Top 10 Animal Oddities of the Week - November 7th, 2013

Here’s the roundup of all the latest odd animal news.

10. Wendy Williams and Scary Halloween Animals
We have to start this week’s list with the clip from my Halloween appearance on the Wendy Williams Show. I brought on “scary” animals for the holiday, but the oddest thing is what I’m wearing!

9. Bizarre Mass Shrimp Die-Off 
Is extreme weather responsible for this odd, mass die-off of shrimp?

8. Half Male, Half Female Butterfly
This butterfly has a condition known as bilateral gynandromorphism.

I F*cking Love Science reports:

“This condition is rare, but not unique. It’s been spotted in birds, insects and crustaceans all around the world. It’s unheard of in humans and it’s thought that it occurs differently in each of the groups listed above.” 

7. Deer Survives Arrow Shot to the Head
This white-tailed deer has miraculously survived an arrow shot to the head.  Read the full story from Gawker.  

Photo by Susan Darrah via Facebook. 

6. Killer Whales Documented on Video for First Time in Hawaii
A pod of killer whales were spotted in Hawaiian waters, where they are not commonly seen. Luckily researchers were able to satellite-tag several and others were able to capture gorgeous video of these animals in the clear waters.

Here’s a news report:

5. Red-Tailed Hawk vs. Rat 
A friend of mine posted this awesome photo of a red-tailed hawk taking out a rat in the middle of Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle. Red-tailed hawks are large and feed on other birds and on mammals such as squirrels, mice and rabbits.  In urban areas with rats, they are more than happy to take advantage of a slighty different food source!

Photo by Jorge Navarrete.  

4. Deer in Bayonne, NJ
I grew up in New Jersey, and much of my family called Bayonne home.  Bayonne is a fairly urban town not too far from Manahattan.  It’s not the place you’d expect to see a white-tailed deer buck. And yet, one was photographed there recently, proving that some wildlife species can live in surprisingly urban areas.

See the pic here. 

3. Cape Cod Coyotes Living in Parking Lot

A pack of nine coyotes has been hanging out in a Cape Cod parking lot begging for food from cars. What’s the cause of this odd behavior?  Hint: it’s happening because of some pretty foolish humans.

Photo by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife via Flickr Creative Commons and is not one of the coyotes from Cape Cod.

2. New Dolphin Identified
It’s always great to learn a new species has been documented by science. In this case, it’s a newly identified species of dolphin that was once thought to be a different species altogether. Recent studies, however, have proven it to be disinct. 

This one has been all over the internets this week. Apparently, dozens of deadly banana spiders

burst out of a banana just as a woman was about to eat it.  Yes, it’s the stuff or nightmares and horror films. But what if they weren’t

so deadly?