Simba, Pumbaa, and Other Swahili Names From "The Lion King"

Recently I decided to learn a bit of Swahili, and I have stumbled across a few things that I thought were quite interesting!  For instance, did you know that "Safari" meant "Trip" in Swahili?  I certainly didn't!  And the old movie entitled "Hatari!" actually means "Danger!" in Swahili!  Who knew! 

As I continued to learn more, I came across something else interesting.  As I was learning the animal names, I found that "Duma" meant "Cheetah," which excited me, as one of the main cheetah stars from BBC's "Big Cat Diary," one of the later seasons, is named Duma.  Next, I found out that "Chui" meant "Leopard...." and guess what?  There was a leopard named Chui, too!

Then, I found that "Simba" meant "Lion."  There was, of course, a lion that went by the name of Simba, in the first season of Big Cat Diary, I believe.  I had just assumed he was named after Simba from "The Lion King," which is still a possibility, but it could really go either way.


But I think it clear where the name of "Simba" came from for the Lion King.  As a matter of fact, many of the characters have names that mean something else in other languages.  For example, Ed, the hyena, is actually short for "Edward" in English.  Below is a list of others.

1. Nala - Gift
2. Pumbaa - Simpleton
3. Rafiki - Friend
4. Sarabi - Mirage
5. Shenzi - Uncouth
6. Sarafina - Bright Star
7. Banzai - Skulk, or Lurk

Propleopus, the Carnivorous Kangaroo

Imagine you are on a safari to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya.  If you timed your visit right, then the Mara is inundated with wildebeest and zebra, as well as numerous other herbivores.  You will probably see a number of carnivores as well: cheetahs, leopards, lions, and especially hyenas.  What you probably don’t realize is that most places aren’t like this.  The Masai Mara has one of the highest predator populations seen in Africa, due in large to the great number of prey animals available for a meal.  Regardless, you are forced to acknowledge that there are a great many more prey animals than there are animals to prey upon them. 

                This is known as the predator/prey ratio, and it can be seen all over the world, and can also be seen in the past.  While hundreds, sometimes thousands, of fossils of a single herbivorous dinosaur can be discovered, it is far more rare to unearth the remains of a predatory dinosaur.  But why is there this unbalance between predators and their prey?  Well, let’s take a look at a continuous, cyclical event that takes place in a period of 9.6 years in the wilderness of Canada, that should be able to shed some light on the situation.

                At the beginning of the almost-ten year cycle, we see a sharp increase in the number of hares.  When food is plentiful, these hares often produce two to three litters of around 12 leverets (baby hare) each.  After their numbers reach their limit, their population density reaches around eight hare per football field.  At this time, the hares have eaten all of the edible material they can reach.  Not only are they out of food, but the plants that they feed upon begin to create bitter chemicals in their leaves and edible parts, that keep the hare from digesting the plant material very efficiently. 

                While the hare population is flourishing so, the hare’s predators find an especially easy time of it.  Owls, wolves, and foxes all flourish, but one predator does particularly well: the Canadian lynx.  Hares consist between 40 and 85 percent of the average lynx’s diet, and they generally kill two hares every three days.  With such an explosion in hare numbers, all of these predators flourish, successfully raising more owlets, kits, and cubs.  However, shortly after the plants begin to release the anti-digestion chemicals, the hare populations tank.  With not enough food, many of the animals die off.  Then, a year or two after the hare die-off, the lynx also experiences a massive fall in numbers.  With the lynx no longer over hunting the hare, and the predator/prey ratio returned to normal, the hare starts the cycle all over again. 

                While this cycle seems to be a healthy part of the Canadian ecosystem, in other places, a rapid rise in the number of predators or prey could be disastrous.  Therefore, nature has made it so that, in a healthy ecosystem, the prey animals vastly outnumber the predatory animals.  But how does all of this tie into kangaroos?  We will get back to that in a minute.  First, let’s take a look at an extinct, 26,000 year old relative of today’s rat kangaroo. 

                First described by Australian zoologist Charles De Vis around the turn of the century, the holotype of Propleopus at first remained unique.  It wasn’t until the year 1967 that more remains belonging to the genus Propleopus appeared.  More was discovered in the following years, but very few remains have been discovered even to this day.  With millions of fossilized mammalian bones discovered in Australia, Propleopus are “known from teeth and jaws attributable to less than 20 individuals.” 

