Top Ten Most Interesting Arboreal Mammals (Part 1)

Today, in honor of the birthday of Charlie Bowers, we are going to be taking a "Top Ten" approach to some pretty cool arboreal mammals.  FYI, for those of you who don't know, arboreal means an animal that lives in the trees!  So let's dive right in!  For Part 2 of this duology, click HERE.

10.  Squirrel - Although a fairly common animal and really not that exciting at first glance, the squirrel is actually quite the exciting animal!  Incredibly acrobatic, the squirrel is superbly adapted for an arboreal lifestyle.  Need more proof?  Click the link right HERE to be amazed!

One of the koalas at the San Diego Zoo in California.  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

9.  Koala -  Other than the kangaroo, the koala is probably the most iconic Australian marsupial.  Many myths abound in regards to the koala.  For example, many people believe that the koala is constantly "adjusting its altitude," so to speak, due to something in the leaves of the eucalyptus trees that they consume.  While it seems quite likely that the koala is constantly baked due to its lackadaisical attitude, it's not actually true: the koala just spends a great deal of its day asleep in order to digest the tough vegetation that composes its diet.  As a matter of fact, the 20-22 hours a day the koala sleeps makes it the sleepiest  mammal!  (For more information about the koala and its digestion, click HERE). 

8.  Primates - Perhaps the order of mammals that is most superbly adapted to a life in the trees, the primates include everything from the aye-aye to the orangutan, from the tarsier to us humans!  Thought to have started evolving in North America or Asia around 65 MYA or so, before even the dinosaurs died out, today there are over 200 extant species, with new ones still being discovered, like the lesula monkey that was discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2012 (pictured above).

7.  Binturong - Often called the "Bear-cat," the binturong is the largest of the strange group of animals known as the civets.  (For more about civets and their relatives, click HERE).  Native to southeastern Asia, the binturong is omnivorous, but seems to consume fruit the most in its diet, and is particularly partial to figs.  Although the binturong is labeled as "Critically Endangered" in China, the IUCN labels the species as a whole as merely "Vulnerable."

6.  Sloth - When you hear the word "sloth," you might think of someone or something being lazy.  There is a very good reason for that association: the sloth is quite sloth!  As David Attenborough says in the excellent BBC production "Life of Mammals," "The sloth moves as if it's powered by the wrong sort of batteries."  Sleeping around 20 hours a day, the sloth is the second sleepiest mammal, right after the koala.  While it sleeps, the sloth hangs upside down from tree branches.  Sounds like a lot of work, right?  Actually, it really isn't: the sloth simply hooks its claws over the tree branch, and relaxes all of its muscles.  If a human hunter shoots a sloth hanging from a tree, it will usually simply remain hanging from the tree branch, anchored by its claws!  Then the hunter actually has to physically climb up into the tree to retrieve its prize!

Top Ten Mammals That Look Like Something They Aren't (Part 1)

Today, we are going to be taking a "Top Ten" look at some mammals that look a lot like something they aren't.  Sometimes, these two animals are fairly closely related: other times, they are quite far apart!  All of these examples will be results of a fascinating phenomenon known as "Convergent Evolution," which is where similar ecological and environmental factors cause two very different animals to evolve in a similar fashion.  So let's dive right in!  But first, this is the birthday post of Joseph Kleinkopf, happy birthday Joseph! (For Part 2, animals 5-1 of the countdown, click HERE.)

10.  Bear Dogs - As their name implies, the bear-dogs are a group of mammalian carnivores that greatly resemble both bears and dogs.  However, they are neither!  According to The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives by Alan Turner, they are thought to be fairly closely related to dogs, and more distantly related to bears.  Their remains are most commonly found in North America, although they are also found in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Temporally, these animals lived during the Miocene Epoch, and are though to have arisen about 15 MYA, and fallen into extinction around 12 million years ago (MYA).

9.  Entelodonts - The Entelodonts, frequently referred to as "Hell" or "Terminator Pigs" greatly resemble the extant (still around, opposite of extinct) pigs and peccaries.  However, they are in a separate family from both the pigs and the peccaries, the family Entelodontidae, but all three do reside in the order Artiodactyla.  Some paleontologists believe that these guys are more closely related to whales and their relatives than pigs, but their exact phylogenetic relationship is unclear.  They inhabited North America and Europe during the Oligocene Epoch, around 34-32 MYA. 

