Have you ever sat around with your friends wondering who would win in a fight between a lion and a bear? Or maybe between a tiger and a moose? I know that I have--a lot. There are thousands of different beasts that can be matched against one another in mortal combat in your mind, especially when you get bored. In fact, I love this conversation. I could analyze these scenarios all day long even when I'm not bored. Take the latter scenario for example, the tiger has tremendous teeth and claws, but what if the moose just kicked it in the head? You get the picture.
The ancient Romans have long gotten a bad reputation for decadence and violence; but you have to chalk some points up for them here: they actually went out and got the animals and made them fight each other. Maybe they were violent people, or maybe they were just trying to settle an argument.
You might wonder who would win in a fight between a lion and a leopard. What do you get though, when the animals aren't fighting, but loving? In the case of the lion and the leopard you get a "leopon":
Animal hybridization is not restricted to the big cats. There are known crosses between a camel and llama (the cama), a whale and a dolphin (the wolphin), a zebra and a donkey (the zonkey), and many more.
This gets me to my story. Yesterday (when I should have been studying) I was doing the LA Times crossword. I came upon a clue that was something like, "relative of the aardwolf." I'm sure the wheels in your head are now turning just like mine were. A wolf and an aardvark? (I'm laughing just like I laughed yesterday.) Could it be? I had to know. The crossword answer 
turned out to be "hyena". As you can imagine, this didn't help a lot, but really just raised more questions.
A very short internet search produced the answer:
Apparently, the parents of an aardwolf consist of other aardwolves. An aardwolf is a varmint that lives in Africa. It looks kind of like a hyena and is taxonomically placed in the same family as hyenas. An aardwolf probably could not win in a fight with a hyena, however. They are insect-eaters like aardvarks and are non-ferocious. They eat a lot of termites, which in turn eat a lot of houses. This places them higher on the food chain than Wesley Willis' log cabin. Their resemblance to hyenas is believed to help protect them from destruction by other animals, kind of like how pigeons look like birds instead of like the cockroaches that they are.
Now you know and knowing is half the battle.
3 comments:
This is so bazaar that you wrote about battle among species as I received an email just today with a link to a video to watch a battle between buffalos, lions, and crocs!!! Who do you think won? Evidently people DO think of these things. I thought it was so strange that she sent this link to what seemed to be everyone she ever knew in the free world. It was way too violent for me. It challenged my realistic image of the world that we live in harmony, one with another! After I close out of this I will forward the email on to you...check it out!
by the way...I had to sign up to respond to you, so who knows if you will even get this???
gwen...that video was awesome. perhaps we will just have to post it on here, even though you think it was too violent. thanks for the comment, I know it is kind of annyoing to sign up with google to do it.
You have got to get out more you sad, sad little man. I say that with love and affection but you do worry me a bit. Oh, the beauty of blogging.
Post a Comment