It’s a baby whale shark which should give you an idea of how big these fish can get, sometimes over 55 feet.
Posts Tagged ‘fish’
GIANT CATFISH OR BABY WHALE SHARK?
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
HORSES AND SHARKS????!!!!
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
This is some gnarly shit right here. Cool, but gnarly.
STOP…BUYING THIS STUFF
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
GOT ME A FAMILY SO I NEED ME A NICE SUV
Or maybe you don’t need a nice SUV. Hell, you probably don’t need an SUV at all, especially since they’re the premier gas guzzlers burning rubber on our American roads. Even worse, the American made SUV’s are considered the bottom of the barrel along with, yep, you guessed it, the Mercedes-Benz M Class. Also included in the outlandishly annoying SUV group, the Lincoln Navigator (which breaks my heart since I’ve always loved Lincolns), GMC Envoy and the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Watching families who can’t really afford the Mercedes M Class, however, takes the cake since a current model of one of these bad boys is going to start you at $43K and could take you up to a measley $90K with accessories. Either way, it’s a pretty simple solution: YOU DON’T NEED AN SUV IF YOU AREN’T OUT IN THE COUNTRY.
GOTTA HAVE SOME MEAT ON THOSE BONES
Get that meat, baby! Just make sure you’re getting the right meat and make sure it’s at the right place. Most people eat meat, unless you’re a vegetarian loser that wants to shove that vegan bullshit in our face. Don’t mind vegetarians and I don’t mind vegans but I do mind you throwing that pretentious philosophy in my grill. Don’t do it and I won’t have to smack you across your grill with a big, fat steak. Point is, I see people, mothers, fathers, families, whatever, buying up meat all the time at my local market. What kills me is they’re buying the meat they want out of pure convenience. When it’s not on sale, how can anyone pay full price for meat whether it’s beef, pork, chicken or fish? Even funnier still is how people don’t head a few miles to the east or west where another market may have that same meat you wanted at anywhere from 25-75% off. There are INCREDIBLE sales at supermarkets EVERY WEEK, you just have to look a little. But that “looking a little” could save you something they call MONEY. LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY!!!
SHIPPING OUR BABY ACROSS THE COUNTRY FOR COLLEGE
And maybe your baby’s on their way back so they can enroll at the local community or state college instead. Unfortunately for private colleges, online universities and community colleges are kicking the ever loving shit out of them for tuition. Parents are much less hesitant these days about shipping Johnny back east where the room, board, tuition and books is priced for the moon. Remember when you were at the toy store and wanted that REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE toy and your parents would just give you that “are you f-ing crazy” look? Well, parents are doing that today as well only this time it’s private colleges and not toys. Either way, parents doing this are thinking right, parents who think there’s nothing better than to be able to brag that you went to ”Princeton or Yale” are losing their money. Also, while private colleges can be marvelous, state colleges can be as well.
TIGER SHARK VS GREAT WHITE
Monday, March 9th, 2009
BATTLE OF THE BEASTS: TIGER SHARK VS GREAT WHITE SHARK
I’ve been waiting on this one since Battle of the Beasts began. I also feel these are just going to keep getting better.
TIGER SHARK (Galeocerdo cuvier)
SIZE: 11-14 FT 850-2000LB
This ain’t your father’s tiger. Coined “the wastebasket of the sea”, the tiger shark will eat, well, anything that looks appetizing which is really just about anything from license plates to bicycle tires. Normally, however, it dines on turtles, seals, smaller sharks, fish, birds, squid and dolphins. Yes, this fish finds Echo the Dolphin quite tasty.
As you can by the stripes on its body that’s where the tiger shark gets its name. It’s also one of the five most dangerous sharks to humans along with the bull, oceanic whitetip, mako and great white. I chose the tiger because it’s the second largest of the man eaters behind the famous great white. By the way, the reason the tiger shark is so dangerous to humans is its extremely aggressive nature connected with the fact that it frequents really populated waters, Hawaii in particular.
DON’T GO FOR A SWIM IN HAWAII!!!
The tiger sharks family members are the lemon, blue and bull sharks, the bull being the only only member of the family that likes to attack us without much remorse. Most of this has to do with the fact that both members of the family like to swim in shallow water.
DON’T SWIM IN SHALLOW WATER EITHER
Here’s a pretty shocking piece of news I read online: largest tiger shark ever caught on record was 23 feet long and over 3000 pounds. Holy shit.
