Chiidax the Northern Fur Seal and the Evolution of the Otariids

Late last year, the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts received Chiidax, an orphaned northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus).  However, it was last July that Alaska SeaLife Center first took in Chiidax, after he was left outside the Alaska Department of Fish and Game offices.  A note which was included on the outside of the box that the pup came in said that the pup's mother had died while she was giving birth.  Notice how in the first two pictures of Chiidax below, the pup is covered in an all black coat, a mark of his young age.

After the pups are weaned at around four months old, they molt into their next coat, the cream and brown color of the young juvenile northern fur seal.  Look for those in these next four pictures, taken sometime last fall.  The post on ZooBorns (read that HERE) doesn't say exactly when the pictures were taken, but given that the post was published late last November, these last photos were presumably taken around then.  

When the first post on Chiidax was written on November 23rd of 2013, he weighed 18 pounds, but when he's full grown, he will definitely be a bit bigger: the males, or bulls, of the species can weigh nearly 600 pounds, which is several times more than the females weigh!  The males have to be so large because they create harems of thirty to forty females, and defend them from other males.  The seals are native to the Pacific Coast of the United States, as well as the coast of the Bering Sea in Canada, Alaska, and Russia.  

The last report on Chiidax was in late December, on the 29th.  Below are several pictures that were shared then.  You can see how smooth he looks, and how perfectly adapted for a life beneath the waves this creature is!  

The northern fur seal is the sole extant member of the genus Callorhinus, but there is also a fossil species of Callorhinus.  C. gilmorei is known from the Pliocene Epoch of southern California and Mexico, as you can see in this paper HERE.  Other sources cite another paper, linked HERE, as stating that this genus is also known from Japan, but I was unwilling to pay the fee to read the paper, so that fact remains unconfirmed.  If you have a subscription to this online journal, let me know what you find!

According to the first paper, the eared seals, or the members of the family Otariidae, can be traced back at least to the Mid to Late Miocene Epoch, approximately 11-12 MYA in California, in the form of Pithanotaria starri.  Another taxon, Thalassoleon mexicanus, is known from Mexico during the Late Miocene, approximately 5-8 MYA.  The authors of the paper suggest that between 5 MYA and today, between our time and the time of Thalassoleon, was when fur seal diversification took off, resulting in the eight extant species of Arctocephalus and the extant Callorhinus ursinus, which includes little Chiidax!  The genus Arctocephalus, along with the genus Callorhinus, comprise the extant members of the eared fur seals.  The writers of the paper also suspect that it is during this 5 million year period that the sea lions developed as well.

Things have probably changed a lot in this area of paleontology since this paper was published in 1986, but unfortunately I can't seem to access most of these papers.  Callorhinus gilmorei still seems to be a valid taxon, however, as do Thalassoleon and Pithanotaria.  Hopefully, new fossils will yield more interesting results regarding these creatures very soon!  

Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of these pictures in the post go to ZooBorns, either this post HERE or HERE.  

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Works Cited:

Meet Pyg!

Meet Pyg, the Triceratops hatchling! Pyg is the blog's new mascot, and will be using her unique blend of entertainment and education to help teach people about her long-lost world. Make sure to follow her on her exploits! I'll be using Pyg to help make our subject matter a little more fun, because, lets face it: dinosaurs are boring. Wow, I'm totally joking, no they're not, they rock! I'm actually with Grace Albers up in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah right now, so you'll probably be seeing some pictures from that trip pretty soon! However, tomorrow we will be talking about the recent Discovery/Megalodon controversy, so make sure to tune in then!

Black Bears on the Primos Truth Cam!

A few weeks ago, a bear savagely tore through the fence of my friends neighbors.  The Lippincott's have an alley behind their house, and the bears apparently like to use it as a thoroughfare, so I decided to try and catch one on my Primos Truth Cam!

Here, we have Sam Lippincott posing next to the bear break-in entry point.  For reference, he's about 8.5 feet tall, which gives you a sense of how tall the bear must have been.

Another photo of the damage.  The bear was trying (and succeeded) to get to the trash cans, and had proceeded in strewing the trash all over the place!

I didn't get much, but I did get a series of five pictures of a young black bear!  Check them out, pretty exciting stuff!

Adventures at the Park!

Today I went walking with Grace and her black lab puppy Kenosha!  We saw lots of cool things, and here are some pictures of some of them!

We also saw this ADORABLE and GIGANTIC dog sitting on her owners lap!!

First off, we saw some more damsel fly nymphs!  A few weeks ago when I was walking Kenosha, I saw one in a little ditch, and brought it home with me as a pet!  Here are some pictures of it then!

