Being different has been frown upon for too long. Its time us weirdos join together and unite! Being weird doesn’t have to be a curse, a burden or even a sacrifice one makes. Weird is wonderful. And if the millions of weird animals of the world have taught us anything, its that your weirdness is what makes you great.
Today you’ll be joining me, Deidre, a fellow weirdo, animal educator and lover of all things a bit strange as we journey into in world of Weird Animal Facts: Explicit; the podcast dedicated to the weird, odd, unusual, gross and often times disturbing facts about animals. And as a previous zookeeper I know that I am a bit bias when I say that the two animals of today are very cute; yet you may not have ever heard of them: Vietnamese Mossy Frog and Okapi.
Before we get started, I would like to thank you weirdos out there tuning in today, and if you have an animal in mind that I haven’t covered yet, but would like to learn more about then please reach out on our Instagram page @wafpodcast. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a weird looking animal, because even if you want to learn about an animal consider to be normal, chances are I will either find a few weird facts about it or I’ll be a complete weirdo in my telling of the critter. And while you contemplate what animal you’d like to learn more about let me weave together some wondrously weird words on our first animal.
***Vietnamese Mossy Frog- Is it a frog? Is it moss? Who knows? That’s the beauty of this tiny amphibian! Go ahead and whip out your credit card, you consumer whore, now imagine a green and brown bumpy frog sitting on top of your card; because it would fit perfectly. Obviously your credit card is not the natural home for this bumpy beast as that would be Vietnam… obviously; it is called the Vietnamese Mossy Frog. And for those of you not familiar with the Vietnamize landscape there are lots of trees and quiet a few caves. In fact, the mossy frog itself lives in the flooded caves.
As you can imagine, being an amphibian, water is very important for the frog. Although they are not always in the water in their adult form, it is suggested for them to keep water around for, say, an easy escape. But this frog is more likely not going to run. Because they will fight!...No! NO that’s not what they do. They don’t fight. I know you can’t see this frog right now (unless of course you’re checking it out from our Instagram), but the mossy frog is called as such because it looks like moss. Its defiantly a frog, don’t misunderstand me, but it looks like moss due to its color and those bumps that cover its body.
There are a few other frogs that are in the same genus (Kingdom, Phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). And because they don’t have the cool mossy, lichen color they look to be sick because of those bumps. As for our mossy frog of today, those bumps just help them go invisible and some say they even play dead: which isn’t as dramatic as an opossum as they just sort of fold up into a ball. Maybe the mossy frog should take some tips from opossums.
Fun Fact: Of the other frog species in the Mossy Frog’s genus, some have colorization to look like the bark of a tree, while another look like bird shit…That sucks. I mean to look like literal shit your entire life. Talk about pulling the short straw in the beauty contest.
I suppose if hiding by looking like something else is keeping you alive, you might as well stick to it. After all the mossy frog isn’t an endangered species at this time, which is great to hear as many frog and amphibian species are at risk of going extinct. And just think of how sad of a place this world would be without frogs and other amphibians. The Muppets would be over and Miss Piggy would probably go into a murdering spree so to avenge her love. If there was ever a greater reason to keep amphibians alive it is to prevent Miss Piggy murdering you in your sleep. How would a frog and pig have sex anyways? As for the frog-on-frog action there are actually a couple different ways and positions.
~Hello everyone, I am Doctor Beverly Loveless and its now time to pull out our Kama Sutra book for frogs. One of the most common and least pleasurable ways of frog reproduction is external. Yes it gets the job done, as did your parents but you don’t want to hear about that. We will touch on it for a moment, which is less then what we can say for the actual process, as this involves a female expelling her eggs for the male to simple expel his sperm over top. Again, not a very kinky night if you ask me. As for the other frog positions, and no we aren’t talking about when the female squats over the laying-on-his-back male and proceeds to bounce up and down as that’s not the true way of the frog, that style is one of the somewhat adventurous positions for the humans. In most cases, internal fertilization for frogs, looks similar to what humans refer to as doggy style, but is actually more like a piggy back ride with some BDSM incorporated. The male will mount the female, on her back and depending on each other sizes and the presences of a nuptial pad, which I like to call a sex thumb as it helps the male hold on to the female, the male will grapple around the female. Again depending on size of each the males arms might only reach the side of her face, but in some cases the arms, along with the nuptial pad, can hold around the chest tightly or even around the neck, in what could be called a chock hold, or they could hold the neck and chest and some will even simply hug around the hips. Now another fascinating way some frogs have sex is simply butt to butt. Technically it’d be cloaca to cloaca but its rather cute if you look at it. It reminds me of the bird’s cloaca kiss.
