January 11, 2008
Thanks to everyone who offered an opinion and submitted their thoughts on that photo - and there were no silly answers, because I feel the real answer was not necessarily easy. As some of you correctly determined, the cat was actually not an unfamiliar or obscure species - just the opposite - it's…
January 9, 2008
The large black cats that people report from Britain and elsewhere in the world are sometimes said to look odd, being occasionally described as unusually gracile and less stocky than leopards (for an example in the literature see Trevor Beer's description and illustration: Beer 1988). If this is…
January 8, 2008
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you read Tet Zoo, you're in very good - nay, famous - company. I've lost track of how many famous zoologists, palaeontologists, artists, TV personalities and Hollywood starlets are among the regular visitors. Among the many is Mike Skrepnick, who of…
January 6, 2008
It always seemed too good to be true. The story goes that members of a team of Russian geologists from Moscow State University - led by Dr G. Rukosuyev - were, in 1964, surveying Yakutia in Siberia when, at Lake Khaiyr (or Lake Khainyr), they saw a lake monster. But not just any old lake monster:…
January 4, 2008
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the attention that the first caecilian article received (it's here): it was in the Sb top five most active articles for most of today (Jan 4th), and elicited a decent amount of response. Thanks as always to everyone who commented and especially to those who added…
January 3, 2008
Did I mention that 2008 is the Year of the Frog? Well, believe it or don't, another major conservation effort directed at the world's amphibians kicks off in January 2008, and in an effort to bring all you wonderful Tet Zoo readers up to speed on amphibian diversity before it launches, we need to…
January 2, 2008
As a dinosaur specialist I often get asked about Robert Mash's 2003 book How to Keep Dinosaurs (Mash 2003). It seems that most people (usually those who haven't read it) think that this book is good, or funny. Don't get me wrong - I think a book dedicated to dinosaur husbandry is an excellent idea…
December 29, 2007
It's hardly a secret that I've had a bit of a thing going for frogs and toads - anurans - during the latter part of 2007 (the anuran series has so far consisted of part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, and part VII). While the whole exercise was a good excuse to learn a lot about…
December 23, 2007
One last thing before Tet Zoo closes down for Christmas but, don't worry, this isn't anything I've knocked up specially... due to an unfortunate series of misunderstandings it's something I produced 'by mistake' and have since decided to recycle. Hey, why not. Ironically, I post it just when I'm…
December 22, 2007
Thanks to everyone for their comments on the previous article about island-endemic otters and canids. I was going to add a brief response to the comments section, but eventually the comments reached the length you see here, hence my decision to turn them into a brief article...
Yes, I should at…
December 20, 2007
Some people who come to Tet Zoo seem to absolutely despise all those annoying teasers, preemptives and references to things that are yet to come. Others regard these as one of Tet Zoo's key points of awesomeness. Whatever, I am pleased to say that I congratulate you all on your patience and…
December 18, 2007
Over the weekend Neil Phillips, Richard Hing, Jonathan McGowan and I went into the field, in quest of tetrapods (Jon and Neil are shown in the adjacent image, as are other mammals). And we saw a bunch. In an effort to produce a post that is essentially an excuse to showcase some of Neil's photos (…
December 17, 2007
If you're on my hallowed List of Correspondents you'll already have received the image here as an attachment (and at slightly higher resolution: email me if you want a higher-res version). For the other several thousand of you, happy Christmas and all that. I've never been one to bother with paper…
December 15, 2007
What with yesterday's Simolestes picture-of-the-day article I couldn't resist but using - at last - this picture. It was taken by Mark Witton at the Oxford University Museum and depicts the immense pliosaur mandible OUM J.10454, a specimen that comes from the Kimmeridge Clay of Cumnor, Oxfordshire…
December 14, 2007
For shame, I have yet to cover Mesozoic marine reptiles in depth here at Tet Zoo: in another effort to bring balance, I here depict a skull of the awesome Jurassic pliosaur Simolestes vorax Andrews, 1909. The name means something like 'voracious snub-nosed robber'. This essentially complete skull…
