Animal Spotlight: Aurochs

This post is the birthday post of Govind Kamath!  Happy birthday, Mr. Kamath!  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!

Over the years, you may have pondered, "Where does my burger come from?"  You probably just meant where was the cow that it came from.  But now here is something else for you to ponder.  Where the heck did the cow even come from?  Do you ever just see wild, black and white cows?  Well, I am here to tell you all about the evolution of the cow.

A Watusi/Longhorn pileup!  They actually crashed into each other, though!  Trust me, I was there, you can even see my sweatshirted elbow in the mirror thingy!

During the Pliocene Epoch, from around 5 to 2 MYA, the planet went through a cooler spell.  The frequent ice ages were a part of this cool spell, as was the most frequent Ice Age.  This colder weather caused many of the worlds forests to decrease in area, which in turn caused the world's grasslands to expand.  This led to the evolution of many large grazing animals, and helped contribute to the Pleistocene Megafauna, often called the Ice Age Megafauna.  One of these large animals that evolved was the Aurochs.

The Aurochs (Bos primigenius), first became domesticated during the Neolithic Age, or the "New Stone Age," probably around 12,000 years ago.  As a matter of fact, two waves of domestication occurred.  As you can see in the map below, there were three different subspecies of the Aurochs; one in northern Africa; one for Europe and Asia; and a third for the mysterious subcontinent of India, as Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali says in "The Big Bang Theory."  The two different domestications happened with the Eurasian subspecies, Bos primigenius primigenius, and the Indian subspecies, B. p. namadicus. 

These two different domestications of these two different species of cattle led to two different domesticated cattle!  In India, we have the Zebu cattle, which has been given its own scientific subspecies name, Bos primigenius indicus.  The other, Eurasian kind has become the cow that we know today from driving down the street and the Chik-fil-A ads.  While other types of bovines (members of the family Bovidae, a group of ungulates that includes water and African buffalo, yaks, bison, and, of course, cattle) have been domesticated throughout the years, specifically the water buffalo, the south-east Asian Banteng, and the Indian Gaur, it is cattle that have remained the most widely used, for a wide variety of purposes, too.

The Aurochs is now extinct.  The very last recorded female passed away in 1627 in the Jaktorów Forest in Poland.

There are two particularly interesting breeds of domesticated cattle that I would like to now draw to your attention.  Back in December of 2011 on our trip down to Texas to visit my gramma, on the same trip where we visited the Heritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country and saw the Acrocanthosaurus footprints, we also visited the San Antonio Zoo, as well as the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch near San Antonio.  This is an awesome place for EVERYONE to visit!  You get to roll down your windows as you drive through a park chock-full of deer, antelope, zebra, and bovines, and you get to drop food for them!  There are also three members of the order Struthioniformes (aka the ratites), like the South American rhea, the Australian emu, and, most terrifying of all, the African ostrich.  The ostriches was absolutely terrifying, and I will talk about them in a later blog post!  But also at the ranch they had two pretty crazy types of cattle!

The first was the Ankole-Watusi, often called simply the Ankole cattle or the Watusi.  Originally bred in Africa, the Watusi was named after the Watusi tribesmen (now the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi).  This type of cattle has enormous horns that can span over six feet!  Both genders have these horns, and they can grow from between 1,500 - 1,800 pounds!  Below are some pictures that my family and I took of the cattle walking by our car!

A Watusi.  CHECK OUT THOSE HORNS!

Another Watusi.  CHECK OUT THOSE HORNS!

A baby Watusi!  HOW CUTE!

The second crazy type of cattle is the Texas Longhorn.  The Texas longhorn is, of course, native to the Lone Star State, and reports of the longhorn enduring thirst while still being able to fight off packs of wolves, as well as bears (presumably grizzly bears), from the pioneer times is not uncommon.  The longhorn, like the Watusi, also has six foot horns possessed by both sexes.  According to the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch Adventure Guide Book, the longhorn "helped form the basis of the ranching industry of the American West during the 19th century."

A Texas longhorn.  CHECK OUT THOSE HORNS.

Another Texas longhorn.  CHECK OUT THOSE HORNS.

The aftermath of the Watusi/Longhorn pileup seen above!

