Despite the clever if misleading title, we will not be talking about mouths on toes today (although many creatures such as butterflies can taste with their feet). I just said that to make it sound like the line from the classic song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" by Bob Dylan. Instead, we are going to be talking about eyes on ears: eyespots, at least!
A picture of one of the Amur tigers at the Denver Zoo. See those white bars surrounded by dark fur on the ears of the cat? Those are the topic of today's discussion.
On the cover of the August/September issue of the National Wildlife magazine, there was a picture of a drinking bobcat, its ears folded back in the posture that some refer to as "airplane ears." On both of its ears were two white bars that made the ears look a lot like eyes. I never really paid attention to this pattern on the coat, but once my friend Aidan Cook pointed it out, it got the proverbial gears going. I remembered that servals also had the eyespot-like patterns as well, but did other cats? Turns out a lot of them do, with just a few shared throughout the post. Notice how defined the eyespot is in both the bobcat (top) and the serval, below.
To learn more, I consulted my "Wild Cats of the World" book by Mel and Fiona Sunquist. The authors state that many cats have this pattern on their ears, "almost as many species" have the ear eyespots that are "poorly defined or absent." One of the many examples that they include is the lion. As you can see in the pictures below, lions do have this pattern to a certain degree, but nowhere near as derived as in the serval or the bobcat. Below we have pictures of a young adult male lion, two of females, and one of a cub, and you can see that none of them have a very well defined eyespot.
Mountain lions also generally don't have it as well defined. It seems like some mountain lions really don't have that much black on their ears at all, and some have a higher degree of black and white. Presumably, whatever the function the eyespot serves in other species, it is not as important for the mountain lion, and natural selection therefore does not favor it highly one way or another.
It's a little tough to tell in the picture below, but the sand cat is another one of those cats that has a poorly defined eyespot.
Cheetahs also don't have terribly well defined eyespots.
Yet another cat that does not have very well defined eyespots, the ever fantastic Pallas cat!
I thought I had read somewhere that the eyespots served to help communicate between individuals when they were hunting. This doesn't make that much sense, though, because most cats are solitary individuals, with the main exception being lions, and we already noted that their eyespots are not quite as specialized. The Sunquists state in their book that the exact function of the eyespots is unknown, although some scientists believe that they serve as a "follow me" signal to their young, which "may be especially important in low-light conditions." I assumed that this might mean that the young cats wouldn't have the eyespots, but this is clearly not true, as you can see the photograph of Sochi, the new male Amur leopardcub at the Denver Zoo. There, you can see that Sochi (named after the Russian city that is holding this years Olympics) also has the ear spots. So while this doesn't necessarily support the idea of a "follow me" signal to the young, it doesn't really not support it either: it's just something interesting that I wanted to point out.
We already talked about how tigers have a pretty well developed eyespot, but here are two more pictures of tigers to drive the point home.
I can't remember for certain if the picture below was a bobcat or a lynx, but I am pretty certain it is a bobcat, looking at the size of the feet. (Lynx spend a lot more time in the snow, and therefore have larger feet, a snowshoe-like adaptation to keep them from sinking in.) This cat, one of many at the Wild Animal Sanctuary, seems to have much smaller feet in proportion to the rest of the body. Regardless, you can see the well defined eyespots.
The snow leopard, one of my favorite cats, has well defined eyespots as well, which you can kind of see in both of these pictures.
You've probably heard me mention the Best Western Denver Southwest several times here on the blog: they are the folks who are changing their hotel into a dinosaur themed natural history museum/hotel extravaganza! Well, the lobby is now complete, as is much of the rest of the dinosaur themed paraphernalia around the grounds! Just a few more things are awaiting completion, but the hotel looks fantastic! I thought I'd share some pictures of the hotel for you guys here! For your information, the credit for all of the photos in this post goes to the Best Western Denver Southwest, unless it is otherwise noted or there is a stuffed Triceratops named Pyg in the picture! But first, you should meet the stars of the hotel: the Tally family!
First, let's start on the outside of the hotel! Here are the initial plans for the outside of the hotel:
And here is who greets you now when you walk inside: Stanley, the Stegosaurus!
