crocodile
dr. dolittle | October 23, 2015 Image from Wikimedia Commons
Researchers from La Trobe University and Max Planck Institute for Ornithology recorded young crocodiles and found that while the animals typically sleep with both eyes closed, in the morning hours they will sometimes open one eye periodically. If they placed another crocodile in the tank or stood nearby however, the animal would open one eye and look at the newcomer.
It was noted in the article that certain birds and aquatic mammals will likewise sleep with one eye open, with only half their brain staying awake. This is known as unihemispheric sleep. This…
gregladen | September 21, 2015Every now and then an animal shows up where it is unexpected. Why just the other day a black bear had to be coaxed out of a tree down by the middle school, a couple of blocks form here. Even though our marshes, woodlands, and small patches of prairie house cougars, coyotes, deer, and all the smaller critters, both bears and wolves are not at present endemic to the Twin Cities suburbs.
When the unexpected appearance of a wild animal happens, there are usually one three factors at play. A migratory animal (typically a bird) is a bit off course, or lands where it normally flies over. The…
laelaps | May 21, 2010
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
Outside of the trash-grubbing black bears I occasionally come across when driving to hikes in northern New Jersey, I never encounter large predators near my home. The imposing carnivores which once roamed the "garden state" were extirpated long ago. This is a very unusual thing. For the majority of the past six million years or so hominins have lived alongside, and have regularly been hunted by, an array of large carnivorous animals, but humans have not been entirely helpless. Rather than a one-…
laelaps | March 18, 2010
A photograph and line drawing (left side) of the fossil dolphin Astadelphis gastaldii. The crescent-shaped line in the line drawing represents the bite of a large shark, with the red portions representing damage done directly to the bone. From Bianucci et al, 2010.
Shark attacks are events of speed and violence. When they have locked on to a prey item sharks seem to come out of nowhere, and though they can be quite gentle with their jaws (as on occasions when they are unsure about whether something is food or not) their ranks of serrated teeth can inflict a devastating amount of damage.…
laelaps | February 24, 2010
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
No one knew what happened to William Olson. At about three in the afternoon on April 13, 1966 he had been swimming with his friends from the Peace Corps in the part of the Baro river that ran through Gambela, Ethiopia when he suddenly disappeared. The last person to remember seeing him was hunter Karl Luthy. One moment Olson was standing in the river, pressing his body against the current, and the next he was gone.
Luthy could not be sure, but he was almost certain that Olson had been taken by a…
gregladen | October 23, 2009One day, about six thousand years ago (or more like 15 thousand ? the timing of this is disputed) a volcano in the vicinity of Mwea, Uganda blasted a huge volume of stuff into the air, covering the surrounding landscape and choking off most of the life forms living in a nearby lake. (A very nearby lake ? the current configuration of the lake suggests that the volcano may have actually been beneath the lake at the time of the eruption).
A repost
Over a very short period of time, we can presume that the land animals that would have been wiped out by this eruption returned to the area,…
laelaps | March 23, 2009
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo.
bleimanb | February 26, 2009Recent conservation efforts in the Florida Everglades to save the American crocodile from the brink of extinction have been effective: good thing. Territorial crocodiles hanging out in Floridian's back yards, however: bad thing. The worst part? Once a crocodile is removed from its favorite haunt, it will travel tens, sometimes hundreds of miles to return, using the Earth's magnetic field as a guide. Now the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has turned to an interesting method of deterring the crocs' return once they have been relocated - taping magnets to the crocodiles' heads…
zooillogix | July 21, 2008In a sure sign that Kruger National Park in South Africa is angling to be the World Wrestling Federation of game reserves, yet another unlikely and brutal animal match-up has been caught on film. In this series of photos, a leopard ambushes a crocodile. A protracted struggle ensues but it's pretty clear who ultimately comes out on top. While crocodiles have been witnessed attacking leopards in the past, this is the first known encounter that began the other way around. Cut and pasted just for you from the pages of The Telegraph, check this out:
more below the fold
This encounter is…
bleimanb | June 26, 2008In a new discovery published in the current issue of the science affairs journal Current Biology , new research reveals that unborn baby crocodiles begin communicating to each other and their mothers moments before they are born.
He can talk. He can talk. He can talk....I CAN SINNNNNNNG!!!
It is believed that the noises, described as "umph, umph, umph," help to syncronize the hatch and signal to the mother that it's time to start preparing for her brood's emergence in the big bad world.
Scientists Amelie Vergne and Nicolas Mathevon of the French Universite Jean Monnet discovered the…
edyong | March 14, 2008Crocodiles and alligators are the epitome of stealth. They can wait motionlessly for prey on the surface of the water, dive to the bottom, or roll around the length of their bodies, all without creating a single ripple.
This sneaky manoeuvrability is all the more impressive for the fact that a crocodilian can pull it off without moving its legs or tail. It's particularly difficult because a waiting crocodilian has to move slowly and methodically, and must make do without the helpful forces of lift and drag that accompany faster movements.
Now, for the first time, we know how they do it. They…
bleimanb | December 17, 2007While we're on the topic, we thought you might enjoy these videos of electric eels using their super powers to defend the world from evil. It's a Christmas miracle!
What's up now, son? Does that feel good? Who's the punk now, son? Who's the punk now?
Oh please, don't eat me Mr. Crocodile. I am just so scar-- Psych!!!
laelaps | October 19, 2007
If it wasn't apparent already, I'm a sucker for monster movies, especially ones involving oversized crocodilians. The vast majority of them are absolutely horrible (like tomorrow's movie of the week, Supercroc), but next month (Nov. 8) a more promising feature from the director of Wolf Creek will be coming out. The film is called Rogue, and while it follows the basic killer croc formula (come on, how many original story lines about giant man-eating suchians can you come up with?) it seems like it's actually going to be scary and enjoyable, unlike the cheese-fest that was Primeval.
In fact…
zooillogix | May 23, 2007Kruger National Park in South Africa is a renowned location for observing some of Africa's most famous wildlife. Here we have all of that wildlife fighting one another, all at once. Basically this is Kruger's equivalent of a WWE event. Watch it through to the end or at least minute seven or so.