Whoever said cows weren't interesting!

Top Ten: Extinct Sea Monsters (Part 1 of 5)

Since ya'll kinda get gypped on Wednesdays with the "What Is It?" challenge, I decided that, when I do do the challenge, I will also include a "Top Ten" list.  I mean, come on now, who doesn't like lists?  I know some of my friends would be absolutely and completely lost without them!  So for today's "Top Ten," we are going to take a look at some of the world's most amazing, extinct sea monsters.  This is also up for debate, so if you disagree, just give me a holler!  Also, they are not in any particular order, I just kind of threw them all in there!  So without further ado, here we go, with our "Top Ten:  Extinct Sea Monsters!"

1.  Megalodon - This gigantic relative of the extant great white shark was thought to be simply massive: perhaps even sixty feet in length!  Living the world over, Megalodon stalked the seas during the Miocene and Pliocene Epochs, and only died out during the current Pleistocene Epoch, around two million years ago.  It is thought that Megalodon evolved to such gigantic proportions in order to be able to attack the massive whales that had started to evolve in the cooler seas of the Miocene and Pliocene.  Remember now: if it's a shark, then it's a fish!

A tooth fragment from Megalodon at this excellent restaurant called The Crab Shack on Tybee Island off of the coast of Savannah, Georgia. 

2.  Basilosaurus - A massive, predatory whale (and, therefore, a mammal) that cruised the seas in the Late Eocene Epoch, 40 to 34 MYA, fossil discoveries of this massive animal were reportedly so common in the southern United States during the early 19th century, that bones of Basilosaurus would be used as furniture!  It was first discovered in Louisiana, and is the state fossil of both Mississippi and Alabama.  Basilosaurus has also been found in Egypt and Pakistan.  At around sixty feet in length, the same estimated length of Megalodon, Basilosaurus is thought to have been the biggest creature alive at the time.

COMING UP:

3.  Liopleurodon
4.  Shonisaurus
5. Elasmosaurus
6.  Dunkleosteus
7.  Archelon
8.  Leedsichthys
9.  Tanystropheus
10. Tylosaurus

This post is part of the "Top Ten: Extinct Sea Monsters" series.  For the rest of the posts in this series, click HERE. 

Masiakasaurus knopfleri, and Other Interestingly Named Creatures

A few months ago, while reading Dr. Scott Sampson's book Dinosaur Odyssey (you probably know him as the guy from Dinosaur Train), he has a very brief section of his book where he talks about some interesting scientific names of sometimes not that interesting of creatures.  He presents nine of them, and here I present them to you, as well.

1.  Masiakasaurus knopfleri
This dinosaur, from Late Cretaceous Madagascar, was named by Scott Sampson and his colleagues, means the "vicious lizard of Knopfler," meaning Mark Knopfler, a famous musician.

 2.  Milesdavis zlichovianus
This trilobite was named after the famous jazz musician Miles Davis.

3.  Mozartella beethoveni
This wasp was named after two famous classical musicians, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

4.  Dicrotenipes thanatogratus
This one is probably less obvious to most of you out there, but in Greek, thanatos means "dead" (think Thanos, the villain for the next "Avengers" movie from Marvel: he loves and worships death), and in Latin, gratus means "grateful."  This midge was named after the famous band, Grateful Dead.

5.  Montypythonoides riversleighensis
This extinct Australian snake was named after the Monty Python franchise, but unfortunately, the name is now outdated; its correct scientific name now is Morelia riversleighensis.

6.  Strigiphilus garylarsoni
Named after the famed cartoonist Gary Larson of The Far Side fame (watch for at least one post featuring him next week).  Besides having this owl louse named after him, also has had a beetle and a butterfly named in his honor. Regarding the owl louse, he said “I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along.”

7.   Ninjemys oweni
"Owen's Ninja Turtle" is named after the famous group, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and was found in Pleistocene-aged rocks in Queensland, Australia.

8.  Gozillus

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0425/Mysterious-Godzillus-fossil-find-stumps-scientists

9.  Darthvaderum greensladeae
One of my personal favorites, this mite was named after the famous Darth Vader, from Star Wars.

