Tetrapod Zoology

Giant furry pets of the Incas

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:20:00 -0500

Another one from the archives. It's one of several articles I wrote in 2006 on obscure tropical rodents, was originally published here, and appears here with new pics and a few new details...

If you've read Scott Weidensaul's excellent book The Ghost With Trembling Wings (2002), you'll recall the story of Louise Emmons and the giant Peruvian rodent she discovered. But before I get to that, let me say that The Ghost With Trembling Wings isn't about ghosts at all, but about the search for cryptic or supposedly extinct species. Think thylacines, British big cats, Ivory-billed woodpeckers, Cone-billed tanagers, the resurrection of the aurochs, Night parrots, Richard Meinertzhagen and the Indian forest owlet. It begins with Weidensaul's search for Semper's warbler Leucopeza semperi, an enigmatic parulid endemic to St. Lucia, discovered in 1870 and last seen alive in 1969 (although with a trickle of post-1969 sightings, some reliable and some not so reliable). If you're interested in the hunt for cryptic species and zoological field work and its history, it is mandatory that you obtain and read this inexpensive book (its cover is shown below).

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My mummified fox

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:25:00 -0500

I think everyone seriously interested in animals collects dead animals, or bits of dead animals. Over the years I've built up a reasonably good collection of bones, teeth, antlers and carcasses, most of which are used 'academically' (in teaching and research) and not just kept for fun. Some of the specimens I have are amazing, like the robin Erithacus rubecula still attached to the twig and the wind-dried squirrel (both discussed here on Tet Zoo ver 1). One specimen above all others might be regarded as the centre-piece of my collection...

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New, obscure, and nearly extinct rodents of South America, and... when fossils come alive

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:05:00 -0500

Another one from the archives, and another one from my rodent phase of 2006 (originally published here): despite efforts, I was simply unable to even scratch the surface of what is the largest extant mammalian clade. Where appropriate I've added updates and have uploaded new images.

Though new rodents are described from all over the place (yes, even from North America and Europe*), I had a recollection of the greatest percentage coming from South America. And indeed there are quite a few (note that some of the following don't have common names), with a randomly-selected list of my favourites being:-

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Ifrita the poisonous passerine

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:30:00 -0500

Back in 2006 I took part in the 'ten birds' meme. If infected (do people normally speak of being 'infected' by memes?), you were supposed to write about ten birds that you found 'beautiful'. I decided to distort it slightly and make the birds the ten that I found most 'beautifully interesting'. Here's one of them, the others may or may not follow too.

Originally described by DeVis in 1890 as Todopsis kowaldi, Ifrita was independently 'discovered' by Walter Rothschild in 1898 and named by him Ifrita coronata. A passerine endemic to moist montane forests on New Guinea, Ifrita is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, nobody really knows what it is and over the years it's been classified in several different, disparate passerine families. It's been allied with warblers, log-runners, and corvids. Secondly, it's poisonous. I'll repeat that for those people who hadn't heard it before. It's poisonous. While it's nowadays reasonably well known that pitohuis (a group of six species of pachycephalid passerines, also endemic to New Guinea) produce batrachotoxin in their skin and feathers, it was shown in 2000 that Ifrita does too (Dumbacher et al. 2000). It's thought that the poisons present in these birds are sequested from poisonous insect prey, but last I heard this was still under debate [there seem to be only three photos of Ifrita available on the web; the one shown here is the most oft-used].

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When salamanders invaded the Dinaric Karst: convergence, history, and reinvention of the troglobitic olm

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:20:00 -0500

From the archives!

One of the most unusual and interesting of amphibians has to be the Olm (Proteus anguinus), an unusual long-bodied cave-dwelling salamander from SE Europe [adjacent image from the Devon Karst Research Society]. Olms were the first specialised cave-dwelling animals (so-called stygobionts or troglobites) to be discovered, they were traditionally identified as dragon larvae by local people, and they remain mysterious and the source of controversy, debate and discovery. I've had a special affinity for olms since seeing them (live) in the former Yugoslavia in 1987, and after a colleague published a brief article on them in 2004 I ended up compiling and publishing my olm-related thoughts. In the interests of re-cycling that text I reproduce it here, in updated form.

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Belatedly, Nemoramjetia (= Avisapiens)

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:59:00 -0500

I've been so busy over the past several weeks that I've totally failed to keep up with several of my favourite blogs. One of them is Andrea Cau's Theropoda, written in Italian but translatable into English thanks to the wonder of google's translator widget (incidentally, my grandmother on my dad's side was Italian). The amount of detail Andrea puts in to his posts is awesome, as are the many novel excellent illustrations he uses (virtually all of which he produces himself). And I've only just seen this, dating from early October...

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The tangled mammoths

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:48:00 -0500

It's reasonably well known that fighting male deer are sometimes unable to extricate themselves after tangling their antlers together. Mammoths - which had more strongly curved tusks that living elephants - sometimes had a similar problem, as demonstrated by the famous fighting mammoths from Crawford, Sioux County, Nebraska...

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The 'python bites fence' photo

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:53:00 -0500

I would not like to be bitten by an African rock python Python sebae. Here's why.

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Long and Schouten's Feathered Dinosaurs, a review

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:21:00 -0500

Another book review. I've had a lot of them to do lately.