8.  Hyrax - This little guy looks like he would be a rodent, but his true relatives are actually much more surprising!  Weighing between about 5 and 10 pounds, the hyraxes are actually fairly closely related to the members of the family Proboscidea, or the elephants and their relatives!  The extant hyraxes have their own family, Hyracoidea, but their ancient ancestors are thought to have branched into the extant hyraxes, the elephants and kin, and most likely the manatee and its relatives!  Hyraxes are found exclusively in Africa and the Middle East.

7.  Red Panda - The red panda has a long history of uncertainty in regards to its phylogenetic relationship to other animals, as has its namesake, the giant panda.  However, now we know that the giant panda is in the family Ursidae, or the bear family, and the red panda is now classified in its own family, Ailuridae, closely related to the mustelids, raccoons, and more, distantly bears.  For more information about the red panda, click HERE.  For more information about the giant panda, click HERE.

6.  Rabbits and Pikas - Even up until just a few years ago, I had assumed that the rabbits and the pikas were both rodents.  They look a lot like them, and they share the trait of continually growing teeth.  However, the members of the order Lagomorpha, which is the order that includes the rabbits and the pikas, differs from the order Rodentia in that they possess four incisors, as opposed to two for the rodents.  Furthermore, most rodents are omnivorous, while the lagomorphs are almost entirely strictly herbivorous.

For Part 2, animals 5-1 of the countdown, click HERE.

And remember, if you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animal, and I will do my best to get a post in! 

Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 4.5)

As some of you may know, right now, we are in the midst of a lis of my  top ten favorite dinosaurs.  However, on December 7th, a new dinosaur was announced, and it has immediately made my top ten list if it is, in fact, a dinosaur, which is currently being debated.  Therefore, I have decided to make this guy number 4.5 on my list, as if this creature is a dinosaur, it may very well be one of the most important finds in the history of dinosaur paleontology, as the find, named Nyasasaurus, may be the ancestor of all dinosaurs! Since this fossil dates to the Middle Triassic Period and is estimated to be about 10-15 million years older than the previously-oldest known dinosaurs like Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus, if this animal is not, in fact, a dinosaur, it resides very close to the base of the dinosaurian family tree!  People around the world eagerly await more remains of this animal from being discovered in Tanzania (where the original fossils were discovered in the 1930s) or somewhere else in the world, in the hopes that some more light can be shed upon this controversy.

 TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 5

Zoo Babies: Lion Cubs at the Denver Zoo

On Saturday, my family and I went to the Denver Zoo.  We saw many awesome animals, but probably my favorite animals that we saw were the three new baby lion cubs!  Born in June of 2012, the cubs were sent to the zoo from Qatar, and will likely be shipped somewhere else once any long-term plans have been established regarding where they will stay.  For now, though, we get to enjoy the pleasure of these cubs, and now you can too!  Enjoy the pictures!

Hello there!

King of Pride Rock

The cubs look up as a HUGE flock of geese flies by overhead!  Nice timing, mother!  (That sounds like I'm being sarcastic but I actually am not.)

Ready to pounce!

Right before the goose flyover!

Master of all he surveys

Top 10 Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 1)

Just a few days ago, we had our first ever guest blog post by David Church.  Mr. Church did his top ten favorite dinosaurs, which got me thinking about what my favorite dinosaurs were, and inspired me to do this post!  So here is my top ten favorite dinosaur list!

10. Argentinosaurus

Inhabiting South America during the Late Cretaceous Period, the enormous sauropod Argentinosaurus is the heaviest known terrestrial animal and, according to BBC, also has the record for being the longest land animal.  It was, of course, discovered in Argentina, and would have been a contemporary of Giganotosaurus.  

A picture of Argentinosaurus (background) under assault from a Giganotosaurus (foreground) with my parents off to the left at the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Another shot of the Argentinosaurus at Fernbank

9. Allosaurus

Allosaurus was a thirty or so foot long carnivorous dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period.  Discovered in the Morrison Formation of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, this dinosaur (or one quite like it) was also likely found in the Tendaguru Beds of Tanzania.  The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry near Price, Utah holds the remains of more than forty individual Allosaurus bones.