                There are multiple reasons why an animal does not appear with a great amount of frequency in the fossil record.  Perhaps it is because the animal was small; smaller bones are much more delicate, and therefore less likely to survive the fossilization process.  (They are also a lot smaller, and therefore usually harder to find then, say the humerus of an Brachiosaurus!)  Perhaps the animal lived in an environment where fossilization is unlikely.  For example, in millions of years, when intelligent life again evolves on this planet, or we are visited by intelligent life from elsewhere in the galaxy, they would find very little or no evidence of mountainous animals, like bighorn sheep or the snow leopard.  This is because mountains are in a constant state of geologic flux.  At times they are being pushed up; but even when they are rising, they are already eroding.  Given enough time, entire mountain ranges can disappear, or almost disappear, like in the Australian Outback.  Sometimes, it is because paleontologists are simply looking in the wrong places, and there are treasure troves of these animals just waiting to be discovered elsewhere.  It could also be because the rocks where the animal was deposited simply don’t exist anymore, something that is called an unconformity in geologist’s terms.  Maybe the animal was just not very successful, and went extinct after only a short amount of time.  The fossilized animal could also represent a transitional fossil, so creatures with those characteristics would have only been around for a few thousand years.  Or, of course, it could be because the animal was a predator, and there were fewer individuals to begin with.

                Now you are probably thinking that this is quite a leap.  Just because this kangaroo didn’t appear all that often in the fossil record doesn’t necessarily mean that it was carnivorous.  And you are right, as if this was the only evidence of Propleopus being a carnivorous kangaroo, I would be laughed right out of the Neolithic Age: and they, at best, had only a very, very primitive form of language, and probably would, at best, barely understand what I was saying.  However, there is more evidence in favor of a carnivorous Propleopus.  As I am fond of saying, “the teeth tell the tale.” 

                Studies of the dentition of Propleopus show a close resemblance to small, extant insectivores or omnivores, i.e. the mountain pygmy possum and the musky rat kangaroo.  Where the teeth of Propleopus differ from the mountain pygmy possum and the musky rat kangaroo, however, the differences “could be interpreted as adaptations to meat-eating.”  To sum up, the incisors are short, stout, and appear great for stabbing, the premolars are strongly serrated, which is perfect for tearing into very tough stuff (perhaps tendon), and the molars are greatly reduced in size, as sometimes seen in the genus Wakaleo, one of the genera of marsupial lion, like Thylacoleo.  Furthermore, the molars, although reduced in size, share similar features to the largest extant marsupial carnivore today, the Tasmanian devil.  These features in the Tasmanian devil serve to keep bone splinters from penetrating the gums, and clearly would not be needed to serve that purpose in an herbivore. 

                The most revealing tale of the teeth can only be revealed by a microscope.  Studies have shown that, when you compare the microscopic wear patterns on the teeth of a herbivore and a carnivore, you can see obvious, and distinguishable, differences.  The teeth tell the tale of the diet of an animal, and help to show us what Propleopus might have eaten.  When compared with the wear patterns of closely related herbivores, like the musky rat kangaroo, and marsupial and placental carnivores, like the thylacine, Thylacoleo, and dogs, the wear patterns seen on Propleopus resembles that of the carnivores more so than that of the herbivores. 

                So was Propleopus a carnivore, or a herbivore, or both?  One hypothesis that has been put forward is that Propleopus was situated in a similar ecological niche as the modern day African baboon, eating whatever came it way, be it plants, eggs, insects, or meat.  Whatever the answer, is is doubtful that it could be answered now, and it is likely that only further research, and more discoveries, will ever hope to unravel the mystery surrounding Propleopus, the seemingly killer kangaroo.  

Arthur the Aardvark

Almost everybody has heard of Arthur Read from the popular PBS show "Arthur."  What a lot of people don't realize is that Arthur is an aardvark.  And even more people don't usually even know what an aardvark is.

A fossorial (burrowing, like terrestrial or marine), nocturnal mammal from Africa, the aardvark is an insectivore, its favorite food being termites, and is labeled as "Least Concern" by the IUCN.  The aardvark, as you can see below, inhabits an incredibly large portion of Africa, including South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, Somalia, Angola, and many others.

The aardvark has several important adaptations for its burrowing, insectivorous life style.  Perhaps the most important are the large claws on its front limbs.  These claws enable the aardvark to not only dig out immense burrows for habitation use, but also to dig into termite mounds to extract a meal.  Interestingly, when the aardvark leaves its burrow to dig a new one, the old burrow is often taken up by the African wild dog, where the pups shelter until they are old enough to leave the protection of the burrow.

The aardvark also has thick skin, which keep the termites from biting it, allowing it to feast in relative peace.  A further adaptation to keep insects (as well as dust) out is in its nose: it can close its nose, preventing both bugs and dust from invading its breathing passages.  Finally, another very important insectivorous adaptation is the tongue of the aardvark.  The long, sticky tongue of the aardvark is usually about 12 inches long, equivalent to about one-sixth the length of the animal!  Long, sticky tongues are a fairly common adaptation for termite-eaters such as the numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus), pangolins (Manis sp.), and the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla) among them.

