Alien Vs. Predator Vs. Parasaurolophus

A few days ago, I sat down and, with several hours of homework to do, watched Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien."  It was phenomenal, and I enjoyed it, and went on to watch Predator (great) and Prometheus (not so great).  Now, on this excellent but snowy Thursday afternoon, I'm about an hour into "Aliens," knowing that any second now an Alien xenomorph is going to appear out of nowhere and kill something.  But that's not why I paused the movie at the 54:44 minute mark.  What I've been thinking about is far more pressing: what's the purpose of that enormously distended xenomorph cranium?

If you have no idea what's going on in this picture yet, that means you're probably sane.

Usually with aliens, you can just pass off a big head as an indicator of big brains.  Ki-Adi Mundi from Star Wars, for example, has two brains in that big 'ol Cerean cranium of his, and an extra heart to boot.  If you rewatch "A New Hope" extra carefully, see if you can't spot Pons Limbic (note the brainy pun) in the Mos Eisley Cantina, the big-brained Siniteen whose head literally resembles a brain.  The Guardians of the Universe from the D.C. Comics franchise are often pretty wise, but in light of some recent events, they might not be quite as level headed and emotion spectrumless as we thought (but that's a story for another bright snowy day).  The Face of Boe from Doctor Who seems to be pretty smart, given that he's literally just a giant head in a tank and can communicate telepathically.  Then there's Zilius Zox, a Red Lantern from the D.C. universe, who also appears to be little more than a giant head.  Both Jumba (from Disney's "Lilo and Stitch") and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) seem to have noggins that are larger than average in proportion to body size, and seem to have above average intelligence to match.  Marvin the Martian and Roger from American Dad?  Both smart, both big-headed.

A skull of the duck-billed hadrosaur Parasaurolophus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, from my visit last summer with my good friend Zach Evens (who also deserves some credit listing big-brained aliens).

Now what about the aliens, or xenomorphs, from the "Alien" franchise?  Although undeniably intelligent to some degree, they aren't what you'd typically think of when the subject of brainy aliens comes up around the dinner table, at least not in terms of processing power.  But they definitely have big heads.  So what are they used for if not for thinking?  We, of course, can turn to the science of dinosaur paleontology to help us with this question.  Take a look at the dinosaur skull above.  This critter is a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, called Parasaurolophus.  Scientists believe that it blew air through its special crest to produce a sound very similar to that of a trombone!  Many hadrosaurs had wild cranial ornamentation, as did other dinosaurs such as some of the ceratopsians and the pachycephalosaurs, just to name a few.  These wacky head-dos almost certainly had a whole lot to do with attracting a mate and sexual selection.  Essentially, the bigger your crest is, the more attractive you are.  Is it possible a similar sort of thing evolved for the Alien xenomorphs?  In "Aliens," we can see that the queen has a different head pattern than do all of the other xenomorphs that we've seen so far, indicating some sort of sexual dimorphism is potentially at work.  Interesting.  What should you take from this blog post?  Probably just that I have way too much time on my hands.

On a brief side note, I realized I've actually talked about the skull of the xenomorphs previously, before I'd even seen the movies.  Check out that post, all about otter skulls, by clicking HERE.

Alien vs. predator vs. Parasaurolophus vs. Tyrannosaurus vs. Lego Gilderoy Lockhart vs. Darth Vader vs. Polly Pocket vs. creepy frog candle vs. macaw vs. Apatosaurus vs. medieval archer vs. Boba Fett Pez Dispenser vs. Ambelodon vs. mallard vs. fisherman from an ironic fish cake vs. Jumba vs. Craire Cat Hello Thingy vs. six different types of shark vs. Taz monster truck vs. Aragorn son of Arathorn vs. Liam Payne vs. Marty from "Pirates of the Caribbean" vs. mouse cat toy vs. basilisk lizard vs. Spider-Man vs. penguins with jet packs and missile launchers vs. Themistocles vs. Terri Irwin.  And this is why it takes me so long to write a blog post.  I think we were all a little surprised about how quickly things escalated.  Yeah, I definitely have too much time on my hands.

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.