Assorted Allosaurus bones from our visit to the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry

8. Spinosaurus

Spinosaurus is an enormous carnivorous dinosaur that we have talked about on multiple occasions, both in our "Biggest Carnivorous Dinosaur" trilogy of posts awhile back, but also in Mr. Church's Top Ten list.  Spinosaurus, despite the fact that it is easily the largest known carnivorous dinosaur, with an estimated length of almost sixty feet, did not eat meat like the other enormous dinosaurs: instead, Spinosaurus was a piscivore, or a fish eater.  This giant creature lived in Africa during the Cretaceous Period.

 7. Parasaurolophus

Parasaurolophus is another one of those dinosaurs that overlaps from Mr. Church's list to my own.  Parasaurolophus is certainly an interesting creature!  A member of the hadrosaurs, or duck-billed dinosaurs, Parasaurolophus, as Mr. Church discussed, is the only dinosaur I know of where paleontologists know with a high degree of accuracy what they sounded like.  The large crest on the back of the head of Parasaurolophus is full of hollow tubing, similar in shape and structure to the trombone, as well as similar in sound, too.  Unfortunately, I could not find a sound file or video of the call, so if anyone has access to a scientifically reconstructed call, let me know!

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2

Animal of the Day: Addax

The Addax (Addax nasomaculatus) sometime called the screwhorn antelope, is a "Critically Endangered" member of the group of animals known collectively as the antelope.  The addax is found in the Sahara desert.  The Addax has been extirpated, or made regionally extinct, in the countries of Egypt, Algeria, Western Sahara, and Sudan.  Nowadays, the Addax can only be naturally found in the countries of Chad,  Niger, Mauritania, and has been reintroduced into Morocco and Tunisia.  The Addax has earned its "Critically Endangered" status due to the immense and very frequent hunting of its horns, and is still often hunted on game reserves in the United States.  The meat and leather obtained from the Addax are also highly prized.  Their diet consists of primarily grass, as well as the leaves of various shrubs.  Rarely drinking, they instead gain most of their moisture through the plants that they eat.  The Addax is a slow moving animal, leaving it vulnerable to attacks from cheetahs, leopards, lions, African wild dogs, and humans.  The calves can also be killed by servals, caracals and hyenas.

There is also a Spanish motorsport team named the Barwa Addax Team, but I was unable to ascertain whether this team was named after the animal or not!
 

Animal of the Day: Beira Antelope

The Beira Antelope (Dorcatragus megalotis) is a small, 1.5 to two foot tall (at the shoulder) antelope that is native to the arid and mountainous regions of Djibouti, Somalia, and eastern Ethiopia.  The males have straight, short horns, and they are currently listed as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN.  The captive breeding program in Qatar, at the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation center, reached its height in 2005 when it had 58 Beira Antelope.  The center has around 2,000 animals, including gerenuk, Somali wildass, sand cats, and cheetahs.  According to their posters on their website, they also have other felines, including the African wildcat, the caracal, the jungle cat, and even a king cheetah, which is a melanistic form of the regular cheetah.  As well as having many different types of felines, they do have lots of ungulates, as well as many types of birds, and some reptiles to boot.

HERE is the page on the Beira Antelope from the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation center's website.

Zoo Spotlight: The Living Desert

So at least a few times now, I have used pictures from a zoo we went to in Palm Desert called "The Living Desert."  An awesome zoo, this place (clearly) focuses a lot more on the desert animals of the world, and introduces you to a number of animals that you immediately recognize, and a number of animals that you might not otherwise be able to see at another zoo.  I thought I could share some of the pictures that I took at this exciting place, and recommend it to one and all as an exciting place to visit if you ever pass by that area!

Sand cat

Let's start off with some of the animals that you might not be able to see at most other zoos.  As regular readers know, I am a pretty big fan of cats, and The Living Desert definitely had its fair share!  For example, the "Near Threatened" sand cat (Felis margarita), the only cat that is found primarily in the desert.  One of my favorite small wild cats, the sand cat is found in the deserts of Africa and the Middle East.

