November 26, 2008
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…
November 24, 2008
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 'Order'. Where appropriate I've added updates and have uploaded new images.
Though new…
November 20, 2008
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'.…
November 17, 2008
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…
November 12, 2008
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…
November 12, 2008
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…
November 11, 2008
I would not like to be bitten by an African rock python Python sebae. Here's why.
Had previously seen this photo on TV but only recently found a version on the web. Apparently, the 4-m-long snake - which had recently eaten a female impala - is dead and died after trying to pass through the…
November 10, 2008
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 […
November 8, 2008
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…
November 6, 2008
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,…
November 2, 2008
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…
November 1, 2008
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 (…
October 31, 2008
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…
October 30, 2008
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…
October 29, 2008
Yay - another one from the archives. This article first appeared on Tet Zoo ver 1 in April 2006 (here). If you've read it before, please have the decency to pretend that you haven't, thanks [excellent macronarian sauropods below from wikipedia].
I've stated before on this blog that I do quite a…
October 26, 2008
In 1993 a Japanese film crew led by Nadaka Tetsuo succeeded in filming a large animal swimming in the waters of Lake Dakataua on New Britain (the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, just north-east of New Guinea). Supposedly, the lake was the haunt of an aquatic creature called the migo or…
October 26, 2008
Identify the tetrapod. I think this is easy. You might agree, you might not. But then do something else: state the significance of what you can see. That might not be so easy, but then it might. Incidentally, more mysterious aquatic creatures to come soon (in a somewhat longer post): this time of…
October 23, 2008
Today sees the formal publication of the bizarre little Chinese maniraptoran theropod Epidexipteryx hui Zhang et al., 2008 from the Daohugou Formation of Ningcheng County, north-eastern China. Unfortunately the publication of this new species is not quite the surprise it should be, as the authors…
October 21, 2008
Yes, it's true. As revealed by my most redoubtable friend and ally Nemo Ramjet, Amerindian people knew of giant flightless azhdarchids long before their possible existence was hypothesised about here at Tet Zoo (follow-ups here and here). Depicting these animals in their artwork, they symbolised…
October 20, 2008
Within recent years, the Palaearctic tortoise fauna has undergone a radical change. If you're interested in the recognition and discovery of new species, in controversy and argument about the status of species, in neat evolutionary stuff such as resource polymorphism and resource-mediated dwarfism…
October 17, 2008
Last weekend I and about 40 other people worked together in another effort to rid the shore at Chessel Bay Nature Reserve, Southampton (UK), of rubbish. We didn't succeed of course - if only that were possible - but, as always, picking up humanity's discarded crap gives you plenty to think about.…
October 15, 2008
What is this bizarre fuzzy little creature? It's a Black coucal Centropus grillii chick, and what makes it particularly interesting is that it's covered with simple, tubular, unbranched feathers (termed trichoptiles). If you know the literature on the evolutionary development of feathers you will…
October 14, 2008
You might not believe me if I told you how much stuff I have going on right now. In, as ever, an effort to put at least something new on the blog, here's a pretty picture taken from a talk I give (or gave) on marine reptiles. Alas, I have yet to finish the Tet Zoo series on sea snakes: part I was…
October 12, 2008
I was going to title this post 'How a tyrannosaur was mounted', or 'How to mount a tyrannosaur', but that seemed childish. Eventually I went for a title based on a movie, as that isn't at all childish. If I could travel in time, high on the list of things to do would be visits to see dead animals:…
October 8, 2008
It is unfortunate that I just do not have the time to do any 'proper' blog writing at the moment. Winge winge winge. So I'm going to do a bad thing, but something that I've been advised to do, and something that lots of other people do anyway: I'm going to start re-publishing old Tet Zoo articles…
October 8, 2008
Because antler growth depends fundamentally on health and nutrition as well as age and size, antlers are among the most plastic of all bones. You might be able to appreciate this fact from this photo (courtesy Jon McGowan) showing diversity in English Roe deer Capreolus capreolus, yet even the…
October 6, 2008
If you've been keeping an eye on the newswires you'll have seen that a very exciting new theropod dinosaur was described about a week ago now: Aerosteon riocoloradensis Sereno et al., 2008, an allosaurid allosauroid from the Santonian Anacleto Formation of Mendoza Province, Argentina. Hooray again…
October 3, 2008
Both Cryptomundo and Big Cats in Britain have recently showcased the photo you see here.
Taken in Snodland, Kent (UK), earlier this year, it depicts what appears to be a dark, mid-sized felid (NOT a big cat in the proper sense), though the lack of any adequate scale makes its size difficult to…
October 2, 2008
A few years ago Brito et al. (2002) published a brief but very interesting little paper in which they reported frugivory in Broad-snouted caimans Caiman latirostris. Two captive Brazilian animals were observed and photographed feeding on the fruit of Philodendron selloum [photo here is Fig. 1…
October 2, 2008
I have lot of toys. Too many. Here are just some of them. Sorry the image is too small, but if you want bigger pics they're all available on my flickr site. Despite all these new theropods (hmm.. Aerosteon. Hmmm) and recently published papers on plesiosaurs, no time for any articles at the moment…
