Top Ten Mammals That Look Like Something They Aren't (Part 2)

Here is Part 2 of this duo of posts.  For Part 1, click HERE.  What are these two posts about?  Well, 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!

5.  Civets and genets - These two groups of animals are quite possibly some of the most unknown animals that are around today.  Members of the family Viverridae in the order Carnivora, if someone does in fact see one, they usually just assume that they are cats, dogs, or something else along those lines.  The family that the viverrids are most closely related to are, in fact, the cats, but they are also related to they hyenas and the mongooses.

4.  Maned Wolf - The maned wolf is neither a wolf, as its name implies, or a fox, as its outward appearance would indicate.  It is related to both, and is in the family Canidae (the dog family) just like wolves and foxes, but it is thought to be most closely related to the South American bush dog.  Interestingly, although small vertebrate prey is quite important to the maned wolf, it eats a great deal of fruits and vegetables, with the most frequently consumed fruit called the wolf apple.

A slightly fuzzy picture of a brown-morph black bear right outside of our tent-cabin in Yosemite!  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

3.  Black Bear - When it comes to the names of the three bears that inhabit North America, they can be very misleading indeed.  ESPECIALLY the black bear, for the black bear, like many other animals throughout the world (including, of course, humans), has different color morphs.  The black bear is, of course, most frequently black.  However, some of the time, the black bear is actually brown, or cinnamon colored, which is not to be confused with the ACTUAL brown bear (or grizzly bear).  In Alaska and northwest Canada, there is the "glacier" color morph, a grey-blue phase.  But I think my favorite is the "Kermode" color phase, which is exclusive to the coast of British Columbia.  This bear is a creamy-white color, and looks a heck of a lot like the polar bear!  How very, very confusing!

2.  Thylacosmilus - Over the course of mammalian evolution, the marsupials have spat out a large number of look-alikes, or animals that evolved via convergent evolution to appear a great deal like other animals throughout the world.  One of the most amazing of all of these (by far, in my opinion) is Thylacosmilus, a marsupial carnivore from the Miocene and Pliocene Epochs of South America.  Thylacosmilus convergently evolved to resemble the saber-toothed cats of North America.  Unfortunately, following the creation of the Isthmus of Panama that connected North and South America around 2 MYA, the saber-toothed cats like Smilodon moved down the newly-formed land bridge to colonize South America during the Great American Interchange, outcompeting Thylacosmilus in the process.

1.  Raccoon Dog - The raccoon dog is a fantastic case of an animal that is now that it appears to be.  You take one look at it, and you decide conclusively that you are looking at a raccoon, no doubt about it.  Your second and third takes yield the same result.  However, the raccoon dog is not a raccoon, as both its name and appearance might indicate: its a canid, through and through!  Listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, the raccoon dog is native to eastern Asia, and is not very closely related to any extant species of dog.  Just a tip, if you are trying to make someone look foolish, showing them a picture of a raccoon dog and having them guess what animal it is is an excellent way to show off your animal-prowess.  Unless they know what it is, in which case you will be the more foolish.

Thanks for joining us tonight for our top ten list!  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! 

The Superorder Xenarthra: More Than Meets The Eye

Here's a joke for you: what does the sloth, the armadillo, and the anteater have in common?  Unfortunately it's a pretty terrible joke and not very funny at all, so you might want to keep it to yourself next time you are at a party.  The answer is that they are all in the superorder Xenarthra.  See?  I told you it was bad.

The Xenarthrans are a large group with the lowest metabolic rate of all of the therian mammals (essentially all mammals except for the egg-laying monotremes).  In our Animal Spotlight on the sloth, we discussed the Top 10 sleepiest animals: the sloth was number 2, and the armadillo was right behind it in third place!  But enough about sleep!  There are many very interesting types of Xenarthrans, both living and dead, so let's take a look, shall we?

Before we look at any Xenarthrans in detail, let's just touch upon their spread across the world.  All of the Xenarthrans evolved in the millions of years of isolation experienced by South America prior to the fairly recent formation of the Isthmus of Panama around 3 MYA during the Pliocene Epoch.  During this event, known as the Great American Interchange, many Xenarthrans went north into Central and North America, while many other animals headed south.  We will look at some individual cases of this throughout the post! 

First off, we have the order Cingulata, which includes the extant armadillos, as well as the extinct glyptodonts and pampatheres.  These guys all have something called "dermal armor," meaning "skin armor," which is composed of many epidermal (skin) scales that overlap.  These scales are typically referred to as "scutes," and are made up of bone, surrounded by a covering layer of horn.  Scutes have evolved in many different animals over the years, a fascinating example of convergent evolution.  Below are a few pictures of non-Xenarthran animals that have, or had, scutes!

When an armadillo rolls into a ball, it is protected on all sides by its dermal armor!  Interestingly, the pangolin, a creature once thought to be a Xenarthran but now known not to be, does the same thing!  This is probably at least part of the reason why many people believed them to be related.