Animal Spotlight: The Mountain Pygmy Possum

You've probably never heard of the mountain pygmy possum (Burramys parvus); few people have, it being one of Australia's many lesser known marsupials.  One of five extant (opposite of extinct, or still living today) species of pygmy possum, the mountain pygmy possum has a very interesting story about its discovery, a story that we will now look at.

The genus Burramys, the genus the mountain pygmy possum is a part of, also contains three extinct species of possum.   In fact, prior to 1966, the mountain pygmy possum had been described solely from fossils dated from the Pleistocene Epoch.  (The Pleistocene Epoch dates from around 2.5 million years ago to around 10,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age ended.)  It was first described from these Pleistocene fossils by the famous geologist/zoologist/paleontologist Robert Broom in the year 1896, and was assumed to be extinct, just like the other three members of the genus Burramys.  That is until 1966, when one showed up in a ski hut on Mount Hotham, a mountain in New South Wales, southern Australia, and home to the Hotham Alpine Resort.

Since this surprising discovery, scientists have located three populations of the Mountain Pygmy Possum in different spots in southern Australia.  Although it is exciting to discover a species that was previously thought to be extinct, it is saddening to find out that this animal has a wild population of a mere 2,000 individuals, and is labeled "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN.  Means have been taken to protect the mountain pygmy possum, including the so-called "Tunnel of Love," a little possum-path that granted the males better access to the female habitat, and helping to reduce fatal encounters with automobiles.

Works Cited:

Mountain Pygmy Possum. (n.d.). - Just another global2.vic.edu.au weblog. Retrieved June 29, 2012, from http://teacherrsc.global2.vic.edu.au/

Dinner Plain on Dwellable

Digest This: Or Can You? A Koala Could

I've been reading some interesting things about the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) that I thought you might be interested in hearing.  As we all know, koalas are one of the sleepiest animals, and can be found sleeping and resting around eighteen or nineteen hours a day.  That means that out of their thirteen year life span, they are sleeping for around ten of those years. By comparison, a human with a lifespan of seventy-five years that sleeps an average of eight hours a day would sleep around 25 years of their life.  While a lot more than twelve years for the koala, keep in mind that humans only sleep around 33% of their life, while koalas sleep around a whopping 75-80%. But why do they sleep so much? The answer lies in what they eat: Eucalyptus leaves.

The leaves of the Eucalyptus trees are incredibly hard to digest.  Not only are the leaves very fibrous, much like celery (think about how hard celery is to chew), but they are also chock-full of toxins that very few animals can digest, with especially high concentrations of volatile oils and phenolic compounds.  What does that mean in English?  Well, phenolics are a type of organic chemical that naturally occur in plants, where they can act as deterrents against predatory browsing at the hands (or rather the mouths) of herbivores.  As stated before, the concentration of phenolics in the Eucalyptus leaves are so high that most animals would simply be unable to digest the leaves.  The koala decided not to take this lying down (ironic, as that is most of what koalas do in a day), and have evolved in a few key ways to help them deal with these toxins.

A fascinating moment of a koala's life: being awake.  Quite the statistical anomaly.

The first is simple; they have teeth that are great for chewing.  The broad, high-cusped molars possessed by the koala help it to thoroughly mash the food in its mouth prior to further digestion.  In our own mouth, we also have molars, along with a wide assortment of other types of teeth. When you are chewing your dinner, you tear bite-sized chunks off with your front teeth, or incisors and canines. Then, you move the food to the back of your mouth for further processing, and you further chew the food with your molars. The cusps on our teeth make it so the food is crushed fairly thoroughly. However, the koala doesn’t eat food like lettuce that can be torn up fairly easily. Thus, the koala has higher cusps on their molars, allowing for the Eucalyptus leaves to be ground up quite nicely.

A koala skeleton on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York.  Note the molars in the back.

The second major evolutionary adaptation is that the koala has a very long cecum, a pouch of sorts that is considered to be the first part of the large intestine.  In fact, at four times its own body length, the cecum of the koala is proportionally longer than that of any other mammal on the planet! The bacteria in the cecum help to break down the tough tissues in plants, such as cellulose, an important structural component of the cell wall in plants.  This gives our fuzzy marsupial friend a whole lot more time and space for that tough plant material to be digested.  Apparently, it takes a whole lot of guts to be a koala.

