What kind of animal is on this rubber ball?
I can't identify the animal(?) depicted on this little rubber ball that my five-year-was playing with last night. Any guesses? (Rotated versions added above to assist in identification. I don't think it is depicting the outline of China.)
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It reminds me of a ram. If you flip it over (china upside down), it looks like it has an eye and horns.
Hippo, I say Hippo.
Flip it left-right, and it's a picture of China itself.
It's a frog, I think, if you flip it over.
At least to me.
The most vicious animal of all, lead paint.
It is obviously a Manbearpig.
Dinosaur. Cuddling its young. A la Matthew Sweet's album Altered Beast:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_fAT7UABRBOo/SCD4zALApII/AAAAAAAAB0o/yfacRWiX1Dk/Matthew_Sweet_-_Altered_Beast2-%5BFront%5D-%5Bwww.FreeCovers.net%5D.jpg
I believe it is Cthulhu playing with a Cecil the Sea Serpent hand puppet.
It could be a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to regurgitate a silhouette of Elvis.
OCTOPOTAMUS
Turn it to the right and it's obviously an elderly Eskimo waving good-bye to the polar ice caps (or hello to global warming!). Unfortunately his right arm was amputated in the great Polar Bear/Sea Lion War of '73 and now he proudly displays his Wooly Mammoth prosthetic arm (great for mixing stews or making a mean guacamole).
I'd ask the five year old - who'd know better?
drum roll... its a snake ! (chillsky)
Rikki Tikki Mongoose!
Looks like a treasure map to me.
china map
Snakodile.
DUH.
@jonathon A map of china with soon to be annexed territory
Actually, if that is one of China's new testicular implants, that could be their new cartoon spokes-model, Mr. Happy Pants.
I think that is an arm on the top and going into the silhouette. So if you rotate it 90 degrees clockwise it certainly makes some animal giving a bear hug. So I assume it is a bear.
It's a Panda of the People beating a Capitalist Pig to death.
rotate 90 degrees left n it looks a bit like an elephant
I instantly recognized it as a snake, would make sense considering the Chinese horoscope.
Talking penis, right?
um its a snake
Barnaby, if that is a reference to Helen DeWitt's _The Last Samurai_, I salute you.
It's obviously Twiggy, the waterskiing squirrel!!
It's the halfsharkalligatorhalfman.
Definitely an upside-down ram. That thing on top that makes it look like it's doing shadow puppetry is its front foot.
Clearly, that's a snakelphant
if you turn the photo 90 degrees clockwise it becomes very obvious that it is an eskimo holding up his left hand in a wave....or at least obvious to me.
It's a drawing of China, by one who has never seen a map.
It's The Great Serpent from The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, as portrayed by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Randall.
Worry not, people, I've been to school where I learned to read and where I also studied biology. Those mysterious (to you) figures below the graphic spell the word "CHINA", which as all scholars know is short for "chinchilla", a rodent beast from the Americas.
You're welcome.
Morcheeba, i was going to say a squirrel with a massive tumor but i like your's better.
It is a ninja with their left hand/arm up, preparing a savage serve...
John Folson
It looks to me like a snake all coiled up and hissing...
It's a brontosaurus whose tail is twirled up and around a two people in parkas, one white and the other black. Obviously. That said, it could be the outline of China if the printer forgot to reverse the image for printing.
I'm in the squirrel camp, only it's riding some kind of mutated fish.
camel of the dromedary (one humped) type
It looks to me like a coiled up snake, hissing...
Kaylee: It's a swan. I like it.
Inara: You do?
Kaylee: Looks like it was made with, you know, longing. Made by a person who really longed to see a swan.
Inara: Perhaps because they'd only heard of them by rough description.
It's obviously a lizard having intercourse with a fish. You know how Chinese people are.
Why it's a Chinese Masked Wrestler crying "uncle" of course.
I would say: snake.
It sort of looks like a Gila Monster to me.. *shrug*
Looking at the far right, I'm just going to go with a gorilla. It makes the most sense so far.
It's an alligator/crocodile in silhouette, mouth is open.
I'm gonna say.. komodo dragon? Is that a thing they have in China?
Loch Ness Monster.
when you turn it upside down it looks like a frog.
Mirror the image, I believe it will match up to the map of China then.
An amateur cartographers rendition of the country China.
It's a triceratops with a particularly large eye and horns, looking to the left.
Definitely a horizontally flipped map of China, if China were to nom nom nom North Korea.
