mammals
laelaps | May 1, 2008
A cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) photographed at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. last year.
laelaps | April 29, 2008
A group of Patagonian maras (Dolichotis patagonum), photographed last year at the Cape May Zoo.
laelaps | April 28, 2008
A spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), photographed last year at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.
laelaps | April 26, 2008
A female Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) photographed last year at the Bronx Zoo.
grrlscientist | April 25, 2008tags: David Attenborough, pika, Ochotonidae, behavior, streaming video
This streaming video shows David Attenborough bonding with a Pika, beginning by presenting it with a floral bouquet [3:20].
laelaps | April 25, 2008
A pair of red pandas (Ailurus fulgens) photographed last year at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.
laelaps | April 23, 2008
A female cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) photographed last year at the National Zoo in Washington D.C.
laelaps | April 22, 2008
Although not as aquatically-adapted as their distant ancestors, Indian elephants are certainly capable swimmers.
A number of my fellow ScienceBloggers have covered the "Aquatic Elephant Hypothesis" lately (see here, here, and here), and even though I'm a little late to the party I thought that I'd throw in my two cents about the significance of ancient, waterlogged pachyderms.
The idea that the ancestors of elephants (including the two living genera Loxodonta and Elephas) were aquatic at some point in the past has been circulating for a number of years now, especially given the close…
laelaps | April 22, 2008
A white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) photographed last year at the Philadelphia Zoo.
grrlscientist | April 21, 2008tags: raccoon, Procyon lotor, Image of the Day
Central Park raccoon, Procyon lotor.
Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George [larger].
Bob Levy writes:
It's a little known fact but an incontrovertible one. Having had the opportunity to closely study the Central Park Raccoon population it did not take me long to discover that it is common for them to greatly exaggerate their exploits and accomplishments. In this image I was able to capture one typical example. Tsk, tsk. What a fibber. I was there. It was half that size.
laelaps | April 17, 2008When Linnaeus was attempting to organize "the Creation," he gave the chimpanzee the binomial Homo troglodytes. Since Edward Tyson's 1699 dissection of a "pigmie" (a juvenile chimpanzee [see Gould's essay "To Show An Ape" in The Flamingo's Smile]), the close resemblance between apes and humans has been recognized, even if a recognition of our actual evolutionary relationship has been harder won.
Sometimes Tyson's landmark work is heralded as a true understanding of the relationship between humans and apes, but in fact it was primarily an attempt to weld on a "missing link" in the Great Chain…
laelaps | April 16, 2008
The extinct "saber-toothed" creodont Hyaenodon.
During the middle Eocene, about 49 to 37 million years ago, the largest meat-eating mammal from what would become of the Wind River Formation of Wyoming was Malfelis badwaterensis. Although a cursory glance at the fossil remains of this animal might suggest it was related to dogs or cats (which are living carnivorans), Malfelis was actually a creodont, belonging to an extinct group of meat-eating mammals that may have shared a common ancestor with the carnivorans (see the comment by johannes below). Although people who are not actively…
laelaps | April 14, 2008Spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) have a bad reputation; they look strange, they have an unnerving repertoire of yips and yowls, the females have a pseudo-penis, and they are often portrayed as ruthless scavengers. I actually like hyenas quite a bit, and although not much can be done about their looks, they are not simply mangy scavengers that steal kills from the more "noble" lions (Panthera leo). Alone or in groups, hyenas are effective hunters, and lions try to steal hyena kills just as hyenas will compete for lion kills (the relationship between the two carnivores varies from place to place…