Besides the armadillos, the order Cingulata includes the similarly-armored pampatheres, and the much more interesting glyptodonts, both extinct.  The glyptodonts look like a cross between an ankylosaur and an armadillo, and were pretty big, especially compared to the armadillos!  Some glyptodonts went north during the Great American Interchange but, unlike the armadillos, were not able to survive to the present day. 

Next up, we have the family Folivora, or the family of sloths.  Now, we have ALREADY TALKED ABOUT THE EXTANT TREE SLOTHS IN ANOTHER EXCELLENT POST, so we won't really discuss them today.  We will, instead, take a brief look at the giant ground sloths!

At least five ground sloths were successful in their transition from South to North America.  One interesting fact about the ground sloths is that many cryptid hunters (people who believe in Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, etc.) believe the mapinguari, a a mythological creature of Bolivia and Brazil, to be either a cultural memory of a ground sloth from thousands of years ago, or actually a surviving ground sloth or two that managed to survive until very recently, and perhaps is still alive today.  Many parts of the description of the animal match up to what we know, or think we know about these giant ground sloths, including size, the sloping back, long claws, and caiman-like skin.  For those of you who don't know, the caiman is a crocodilian, related to crocodiles and alligators.  This might look weird on a giant sloth creature, but preserved skin of a giant ground sloth shows a type of dermal armor similar to the armadillo and the crocs.  So who knows!

Actually, there is one more sloth thing!  The other day, my friend Kristie Chua sent me something funny.  It read, "If you ever feel uncoordinated, just remember that sometimes a sloth will mistake its own arm for a tree branch, grab it, and fall to its death."  I'm not sure if it's true or not, but it most certainly seems plausible!  Either way, it definitely makes you feel better about yourself!

Finally, we have the anteaters!  Below are a few pictures that I took at the Denver Zoo A FEW MONTHS AGO, and below that we have a picture of a giant anteater skull.  Notice how the lower and upper jaws have been fused together!  Then, below that, is a picture of the tongue of the giant anteater, which can actually be longer than the skull itself!  Enjoy!

 

This birthday post goes out to Sam Lippincott, happy birthday Sam!  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 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

Smilodon Vs. Thylacosmilus: The Saber-Toothed Marsupial

Two million years ago, a saber-toothed predator stalked the landscape of South America.  Possessed with long, dagger-like teeth, Thylacosmilus was undoubtedly a terrifying predator of the plains of Patagonia.  This saber-toothed predator would have given even the saber-toothed cats pause, despite the fact that (to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi), "He's more kangaroo now than cat."  Despite superficial similarities, Thylacosmilus was not a saber-toothed cat.  Instead, it was a six foot long, 500 pound saber-toothed marsupial.

A reconstruction of Thylacosmilus by the talented young artist Sam Lippincott.  Interestingly, the super-sized canines of Thylacosmilus grew continually throughout its life, unlike those of Smilodon or Xenosmilus (see below), two of the actual saber-toothed cats.  Photo Credit: Sam Lippincott

The immense canines possessed by Thylacosmilus had previously evolved in both the cat-like Nimravids and the various saber-toothed cats (amongst others), and is a classic example of convergent evolution, a topic, in my opinion, that is one of the most interesting happenstances in nature.  We will hopefully talk about convergent evolution sometime next week.

A mounted skeleton of Xenosmilus, a type of saber-toothed feline, at the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.  I got to visit here in July of 2014, and it was a very nice little museum.  Compare the skull of Xenosmilus with that of Thylacosmilus (below).

Anyways, Thylacosmilus lived during the Miocene and the Pliocene Epochs, from 10-2 MYA.  Up until 2 MYA, South America had been its own, separate land mass, not connected to any other continents since some time during the Cretaceous.  2 MYA, however, something extraordinary happened: the Isthmus of Panama was formed, connecting the two continents.  With this connection, came something scientists have dubbed the "Great American Interchange."  Animals from both continents could move, and spread out into the other continents.  For some creatures, like the saber-toothed cats, this was a good thing; they moved down into South America from North America and dominated the landscape.  For other predators, like the terror-bird Titanis(again, a topic for another time), it was good, for a while; after moving into the southern part of North America, however, Titanis was outcompeted by other predators.  For Thylacosmilus, it was down-right disastrous.  Shortly after the Great American Interchange, fossil evidence of Thylacosmilus entirely disappears, similar to the competition between the dingo and the thylacine that drove the thylacine to extinction on mainland Australia.

The skull of Thylacosmilus on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  Got to see this sucker in person in August 2014, when I visited with my good buddy Zach Evens! 

This is a partial post for the "Convergent Evolution" series.  That means that this post is partially included, but was not made specifically to be a part of that series.  HERE is a link to the Homebase for this series.