mammals
laelaps | February 14, 2008
Banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) are a gregarious animals that, like some of their close relatives, use termite mounds for food and shelter. They are one of the few animals I've featured here that are not presently threatened or at risk of extinction, and a WWF map of the range of the species indicates that banded mongoose inhabit the majority of sub-Saharan Africa.
laelaps | February 13, 2008
"It is little wonder, then, why this great creature failed to continue its lineage: with no ears, it could not sustain a top hat upon its head, and thereby expired from lack of common dignity." A cartoon featuring Koch's "Hydrarchos," cobbled together from several Basilosaurus skeletons. [Update: I've been told that this cartoon is from Married to the Sea, whereas I had assumed that it was so old that it was public domain (I just had it sitting around in my pictures file and I don't remember where it came from). I'll err on the side of caution: Married to the Sea.]
Yesterday was the…
laelaps | February 13, 2008
Paleontological reconstruction can often be a bit of a gamble, especially if the specimen you're working with is incomplete. In most of the newer books about prehistoric animals I had when I was young, Pakicetus was often reconstructed as a stubby, seal-like creature, and the AMNH reconstruction followed the trend. Fortunately for paleontologists, more complete material has come out of the ground in recent years, causing a total revision of what Pakicetus looked like.
While still not entirely complete, the newer skull material shows that the reconstruction pictured above is incorrect on a…
laelaps | February 9, 2008
Given the diversity of lemurs on the island of Madagascar, it's not surprising that some of them have more specialized diets. Bamboo lemurs (Hapalemur sp.) are among the specialist species, their diet consisting almost entirely of bamboo. This diet results in them ingesting a considerable amount of cyanide, although the reason for their immunity to the effects of cyanide is still unknown. There are several species, the most common being Hapalemur griseus, and compared to other lemurs this species appears to be at less risk of extinction. The IUCN entry for H. griseus notes that the status of…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2008tags: hedgehog, mammals, animals, photography, subway art, AMNH, NYC, NYCLife
I think this is a species of hedgehog,
as portrayed in tiles on the walls of the NYC uptown subway stop (A-B-C)
at 81st and Central Park West. (ISO, no zoom, no flash).
Image: GrrlScientist 2008. [wallpaper size].
Read more about the AMNH tile artworks and see the AMNH tile artworks photographic archives -- with all the animals identified.
laelaps | February 7, 2008
This is a photo I took a little less than a year ago of Tai Shan, a giant panda cub (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. You can see the pandas at the National Zoo via a webcam on the official website.
jlynch | February 6, 2008
A mother Minke whale and her year-old calf are dragged on board a Japanese whaling ship after being harpooned in Antarctic waters. The picture was taken from an Australian customs vessel tracking the whalers to gather evidence for possible legal action to stop the annual slaughter. [Photo: AFP]
grrlscientist | February 4, 2008tags: felidae, Sumatran tiger, Panthera tigris sumatrae, mammals, Image of the Day
The Sumatran Tiger, Panthera tigris sumatrae,
is under threat of extinction. There are only 100-300 left in the wild
with 20 occurring in Harapan, Sumatra.
Image: Dave Watts [larger view].
laelaps | February 4, 2008
The grey-faced sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis). From Rovero, et al. (2008).
Several years ago, while on a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo, I first saw a creature I had never heard of before; the black and rufus sengi (Rhynchocyon petersi). The exhibit caption simply called it a giant elephant shrew, and even though I was familiar with smaller members of the Macroscelididae like the short-eared elephant shrew (Macroscelides proboscideus), I had never seen their giant relatives. This perhaps represents my own ignorance of the group known as Afrotheria, but the discovery of a new species of…
laelaps | February 4, 2008
The above photograph is of the forelimb claws of the giant ground sloth Megalonyx wheatleyi, first named by E.D. Cope in 1871. The genus name for this animal was assigned to a similar animal at the close of the previous century, however, Megalonyx first being assigned to fossils that first found their way into the possession of Thomas Jefferson around 1797. Jefferson first inferred the giant claws to be from some gigantic, ancient big cat,* but shortly after he formally described the find it was compared with the giant sloth Megatherium that Cuvier had described earlier. The similarities…
jlynch | February 1, 2008Readers who saw my post yesterday about cat domestication may be interested to see that Greg Laden has posted on the paper. Greg’s view is that "[t]he conclusion the authors draw about cat origins is very weak ... but the information this study provides about cat breed genetics is excellent and will be of value [to?] cats around the world."
laelaps | February 1, 2008
Smilodon is perhaps the most famous of all the saber-toothed cats, but the level of notoriety it has received has led to a number of misunderstandings. As a child I remember hearing in a documentary (complete with somewhat hokey stop-motion giant sloths) that sabercats became extinct because their teeth grew so long that they could not close their mouths. I did not know it at the time, but this fallacious idea had been around for quite some time, and was quite surprised to find an effective refutation of it when I read G.G. Simpson's popular book The Meaning of Evolution (1950);
The…
jlynch | January 31, 2008
A recently published study has used microsatelite markers to discover that domesticated cats originated in the Middle East, a finding that reinforces earlier archeological research. The abstract reads:
The diaspora of the modern cat was traced with microsatellite markers from the presumed site of domestication to distant regions of the world. Genetic data were derived from over 1100 individuals,representing 17 random-bred populations from five continents and 22 breeds. The Mediterranean was reconfirmed to be the probable site of domestication. Genetic diversity has remained broad throughout…
grrlscientist | January 31, 2008tags: bats, little brown bats, Indiana bats, white nose syndrome, cavers, Alan Hicks
Hibernating bats suffering from the mysterious "White Nose Syndrome" (arrows).
Image: Alan Hicks, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation [larger view]
If you live in New York or Vermont, then you might have heard about the mystery disease that is killing tens of thousands of bats hibernating in caves and mines throughout these two states. The disease has been given the descriptive appellation, "white nose syndrome" because its most obvious symptom (besides death), is the peculiar ring of white fungus…
jlynch | January 31, 2008
This is a grey-faced sengi, Rhynchocyon udzungwensis, a new species of giant elephant shrew that has been described in the February issue of Journal of Zoology (Lond.) (on whose editorial board I sit). It's a 700g beastie, so it is hefty for an elephant shrew.
Photo by AFP & California Academy of Sciences.
laelaps | January 31, 2008
Two grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) playing in a pool at the Bronx zoo.
grrlscientist | January 30, 2008tags: drug use, lemurs, streaming video
This streaming video from Animal Planet reveals that Madagascar's lemurs also use drugs to get high -- but instead of peyote buttons or magic mushrooms, they use a poison produced by the millipede [1:55]
laelaps | January 30, 2008
The black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) is one of two species of ruffed lemur (Varecia sp.), although there may be as many as three subspecies of the black-and-white variety. Like many other lemur species, the black-and-white ruffed lemur is presently endangered, populations existing at relatively low densities throughout its range on the island of Madagascar.
laelaps | January 29, 2008
Gobiconodon ostromi was a triconodont mammal found in both North America and Asia during the early Cretaceous. It was rather large for an early Cretaceous mammal, the skull being about 10 cm long.