Liz Langley

New Discovery: Porcupine Species Identified in Brazil , my NatGeo blog post on the Baturite porcupine, recently identified but in a threatened environment so probably already in trouble. You'd be prickly, too....

A few weeks back I was in Toronto and thought what I've thought every time I've been anywhere in Canada in the last few years: "I could live here." It's an easy thing for a hot house Florida flower to think when she has a return ticket to the tropics, when the snow new and fluffy, not slate gray and threatening to turn into menacing little street icebergs and when a Tim Hortons smaterializes in front of you every time you think "I need to get inside," (approximately every 45 seconds). Cold - real cold - is something I've never had to deal with for long. It would probably be hilarious to watch me try. So when I think about an expedition to Antarctica where the high temperatures sometimes reach freezing  I can only imagine how driven the people are who embark on such a trek for five months, for the most human of all reasons - to have a look around. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey recently brought up thousands of specimens from

Still catching up with my blog posts and can't believe this one came way back on Thanksgiving Day! Dr. Ruchira Somaweera of the University of Sydney has been studying a unique lizard, the Ceratophora,  the horned lizards of Sri Lanka. The several breeds all have odd adornments on their noses, all of which vary in shape giving them a unique appearance and for a variety of reasons not much is known about them. In the National Geographic blog post  Rare Horned Lizards of Sri Lanka Revealed I got to ask Dr. Somaweera about his research and get a look at some of these strange and intriguing reptiles.

I'm a little behind in my blogging - so obviously I'm having a good holiday season. ;) But it wouldn't do not to neglect a  National Geographic story about seahorses, especially one as cool as this one about why the seahorse adapted to have such a strangely shaped head and how it helps them trap their prey, tiny animals called copepods. What I love about this is the video - when you click on the link make sure you click on that and watch how amazingly fast and sneaky these mythical looking animals are: Why Does Seahorse Have This Odd Head? Mystery Solved .

Even after they stopped dressing in pelts people still took huge cues from nature as far as their fashion statements. I'm a huge fan of the animal print myself and of course there's the fishtail dress , the butterfly sleeve , feather earrings ...ladies in the Victorian era could cram an entire bird onto a single hat , for goodness sakes. Performers like Cher  and Elton John  have clearly been under the animal influence when they've adopted certain spectacular outfits and when I saw images of a couple of truly fantastic creatures...specifically the psychedelic frogfish ... I thought that nothing in the human world could possible capture the crazy beauty and glorious weirdness of some of some animals like Lady Gaga. I was incredibly pleased to end up writing the Weird & Wild blog post "5 Animals that Look like Lady Gaga," or, in my preferred version (as it appeared on their front page) "5 Animals That Evoke Lady Gaga" on the National Geographic w