When it comes to the hugs, or amplexus as its technically called, if the male is a bit too small for him to hold around the neck and for their cloacas to touch, which can be unfortunate, but there is an alternative, he will simple ejaculate on the female’s back and allow his sperm to run down the female’s spine and into the fertilization hole. And the sex life of frogs is very exciting, if I do say so myself, and the reason being, that with the expectation of humans and apes, and perhaps the mischievous dolphin as well, most animals only have one single mating position, while frogs have seven. But that does not mean they will not discover more. Because just like a young woman discovering her sexuality, frogs are adapting every day. And I look forward to learning and then sharing with you those new and fun sex positions of the animals. Bye bye. ~
Fun Fact: Normally its just the males who have this nuptial pad, but in the Mossy Frog both the males and females have this.
Another odd characteristic that both the male and female mossy frog share, that isn’t common is vocalization. Normally with frogs, when you hear that chorus of croaks it’s just the males you’re hearing, but both with the mossy frog it’s been observed that both the male and female with croak. Typically, it is just the male, or at least he’ll vocalized more often when compared to the female.
Let’s back up just a bit so that we can return to those nuptial pads. Which yes, it is weird that the female mossy frog has one too but these nuptial pads are their own kind of weird. For the males, during breeding season is when it can become easier to tell the male from the female due to the male’s nuptial pad swelling. I guess you can think of it like a human male’s penis getting hard. Only its not quiet like that. The nuptial pad of the male mossy frog will also become red or pinkish during the breeding season (oh yeah, and also the female mossy frogs are like 20% larger than the males. Who run the world? Girls. Who run the world? Girls.). Being that the male is so much smaller then the females he really needs to hold on and these pad help give him and even better grip. But frogs already have exceptional grip. They can climb on walls!
If you listened to the Leaf tailed gecko episode 47 then you already learned the complicated ways that those fancy lizards climb on walls, and you would think that frogs’ feet would be even more complicated! But its not. Their feet are just sticky. Or more so their feet produces a sticky substance that allows them to hold on to stuff. Mucus….its mucus. They climb with the use of mucus being secreted from their feet skin. But because of this mucus it works like a wet adhesive. Think of liquid nails or simply Elmer’s glue. And because of this wet adhesive mucus these climbing frogs do a much better job at climbing on other wet things. All this means is that if the thing they want to climb on is too dry, they have a harder time. The secret isn’t just the stickiness but also nanopillars; which are just the larger structures on the toe pads. When their sticky solution gets between these nanopillars it helps the frog get a better grip. Obviously more research is needed to truly understand all the wonders that is the climbing feet of the frog. Why the fuck should I care? Well do you drive a car? Or live in a world with vehicles that possess tires? Because scientist are hoping that by studying both the tree frogs and wall climbing lizards feet it can give us more insight and better designs for our vehicle tires. I have a question; If tree frogs climb because of the wet then how come when it rains I hydroplane? Well, that probably because your tire are bald and you should get new ones. But remember with climbing tree frogs its not just the mucus that allows them to grip, its also the nanopillars, which are kind of like the ridges in your tires. When your tire is bald you slip and slide everywhere even it its not raining. But have you have gotten bran new tires before after having tires too smoother than Mr. Clean’s head? Oh! What a sensation it is to come to an instant stop.
By the way: there are over 5,000 known frog species in the world and not all of them are exceptional climbing. The Mossy Frog happens to be a tree frog, and tree frogs are great climbers. Others like the American bullfrog, isn’t about that Spiderman lifestyle of hanging from the trees. There are only about 800 species of tree frogs in the world. And just because they’re called tree frogs doesn’t mean they live in the trees. It generally means they are good at climbing and could probably climb a tree if they really wanted to. In the mossy frog’s case, they might not be so much tree climbers but they most certainly could. For now I think the mossy frog would rather sit on a mossy rock of the high humid air of Vietnam and stay absolutely still so that predators and people alike would leave it the fuck alone.