I talked to a local aquatic insect expert who came to talk to our Outdoor Ed class about fishing and aquatic insects named Wallace Westfeldt, and he told me that they were blue damsel nymphs!  Here are some more pictures of the blue damsel nymphs that we saw today!

And here is a picture of what these nymphs will grow in to!  They look a lot like the closely related dragonflys, but they aren't quite!

A dead crayfish in the same pond!

We also saw this hawk or falcon, I'm not quite sure which, land right in front of us on a fence!  [MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE:  Hello, this is Zack Neher speaking to you from 12/21/2014.  As you will one day learn from Anne Price, the Curator of Raptors at the Raptor Education Foundation in Colorado, this is an adult female Cooper's hawk.  Thank you for your patience.]

Here's a few pictures of a blue jay!

We also saw this random bird that was flitting around in groups of about thirty or so!  Neither Grace or I knew what kind of bird it was, so we took a picture and sent it to my dad, but without even looking at the picture he knew that it was a nighthawk when I called him just by telling him that it looked kind of like a swallow and that it was in a large group eating insects in the air!  

Here's a close up picture of a nighthawk!

Finally, here is a picture of another cute dog that we saw!

Zoo Babies: Bison

Today, in honor of the birthday of Kevyn Llewellyn, we are going to be looking at a few photos of a baby bison born about this time last year at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, Illinois.  Although frequently incorrectly referred to as buffalo, they are simply different animals, despite the outward similarities between the two groups.  If you see something that looks like it could be either a buffalo or a bison, there is a very, very good bet that you are looking at a bison.  Unless something very strange has happened, and in that case, you will be excused for looking foolish when it comes to your knowledge of the bovids.

Anyways, the bison, despite their once immense numbers (numbering in the tens of millions), were hunted almost to extinction in the 1800s, but have made a stunning comeback, with about 20,000 living in protected areas such as National Parks, and a further 500,000 living on tribal lands and ranches.  Nevertheless, their range is vastly reduced from what it once was.  Many people have come to the aid of the bison over the years, including Theodore Roosevelt and a man named William Hornaday, who together co-founded the American Bison Society at the Bronx Zoo in New York in 1905 in order to help protect these wild creatures. Today, they are labeled as "Near Threatened" by the IUCN due to these conservation efforts. 

Today, the bison is the largest North American mammal, but it wasn't always this way.  In fact, it wasn't always even the largest member of the genus Bison in North America!  Ancient ancestors of the North American bison have been traced by paleontologists to southern Asia to about 400,000 years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch.  Once the bison managed to make it across the land bridge into North America, it diversified and evolved.  One species, Bison latifrons, had a horn-span of a whopping nine feet!  Another species, Bison occidentalis (of which I have a scapula!) is thought to be the direct descendant of the modern bison, and evolved sometime during the late Pleistocene Epoch.

While talking bison with Dr. Robert Bakker and Matt Mossbrucker at the Morrison Natural History Museum, I learned that if you are looking at postcranial elements of a fossil bison (that is fossilized bones from behind the head), they are almost impossible to differentiate from each other.  Not only that, but they are extraordinarily difficult to differentiate from cows, too!  As a matter of fact, the species barrier is quite tentative between the bison and domestic cattle, resulting in the domestication of some bison, as well as hybrids, such as beefalo and cattalo.

Photo credit for all of the photos used in this post goes to the website for ZooBorns.  If you like what you are reading, please feel free to follow us here or via Facebook!  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!

Bears and Bikes in Lake Tahoe

We stopped for a few nights in Lake Tahoe on our California driving trip in 2010 which, by the way was awesome (both the trip and Lake Tahoe!)  I would definitely love to go back there sometime!  The one part that I didn't really enjoy was the bike riding, I'm just not the bikes biggest fan, I don't know why.  However, I am certainly very glad that we went, as if we hadn't, we wouldn't have seen....the bears!

Black bear cub!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear cub!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

Black bear!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

We saw someone looking through the trees, and when they saw us approaching, they motioned for us to stop.  We stopped, followed their line of sight, and saw an adult female black bear being followed by two cubs!  It was really cool, and they were super cute!

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23-Fact Tuesday: The Polar Bear!

Everyone loves polar bears, so today, for the birthday post of Brooke Harrower, we are going to be taking a 23-Fact Tuesday look at them!  Allons-y!

1.  Despite the fact that the polar bear can be quite a fierce animal, it can also be very playful and gentle.  For proof, click HERE to see a very cute video of polar bears playing with sled dogs!

2.  A group of polar bears is called a celebration.

3.  In an attempt to safely film polar bears up close and personal without disturbing them, one production company resorted to an interesting array of spy cameras.  To see an awesome video of the polar bears playing with the spy cameras, click HERE.