Crocogoiter.
OMG I can't believe I didn't say "Aligoiter."
Its like that one Star Trek TNG episode where they capture a Borg and show it a rendering of a 4th dimensional object that it takes back to the cube when they release it and then causes a memory overflow issue except that they wussed out and didn't actually do it. Yeah, china is trying that crap with us now.
It's a trap! I was squinting at it and my wife said "why do you look all Chinese?" Look away people unless you want to catch "The Chinese"!
I'm going to say it's a Koala holding onto a branch.
Tina Yuthers.
At first, I thought it might be a ram... but I'm now thinking that the negative space that looks like a horn is supposed to be the outline of a rabbit's ear.
My best guess is that it's a Panda or some other animal with either part of the image or a whole color missing from the printing.
What would you do if you messed up 1.5 million rubber balls? Sell them dirt cheap and they might end up in a quarter vending machine.
I say Boar! Wild Boar.
http://img2.travelblog.org/Photos/18193/79342/f/485804-Crocodile-Temple-1.jpg
It's a whale / fish from right side up CHINA perspective; it's body is curved and we're looking at it from the front. It's sort of 3d.
It's a street lamp.
I agree with #41. It's a frog.
The one from "Zuma". As is the ball...
Koi fish, tail tucked around behind it.
I'm sure it's the deadly vicious Rabbit of Caerbannog!
Spiderpig?
Sloth humping a snapping turtle?
Ha!
Amoeba
I with all the above posts stating that it's a depiction of China (the country). Unfortunately, whoever made the stamp, forgot to take into account the fact that you have to make it backwards.
If you take the first image from above, and mirror it, you will notice that the "eye" in the middle is roughly where Beijing would be, and the "swish" would be right in Tibet territory.
One could think that it's a statement of China "looking towards the future" with Lhasa on-board.
However, you could also think of it as China "takes a step backwards", since it's mirrored.
I'd say it's a mammoth. (last photo, bottom row)
The shape of the head and tusks match.
Maybe it was meant to be printed in two colours and they got cheap.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Mammoth2.jpg
A jackal, jackal, it's a jackal, it looks like a jackal, jackal? It's a jackal. Jackal?
I'll have to go with . . . my worst nightmare.
I showed it to my ten year old, who draws cartoons every hour of the day, and he promptly said, "It's a frog. Turn it upside down. See?"
When inverted horizontally it's a pretty good map of China. I don't have a clue what the negative space thingies are though.
It is a Giant Salamander....those are from China right?
It's not an animal, it's a ghost. It's from a series of "scary" Halloween balls you can find here: http://tinyurl.com/62amqh - there's a jack o'lantern, a cat and a spider.
I agree that it looks like an inverted map of China.
More China oddities and goodness here: http://snphl.wrdprss.cm/
Wow! Nice find Christian Cox.
@ #64 - you just proved that the internet truly is the repository of all knowledge.
A camel-snake. Or maybe a snake that just ate a camel?
When I Googled "rubber balls" this site was the top sponsor link. THAT'S fucking scary ;)
Liger!
Or the Great Wall: http://www.asiabest.ca/products/china/images/great_wall.jpg
This is obviously an ancient picture drawn no more than 6000 years ago depicting Man and Dinosaurs living together. I must now go and burn a witch.
heheh yeah good job CC! I guess the "eskimo" guessers were closest after all
Looks like a penis-headed Triceratops to me, but maybe that's just because I have one as a pet.
64: Awesome. Good work. So it's a ghost waving with its left hand, and holding its right hand to its chest (hence the weird outline). Also, it's smiling and its two eyes kind of merge together.
bravo christian
#70: LEAVE ANN COULTER ALONE!
I would presume the text indicates the preferred orientation.
Having said that... I'm not even sure it's intended to be an animal.
"Raw shark?"
Christian Cox is right, but the ghost pattern was actually copied from Gorbachev's birthmark
Haven't you ever seen a picture of Yog-Sothoth before?
camelsnake, in repose.
I wonder why they would include a hippocrocosquirrel among those Halloween images. Strange.
I was so inspired by Barnaby's guess of octopotamus I had to draw one. Such a majestic creature. http://flickr.com/photos/chrisfurniss/3020537756/
Looking at the second image from the left, I'd say it's a waving Jawa.
a bit too obvious, maybe, but I think it's a cloud.
