Life Photo Meme: Silly

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Monotremata

Family: Tachyglossidae

This silly-looking animal is the short-beaked echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus. There are only two types of echidnas in the world, the long and short-beaked. The short beaked echidna is found in Australia and the long beaked in New Guinea. Like the platypus, their beak has electrical sensors, which they use to find ants and other creepy-crawlies in the dirt. Like the other monotremes the adults lack teeth, so after catching their ants with their long sticky tongue, they crush them with hard plates on the roof of their mouth.

They also lay eggs. The female lays an egg during breeding season, but will then carry that egg around in a pouch until it hatches. She can deposit it down a burrow, if she needs to leave to go forging. The newly hatched echidna is only the size of a jellybean and will hitch a ride on top of the mother’s pouch.

Their paws are quite interesting. The front paws have long claws for digging, but the back ones are very strange. They curve backwards, so the animal is walking on the top of their foot. This backwards curve helps the animal push dirt out and away from the hole it is digging. They also posses an unusually long claw that curves farther out on each foot. This set of claws is used for grooming; it’s so long, so it can get in between the stiff guard hair spines. Despite the grooming, echidnas are home to the world’s largest species of fleas, which is 4mm long (0.15 in).

Bats!

While wandering the internet, I came across this post by Carl Zimmer which was all about bats in motion. If you've ever wanted to know how bats fly, land, and feed, go over to The Loom and check it out. There are some truly amazing videos in slow motion that shows all those things and more... Really one of the best posts I've read in a while.

Photohunter: Chipped

I think this qualifies as 'chipped'. This big cat toy looks like it has been thoroughly enjoyed by its owner. This toy was probably put in the enclosure as part of an enrichment program. Enrichment is when you try to provide opportunities for an animal to act naturally. It could be as simple as providing a nutritional treat, hiding food around the enclosure, giving toys, or re-arranging the 'furniture' (logs, ropes, sheets, etc.) in the enclosure to create new places to hide or climb. Enrichment is just that, something to enrich the animal's well-being.

And you can see that this is one content kitty...

Life Photo Meme: New

Kingdom: Animlia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Rodentia

Family: Sciuridea

I am not exactly sure what kind of squirrel this is, but I suspect that it is a California Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi). These guys seem to be exploiting a new habitat, as humans tend to give them peanuts along the rocky coast area. They seem to live under the rubble provided to shore up the shoreline.

This is not a new photo, but one that I took a couple of weeks ago on my last collecting trip. I am currently on a collecting trip in Washington and Oregon, so expect new photos from that when I get back!

Life Photo Meme: Royal

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Family: Felidae

The lion (Panthera leo) has long been know as the king of the jungle. It is the second largest cat, with males weighing in at 250 kg (550 lbs) and about 2 m (6 ft) in length. However, this is nothing compared to the ancient American lion, the largest lions ever to have existed at 300 kg (660 lbs) and 2.5 m (8 ft).

Most people know about the superb hunting skills that the lionesses practice, and that the males basically do nothing but defend their pride from other male lions. Lions are the only cat to have sexual dimorphism, as the males have a distinctive mane. Some relatively recent research had some interesting things to say about the mane, in terms of selection and possible purpose. They found that males with darker longer manes were more likely to win male competitions, and be successful at mating. So, males may be able to size up their competition by comparing manes. But, males with darker manes had more difficulties in hotter weather conditions, to the extreme that their sperm can be come deformed. Of course, there is the idea that having a handicap to over come means that you are very healthy, and would make a good mate (think peacock tails). The original study can be found here.

Cloning mammoths?!

There's a really interesting article in November's issue of Nature. The author Henry Nicholls answers the question what would it take to clone a mammoth. This is more of an intellectual exercise than an actual doable process at the moment, but only because they don't have the entire genome of the mammoth sequenced yet.

I was very impressed with the detail and clarity of the article, it brought up questions that I never considered. When making a mammoth, figuring out the genome is a relatively easy task. It's fairly easy to read the genes, but which genes go on which chromosomes? How do you then turn that huge library of letters into a set number of chromosomes, when you have no idea what that number is? And what about mitochondria? Those organelles are not built by instructions contained in the nucleus, but are transferred from mother to offspring (in rare cases, the fathers contribute some too). Nicholls does a wonderful job of laying out the problems and suggesting solutions based on research techniques that are currently being used for other (but similar) purposes.

So if you want to know what would be involved in building a mammoth, or you are just interested in learning about some cutting-edge research in cellular biology, check out this article.

Life photo meme: endangered tasmanian devils

Kingdom: Animalia

Phlyum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Dasyuromorphia

Family: Dasyuridae

This is the Tasmanian Devil or Sarcophilu harrisii. They are found on the island of Tasmania, however they used to roam all of Australia. They were hunted on Tasmania up until they became protected in the 1940's. They were seen as a threat to the livestock, despite the fact that they are mainly carrion eaters, and rarely hunt. They are the largest carnivorous marsupial since the extinction of the "Tasmanian wolf" or Thylacine in the late 1930's.

The current populations of Tasmanian devils has been upgraded from vulnerable to endangered just this year. The decline in devil numbers has been drastic, with a estimated drop in numbers from 150,000 to 50,000-20,000 individuals in just ten years. The cause is a particularly virulent cancer which causes facial tumors on the devils. Once contracted, they die within a year to a year and a half.

The cancer can be spread from one devil to the next by contact (mainly bites). As matings frequently involve biting, and feeding is highly social (devils will call others to a meal) the disease has spread very easily and rapidly. Researchers have been working hard to figure out this issue, and they have found that because the devil's numbers were so reduced, that their immune system is not very genetically diverse (esp. MHC genes). Because of this cancerous cells from an infected individual are not rejected by a healthy individual because they are not considered foreign cells by the healthy individual's immune system [1, 2].

In an interesting response to this decreased life expectancy, the devil population is undergoing a shift in sexual maturity. Devils used to reach sexual maturity at two years of age. Now a high proportion of the population is sexually maturing at one year of age. This shift gives them a better chance to mate and produce offspring before they die [3].