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Cats are Evil and Plan World Domination - Photographic Proof

Sunday, 5 June 2011

Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this and they have been plotting their usurpation of humanity for hundreds of years. Here, we present the definitive photographic proof, so there can no longer be any doubt in your mind that cats are evil and plan world domination.

They Have Secretly Organized in to a Secret Criminal Society



Image Credit Flickr User katkamin 
A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.
Mark Twain Notebook, 1895

He sniggers in the way only an evil genius with a plan can.  Yet it is not too late to unmask this feline plot.  Here, We present here definitive proof that cats have a secret plan to take over the planet and form the furred reich. Above we see the mastermind of the CATLIT (Cats Arise – Terrorize Local Impudent Two-Footers – i.e. humans!!) taken by our intrepid undercover agent. He was able to upload the image before being caught and thrown, without mercy, to the kittens. The swine! Well, feline would be more accurate but you get the drift.

They Have a Secret Service
In a cat's eye, all things belong to cats. 
English Proverb

Another secretly taken photographic shows one of the High Commanders of CATLIT being guarded by her group of Secret Service Felines. Do not be fooled by the restive and laid back air of this apparently harmless grouping. This group of blood thirsty murderers had recently viciously (and without provocation) attacked and devoured three mice, two gerbils and a sparrow. The heartless cads. The gangs are beginning to come out in the open now, emerging from their underground HQ as well as from the rooftops. Proof? Here you are.


Their Secret Service Infiltrates All Levels of Society
Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.
Unknown

A rare photo of the Ninja Assassin Sect – last located in down town Tokyo but who have recently disappeared (seemingly without trace), leading Intelligence to believe that a full scale cat attack is imminent. Look at the pitiless eyes, the cold killer stares and admit to yourself there is reason to worry.

If you are unlucky enough to catch a cat in his ninja outfit, run for your life. This will, of course, prove to be a fruitless use of energy as they only reason that you have seen him is because you are the target.

They Have a Secret Pirate Cabal
God made the cat in order that humankind might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger.
Fernand Mery

The dispassionate stare of a seasoned killer. This is one of the leaders of the, until recently, secret cabal of feline pirates. Walter, named after a certain Mr Raleigh of Elizabethan pirating fame, is close to the top of the CATLIT hierarchy and it will be his mission, when the attack comes, to spread confusion and chaos among humanity. If you own a cat and think it may be part of the Pirate Cabal, listen closely when he is sleeping. If, instead of going purrrr your cat instead emits an Arrrrr noise, then your worst fears will be confirmed. Run for your life (but be aware of the pointlessness of this).


They Are Highly Trained and Armed To The Teeth
The youth wing of KITCAT must be taken seriously, perhaps even more than their full grown counterparts because it is among the kitten population that true fanaticism exists. Trained as expert snipers, these kittens regularly take pot shots as dogs as they are walked, showing true disregard for the equality of species as laid down by the Aquaviva Convention. If you own a dog and the poor things yelp suddenly (for no apparent reason) whilst being walked then you can be sure that a member of the youth wing of KITCAT is sniggering on a window ledge nearby.


They Know How to Exploit New Technologies
Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you.
Mary Bly

Cats have no fear of exploiting new technology in their war against us. In fact, they are encouraged from kittenhood to immerse themselves in the internet. In fact, several humans have recently been jailed for researching bomb making on the internet. Erroneously.

Professing their innocence strongly, little did they know that they were the unwitting dupes of the feline super villains they once called Mr Tibbles and Angel Princess. If you think your cat is simply entranced by your fish tank screen saver, think again. While you are in the kitchen opening the latest can of de-luxe Tuna chunks (and beware, cats much prefer dolphin, by their own admission), young Atticus the Catticus is plotting the next outrage.

...and frankly, they don't care if they're a Mac or a PC.

They Have Strange Hypnotic Powers
There are many intelligent species in the universe. They are all owned by cats.
Anonymous

Another member of the youth arm of KITKAT tries to fool its unwitting human “owner” in to thinking it is just a super cute ball of fur. However, every now and again their guard goes down and their true nature can be revealed. Look at the insatiable thirst for power in the eyes of this villain and shudder! This is the true face of evil.


They Have Undergone Highly Intensive Training
In order to effect world domination, KITKAT have been pursuing rigorous physical training, sometimes involving highly elaborate military training grounds, tucked away in the back gardens of their human “owners” and masquerading as harmless garden furniture. Here, members of KIKTAT train secretly, unaware that they have been caught on film by our undercover agents. Note how the first mercilessly uses a small dog in his insane lust for ultimate cat power. This is fanaticism which must be stopped. We must act now to extinguish this feline threat before it is too late! Today, the back garden, tomorrow your rugs, settees and Wedgwood china!