*this man can never be called a wuss ever again
GREAT WHITE SHARK (Carcharodon carcharias)
SIZE: 13-16 FT 1500-2500LB
Remember that part in Pulp Fiction at the end where Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) has a gun on Tim Roth underneath the table and tells him to get out the wallet that has “BAD MOTHERFUCKER” on it? That wallet belongs to this shark.
Known the world over as the most dangerous shark, what’s more important is that it actually is the most dangerous, most deadly shark to prowl the planet’s waters. But, unlike the tiger shark, the great white is all alone. Why? Because it is the last remaining species left in its genus, Carcharodon. Though it may be a loner in genus, it’s got a few family members to look to in case it ever gets lonely in the mako sharks, salmon shark and a European shark called the porbeagle, a rare shark close to extinction.
It’s no surprise that Mr. White doesn’t fool a round when it comes to his waters. Trespass and you may not live. Either way, you’re bound to get bit, whether it’s just your leg that gets taken or your whole life. Scary part about great whites is they’re one of the few sharks that have been discovered all over the world. So don’t think you’re safe. ANYWHERE.
WHO WINS?
THE SAGE SAYS…After circling each other for a few minutes, the tiger shark launches into an aggressive attack mode but the heavier great white shoves him off and descends to the bottom of the ocean where he returns only a few seconds later with a fatal blow from below, its body forming a torpedo with hundreds of teeth that undoes the tiger shark once and for all.
GREAT WHITE SHARK WINS!
DEADLY ANIMALS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT: CATS!
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
*People love dogs and cats the world over. I’d say, overall, dogs are ahead as far as lovable pets go but that doesn’t mean that cats are far behind. However, out in the wild, there are WAY more cats than dogs and wild cats, otherwise known as big cats, make wild dogs look like house cats. They’re pretty damn cool though, whether they’re huge or just a bit bigger than domestic cats. I think I owe it to you all to list some of the more dangerous and deadly big cats across the globe.
So, in honor of those dangerous, furry, cuddly cats, a list…
JAGUAR (Panthera onca)
SIZE: 5-6 FT 125-300LBS
The Jaguar (and we ain’t talking cars here, folks) can call the lion, tiger and leopard family. Not only is it the third largest cat in the world, it’s the biggest in the New World otherwise known as the Western Hemisphere (big cats in Africa, Asia and India are considered part of the Old World).
And check this out: jaguars tend to get bigger the further south you go. That means, stay out of South America, especially places like Argentina and Uruguay probably wouldn’t be nice places to go prancing around in the rain forest. You wouldn’t want to meet a jaguar either because, pound for pound, it’s got the most powerful bite of the family. Fortunately for you, jaguars rarely attack humans.
What it does attack is pretty damn impressive, however. In the picture above, he’s got a tasty caiman (a South American crocodile relative) in his mouth meaning he can kick some major ass. In addition to caimans, jaguars will kill capybaras (largest rodents in the world), deer, tapirs (one of the weirdest looking mammals in the world), turtles, mice, birds, frogs, dogs, peccaries (a kind of pig), dogs, foxes, monkeys, and, my favorite one of all, anacondas.
Anything that can hunt an anacanda is a gangsta. Period. End of discussion.
LEOPARD (Panthera pardus)
SIZE: 3-6FT 80-200LBS
The leopard is the baby of the family, being that it’s the smallest. This doesn’t give you a pass to provoke the thing but I’m just stating the facts here. There’s not too many of these around because we keep murdering them as always but they’re primarily in Africa but some leopard species still call parts of Asia, India and Pakistan home.
While you may think leopards look like jaguars and vice versa, the rosette patterns on the leopard lack the inside patterns the jaguar possesses. Remember that and also that it’s smaller. Another thing to know: the mystical “black panther” is really a melanistic leopard or jaguar, not a panther (aka mountain lion, cougar)).
On to the fun part: what they eat. Leopards don’t have quite the magnitude of their bigger family members but it makes up for it in other ways. It will prey upon a variety of different creatures big and small including ungulates (hoofed mammals), rodents, monkeys, fish and reptiles. The key difference here is that a jaguar, unlike any other cat in the fam, can drag prey up to three times its own body weight up a tree.
When it comes to us, leopards will try to avoid humans. However, they’ve been known to be vicious hunters of man in the past. The legendary Indian leopard, Leopard of Penar, was said to have killed over 400 men. There have been other stories of leopards killing over 100 people. Not good, says I.