Sand cat

Besides the sand cat, The Living Desert also has a few other small cats, including the Arabian wild cat, one of the many sub species of the wild cat, Felis silvestris.  Unfortunately, this little guy was asleep so I didn't get any pictures, but I did get pictures of two of the other smaller felines: the serval, and the bobcat, each of which we have done an Animal Spotlight on.  The serval is native to Africa, while the bobcat lives all over North America, in both forests and deserts.

Sleeping serval

Bobcat on the prowl

Bobcat....stretch!

Other, larger cats can be found at The Living Desert, as well, including the jaguar and the mountain lion (both of which I got no pictures of), as well as the cheetah.  We saw two or three cheetahs, but they were all doing what cats do best: sleeping! 

Sleeping cheetah!

Another very interesting thing about the zoo is the vegetation.  Many people simply pass over it: but if you do stop to take a look at it, you might notice something interesting: a whole bunch of the plants, both in and out of the exhibits, are very prickly!  This is because the people at The Living Desert have done their best to make the vegetation in their exhibits as accurate as possible.  Pay special attention to the trees once you reach the large exhibit with both giraffes and kudu, a type of African antelope.  These incredibly spiky trees are called acacia trees, and these trees are one of the reasons why the giraffe has such an incredibly long tongue.  I've been able to see this tongue first hand on numerous occasion at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, including the last time I went with my friend Masaki Kleinkopf, as you can see in this incredible video.  The giraffe has been forced to evolve its incredibly long, prehensile in order to circumnavigate through and around these spiny branches in order to reach the leaves. 

Look at those spikes on those acacia trees!

A picture of myself feeding the giraffes at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Grazing kudu

Another one of my favorite things at The Living Desert was the Miriam U. Hoover Discovery Center.  Indoor and air-conditioned (which, trust me, was very refreshing after being in a desert for a while!), the Discovery Center had a number of things for younger kids to do, but it was definitely worth stopping in, because they had an exhibit talking about the Pleistocene (2.5 MYA - 12,000 years ago) residents of California!  Here are what some of the coolest fossils were.

Mounted giant ground sloth skeleton

A full skeleton of the eight-foot-tall giant ground sloth.  The relationship between extinct South American ground sloths and the extant tree sloths was one of the most important things that influenced Charles Darwin into his Theory of Evolution, more so than the case of the Galápagos finches that most textbooks cite.  During the Great American Interchange, at a time when many South American species were going extinct due to competition from animals coming down the Isthmus of Panama from North America (like Thylacosmilus), the giant ground sloths were actually able to move the other way, with remains being found even as far north as Alaska.  

The skull of Panthera atrox, the North American lion

A skull of the North American lion (Panthera atrox), as well as a skull from Smilodon, colloquially known as the "saber-toothed cat."

The skull of Smilodon

Skulls of Camelops (a type of camel); a dire wolf (Canis dirus), a significantly larger relative of the extant gray wolf; and the Teratorn, one of the members of the family Teratornithidae, a group of birds of prey that lived in North and South America, and includes the largest flying bird known, Argentavis.  Finally, there was a life-sized picture of a mammoth on the wall with a fossil tusk sticking out which was pretty cool as well!

The skull of Camelops

The skull of the dire wolf

The skull of the Teratorn

A size comparison of a mammoth and a human, myself

Now, back to the living!  Here are some more pictures of some of the really cool animals that we saw!  

The "Critically Endangered" addax (Addax nasomaculatus), native to the Sahara Desert

The "Endangered" African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), native to (you guessed it) Africa

American badger

Bighorn sheep

Burrowing owl

Dromedary camel

Caracara

Sleeping fennec fox

Another sleeping fennec fox

Giant tortoises eating

Mexican wolf

Another Mexican wolf.  Despite the fact that this wolf looks like it is snarling, it actually wasn't!  I don't actually know what was going on!

A Mexican wolf running

Pronghorn

There were also tons of lizards running around all over the place!

There was also a really cool, huge, giant train set!  Here are a bunch of pictures of it!

Incredibly detailed: the Monticello vineyards!

Incredibly detailed: Mount Rushmore!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So would I recommend The Living Desert to anyone who is going to be in the area?  You bet I would!  Not only is it an excellent zoo, it gives the visitor an interesting and often difficult-to-find view of desert life from around the world!

South Palm Desert on Dwellable