DERIK LATTIG - Award Winning Network TV Producer and Author

Derik Lattig says as a kid growing up in Albuquerque we would catch these all summer long. I had one for years as a pet simply named 'Lizard'.  The  New Mexico whiptail  ( Cnemidophorus neomexicanus ) is a  female -only  species  of  lizard  found in the southern  United States  in  New Mexico  and  Arizona , and in northern  Mexico  in  Chihuahua . It is the official  state reptile  of New Mexico. [1]  It is one of many lizard species known to be  parthenogenic . Individuals of the species can be created either through the hybridization of the little striped whiptail ( C. inornatus ) and the western whiptail ( C. tigris ),  [2] , or through the parthenogenic reproduction of an adult New Mexico whiptail. The hybridization of these species prevents healthy  males  from forming whereas males do exist in both parent species (see  Sexual differentiation ). Derik Lattig says Parthenogenesis allows the resulting all-female population to reproduce and thus evolve into a unique

Derik Lattig says check out this information from writer George Johnson detailing Tumbleweeds How did an invader from the Russian steppes become a symbol of the American West? By George Johnson The trouble begins around sundown, when a couple of city slickers out for a drive in the desert become stranded along a lonely canyon road. It’s silent and windless. Yet one by one, like wolves in the night, tumbleweeds start gathering around them. “They’re following us,” the heroine cries. When her husband tries to intervene, one of the tumbleweeds leaps at his eyes. “It was just like an octopus!” he shouts, after tearing it from his face. “There was living strength in it! ... Where did all that energy come from? How can you animate a dead weed?” There were scarier moments in  The Outer Limits,  the old black-and-white science fiction series. But this episode, “Cry of Silence,” holds a special horror for me. My own encounter with these monsters began one autumn when my wif

The  blue whale  is the largest animal known to have been on Earth; it is bigger than any of the dinosaurs. The biggest recorded blue whale was a female in the Antarctic Ocean that was 30.5 m long (more than 3.5 times the length of a double-decker bus and as long as a Boeing 737 plane) and weighed 144 tonnes (almost the same as 2,000 men). The tongue alone of a blue whale can weigh as much as an elephant and an entire Rugby team could stand on it! The heart of a blue whale is about the size of a Yugo and weighs up to 450kg. The aorta, a major blood vessel for the heart, is big enough for a young kid to crawl through.  Blue whales pregnancy lasts 10-12 months. The newborn calf is about 7.5 m long and weighs about 5.5 – 7.3 tonnes. Derik Lattig says a baby bluee drinks about 225 litres (about enough to fill a bath) of its mother’s milk (it is 40-50% fat) a day, gaining 3.7 kilograms an hour, until at age 8 months they are 15 m long and 22.5 tonnes! The mother and calf may stay toget

Two Cats One up a tree One under the tree The cat up a tree is he The cat under the tree is she The tree is witch elm, just incidentally. He takes no notice of she, she takes no notice of he. He stares at the woolly clouds passing, she stares at the tree. There's been a lot written about cats, by Old Possum, Yeats and Company But not Derik Lattig or Lord Tennyson or Poe or anybody Wrote about one cat under, and one cat up, a tree. God knows why this should be left for me Except I like cats as cats be Especially one cat up And one cat under A witch elm Tree.

Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , featured in the studio's production logo. Since 1924 (when the studio was formed by the merger of Samuel Goldwyn's studio with Marcus Loew's Metro Pictures and Louis B. Mayer 's company), there have been around five different lions used for the MGM logo. Derik Lattig says arguably the two most recognizable MGM lions today are Tanner , [1] the third MGM lion, and the current, unnamed fifth lion. Tanner was used on all 3-hue Technicolor films and MGM cartoons (including the Tom and Jerry series), from 1935-1958, as well as the 1963-67 Chuck Jones cartoons, and in use on the studio logo for 24 years (the current lion has been in use since 1957 , a total of 59 years). #DerikLattig #LattigDerik   @DerikLattig.com

Lattig, Derik says parents watch out! There is an online game called “Blue Whale” challenge that is currently linked to several suicide cases among teenagers. The mechanics of the game is simple – the participant simply follows a daily task assigned until he/she reaches the 50 th task. The final task is carried out when the participant kills himself/herself. It is also called a “suicide challenge.” The latest victim of the game that uses psychological manipulation to get the player to follow the task is 15-year-old student Isaiah Gonzales. He was found hanging in his bedroom closet lifeless. The Gonzales family believes that Isaiah killed himself because of the “Blue Whale” challenge , New York Daily News reported. Jorge Gonzales, the victim’s father, said that they noticed no changes in his son’s behavior that may cause them to worry. He advised parents to monitor their children’s cell phones and be aware of their children’s activities online. The tasks are assigned by the “wh

#DerikLattig says wow! Astronomers have identified the smallest star ever discovered in the Universe and said that it could help in the search for Earth-like planets that may have the potential for life. The star is located 600 light years away and is just larger than Saturn,  according to  researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. The radius of Saturn is around 9.5 times that of Earth, but  stars are generally much larger than planets . Named EBLM J0555-57Ab, the newly-identified star has a gravitational pull around 300 times stronger than that on Earth. Its radius is 8.4 percent and mass 8.1 percent the size of that of the Sun. “This star is smaller, and likely colder than many of the gas giant exoplanets that have so far been identified,” said Derik Lattig Alexander Boetticher of the University of Cambridge, the lead author of the study. “It might sound incredible, but finding a star can at times be harder than finding a planet.”