Scientific names are hard. Vietnamese Mossy Frog: Theloderma corticale
***Okapi: Oh-what-ie? Okapi. No I don’t copy, can you repeat? Okapi. Chances are you have never heard of this animal. And further more it might even should like I’m making it up, especially once I describe it to you. But you know what. Since the okapi is its own type of weird I think I should like Mother Nature and God, explain their thought process to you.
M: Howdy yall we’re Mother Nature and God and we have been renovating animals for over one billion years.
G: When trying to meet our clients’ needs, we look at the ecosystem as a whole as well as what our clients’ needs to survive.
B: Welcome to Animal Renovations.
M: Today we’ll be designing the okapi. And when speaking with our client it sounded like they weren’t too sure as to what they wanted. So it was then up to me and God try and work out what it was they had in mind. We needed to start with the interior first so that we could as normal work from the inside out.
G: You’ve got to have a good foundation before you start with the exterior. But this imbecile only cared about the look.
M: There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look sexy.
G: I wouldn’t call the okapi sexy.
M: Speak for yourself. But because our client had some ideas of what they wanted we were going to have to work with them…from the outside in. The first thing that the okapi liked was the look of the giraffe.
G: Which is a ridiculous looking animal.
M: I complete agree, but its whatever the client wants. So I had to talk with Okapi about how a giraffe design would help them in their home.
G: It wouldn’t! They live in thick forest! If we gave that okapi that long giraffe neck they wanted they would have been decapitated by a branch.
M: Luckily I was able to talk okapi down from that 6 foot long neck to a more reasonable length. But I still had God add a few extra inches that way the okapi still felt like they had some of that giraffe request.
G: Yet some how I was still able to put in a normal sized tongue.
M: I wouldn’t call 14 inches normal.
G: It is when compared to the zebra. Another random animal the okapi wanted in the design. If you ask me, Mother Nature is getting to generous with the client’s requests. Even though we made most of the interior workings like a giraffe, it still wanted to look like a zebra but somebody ran out of ink.
M: Shh! That’s not what I told the okapi. As far as they’re concerned the zebra print on the rump and legs was part of my original design…But yes, because I ran out of ink, we decide-
G: You. You decided.
M: Fine, I decided to focus more of the giraffe request and make the okapi an even-toed ungulate. You see zebras are like horses with one toe.
G: Meaning I had to add an additional toe to the okapi so to attempt to replicate the feet of the giraffe’s two toes.
M: And you did such a great job at it too.
G: I did, didn’t I? Well we didn’t stop there. We gave the okapi large giraffe like ears, almost the same size.
M: Really makes the okapi look cute doesn’t it?
G: Those ears were a bit tricky as, Mother Nature pointed out to me that being that the okapi lives in thick forests they’d need to hear any predators coming up. That’s why I made those ears adjustable. Able to move in almost every direction. Kind of like a cat.
M: But don’t tell Okapi that.
G: We sure are keeping a lot of secrets from this client.
M: All they said was they wanted to be a giraffe that looked like a zebra and were very particular in that. I just hope those ossicones did the trick.
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That’s right an okapi is pretty much a giraffe, but much shorter, yet taller than a zebra, is a chocolaty brown color but has a zebra print ass. It’s a weird looking thing. But it is in the giraffe family (Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). That means in addition to being known as the Forest Giraffe, they are also a ruminant.
Ruminant: An animal that chews the cud. Specifically: an herbivore, even-toed, hoofed mammal that has a complex 3-chamber or 4-chamber stomach.
Okapi’s, like giraffes, have a 4 chambered stomach.
Fun Fact: The ruminates with 3 chamber stomachs are those in the camelids family; like camels, llamas and alpacas.
