Monday, May 30, 2005

Mystery animals, Episode III (more work avoidance)

So my friend Franz has been teasing me by email with "guess the animal", and instead of finishing my paper (due tomorrow), I'm searching on the web to figure it out.

Here are the clues from him so far:

1. A photo of the animal

2. The entire "entity" is the animal.

After guessing "mouse", I got the following clues:

3. Not mice. Not their cousins the rats either.

4. Several people have inadvertedly stepped on them and died.

So that led me to guess "poisonous marine invertebrate of some type" (and to ask for clarification about whether that is really "hair/fur" on the animal), and these are the clues in response:

5. I consider them HAIR because, overwhelmingly, professionals from respectable sources call them HAIR: [long list of universities and professional journals follows].

6. "Marine invertebrate" ... I bet this hairy entity will never meet the ocean. Perhaps we are talking of the same Phylum. But we are definitely talking of different Classes. (at least one subphylum of the-phylum-the-hairy-entity-belongs-to contains "marine invertebrates")

7. A photo of a relative of the hairy entity (same Family)

Ideas? Guesses are welcomed in the comments; I'll post the answer when I find out.

If I get any more work-avoidant than I already am, it'll be time to write a post on my traditional work-avoidance topic, the candirú! :)

2 Comments:

At 9:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tribble?

 
At 7:35 AM, Blogger thalarctos said...

Hmm. Morphologically plausible, yet I don't remember seeing any reports in the literature of someone dying from inadvertently stepping on a Tribble.

Publication bias, perhaps...

 

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