MOUNTAIN LION/COUGAR/PUMA (Puma concolor)
SIZE: 5-9FT (head to tail) 115-160LBS
The mountain lion is not a true lion but whoever saw it first thought it looked pretty damn close to a lioness and accordingly named it “lion of the mountain”. A lot of people think cougars and pumas are a different animal than the mountain lion but these people are wrong. All three are one in the same but the cat was lucky enough to get three cool sounding names. At least, I dig them all.
If you want to know how adaptable these guys are, they’ve got the largest geographical range of ANY land animal in the entire Americas. Talk about flexibility, a mountain lion lives in any environment from dense brushes to mountains and deserts. Funny thing is, cougars get smaller near the equator and larger at the poles. Weird, huh?
As the fourth largest cat in the world, pumas eat a very wide range of things, with its most important prey being deer, at least for the majority of the ones in North America. Their South American counterparts tend to drift towards rodents and other smaller sized mammals. But, again, being the flexible cats that they are, mountain lions will eat just about anything it can catch.
Like most attacks from big cats, cougar attacks on humans is a rare occurrence. However, the more we take over their habitat, the more they want to bite us. Do you blame them? Check it: between 1890-1990 there were 53 mountain lion attacks. From 1990-2004 there were 35. Big, big, BIG difference. We’re to blame. As always. Just don’t take your kids hunting in puma territory. Just about every attack on children turns out to be fatal. But I’d imagine you, as the parent, would be liable for that.
LION (Panthera leo)
SIZE: 5 1/2-8FT 330-550LBS
Ah, the mighty king of the jungle. He of the Lion King, one of Disney’s greatest masterpieces of all time. Lions are one of the most beloved creatures on earth, adored by the masses all over the planet. It’s interesting how such a murderous cat can be so loved but hey, that’s people.
The majority of lions inhabit Africa but some still patrol parts of India but they’re called Asiatic lions, different from the lions we all know and love, the African lion. Interestingly, lions are one of the only social group of cats and of course, unique in that the lionesses (females) do the hunting while the king of the jungle lays back and chills. And he still gets first on the grub.
Although lions can run up to 40mph, they can only do so for a short amount of time because their stamina is very, very low. This may also be a reason they hunt in packs, to give them a better chance at a kill. However, in the eating world, lions got tons of range, BIG RANGE. As in, they devour BIG animals. Overall, the wildebeest is one of the most sought after meals for the lion but they can take down anything such as antelopes, zebras, buffalo, giraffes and yes, even elephants. In fact, there’s a group of lions that primarily prey on elephants, taking them out at night when the big beasts’ vision is terrible. And yet another group of lions along the coast feed exclusively on seals. Yep, lions don’t screw around when it comes to eating.
Well, well, well, Mr. Lion, do you like to eat people? Why, yes he does! Not that lions purposely hunt humans, although there have been some rare cases (The Ghost and the Darkness is a movie based on two lions of this nature) but since people seem to venture closer and closer to lions, there seems to be more and more cases of lions eating them. Some researchers report that lions kill over 200 Tanzanians a year and from 1990-2005, at least 563 villagers were attacked, many eaten, around Tanzania. There’s a lesson to be learned from these facts:
DON’T GO TO AFRICA
TIGER (Panthera tigris)
SIZE: 7-10FT 400-700LBS
Funny how the final two big cats aren’t only the most popular but the biggest and the baddest, the tiger being the largest of the cat family by a fairly wide margin. At least, the Siberian tiger (largest cat in the world) can claim this since it is the largest and the heaviest.
There are only about 4000 of these huge cats left in the wild where they only call the continent of Asia their hometown. Here’s something you probably didn’t know: tiger stripes are as distinct on tigers as fingerprints are to humans, creating a much easier way for scientists and researchers to track the striped felines.
Though it may be heavier and bigger than its cousin, the African lion, tigers usually will prey on animals smaller than what lions are accustomed to. This isn’t to say that tiger prey is small, however. It’s got a wide range of creatures it eats including antelopes, guar (large wild cattle), deer, boar, but more impressive are the pythons, leopards, sloth bears and crocodiles it occasionally finds appetizing. Once you’ve claimed pythons, leopards, bears and crocodiles as food, you’re absolutely not be to screwed with. EVER.
Well, there’s a reason I got the tiger down here. It’s because, over history, the tiger has killed more humans than any other big cat but it’s more due to increasing population than a thirst for the flesh of homo sapiens. A particular location of India called the Sundarbans mangrove swamps, tiger attacks have increased so much that villagers wear masks on the back of their heads when moving through the mangroves because tigers generally attack from behind and tend to not do so when faced. Another lesson here:
DON’T GO TO INDIAN MANGROVE SWAMPS