They have a Special Air Service
One reason we admire cats is for their proficiency in one-upmanship. They always seem to come out on top, no matter what they are doing, or pretend they do.
Barbara Webster

As the day of the masterplan draws near, many cats are becoming lackadaisical about whether or not their future slaves see them in their training routines. Notice that these activities are now going on in broad daylight. This offhand attitude only goes to show the dismissive attitude that cats have towards us and what little regard they have for the species once renowned as sapiens.

They Have Secret Powers of Levitation
I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food which they take for granted--but his or her entertainment value. 
Geoffrey Household




Caught in a moment of distraction, this cat is all the proof that is needed to show that the feline species must have been quietly interbreeding with an unknown alien race which can levitate and that skill is being passed down the generations. While this phenomenon is still rare, it seems to be on the increase and can be traced back to around the same point in time as the high speed digital camera.

However, when all cats have this ability they will strike and humanity will be reduced to a subjugated role while the cats live a life of irresponsibility and decadent and degenerate sexual partnering.

They have also perfected the art of levitating other objects besides themselves.

They know how to put on the Mata Hari
Cats spit on their hands and rub it all over their bodies.
Unknown

Cats will stoop to anything in their unquenchable thirst for power and here is all you need to see to realize that they have been purveying kitty smut for decades in the guise of cute pictures which their “owners” then frame and show off to guests and friends. In fact, the cat above is about to perform an unspeakable act on itself which would shock and horrify you were it to be named. So perverse is the act that you would probably have to look it up in a dictionary.

After all of this evidence, do you need any further proof that cats are extending their shadow of evil and plan to take over the world? Run, run I tell you, and don’t look back!

Too late, you've already been captured.

Wildlife of Richmond

Saturday, 4 June 2011


Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States.  It may not strike you at first hand as a hotspot of wildlife diversity but take a look at this short film by Mark Svoboda.  The place is absolutely teeming with life of all sizes.

The close-ups were committed to digital form with the help of a Canon 50mm 2.5f EF macro lens with its 1:1 life-size adapter. The jazzy music to accompany the piece is Hey-Hee-Hi-Ho by Medeski, Martin & Wood

Jellyfish


Jellyfish – found in every ocean on the planet, from the deep sea to the surface.

Not only that but they have roamed our oceans for over 500 million years.

There is nothing quite like the grace of a jellyfish, as this video taken in Monterey Bay Aquarium by Jojo Lingat shows. Sheer magic.

4 Little Creatures That Pack a Big Scientific Punch

Thursday, 2 June 2011

We don’t seem to have featured any bacterium on Ark in Space before (but hey, we’re a young site!) but if you like your life tiny, tiny, tiny then pop over to Neatorama.

Miss Cellania has penned a loving paean to four little creatures that pack a big punch, including the Shewanella, pictured above.  While you’re there – if you haven’t visited Neatorama before, hang around.  It comes under the we’re not worthy! School of blogs and is packed full of interesting stuff with which to while away your time.

Manukura - The Little White Kiwi

Tuesday, 31 May 2011


The most successful kiwi breeding season in the history of New Zealand’s National Wildlife Center has ended on an extraordinary note with the surprise hatching of a rare white kiwi chick. The North Island Kiwi shown here is not albino, just naturally white. It is considered a sign of good things to happen by the local Maori community.

The flightless birds are as a rule only seen in the wild every couple of years and the last one born in captivity was released almost a hundred years ago - in 1915. The kiwi is a brown bird (as shown in the video) and this is an incredibly rare occurrence.

She has been called Manukura or Chiefly One by the local Maoris and is being hand-reared in a specially maintained nursery where the keepers will care for her for a minimum of twelve months before hopefully she is released in to the wild.

Robins: 4 Eggs, 4 Weeks


Fred Margulies is a lucky man.  A pair of robins decided to nest in a flower basket on his porch.  Being a film producer he captured this wonderful footage over the next four weeks.  Add the most appropriate soundtrack – When the red red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ and you have something magical.

Billions to None: The Passenger Pigeon and Species Extinction in America

Sunday, 29 May 2011


This is a rough cut of a proposed documentary by David Mrazek but you can see from this fifteen minutes or so that the finished product is going to be something really special. It tells the story of the demise of the great American species the Passenger Pigeon, the numbers of which went from the billion to none by the early twentieth century.

It details not only how the destruction of the species was speeded up by what amounted to industrialised harvest but warns that we are still doing the same thing to the planet – and depriving future generations of possibly countless species.

The documentary points out that at least our ancestors had the benefit of ignorance (with which I disagree a little it has to be said – that is letting them off the hook too easily!) yet that is something we most certainly do not have.