As we’ve learned from the guanaco, white tailed deer and muntjac episodes; ruminants relay on microorganisms to help them digest and process the vegetation that they eat. For the okapi, and even the giraffe, they eat things that are in trees. But seeing that the okapi is only 8 feet tall in compression to the nearly 20ft tall giraffe, the okapi has a bit more restriction as far as how high they can reach up. But you could argue they have more selection seeing that they live in the lush forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo verse the semi-arid giraffe habitat of the Sahara. However, even though the okapi isn’t reaching up for those leaves on the very tippy top of the tall trees they still use their tongue in very similar ways as the giraffe.
Looking like a tentacle reaching from their throat, the okapis tongue is a long purple-ish flexible thing. Able to wrap around a branch and strip it of its leaves. Their tongue looks to be something out of a sci-fi sea/space movie. But that purpleness on the tongue is thought to not just look spooky but to help protect it from getting sun burnt. If your tongue had to be constantly out picking food from high up branches you wouldn’t want it to get burnt. When was the last time you got sun burnt? Its not a good feeling. Not just imagine that on your tongue.
Speaking of protecting one’s self. Even though the okapi is fairly large, it still has to be on the look out for predators. As Mother Nature and God pointed out the ears are about to rotate in all directions so to listen more closely and if that sneaky predator started getting too close and the okapi had to make a run for it, luckily they’ve got long gets for speed, but living in a thick forest you might have to worry about more then just that large cat scratching you. There are branches everywhere! In every movie when a person is running in the woods, what happens? They get scratched up by branches and eventually get knocked over. Luckily the okapi is a bit more adapt to the wooded life then you and would most likely not run directly into a large branch. But there are tiny twigs that can poke. And what about their beautiful brownish black eyes? If something was coming into your face, like a stick, you’d close your eyes I hope your eye lids were tough enough to protect you. But if you were an okapi you could literally suck your eye balls into it its socket. You see normally the okapi’s eye balls are a bit more protruded. Think about the freighting eyes of a deer stuck in the head light. They almost look like they are popping out. That’s kind of because they are. Same thing with the okapi. And when they ball that eye ball back, not only it is now protected by the bone of the skull but the nictitating membrane will come across with a windshield wiper sweep to make sure that eye is sparking clean.
Aw! What a wonderous life it would be to be an okapi!
But the wonder does not stop there. Their coat. That’s right that chocolaty-velvet-zebra-ass coat has more then one use. Let’s start with the zebra butt. If you know your animal ass facts then you’ll know that baby zebra’s will identify their mom based on the strip pattern that can be seen on their mother’s butt. Its thought that okapi babies will do this too. But if you were to touch an okapi-
Disclaimer: DO NOT touch wildlife! EVER! I mean it! Don’t fucking do it.
But if you were to touch an okapi their fur would feel almost like velvet
Black velvet on the forest giraffe’s back
Black velvet its just the height the okapi lacks
Its not a new species listen up and believe
Black velvet, okapi
In addition to the thin smooth fur there’d also be oils. As the okapi secedes a dark, almost gross body oil. Why? Well some say its to help waterproof them. Not to mention the short, thin fur will help to keep them even more silent as they move through the forest.
If you’re ever in Africa, in the Democrat Republic of the Congo and you just happen to spot a wild okapi. Consider yourself very luck, as they are called the African Unicorns for a reason; they are endangered. Their population is declining. Its thought that there are only 5,000 individuals left. If you have been inspired by this podcast and would like to help the okapi then you should learn what you can about the Okapi Conservation Project. The Okapi Conservation Project helps protect the okapi’s natural environment and works to help develop educational programs for local people of the okapi’s community. And I know it’s a little early but if you remember October 18th is World Okapi day a day to celebrate the weirdly wonderful ways of the okapi. If you’d like to learn more or even donate so to help save this species then scroll down to the show notes for this episode to find a link to the Okapi Conservation Project’s website. And while you venture to their page let me attempt the okapi’s scientific name:
Scientific names are hard. Okapi: Okapi johnstoni
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Even though both the Mossy Frog and Okapi are strange and different they are still animals. The mossy frog is still a tree frog and the okapi is basically a miniature giraffe living in an apartment building. But just because they are a little different or weird doesn’t mean that they are any less important to the world or any less special. If anything these two animals help to color this already wonderful rainbow filled world we call home. And if you enjoyed today’s episode then please continue to tune in that way we can all add a few new colors to the world. Stay weird.