center of the stage just won’t do. You have to lead them slowly to the point you choose. For example, you slowly move a small cube of sugar and let them follow it. But that kind of interaction requires a lot of patience and gentleness. A shooting session can easily reach several hours. I never start shooting this way unless I know I have at least about 12 hours to spare, just in case. Of course it’s in an eased fashion with a lot of intermissions for me and for the models.

Behind the scenes with the photographer:

via Gizmodo and My Modern Met

YouTuber KoreanFrogMania challenged a pet African Bullfrog to a game of Ant Smasher on their smartphone, but got a nasty surprise instead…who knew frogs could bite? Animals playing Ant Smasher is apparently a thing—this Bearded Dragon does pretty well, and without all the aggression:

via The Daily What & Obvious Winner

Ant Blades of Bird Box Studio has created a cute interactive series of animated videos called Singing Christmas Hedgehogs. To play, you choose your own Christmas hedgehog, then pick a song or activity for your hedgehog and the video takes you from there.

via Oh have you seen this?! and b3ta

The Dear Leader Centaur Oil Painting is what happens when the image of (recently deceased) “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il is combined with the hindquarters of a horse and carefully painted.

Archie McPhee, the creators of the Dear Leader Centaur Oil Painting describe the item:

This image was stolen by spies directly from the wall of the North Korean Presidential Palace where all official portraits display government official’s faces on centaur bodies. Each work of art is set in an 11″ x 13″ gold colored frame.

Filmmaker Todd Bieber traveled to Costa Rica with his girlfriend, escaped the confines of their plush resort and stepped into the world of orphaned baby monkeys at the Nosara Wildlife Rescue. His short documentary film, Encounters with Orphan Monkeys, tells the story of how these monkeys were orphaned and what the good folks at the rescue are doing to help them.

Todd is also behind the film projects in our posts, Who Shot The Lost Photos of The New York Blizzard?, How to Pick Up a Snapping Turtle and Vigilante Gardener, The Story of an Illegal Garden in Brooklyn.

For 40 seconds of extreme cuteness, take a look and listen at this video uploaded by ddarlingx3 of two baby rhinoceros in South Africa ‘talking’ in cute high-pitched squeals.

via Nothing To Do With Arbroath

Last year Lucy Cooke traveled to The Aviaros del Caribe Sloth Sanctuary (now called The Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica) and made Meet the Sloths, an adorable video about the sloths living in the sanctuary. Since then, Cooke has been working on an hour-long documentary titled Too Cute! Baby Sloths which will premier December 17, 2011 on Animal Planet.

In a sleepy corner of Costa Rica there is a very peculiar sanctuary. Devoted to saving orphaned and injured sloths. The dangerously cute baby sloths lead quite busy lives and have to attend sloth school to learn the ways of the sloth.

Cooke’s Slothville website is “a place to celebrate the world’s laziest animal”. She is also working on a book, The Little Book of Sloth, for Simon & Schuster.

via Motherboard

The music video for Back in the Day by The Erratic Man features an entire store full of taxidermied animals singing away with their creepy little teeth-filled mouths. Should you wish to have a photo of your pet singing like the taxidermied animals in the Back to the Day video, head on over to the Pet Choir website.

via Neatorama

Artist and photographer Slinkachu recently created Worst Wurst for his ongoing series of miniature street art installations at The Little People Project. Worst Wurst depicts tiny men gathering “inventory” for their wee “food” stand. We most recently posted about the project’s Fantastic Voyage installation.

photos by Slinkachu

Awwccupy Wall Street is a Tumblr blog featuring some of the #Occupy movement’s cutest Protestors, such as San Diego’s Chopper the Biker Dog being frisked by a cop.

via Anthony De Rosa

photo by unknown

Scientist and friend of Laughing Squid Sandwich Girl recently discovered giant salmon at Cape Evans in Antarctica. The new species is very similar to the rare San Francisco giant salmon, which spawn each year at the Bay to Breakers race.

photos by Sandwich Girl

“Evolution” by photographer Ted Sabarese is a portrait series that compares people to their fish lookalikes.

With all the recent, fiery controversy between evolution, creationism, intelligent design, science, religion, the political left, right, etc., I thought it might be provocative to throw my visual two-cents into the ring. The images beg the question, is it really so difficult to believe we came out from the sea millions and millions of years ago?

via Curiosity Counts