Not Dead Animals - Weekly Recap

zooillogix — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:37:10 +0000

A quick wrap-up of the animals discovered not to be extinct this week:

Armoured mistfrog

This Armoured Mistfrog, thought by many experts to be extinct due to the recent amphibian chytrid fungus epidemic, was rediscovered by my boss, enterprise search god, Chris Cleveland, while he should have been working, on CNN. And more specifically, in a remote tropical area in northern Australia.

Tadpole Shrimp

Heavy rains in Scotland have created perfect conditions for the reemergence of the tadpole shrimp, thought extinct in the UK until recently. The little critter resembles a tiny horseshoe crab and lays eggs which can lie dormant in dry pools for decades, making this discovery maybe not so unexpected. Also called triops, these crustaceans are most notable for appearing in this awesome YouTube video.

Okapi (not wiped out by civil war)

While hoof prints and dung have been identified in the past, okapi in the wild have never been caught on film. Well the Zoological Society of London has finally done so, proving that the okapi does not actually possess the power of invisibility, the ZSL's previous working hypothesis. This close relative of the giraffe is a frequent target of poachers and publicity hungry ZSL cameramen.

Thanks to JP Berkery for cluing us into this last one.

zooillogix Thu, 09/11/2008 - 12:37

Sea Monkeys on Steroids

zooillogix — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:57:00 +0000

Sea Monkeys on Steroids

Triops australiensis
Where the hell were these things when I was a kid? Triops are small crustaceans in the class branchiopoda, that grow quickly and massively, reaching three inches or longer at full size. Their external appearance has apparently not changed since the appearance of Triops cancrifromis, 220 million years ago in the Triassic Period. This may make the Triops, also called tadpole shrimp or shield shrimp, the oldest living animal species on earth.

An adorable triops eating a piece of corn. This playful behavior in juveniles has a very practical application in adulthood, when Triops must lay eggs in struggling humans' stomachs.

Although a few Triops' populations are evenly divided between the male and female sex, the vast majority are entirely female and reproduce through parthenogenesis. In this case, that means that the egg and embryo grow without fertilization from a male. However, all female Triops populations aren't the harmonious societies NOW might have you believe. Cannibalization of young Triops is common and even freshly molted adult Triops often find themselves the victims of their not so freshly-molted brethren.

Learn more about Triops from Stuart Halliday, a Scotsman who has devoted himself to the ungrateful critters. You can purchase your very own prehistoric beasty from American Science Surplus. Finally, thanks to our friends at Shinka3 (Japanese animal blog) for bringing the critters to our attention.

zooillogix Wed, 06/20/2007 - 08:57