It looks like maybe not one animal, but several silhouettes combined in a black blob that may (by some stretch) be a highly stylized, rounded version of China's borders.. or maybe it's not all of China, but just Xinjiang?
Upper left black 'protrusion' sure looks like a perfect silhouette of a squirrel facing left; it's head, ears and front hands delineated, jumping out of an otherwise very rounded, blobby outline of Xinjiang.
Inside at the lower left seems clearly to be a floating white silhouette profile of a panda's head facing left and up with its mouth agape.
Those two images seem pretty clear. Why the squirrel is so much larger than the panda I'm not sure.
At the lower right would seem to be a black silhouette of a human head floating inside a white background, but it's neck swirled oddly (badly) into the overall black blob outline of China.
The whole image seems to indicate some kind of environmental synergy between animals and humans.. a nature logo?
It seems to tell the sad tale of an under-budgeted logo where the designer was out sick, and the designer's apprentice didn't know how to use Photoshop, but the printer's deadline was tomorrow, so it had to go out without approval..
Squirrel riding a whale somewhere near Big Portugal. Duh.
Giraffes!
http://www.hulu.com/watch/42614/saturday-night-live-giraffes#s-p1-st-i0
It's a boa constrictor digesting an elephant, no?
It's a drawing of China, by one who has never seen a map.
Someone famously described English women's shoes as being made by someone who had heard a description of shoes, but never actually seen a pair.
It looks like a yellowy/orangy ball, with some kinda inky smear on it. And, some text.
What do I win?
Totally looks like a snake to me with the head up top facing left and the lower part being the body coiled.
1. is obviously a snake, 2. is a guy giving a thumbs up, 3. is a musk-ox, 4. is a gorilla.
I believe it is the legendary Esquilax. Although the 4th rotation looks a little like Cthulhu in profile.
None of the above. And all of the above. It's a Rorschach test.
In the category of "rule this out", has anyone copied the image to another orange ball, then cut out the black image and spread the remaining orange color in a mercator projection and see if it looks like anything?
it's a snake... eating China.
Ninja turd.
I see a schooner.
Double Scorpion.
It's a dickfer, of course.
OK People!
Stop guessing already - @Christian Cox nailed it. Look here if you do not believe him: http://tinyurl.com/62amqh
i think it looks like a smiling/talking horse if you flip it to the left.
Mr. Ed is making comebacks. in china.
however, if you flip it the other way, it could also be a hooded man with a large nose and a messed-up right arm, and holding a 'thumbs up' with his left hand.
Chinese delicacy AND endangered species
what kind of terrible shadow-creatures do they have in china, nowadays?
this is growing quite troubling on me.
Hmmm. What's a dickfer? For that matter, what are christiancoxfer?
obviously, it's a geoduck clam
Orange and black.
It's a friendly incarnation of Death. China on the left.
OMG SNAEK!1
wow so it's clearly a ghost in the pic above (thanks gabielm!) but due to the word "CHINA" my brain instists of righting the image no matter what angle i look at it, thus making it look almost nothing like the image in the original image.
so to conclude:
1. image linked by gabrielm looks like ghost.
2. image in article looks like freaky sock puppet
3. i drank too much gin tonight
I don't know what it was, but it looks quite a lot like something on my windshield right now.
@ #5
I LOLed. Perhaps too hard.
It's a squid!
crapauds, Frogs, grenouilles, perereca, rã, sapo, Toads
It's definitely a stamp of the alien coming out of John Hurt's stomach in ALIEN.
Hippoblobomus
godzilla?? :P
Obvs. a puma humping a tortoise.
Rodan riding on the back of Snuffleupagus innit
One of the things I love most about Boing Boing is that, every now and then, there's a post designed just to make people comment. Good on ya, you got another one. It's a cheap, Chinese toy, I'm guessing cheap, Chinese dragon.
Lupus? Is it Lupus?
Hurm. Rorschach.
Come on folks, this was such an easy one. It's the Montauk Monster of course!
Hippagator
I can't get Christian Cox's Tinyurl link to load. Help? This is killing me!
It's HalfSharkAlligator/HalfMan
Oh nevermind. Tinyurl is down.
I think it's an Ambient Dinosaur, but then again, I'm obviously biased.
where's my fricking royalty?
Looks closely at the picture where the word "China" is upside down.
It's Cloverfield. See the weird head sacks, with the eyes and the elongated jaw and the tongue.
It's definitely Cloverfield.
Whatever it is. I'm sure you can eat in China.