December 13, 2007
In, as usual, a desperate effort to bring in the hits, I thought I'd go nuts and see what posting about the Loch Ness monster might do for my stats. Hey, maybe I could throw the word sex in there as well. There: sex, there, I said it again. But seriously... anyone who's anyone has heard of the…
December 11, 2007
You can knock it
You can rock it
You can go to Timbuktu
But you'll never find a nessie in the zoo
You may see an anaconda, or giraffe and kangaroo
But you'll never see a nessie in a zoo
More soon, really. For now, I'm afraid all you get is this poxy teaser post... plus some of the lyrics to The…
December 11, 2007
I'd like to talk about the filming of long-eared jerboas Euchoreutes naso (after all, I covered them on ver 1 back here), about the reclassification of Brontornis (again, covered on Tet Zoo ver 1 here), about Aaron Filler's new paper on bipedality in hominoids (see the PLoS pdf here), and about…
December 9, 2007
We are surrounded by annoying misconceptions about the diversity of animal life. For me, one of the most annoying and persistent of these is the idea that... drumroll... Australia is a 'land of marsupials' where - bar humans and introduced species like dingoes and rabbits - placental mammals have…
December 9, 2007
If you read the ceratosaurid article from yesterday (here), you'll understand what's going on here. I drew it in a diary in 1992 (specifically, on Wednesday 29th April 1992, the day I learnt that Toby the cat had died, and also the day on which the borg [of Star Trek: The Next Generation] made…
December 8, 2007
One of my most favourite dinosaurs has always been Ceratosaurus but, given that I mostly work on Lower Cretaceous dinosaurs, I've never had the chance to look at it much (Ceratosaurus is Upper Jurassic). Imagine my surprise then when, during a recent visit to Glasgow (Scotland), I was confronted…
December 7, 2007
Specializing on locomotor ecology*, my good, long-standing friend Mary Blanchard of the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology has been spending a lot of time on Madagascar over the past several years, and has been looking at a lot of wild lemurs. She has studied…
December 6, 2007
We returned late last night: it was a journey involving koalas, Pallas' cat and Asian golden cat, wolverines, rhinos, anteaters, Ceratosaurus, a toy armadillo, and yet again those bloody ichthyosaurs. Thanks to those who've been leaving comments in my absence, I'll address some of the points in…
November 30, 2007
Only time for a picture-of-the-day today, and this neat picture shows an Eastern red bat Lasiurus borealis, a mid-sized vesper bat (wingspan c. 300 mm) that occurs across most of eastern North America, some of northern South America, and parts of the Caribbean (in 2004 an individual was reported…
November 29, 2007
That weird little face was, indeed, that of a turtle - but it wasn't that of a matamata Chelus fimbriatus, it was instead that of a softshell turtle (a trionychid), and specifically that of a narrow-headed softshell Chitra indica (though read on). Well done Lars, Johannes and Emile, and…
November 28, 2007
Late in the evening I sat in an airport lounge, finally reading Robert Twigger's book on python hunting, my head full of Robert Appleby's legacy, fossil giraffes, giant mustelids, and the song from the end of Portal. I thought about the wolfhounds I'd seen, the bullfinches, stock doves and plovers…
November 24, 2007
I'm going away for a little while. I leave you with this nice picture of a male Fallow deer Dama dama, taken from Neil Phillips' collection of UK wildlife photos (and used with his permission)...
All deer are bizarre (I'll elaborate on that cryptic comment at some time), but Fallow deer are…
November 23, 2007
On to more of my thoughts about the TV series The Velvet Claw (part I is here). In the previous article, I discussed the art and animation used in the series, all of which was really quite good and very interesting in often featuring fairly obscure creatures...
There's one really important thing…
November 21, 2007
Those of us interested in the same subject often tend to have experienced the same sort of things. If you share my interests (as you probably do, given that you're here), you've probably watched a lot of Attenborough on TV. You've probably been to at least one of the bigger natural history museums…
November 19, 2007
If you're like me, you'll know the TV series, and/or the book, well...
Reminiscing about it now, it's impossible to forget how awesome it was. And it was so much more than a history of the carnivorans: it involved dinosaurs, mesonychians, pristichampsines, glyptodonts, future predators, and some…