A southern tamandua (Tamandua tetradactyla) shows off its extraordinarily long tongue during an animal demonstration at one of Denver Zoo's teen career days.  Tamanduas are also insectivorous, and clearly also possess an amazing tongue.

The Cichlids of the African Rift Lakes

Three of the largest lakes in the world reside in the 3,700 mile long Rift Valleys of Africa.  These lakes, Lakes Victoria (located in the countries of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), Tanganyika (split between Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC], Tanzania, and Zambia), and Malawi (located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania), rank among the top ten largest lakes in the world; third, seventh, and ninth, respectively.  (For some reason, these rankings differ upon where you look.  Lake Victoria as the third largest lake seems pretty universal, but the ranks of Tanganyika and Malawi differ for whatever reason.  You'd think that it would be pretty universal, but I suppose not.)  Besides being such large lakes, these lakes are important for other reasons, perhaps the most important reason (for biologists, at least) being their isolation.

You see, the three great lakes are islands, of a sort.  According to Websters, the definition of an island is "a land mass smaller than a continent and surrounded by water."  The Rift Valley lakes are essentially the opposite; "a body of water smaller than an ocean and surrounded by land."  For our purposes, an island is just something that has been isolated for a time, and allowed its flora and fauna to flourish in new and interesting ways.

And flourish it did in the Rift Valley lakes.  If you were to visit these lakes, snorkel or scuba in their waters, you would most likely notice a wide variety of fish.  You would not be wrong in this assessment; however, you might be surprised to find that most of these types of fish are belonging to a group called the cichlids (SICK-lids), and that all 1,650 plus species of these cichlids descended from a common ancestor.  While the dates of when the common ancestor of the various cichlids came to be trapped in their respective lakes, it has been estimated that the cichlids of Lake Malawi all evolved from a common ancestor trapped 700,000 years ago, and those of Lake Victoria around 12,000 years ago.  Trapped in these growing lakes while they were being formed, this small group of fish quickly came to dominate their new home, exploding in biodiversity to adapt to the wide variety of niches left open to them.

Tenuous can this biodiversity be, as recent logger-based erosion has shown.  Logging nearby to one of the lakes resulted in rapid erosion.  This erosion caused a great deal of silt to build up in one of the lakes.  This, of course, caused the water to become quite murky; think about your average beach, and how murky the water often is near the shore.  Many of the cichlids that lived in this area relied upon visual identification to recognize members of the same species for mating purposes.  With the cloudy, muddled water, this became quite difficult.  As a result, many fish from closely related species ended up mating with each other and, in the case of many of the couplings, resulted in viable offspring.  These viable offspring in turn bred with other species, lowering, at least temporarily, the biodiversity of the cichlids in this particular corner of the lake.

Blantyre on Dwellable

Another Living Fossil: The Coelacanth

400 millions years ago (MYA), during the Devonian Period, life had already gained a foothold on land.  However, in the seas, unless you were at the top of the food chain, there were a lot of predators to contend with.  If you were a fish in the middle of the food chain during the Devonian, you not only had to deal with ancestors of the modern day shark, but a now-extinct group of armor-plated fish, called the Placoderms.  Some of these Placoderms, like Dunkleosteus, grew to simply enormous proportions, around 30 feet in length!  One type of fish that lived during the Devonian and was most likely preyed upon by the sharks and the Placoderms was a fish known as the Coelacanth.

The Coelacanth (SEE-lah-canth) was a relatively unassuming fish, its closest living relative being the lobe-finned fish.  Fossils of the Coelacanth have been discovered ranging from 400 MYA to around 65 MYA, coinciding with the death of the dinosaurs.  In 1938, however, when one was hauled in on a fishing net off the coast of South Africa, the temporal range of this animal was extended by 65 million years!  Today, by studying the living Coelacanth, scientists have found that the fish gives birth to live young, unlike other fish.  Further discoveries both in Africa (off the coasts of Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya and Tanzania) as well as Asia, around Sulawesi, Indonesia, of living Coelacanth specimens have further widened the current geographical range of the Coelacanth.

A specimen of the Cretaceous coelacanth Coccoderma nudum from Germany.  On display at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History on the campus of the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

Unfortunately for this living fossil, it is labeled "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN, much like yesterday's living fossil, the mountain pygmy possum.  Just like the mountain pygmy possum, conservationist groups are working towards it's protection, trying to keep fisherman from fishing in the Coelacanth's habitat.  Hopefully, humans won't be the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, for this 400 million year old fish.