I thought it was a hoax when I first saw the picture, but the “Yeti Crab” seems to be for real.

Sploid, a consistently good source for freaky animal news, has a story today about a mysterious creature that’s turned up at the Tyco Electronics headquarters in North Carolina. It’s a lovely, graceful thing that looks like a dog crossed with a fox crossed with a faun.

The other night, a friend of mine from Cincinnati told me that there was a town across the river in Kentucky that had a dog for a mayor. Like most stories that people in bars tell about animals, this one turns out to be true.

We're on our way to finding out a lot more about what goes on in that secretive world under the sea. A Census of Marine Life project called Tagging of Pacific Pelagics, or TOPP, has been sticking marine animals with electronic tags that transmit data about their habits and habitats to researchers by satellite.

There was sad news today for every junior high student’s favorite aquatic mammal. According to a report by the Associated Press, Florida manatees died in record numbers last month, up by a third from January 2005.