Fossa

A relative of the mongoose, the fossa is unique to the forests of Madagascar, an African island in the Indian Ocean. Growing up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) long from nose to tail tip, and weighing up to 26 pounds (12 kilograms), the fossa is a slender-bodied catlike creature with little resemblance to its mongoose cousins.

It is the largest carnivore and top predator native to Madagascar and is known to feed on lemurs and most other creatures it can get its claws on, from wild pigs to mice. Unlike mongooses, and more like felines, the fossa has retractable claws and fearsome catlike teeth. Its coat is reddish brown and its muzzle resembles that of a dog.

The fossa is also equipped with a long tail that comes in handy while hunting and maneuvering amongst the tree branches. It can wield its tail like a tightrope walker’s pole and moves so swiftly through the trees that scientists have had trouble observing and researching it.

The elusive fossa is a solitary animal and spends its time both in the trees and on the ground. It is active at night and also during the day. Females give birth to an annual litter of two to four young, and adulthood is reached after about three years.

Madagascar is home to an enormous variety of plant and animal life, and a number of species are unique to the island—including over 30 species of lemur, the fossa’s prey of choice. Explorers first arrived on the island some 2,000 years ago, and scientists believe that they would have been met by a bizarre assemblage of now-extinct beasts, including lemurs the size of gorillas and a ten-foot-tall (three-meter-tall) flightless bird.

Presently, fossas are endangered creatures due to habitat loss. Less than ten percent of Madagascar’s original, intact forest cover, the fossa’s only home, remains today.

The aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

is a lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth and a special thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. It is the world’s largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood and inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. The only other animal species known to find food in this way is the striped possum. From an ecological point of view the aye-aye fills the niche of a woodpecker as it is capable of penetrating wood to extract the invertebrates within.

The aye-aye is the only extant member of the genus Daubentonia and family Daubentoniidae (although it is currently classified as Near Threatened by the IUCN); a second species, Daubentonia robusta, appears to have become extinct at some point within the last 1000 years.

Indri
The largest living lemur is the Indri (Indri indri) of the montane forests of eastern Madagascar. In coloration, it resembles a giant panda with its black and white fur, but in body shape is more anthropomorphic with its long neck and arms, and small ears. The Indri feeds on canopy fruits and leaves and is best known for its eerie yet beautiful song (whale sounds), which can carry for more than 1.2 miles (2 km). This diurnal lemur will bark when confronted with danger, and make kissing sounds when affectionate. Despite its large size, the Indri refuses to move along the ground, and will negotiate gaps by leaping, often over 33 feet (10 m) between tree trunks. Naturally rare due to its low birth rate (one birth every three years) and small population density, today the Indri’s numbers are small and dwindling due to habitat loss and hunting. A good portion of the world’s remaining Indri are in the Analamazaotra (Perinet) reserve and surrounding forest, due east of Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo. The Indri will not survive in captivity and cannot tolerate habitat disturbance; traits that are potential roadblocks to possible rehabilitation projects and conservation.

This is the Buckley Family. The children’s names were Susan and John. As a Halloween joke, all the kids in the neighborhood were going to get a dummy and pretend to chop its head off. The Buckley children thought it would be hilarious to actually murder their mother, so when the kids walked up the the door, they got an axe and slaughtered her. Once everyone figured out what they had really done, they called the police, but the kids were long gone by then. The only picture of them was this photo, taken by a trick or treater. The mothers body was later found half eaten.

The Grenadier Fish

Strange Fish, saw this on the web, got a bit curious, but I still don’t know if it’s hokes or real

The Arapaima Gigas