RATHER CUTE "MYSTERY LEAFHOPPER". IDENTITY PLEASE

ROBERT SCHNECK: What's Stranger than a Tarsier Muffin?

A baby Wobbegong Shark made from a banana, strawberries, chocolate chip and miniature marshmallow.

MAX SPARREBOOM WRITES

Dear friends and colleagues,

Since a couple of years I am compiling a database with natural history data of all Salamanders of Europe, Asia and Northern Africa (URL below). I am about halfway now and hope to complete the remaining species entries in the course of 2011. I should like to appeal to you for good photographs of salamanders, especially pictures of animals with known collecting localities. After completion I will consider publication in book form and for that purpose high resolution pictures (300 dpi) would be very helpful.

Besides this request for photo's, any comments and suggestions are also most welcome.

All best,

Max Sparreboom

http://science.naturalis.nl/salamanders

ALL THAT GLITTERS

I am indebted to Ruby/Rebecca Lang (my dear girl, you do confuse me) for this fascinating story of giant fish. Max tells me that although the golden colour morph of the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) is known, and so this charming fellow is not unique.

I assumed that it would have been someone like this fish who was the great grand-daddy of the domestic goldfish but peculiarly the goldfish (Carassius auratus) is descended from domesticated forms of the Prussian carp (Carassius gebelio), which doesn’t come from Prussia at all but is a native of various parts of Asia.

Koi, however, are descended from common carp, but this handsome chap is no koi, just an incredibly beautiful colour variant of yer normal Cyprinus carpio. Lovely isn't he?

http://www.iinet.net.au/customers/news/articles/7958330.html