The idea that feathers decorated and insulated the bodies of the small bird-like predatory dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous - the coelurosaurs - is no longer a speculation limited to controversial artwork, but the mainstream view [for background info see Feathers and filaments part I and part II]. Spectacular fossils from the Lower Cretaceous rocks of Liaoning Province in north-east China have shown that feathers, and simpler, filament-like 'proto-feathers', were widespread among coelurosaurs, being present in compsognathids and basal tyrannosaurs as well as in the maniraptorans (the oviraptorosaurs, troodontids, dromaeosaurs and kin). In this new book, author John Long and artist Peter Schouten have worked together to show-case a diversity of coelurosaurs (many of which are only recently discovered) in modern, state-of-the-art life restorations.

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Do crocodilians (sometimes) feed their young?

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 07:18:00 -0500

We all know that many birds feed their young. Nowadays, many of us are also familiar with the idea that hadrosaurs and other dinosaurs might also have fed their young. Far less well known is the possibility that crocodilians may do this too, at least sometimes. As with those fruit-eating alligators, I have John Brueggen of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park to thank for the video you see here (and thanks, again, to Tim Isles for bringing this subject to my attention in the first place).

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Super-size cougars

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:07:00 -0500

Knowing that members of a certain species sometimes reach a certain size is not always the same as actually seeing images of that certain species at that certain size.

The Puma, Cougar or Mountain lion Puma concolor (other names include panther, painter, catamount, mountain devil, silver lion, brown tiger, red tiger, king cat, Indian devil, purple feather (wtf?), mountain demon, sneak cat, leao and onça vermilha) is a highly variable animal (its historic range extends across much of the length and breadth of the Americas), but an average example from an average population might be anywhere between 1.7-2.7 m in total length, and weigh between about 60 and 80 kg (though the range is from 25 to over 110 kg; Currier (1983) gives the 'average' range as between 55 and 65 kg). Pumas seem to conform to Bergmann's rule (Gay & Best 1996), though the presence of jaguars and the size of available prey also seem to have an influence on their body size. Animals at the upper end of this range must be impressive beasts: larger than even a very big leopard, and only 10 kg or so lighter than an average African lioness. Here are some pictures of big pumas: the specimens might not be record holders, but I find them interesting as they show pumas that are, to me, exceptionally big.

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Why the Lion Grew Its Mane, a book review

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:10:00 -0500

Thanks to Tet Zoo, I sometimes receive books to review, and earlier on in the year I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Lewis Smith's Why the Lion Grew Its Mane (Papadakis, 2008). Smith is a science reporter at The Times and in this book, billed as presenting 'a miscellany of recent scientific discoveries from astronomy to zoology', he takes us on a tour of some of the newest, neatest science. Despite its title, Why the Lion Grew Its Mane isn't just about animals, but also includes sections on cutting-edge technology, astronomy, genetics and psychology. I don't know enough about any of those subjects to comment on them, so what you're going to get here is a review of only some of the book - namely, of course, the parts on tetrapods.

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A nice piece of ass

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 08:29:19 -0500

Blame Matt Wedel for kindly bringing my attention to this wonderful image; he was clearly inspired by the anuran porn from yesterday. Attempted interspecies matings are more common than people normally think - particularly in captivity of course - and, sad to say, I have detailed files (incidentally, I'm not totally sure that this is an attempted mating: hard to tell!). Am thinking of doing a themed post on the subject, god help me.

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Shocking inter-racial sex scenes

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:03:00 -0500

During the breeding season male frogs are compelled to grab moving objects and engage them in amplexus, the tight 'breeding clasp' that occurs either under the forelimbs (axillary amplexus) or around the waist (inguinal amplexus), depending on the species. Amplexus is assisted by roughened pads of tubercles or even small spikes on the male hand, wrist and/or forearm. If it's obvious that the moving object is not a female of the same species (because it feels wrong or makes an objectionable noise [as male frogs do when grabbed by other males]), the male lets go.

Nevertheless, male Eurasian common frogs Rana temporaria - the anuran I'm most familiar with - have been reported to grab goldfish, people's hands and, as you can see from this photo, members of other anuran species. Here, a male R. temporaria has engaged in amplexus with a Common toad Bufo bufo: presumably a female based on size and colour (males are generally small and grey, females big and brown). I don't know what the outcome of this photo was, but if mating occurred, there is no possibility of successful hybridisation between these very distant relatives.

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The world's largest modern crocodilian skull

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:59:15 -0500

Do you remember the photo - provided courtesy of Colin McHenry - showing a variety of crocodilian skulls? I published it in an article on the CEE Functional Anatomy meeting, and here it is again. The challenge was to try and identify the largest skull. Suggestions included Saltwater croc Crocodylus porosus, outsized American croc C. acutus or Slender-snouted croc Mecistops cataphractus, but it's none of those (for the resurrection of the genus Mecistops Gray, 1844 for cataphractus see McAiley et al. 2006). The monster skull is in fact that of a False gharial Tomistoma schlegelii. Yes, a False gharial. Holy shit. Hai-Ren actually got it right: well done you! At 84 cm long this skull might cause you to revise whatever preconceptions you had about a species with the name 'False gharial' (having said that, gharials proper ain't necessarily unimpressive... read on).

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