4.  As we saw in the previous video clip, the polar bear is quite the curious animal.  It has to be, to survive in such harsh conditions!  The polar bear is also a lot smarter than many other bears, as can be seen in a comparison of a few different bear brains, below!  Look at how much larger (comparatively) the brain of the polar bear is than that of the American black bear!  Also keep in mind that more wrinkles=a greater surface area=a smarter animal!

5.  Unlike the color of its fur, the skin of the polar bear is actually jet black!

6.  Despite the fact that they are often erroneously pictured together, it is almost entirely impossible for penguins and polar bears to meet naturally in the wild, as no penguins ever really make it past the Equator, with the Galápagos penguin living the furthest north, right on the Equator!  For more information on the subject (as well as some really funny stories) click on the link HERE, to check out a page on the awesome blog March of the Fossil Penguins.

7.  As you can see in the video clip HERE, filming the polar bears for the excellent BBC series Planet Earth could be quite a challenge (see the full post HERE), especially when they come knocking at your door!

8.  The polar bear is the largest extant (still living, opposite of extinct) mammalian carnivore.  The males can grow up to a whopping 1,500 pounds! 

9.  It occurs to me as I eat this delicious cherry popsicle that the polar bear must have some sort of special evolutionary adaptation to prevent brain freeze as it consumes a cold and frozen meal.  Research should be done into this.

10.  Polar bears, after their emergence from their dens following the harsh Arctic winters, have been observed sledding down the hills on which the dens are associated.  Some scientists believe that this action is solely intended to clean the fur, but many others (myself included) believe that it is probably more for fun!  Check out the video HERE.

11.  The polar bear is native to only five countries.  These are Russia, Denmark owned Greenland, Norway owned Svalbard, Alaska, and Canada.

12.  The polar bear is a descendant of the grizzly bear, and was once thought to have diverged from the grizzly possibly only even around 70-100,000 years ago.  Others are more conservative in their estimations, as DNA analysis on one particular fossil specimen indicates that the polar bear diverged from the grizzly bear around 160,000 years ago.  It now seems more likely that the age of divergence of was much earlier in time than even 100,000 years ago, and polar bear fossils dating from earlier than that (round 115,000 years ago) have actually been discovered.

A picture of one of the grizzly bears at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo doing what the zookeepers call the "Yoga Bear."  This was from the behind the scenes experience that my dad, grandma and grandpa, my friend Masaki and I got to do with Kelley Parker a few months back!  Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf.

Another picture of one of the grizzly bears at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo doing what the zookeepers call the "Yoga Bear."  This was from the behind the scenes experience that my dad, grandma and grandpa, my friend Masaki and I got to do with Kelley Parker a few months back!  Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf.

13.  The oldest polar bear fossil known to science, the lower jaw of a male, was discovered in 2004.  It's age is thought to be between around 110,000 and 130,000 years old. 

14.  The scientific name for the polar bear, Ursus maritimus is "sumitiram susru" spelled backwards.  This means absolutely nothing and is really not that exciting, unless you are me and think it's funny and clever to spell things backwards and make stupid jokes about it.

15.  Algae, while not threatening to a polar bear in any significant way, can be extremely hard to wash out of the bears fur.  So therefore, in the summer of 2008 when three bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Japan got a bunch of algae stuck in their fur, they were green for the entire summer!  True story!

16.  The polar bear is a fantastic swimmer, aided by its streamlined body and skull as well as its partially webbed feet, and have been spotted swimming strongly in open waters as much as 200 miles from the shore!

17.  The polar bear will consume a wide variety of foods, including everything from seals to walrus, beluga whales to bowhead whale carcasses, birds, and even kelp!

18.  The polar bear is labeled as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN, a position which may deteriorate in years to come with the further melting of the ice caps.

19.  Hybrids of the polar bear and the grizzly bear, sometimes called grolars, have been known to occur both in the wild and in captivity, a further testament to the close genetic relationship between the two bears.

20.  Baby polar bears are possibly some of the cutest animals on the planet, as can be evidenced by the picture below of baby Anori from Germany's Wuppertal Zoo.

21.  Humans are the only animal that hunt polar bears.

22.  So well protected against the cold is the polar bear that they can quickly overheat, even when the temperature is below zero!  In order to combat this, the polar bear will try to avoid running and will rest for many many hours at a time.  Maybe my cat's a polar bear.

23.  Polar bears, like myself when Windows Movie Maker refuses to work, have actually been observed by scientists to throw tantrums when they fail to catch their prey!  The bears have been observed growling disappointedly, kicking piles of snow, and even throwing ice chunks!

Happy birthday Brooke, hope you enjoy!  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!

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