mammals
grrlscientist | March 29, 2008tags: American bison, Bos bison, mammals, animals, photography, image of the day
American bison bull.
Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [wallpaper size].
laelaps | March 28, 2008I find bones utterly fascinating, and I'm very happy to say that I have a spouse that understands and appreciates this. That's why when my wife spotted a dessicated deer carcass on the side of the road, she said "Do you want to stop and see it?" rather than "Eww!" It was what was left of young adult male deer, his antlers being relatively small, and just about all the internal organs had rotted away. The head was arched back over the vertebral column, the feet had fallen off the limbs, and the skin was a tough "jerky" that ran down its back, curling in on itself like a scroll.
The skeleton as…
laelaps | March 27, 2008According to a Daily Mail article released yesterday, a 19 lb. jawbone from an extinct elephant relative was found in an unmarked package in a bus compartment. There isn't much else to the story, except that the mandible was misidentified by the "expert" called to look at photos of the fossil (and hence the error was repeated in the newspaper). According to the report, the jaws were from a Triceratops;
Pablo de la Vera Cruz, an archeologist at the National University in Arequipa, said examined police photos of the fossil. He said: "The jawbone that was found could be from a triceratops, even…
edyong | March 26, 2008Would you gamble on a safe bet for the promise of something more? Would you risk losing everything for the possibility of greater rewards? In psychological experiments, humans tend to play it safe when we stand to gain something - we're more likely to choose a certain reward over a larger but riskier one. Now, we're starting to understand how our two closest relatives deal with risk - bonobos, like us, tend to be risk-averse while chimpanzees usually play the odds.
Sarah Heilbronner from Harvard University studied the attitudes of five chimps and five bonobos to risky decisions. All the…
laelaps | March 26, 2008
Puzzles, a 27 year old female giraffe that was a favorite at the Philadelphia zoo (see above), was euthanized last week. Puzzles was most easily identified by the mysterious growth on her neck, something that zoo officials said did not contribute to her declining health although no one ever seemed quite certain why the growth formed.
Unfortunately the zoo may euthanize another 28 year old giraffe named Twigga in the near future as well. The other giraffe being kept, Stella, is only 7, and the zoo staff is asking around to obtain another giraffe so Stella will not be left all alone.
The story…
laelaps | March 26, 2008
The mount of Brontotherium on display at the AMNH. Notice the healed rib.
During the field season of 1892, J.L. Wortman found the front half of an absolutely monstrous mammal. Entombed in the South Dakota sediment was the exquisitely preserved front half of a Titanotherium (now called Brontotherium, as far as I've been able to tell), an odd-toed ungulate that looked something like a rhino despite its closer affinity to horses. Much to the disappointment of Wortman and his assistant O.A. Peterson, however, the hips, hind limbs, and tail of the creature seemed to be eroded away, and a…
laelaps | March 24, 2008
An African civet (Civetticus civetta) that had been rescued and found a home at the Popcorn Park Zoo. I don't know the history of this particular animal, but civets are often "farmed" for civetone, an ingredient used in expensive perfumes that is found in a substance secreted from a gland near their anus (the civets aren't killed; a spoon is used in the process). Civetone can be created synthetically, but some companies still prefer the natural stuff, and strangely enough some wildlife biologists have found perfumes containing civetone to be useful to their research. Jaguars seem especially…
laelaps | March 19, 2008
Tai Shan, a giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
laelaps | March 17, 2008
A pair of wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) playing at the Bronx Zoo (I apologize that it's a bit blurry).
As you might have seen in the last post, my computers and camera were stolen this past weekend so I have lost 99% of all the photos I've taken over the past two years. I still have a few I had burned to discs, though, so even though I don't know when I'll be able to take more photographs (being I have no camera) I'll still have some fodder for the Photo of the Day.
laelaps | March 15, 2008... but this is ridiculous; [beware the blood & gore]
Although it's not clear how this giraffe died, the video does serve to illustrate an important point; spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) often hunt alone, and if an individual comes across a carcass there's more for them than if they had to share a kill with a hunting party. Such are the trade-offs that often direct hunting strategies; hunt alone and get a juicy giraffe to yourself every once in a while, or hunt in a group and get a piece of a carcass more regularly.
laelaps | March 14, 2008
A polar bear (Ursus maritimus) playing with two toys prepares to jump in the pool after throwing them in to the icy water.