This documentary is already extremely well put together and I really look forward to seeing the complete version. The story of the Passenger Pigeon is tragic – if you have never heard of it you really should watch this eye opening film.

Loom

Saturday, 28 May 2011


This is simply stunning. Loom tells the story of a successful catch. A moth inadvertently flies in to a spider’s web and its fate is sealed. As it disturbs the web with its struggles so its nemesis advances upon it from behind. This will – hopefully – blow your mind, as it did mine!

It is the creation of Polynoid, the design and storytelling loving collaboration of Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, Csaba Letay, Fabian Pross and Tom Weber.

Founded in 2007 as a creative platform and playground for their own films and experiments, Polynoid today uses that same spirit but combines it with the resources of a production studio. It looks, from this superb animation, to have a very bright future ahead of it.

On the Way Home

Sunday, 22 May 2011


Spring is such a magical time of year and it is wonderful to come across a piece of film which captures it in all its majesty. On the Way Home was shot over two days at FreezeOut Lakein North Central Montana in the US this spring.

The shots of the migrating birds, especially the geese are captured on HDV and the music is absolutely spot on here. So, go and grab a coffee (or whatever you drink while near your computer keyboard!) and take in this amazing spring spectacle for yourself.

Two Unlikely Friends at the Bronx Zoo

Saturday, 21 May 2011


The Bronx Zoo is home to many animals, all of which deserve the attention of the photographer. Yet one day in 2010 Tom Warren spotted something different about the gorilla enclosure.

A tiny motherless duckling had wandered in. At first the gorillas were bemused but as they became used to their miniscule visitor their wariness grew in to acceptance.

One of the pictures that Warren took became the winning photo in the 2010 Nature's Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards, in the Zoos and Aquariums Category.

The photo will be on display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. until September 25, 2011. The photos are by Tom Warren. This is the story behind that amazing picture.

The Silkie – Tribble Rabbit Muppet Chicken Thingy

Monday, 16 May 2011

Marco Polo wrote about them. Sideshows exhibited them as a cross between a chicken and a rabbit. Some say it is the closest thing the bird world gets to a tribble. Others that it must be some kind of refugee from The Muppet Show. This is the Silky. It is quite probably the coolest breed of chicken on the planet, particularly when it comes to its fabulous plumage. The general fluffiness of the Silkie makes it unusual, not to mention attractive, but it has many other endearing qualities as well as an interesting history.

They are one of the calmest chicken breeds and they generally never run around like, well, like a headless chicken.  In fact they love nothing more than to grab a perch and just watch the world go by.

They are kept for pets but the hens are renowned for being wonderful mothers. As well as incubating eggs they have laid themselves they are quite happy to do the same thing for any other eggs you might wish to pop underneath their fluffy frame.

In fact, it is not unusual to see them trotting around a farm yard with a host of (not so) ugly ducklings in tow behind them.

The Silkie makes a great mother and is unusually docile and trusting, even for a chicken.

Perhaps too trusting. BEHIND YOU!!!

I said, BEHIND YOU!!!  I can't look! You may not want to see the third picture in this sequence, reader. Seriously, rest assured that no silkies were injured in the creation of these pictures. In fact, cats and silkies have been known to share a crib.

"Excuse me? Could you make a little room? Just a little? Oh, sigh. Never mind."

Though sometimes a silkie can get home and discover unwanted house guests crashing the place. If that ginger tom could talk he would be just about to say one short sentence.  "What d'ya want, birdie?"

However, back to the breed itself rather than interspecies mingling. The plumage of the Silkie is what instantly attracts and the feel of it gives the bird its name. It also makes the Silkie unique among chickens. The light and soft feathers, so reminiscent to the touch of fur, can appear in individual chickens as a result of a recessive gene. However, the Silkie is the only chicken to possess it as a breed.

They come in a variety of different colors, from white to black, taking in red, blue and buff in-between. What you can’t see, however, is their black flesh and bones below, very unusual among chickens. Other features that set them apart from most chickens are their five (instead of four) toes and those striking blue earlobes.

The species is thought to have originated in China and, true to say, there in something eastern in their look and certain inscrutability. They arrived in Europe (and from there the New World) via the Silk Route. The most famous European to follow that path was Marco Polo and his accounts tell of a furry chicken which was possibly the Silkie.

They certainly didn’t fly out of China. Their feathers, so soft and downy render them incapable of flight. You may have noticed that in some of these wonderful pictures the bird(s) seem to have a muff of feathers under their beak which covers their blue ears, while some do not. These are not separate breeds but varieties and are known as bearded and, you guessed it, non-bearded.

