mammals
edyong | October 13, 2009In the movie industry, special effects and computer-generated imagery are becoming better and more realistic. As they'd improve, you'd expect moviegoers to more readily accept virtual worlds and characters, but that's not always the case. It turns out that people are incredibly put off by images or animations of humans that strive for realism, but aren't quite there yet.
A character like Wall-E is lovable because he's clearly not human but has many human-like qualities and expressions. In contrast, the more realistic CG-characters of Beowulf or The Polar Express are far closer to reality but…
laelaps | October 12, 2009
The partial remains of a large animal entombed in a thermal feature in Yellowstone's Mud Volcano Area.
laelaps | October 11, 2009
The battered skull of a cougar (Puma concolor), photographed at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
edyong | October 10, 2009The white rhinoceros - the planet's second largest land mammal. Even though it's the most common of the five existing speceis of rhino, there are still just over 17,000 left in the wild. For comparison, more than five times as many humans pack into Wembley Arena when there's a match on. With that in mind, we felt lucky and priveleged to see these magnificent animals, not just once but on four separate occasions.
These photos come from the clearest daylight sighting (most were of far-off animals lurking behind thicket), when we followed two individuals for about ten minutes. As you can see,…
laelaps | October 9, 2009
Chucking stones at baboons; the first hominin passtime? From The Making of Man.
For the Australian anatomist Raymond Dart, the fossilized bones scattered among the caves of South Africa were testimonies to the murderous nature of early humans. The recovered skulls of baboons and our australopithecine relatives often looked as if they had been bashed in, and Dart believed the bones, teeth, and horns of slain game animals were the weapons hominins used to slaughter their prey. (He gave this sort of tool use the cumbersome name "osteodontokeratic culture.") Our origins had not been peaceful;…
laelaps | October 7, 2009
A male pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), photographed at Antelope Island, Utah.
laelaps | October 6, 2009When I wrote about the public unveiling of Ardipithecus ramidus (or "Ardi" to the public) last week I contrasted the description of the hominin with the bombastic rollout given to the lemur-like fossil primate "Ida" (Darwinius masillae) this past May. In the latter case it was clear that a media production company rushed the scientific process and overhyped the conclusions presented to the public, but now there are questions about the relationship between the scientists who described "Ardi" and the Discovery Channel.
This coming Sunday the Discovery Channel will air a special called "…
laelaps | October 6, 2009
A coyote (Canis latrans), photographed near Grizzly Lookout in Yellowstone National Park.
laelaps | October 4, 2009
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) enjoying a lunch of salad greens. Photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
When I first walked into the Bronx Zoo's recently-constructed Madagascar exhibit I was greeted by an unpleasant, but not unfamiliar, odor. It smelled like the ancient gym mats of my old high school's "wrestling room"; foam rubber pads that contained the sweat of several generations of pubescent grapplers. Yet the pungent stench in the zoo came from an entirely different kind of primate; lemurs.
Scents mean a lot to lemurs. They are strepsirrhine primates, or have wet, dog-like nostrils, and…
edyong | October 4, 2009Every weekend, I'm going to post new wildlife photos from our recent South African holiday. The vast majority will come from the four-day safari we went on, and what better way to start this series than with shots of an animal named Safari. She's a leopard, and undoubtedly one of the highlights of the trip. We crossed her path twice and on both, she was totally unperturbed by our presence. On our second encounter, she even posed for pictures, sitting gracefully atop a termite mound bathed in a golden sunset.
If you're wondering why this leopard in particular is so recognisable, here's the…
laelaps | October 2, 2009
Two restorations of "Ardi", a 45% complete skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus published in this week's issue of Science. Restorations (including the full skeletal restoration below) by artist Jay Matternes.
The stories of "Ida" and "Ardi" could hardly be more different.
Ida was a lemur-like primate that lived 47 million years ago in an area that is now Messel, Germany. Ardi was much closer to us; she was one of the earliest hominins and lived 4.4 million years ago in what would become known as Ethiopia.
When the bones of Ida were discovered they were held in a private collection for years…
laelaps | October 1, 2009It's Ardipithecus day! No, not that one, but the other one, Ardipithecus ramidus, which paleoanthropologists have been studying for the past 15 years. Over 45% of the skeleton of this hominin was found in the early 1990's, but outside of a brief initial description no further details about Ardipithecus ramidus had been published until today.
Later this afternoon Science will launch a webpage containing multiple print articles and online features chock-full of details about this early hominin. (Word has it that an entire University of California Press volume will be devoted to Ardipithecus…
gregladen | October 1, 2009Minnesota moose experts generally agree that global warming is forcing the southern edge of the distribution of the moose northward into Canada, threatening this important US population of this ginormous deer species. Global warming denialists insist that this is the moose's fault, and has nothing to do with global warming. This is the first of a two part look at this question.
This is an Alaskan moose. But someday he hopes to visit its relatives in Minnesota. If they live long enough...
Moose are one of five species of deer that are common in North America. (For those of you tuning in…
laelaps | September 29, 2009
I have been a little tied up with other writing duties today, so in lieu of a "normal" post here is another snapshot from my trip to the Bronx Zoo last weekend. It is of a young male gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) that came down to the moat to drink. He had just been involved in a major altercation. The entire troop went running after another young male who had gotten a little too close to a female spoken for by a larger male. The "fight" was more of a chase than anything else, though, and soon afterward most of the geladas went back to what they do best; eating grass.
laelaps | September 29, 2009
Three pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), an adult female and two juveniles, photographed in Grand Teton National Park.
gregladen | September 28, 2009We have had a cool summer here in Minnesota, and this has brought out the miscreants who for their own reasons do not want to get on board with the simple, well demonstrated scientific fact that global temperatures have risen, that we humans are the primary cause, and that this climate change has negative consequences.
There are probably different reasons people do not want to get on board with this reality. The main reason especially for younger individuals is that they have been told by their political mentors to not accept global warming. The political mentors, in turn, reject global…
laelaps | September 28, 2009For a handful of some of my favorite photos of big cats, check out this post on the website Paw Talk.
laelaps | September 28, 2009
A bison (Bison bison) near the side of the road on Antelope Island, Utah.
grrlscientist | September 28, 2009tags: nature, mammals, Antarctica, blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, National Geographic, streaming video
Researchers on a National Geographic expedition seek answer some mysteries surrounding Blue Whales, Balaenoptera musculus, and find tantalizing clues, but big questions remain unanswered.