Now, the lobby only just recently finished construction. Until recently, the lobby entrance looked like this:
The lobby just finished construction and looks GREAT now, but first let's look at a few more construction pictures, just so you can get a feel for how far along everything has come! First let's take a look at the pool! In the far future, the room should be partially enclosed from the outdoors!
At the beginning of construction, this place looked like it does in the picture below with Meredith!
A few months later, we have their two children, Caroline and Joe Tally, talking about the future plans for the pool with a camera crew from the BBC!
Finally, here are some pictures of the pool from very recently, it is now finished!
At least, the pool itself is finished. Sometime starting next year, the Tally's will be hiring someone to create a tile mosaic of some creatures that inhabited the Western Interior Seaway (which you can read more about HERE). Oh....and did I forget to mention that the pool is in the shape of the seaway? Pretty frickin' awesome if you ask me!
Now, a few pictures back, I mentioned that Joe and Caroline were talking to a BBC camera crew. What was that all about? Well, as you can imagine, this whole dinosaur hotel idea has been pretty popular to a whole lot of folks, and has made an appearance across a very wide range of media, one of which was a BBC story about it! Check out the link HERE! I also have several pictures of the filming! First off, we have several pictures of the camera on Greg!
As you might have noticed in the video, the film crew also stopped at the Morrison Natural History Museum, my place of work! There they interviewed the director and curator Matt Mossbrucker, and you can see a few of those pictures below!
Here the film crew watches as Matt excavates part of an Apatosaurus skull named Kevin upstairs in the lab!
Another big break for the hotel came from The Oatmeal! We have a lot to cover here in this post so I won't take the time to delve into it myself, but you absolutely HAVE to check it out by clicking HERE: it is fantastic, I guarantee it! These three screenshots below are credited to The Oatmeal!
It doesn't stop there, though! The Tallys have also been featured in Entrepreneur magazine! Here is a picture of the article, and you can read it yourself by clicking the link HERE!
And on the lighter side of things: have you ever heard of the popular YouTube series My Drunk Kitchen? If not, make sure to check it out because it is hysterical: but especially make sure to check out the episode with the hotel and the museum in it! Suffice it to say, the Tallys have definitely found their way down many different avenues of pop culture!
I don't really find it that surprising: what they're doing is freaking awesome! Check out these murals that they are having painted on the back of the building! The first one is a sort of walk through time, featuring all sorts of fun animals! The close up below is of a prehistoric mammal called Uintatherium!
Here's another mural for you to check out:
As if that isn't enough awesome paleo art for you, hanging in the rooms will be copies of some of the watercolors made by an awesome paleontologist named Arthur Lakes who excavated a lot of cool things from the area, including some of the bones that we have in the museum!
There are also some awesome banners hanging on the poles outside the hotel!
These aren't the only reasons why the hotel is super cool, though: not by a long shot! Usually every week, they have a Bird of Prey show and a Jungle Lady show!
First some pictures from the bird of prey shows! First, a few pictures of Anne Price holding a barn owl!
Next, we have a picture of her holding a turkey vulture!
The Jungle Lady is really cool too, here are some pictures of the animals that she brings, too! Here's Meredith with the albino Burmese python!
And an albino hedgehog!
Here's a picture of a veiled chameleon named Prince Charming!
This post is really long: I am splitting it up into two parts! Check back next time to learn about what REALLY makes the dinosaur hotel a DINOSAUR hotel!
Yesterday, Mr. Bones, a local dinosaur enthusiast who's created some amazing looking dinosaur skeleton suits, visited the Morrison Natural History Museum! The museum was also visited by Greg and Meredith Tally and their children, the fantastic people who are renovating the Best Western Denver Southwest to be a dinosaur-themed hotel! All of these folks were here to make a brief teaser sort of thing to promote both the dinosaur hotel and the Morrison Museum! I took a little bit of video, as well as some pictures, so make sure to check them out here!
Greg Tally is attacked by Mr. Bones!
Running is useless!
Just a little too big for the door!
Below, we have a picture of Greg Tally helping out with the cameraman and Mr. Bones!
If you want to see some video of the museum's encounter with Mr. Bones, check out the video below!
Here, we have some shots of Mr. Bones taking a swipe at the museum sign out on the road!
Kids LOVE Mr. Bones!
One of his other suits, a Utahraptor! All of the other shots are of him wearing his "Kindergarten Tyrannosaurus rex" suit!