It took quite a while for the breed to be formally recognised in the US. In fact it was accepted in to the Standard of Perfection in 1874 (which was, admittedly the first time it had been published0. Yet despite this acceptance rumors about the Silkie have abounded and persisted.

One of the most unrelenting tales is that the Silkie is, in fact, a hybrid of a chicken and a rabbit. While you can see – obviously – while the more credulous people may have believed this in centuries gone by it is a legend which has proven fairly difficult to dispel. In Victorian times they were often shown in travelling shows and billed as such an interspecies cross, with people being told that they had mammalian fur. You can just imagine Barnum buying a dozen and crossing his fingers. You can see why, perhaps.  Do these chickens have heads?

Today, however, the Silkie has become a popular breed of ornamental chicken. They are popular with smallholders not only for their looks but because the hen is about the broodiest bird on the planet. Any extra eggs from any breed of poultry will be gladly welcomed in to the brood to be of a mother Silkie who herself produces around three eggs each week.

Some of you are probably asking the question, yes, but what do they taste like? Perhaps because of their black skin (see a dead pair here if you must!) the breed has escaped intensive farming in the West – or it could be the simple fact that it does not produce as much meet as other breeds of chicken. Underneath that ball of fluff is quite a skinny chicken, believe it or not. In China, where they are known as wu gu ji – literally the chicken with black bones – they are regarded as suitable for gourmet tastes.

Although this is not a site that marks out animals as pets (or tells you where to buy them or how to look after them), it has to be admitted that if you want a chicken as a pet then the Silkie is an ideal. They are composed, amicable and sociable and they like children. In other words they are quite docile. Although this means that they can be bullied by other birds they tend to do well in human company.

We have now, hopefully, firmly established that the Silkie is not a rabbit – or indeed a tribble – but very much a bird. It has to be said it is an unusual looking winged, bipedal, endothermic, egg-laying, vertebrate but you know something? However, this, with apologies to EB White and Charlotte is some bird. Some bird indeed.

Jellyfish Lake Palau

Tuesday, 10 May 2011


We recently posted a photo essay on the amazing Jellyfish of Palau.  Every day millions of golden jellyfish migrate – no big surprise there.  However, you might not expect them to migrate horizontally across a lake.  Still, a visit to Jellyfish Lake on Eil Malk, an island in Palau, in the Pacific Ocean, will confirm just that.

We looked for a video at the time but didn't find one we liked (that much) until now.  This great piece was shot by Sarosh Jacob - who filmed the amazing contents of the lake.  Add a soundtrack by Radiohead and it's perfect!

Sir David Attenborough - WWF at 50


Sir David Attenborough reflects on the early days of conservation and more specifically the work of Peter Scott, who was instrumental in the formation of WWF - the World Wide Fund for Nature.

He talks about the issues facing environmental organisations today and speaks passionately about the need for conservation groups such as WWF.

On a lighter note he touches on his career in the broadcast industry and the love he holds for the natural world.

Cat in a Box


This may not be the highest quality of videos, but nevertheless I found it very amusing. Who can say what goes on in the head of the average cat – let alone one like this.

This cat likes to play with boxes – or more accurately I should say that this cat likes to be in boxes.

It may be a case of go figure, but if it’s happy and it’s not hurting anyone – who can argue? It does, after all, take all types to make a world.

Springtime - A Journey Into Macro Space

Friday, 6 May 2011


When spring had arrived in Vienna, Gunther Machu thought about showing the beauty of nature in terms of the landscapes and the insects – to take a journey in to macro space.

He started initially to just reverse mount his 50mm f1.4 lens (taping it to the adapter on his Lumix GH1), but then for quality reasons he bought a used 50mm f3.5 FD macro lens with a 25mm extender.

Almost everything was filmed in his garden, apart from the first sequence which was on a small hill very close to his house – he realized that the flowers there became extremely rare and are under severe protection!

It makes for a fascinating glimpse in to a world we only rarely consider – that which is right underneath our noses. Enjoy!

Cahuita National Park


Shawn Landersz recently visited Cahuita National Park in Costa Rica. The animals seemed so chilled that when he put his footage together the only tune he could possible accompany it with was Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds. You have to admit, it does go extraordinarily well with the footage of animals just doing their own thing!

If you would like to know more about the park, here is a little clip from Wikipedia:

Cahuita National Park is a National Park in the Caribbean La Amistad Conservation Area of Costa Rica located on the southern Caribbean coast in Limón Province, connected to the town of Cahuita. It protects beaches and lowlands and attracts tourists and other visitors who are able to scuba dive and snorkel in the protected marine area which contains the Coralline Reefs, as well as being a nesting ground for sea turtles. This is also one of the nicest and least developed beaches in Costa Rica.

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