mammals
laelaps | July 9, 2008
A Wolf's Guenon (Cercopithecus wolfi). Photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.
laelaps | July 8, 2008
A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta). Photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.
laelaps | July 6, 2008
A pair of ring-tailed mongoose (Galidia elegans). Photographed in the Madagascar exhibit at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.
laelaps | July 4, 2008
Edouard de Montule's 1816 painting of the mastodon reconstructed in the Peale Museum. Note the down-turned tusks which were later turned the right way up.
Thomas Jefferson had an axe to grind when he wrote his Notes on the State of Virginia in 1781. Twenty years earlier the French naturalist Buffon had published the 9th volume of his epic series Histoire naturelle in which he compared the great, ferocious beasts of the Old World with the pitiful creatures found in the New World;
In general, all the animals there [in the Americas] are smaller than those of the old world, & there is not…
laelaps | July 4, 2008
A polar bear (Ursus maritimus) playing catch with itself, photographed at the Bronx zoo in the spring of 2008.
[As a side note, I'll probably head back to the Bronx zoo tomorrow to get some new photographs. The forecast is calling for thunderstorms but I'll probably go anyway; I just can't say no to fossas.]
laelaps | July 2, 2008
A white-tailed deer fawn (Odocoileus virginianus), photographed in the summer of 2007.
laelaps | June 30, 2008
An Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), photographed in the summer of 2007 at the Bronx zoo.
edyong | June 24, 2008In 1994, a third of the lions in the Serengeti were killed off by a massive epidemic of canine distemper virus (CDV), an often fatal infection that affects a wide range of carnivorous mammals. Seven years later, a similar epidemic slashed the lion population in the nearby Ngorongoro Crater. While CDV was undoubtedly involved, the scale of the deaths was unprecedented. What was it about the 1994 and 2001 epidemics that claimed so many lives?
Now, a team of scientific detectives led by Linda Munson from the University of California Davis, have solved the mystery. It turns out that the lions'…
laelaps | June 24, 2008
The backside of a Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) at the Bronx Zoo. This particular species is the largest of the living species of zebra and can be easily identified by its smaller stripes. Photographed in May 2007.
laelaps | June 23, 2008
Two grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) playing in their pool at the Bronx Zoo. Photographed in May 2007.
laelaps | June 20, 2008
AO-4, from the Marine Mammal Science announcement. (arrow added)
On October 28, 2006, fisherman that were capturing individuals of a group of 118 bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) near Taiji, Japan for exploitation in aquaria noticed something peculiar about one of the captured individuals. While the vast majority of dolphins have only two front flippers one particular female had a set of small pelvic flippers. Many whales (particularly baleen whales) have the vestiges of hips and leg bones inside their bodies but a whale with external pelvic fins is an even rarer find. A new paper…
laelaps | June 20, 2008During my first visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York the only thing that impressed me more than the skeletons of the dinosaurs was the sculpture of the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), posed in a dive above the Hall of Ocean Life. I had seen pictures of blue whales in books and eagle-eye views of them in documentaries, but the sheer size of the cetacean astounded me (especially because I was still so small!). No trip to the museum is complete without at least peeking into the recently refurbished Milstein Hall of Ocean Life to see the whale, but what most people don…
laelaps | June 20, 2008For those of you who subscribe to Natural History there is an excellent article (featuring the always astounding artwork of Mauricio Anton) about the evolution of canids in the new issue. If such a short article on ancient dogs and their relatives isn't enough for you, though, you're in luck. Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History by Wang & Tedford has just been let off the chain and I can't wait to pick up a copy.
edyong | June 18, 2008In my last post, I wrote about how chimpanzees console one another to reduce the stress of violent confrontations. Conflict and competition are clearly important parts of chimp life and never more so than when sex is involved. The second study this week on the social lives of chimps demonstrates one of the strategies that female chimps use to avoid competition in some cases, and stir it up in others.
It comes down to sex calls - distinctive calls that female chimps make while mating. New research shows that they do this to advertise their availability to other males and garner both sperm and…
laelaps | June 18, 2008
An illustration of Koch's reconstructed "Missourium."
On January 12, 1839, an interesting article appeared in the pages of pages of the Philadelphia paper the Presbyterian. Written by Albert Koch (although it appeared in the paper as unsigned), the article made the bold claim that the remains of a mammoth had been discovered along with stone tools in Gasconade country, Missouri, proving that Native Americans had lived alongside the extinct animals. Looking at vestiges of the ancient hunt, Koch proposed that the mammoth had sunk into mud or some other trap and keeled over at which point the…
edyong | June 17, 2008Humans are intelligent and social animals. We are devious in fending off competition, we use guile and strategy to attract partners, and we extend acts of kindness towards friends in need. Many people suffer through the inanity of reality TV for the odd glimpse of these social interactions. But humans aren't the only animals with complex social lives - those of chimps are just as fascinating and news of their exploits can be found in scientific journals.
Just this week, two new papers shed new light on the rich social lives of chimps. They are filled with just as much drama and deception…
laelaps | June 17, 2008
An Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus), photographed in New York on June 14, 2008.
grrlscientist | June 12, 2008tags: wapiti, Desert elk, Cervus canadensis, mammals, nature, Image of the Day
My good friend, Dave Rintoul, has just returned from a much-deserved vacation camping in the Chiricahuas and Gila Wilderness area and sent a couple images to share with you.
Wapiti, Cervus canadensis, grazing at sunset with Chaco Canyon's Fajada Butte in the background. Desert elk... Who knew?
Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view].
laelaps | June 9, 2008
This past fall my friends Julia and Neil were kind enough to obtain a signed copy of the new book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters for me from the annual SVP meeting. Although I had not heard of the author, Dr. Donald Prothero, prior to reading the book I was certainly impressed with the wide selection of subjects he ably covered in the text. Little did I know that he is been a prolific author and researcher, some of his other recent published work being After the Dinosaurs and The Evolution of Artiodactyls. From microfossils to mammals, Prothero has studied a wide variety…
laelaps | June 9, 2008Last fall I was saddened to learn that the Yangtze River dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) is probably extinct. Today it was announced that the Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis), last seen in the 1950's, is most likely extinct as well. The Endangered Species Protection Act came too late for these marine mammals (the last sighting was in 1952 and the seals were listed as endangered in 1967), and it is possible that they were entirely extinct before they even received protected status.
The two extant species of monk seal, the Hawaiian (Monachus schauinslandi) and Mediterranean (Monachus…