What makes you think it's an animal?
Christian Cox found it - if you can't follow his link, here is an explanation:
Look at the second image in the row of four small multiples. The one where the word CHINA is to the left of the blog, written from top to bottom. That's the correct orientation.
The blob is a distressed rendition of a grinning ghost, waving at you. The small reversed-out circle is his nose; the crescent underneath is his leer. The peninsula at top right is his waving left hand. The spiral at left is the outline of his right hand.
The rendering of the ghost is clearer on the "Halloween Bouncing Balls" site found at Christian's link, but it is no more beautiful and is definitely intended to be the same apparition.
The other Halloween Bouncing Balls for the record (and this is, after all, a Blog of Record) are: Grinning Spider Wearing Top Hat, Jack-o-lantern, Cat with Bow Tie. All are black on orange (and as such the Jack-o-lantern is the most convincing of the four) and none visibly declaim "CHINA", unlike Mark's five-year-old's ball depicted above.
Whatever it is, Sarah Palin has undoubtedly shot one.
I think that's Manimal.
Thanks viveka! It finally loaded and you are absolutely right. Now I can finally get some sleep!
/pathetic
its a ghost, you can tell by the second picture with its hand in the air and a grin
Nice work, Christian Cox. I am in serious awe of your patience, commitment and mad Google skillz.
Worst ghost evar
A SNAIL!!
It's a snake that's eaten an egg or a rat.
Christian Cox @ 81 FTW!!!!
good work man.
Giant Salamander with its tail curled around.
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/cryptobranchidae/
I think A) an anime style ram B) a squirtle (pokemon) or C) a frog
161 comments?
The animal, 'tis the Chinese Jabberwock.
It's a reverse image. If you stare at it for ages, and then look away at a white wall or something similar, it becomes an *amazing* image of Chairman Mao.
Chimerical succubus.
It's a Streetlight
It is most definitely an upside-down elephant head, or a silhouetted leopard crouching in a bush with an giant person hidden in it.
It's OBVIOUSLY * Godzilla * !!!! - Conmartian in Chicago
* G * O * D * Z * I * L * L * A *
Rotated 90º clockwise, it's obviously the Eggplant Wizard from Kid Icarus.
If you look at it with 'CHINA' on the left side, it's obviously a somewhat stylized image of Casper the one-eyed black ghost with a hook for a right hand. He's waving 'Hello'. Unmistakable.
It's a child in a hoodie waving.
The CHINA is the red herring, probably just missing the MADE IN
I'm not sure, but that drawing looks almost exactly like the one embossed in this logo.
It's the imperialistic python China gorging itself on the free west
this blog has been translated and posted on a Chinese website, u may see what the Chinese will act to this.
what u know about Chinese culture is like a grain in the sea, actually, this is a decorative image in ancient China.
the website: http://www.qseen.cn
Its a picture of China slowly taking over the US as we post blogs and read news stories when we are suppose to be working :)
Not * G * O * D * Z * I * L * L * A *, but...
* H * E * D * O * R * A * H *
http://tinyurl.com/5cpoc5
so, you don't know what it is either?
It looks like a camel fucking a whale.
All glory to the (chinese) hypnotoad!
I believe it is a blind contour drawing of a snail.
Maybe has been already offered, but if you blur your eyes it looks like a koala peeking out from some leaves.
IT'S PIKACHU!!!!
GOD DAMN IT!!!!
(For reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9o5_W6hn9k)
#80 Nope. Giant Salamanders live in Japan. (adopts Ricky Gervais voice) Raacist.
Not an animal per se, but it looks like a Firefly class spaceship landing. Admittedly the traditional version doesn't have that mouthlike shape, but who knows what accessories get bolted on in China?
--Doom
Clearly a break-dancing clown in a black hoodie giving the thumbs up while clutching a ping pong paddle. Its the widely recognized symbol of the new China; pro-everything, sport diplomacy, black hat internet, rhythm rhyming hipsters with a sense of humor but persistent inscrutability.
it looks like a cartoon kid wearing a baseball cap. The big swirl is a stylized ear maybe? Kinda looks like Shin-chan.
here are some pics of this kind in ancient China, this may be helpful. sometimes those images has no exact meaning but to create a solemn atmosphere.
link: http://www.qseen.cn/post/decorative-image-China.html
I know what it is, but unfortunately I do not have space enough in this margin to write down the answer.
It's obviously a FROG.