Believe it or not, I don't have a picture of a koala cecum on file.  So instead, take a look at this other interesting adaptation of the koala.  Instead of having a single thumb like we humans have, it has two!  Its first two digits are both functional thumbs, and are opposable to the other three digits on their hand.  You can see part of the hand skeleton the picture above this one.

Koalas aren't born with those important cecum bacteria, though, and to my knowledge no animals really are.  After five months of suckling from mom, the koala joey starts to enjoy the "partially digested leaf material produced from the female's anus" (MacDonald, 1984), or, as I like to call it, "Mom's Butt Leaves."  This delicious meal is actually thought to come from the cecum, giving the joey those essential bacteria and microbes, not to mention a delightful, pre-digested meal of Mom's Butt Leaves.  (Check out our other post about butt bacteria and eating poop HERE.)

Get yours at your local King Soopers today!

A fourth innovation of the koala is simply the exorbitant amount of time that the marsupial spends sleeping.  When you sleep, you are burning fewer calories than you would be if you were running around or hunting, or moving through a Eucalyptus tree browsing on its leaves.  Therefore, the more time the koala spends sleeping, the more energy it saves in exchange.  (The popular myth that the koala gets "stoned" by the Eucalyptus leaves is nothing more than that: a myth.)  The koala is able to delicately walk the line that we all desire to find: the maximum amount of sleep that one can get without dying.  It's truly a marvelous achievement, one which the koala handles with much grace and aplomb.

During the Pleistocene, there existed a larger species of koala, Phascolarctos stirtoni, a slightly larger koala than the modern species, P. cinereus.  Based on dentary measurements of both species from Price et. al., I came up with an approximate size increase of 1.4.  That is, take the length of a body part of P. cinereus, the modern koala, and multiple that value by 1.4, and you should get the approximate length of the same body part for the robust koala, P. stirtoni.  Not exactly the most precise method, but one that'll work for our purposes.  Below, you can see an approximate size comparison that I made of the two koalas, our modern species in gray and the extinct species in brown.

An approximate size comparison between the modern Phascolarctos cinereus (right) and the extinct P. stirtoni, with a can of Mom's Butt Leaves for scale.

More recently, scientists have realized that there is actually no evidence that does not support the idea that the hypothetical Laser-Eyed Koala (Phascolarctos oculaser) could have maybe possibly existed.  Scientists have been quoted as saying "We have never found it but that's not to say that who's to say that we aren't all koalas."  Below is the first unrefuted photographic evidence of the Laser-Eyed Koala in action.

That incredible, hands-on natural history museum in scenic Morrison, Colorado never stood a chance against that koala.  Fortunately, repairs to the facility should be completed on time for tomorrows 10:15 AM tour, which is included with your admission fee and well worth the time.  Talk about great free advertising, am I right?

Works Cited:

Hättenschwiler, S., & Vitousek, P. (2000). The role of polyphenols in terrestrial ecosystem nutrient cycling. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 238-243.

Logan, M., & Sanson, G. (2002). The effect of tooth wear on the feeding behaviour of free-ranging koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus, Goldfuss). Journal of Zoology, 63-69.

Macdonald, D. (1984). The Encyclopedia of mammals. New York, NY: Facts on File.

Nagy, K., & Martin, R. (1985). Field Metabolic Rate, Water Flux, Food Consumption and Time Budget of Koalas, Phascolarctos Cinereus (Marsupialia: Phascolarctidae) in Victoria. Australian Journal of Zoology Aust. J. Zool., 655-655.

Piper, K. (2005). An early Pleistocene record of a giant koala (Phascolarctidae: Marsupialia) from western Victoria. Australian Mammalogy Aust. Mammalogy, 221-221.

Price, G. (2008). Is the modern koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) a derived dwarf of a Pleistocene giant? Implications for testing megafauna extinction hypotheses. Quaternary Science Reviews, 2516-2521.

Price, G., Zhao, J., Feng, Y., & Hocknull, S. (2009). New records of Plio-Pleistocene koalas from Australia: Palaeoecological and taxonomic implications. Records of the Australian Museum Rec. Aust. Mus., 39-48.