Big @$$ Eyes

I recently acquired a laptop for my graduation gift, and have been enjoying the crazy pictures that you can take on the Photo Booth!  I think my favorite way to mess with the pictures is by making our eyes ENORMOUS!  Incidentally, some of my favorite animals are those with gigantic eyes, and after coming to this realization, I sensed a post in the making!  Today, we're just going to take a look at a few of my favorites, but you can be sure that we'll be taking a look at other big-eyed creatures in the future!

The spookfish is an absolutely terrifying fish.  Do I need to say anything more?  I suppose I'll say a little more.  The spookfish is the only vertebrate animal known to ever have evolved mirrors instead of lenses in its eyes.  OK, that's enough, it's really starting to creep me out now.  Time we moved on.

Next we have another oceanic animal: the giant squid!  The record for the largest eyes in the animal kingdom is held by this animal, at around 10 inches in diameter: the size of a dinner plate!  WHAT THE HECK!  These animals live at extreme depths and, and where other animals would fail to see spectacularly, the giant squid is able to live and see quite comfortably!

The only extinct animal that I have included in this post, Opthalmosaurus was literally named after its enormous eyes: its name means "eye lizard" in Greek!  Although it looks a heck of a lot like a dolphin, Opthalmosaurus was a type of marine reptile called an ichthyosaur that swam the oceans during the Jurassic Period.  A bony ring called the scleral ring in the eye of the animal helped to keep the eye from collapsing under the intense pressure of the ocean!

Let's move out of the ocean now, and into the trees: meet the tarsier!  The tarsier is a terrifying little primate that is native to southeast Asia and HOLY CRAP.  I JUST LOOKED UP A PICTURE OF THE SIZE OF THE TARSIERS EYES AND LOOK.  AT THAT PICTURE.  BELOW.

OH MY GOD.  THAT IS INSANE.  AND NOW CHECK OUT HOW BIG ITS SKULL IS.

That is really, terribly creepy.  My goodness.  I....I don't even know what to say.  Let's move on now.

Another arboreal primate, the aye-aye is one of my favorite animals of all time!  Native to Madagascar, this lemur is nocturnal (of course, given the eyes), and as you can see in the picture below, definitely doesn't like having its picture taken with the flash!

Flying above the ocean and the trees are the birds, and the creepiest birds with the biggest eyes are the owls.  The owls and the tarsier both share something in common: their eyes are so big in comparison to their head that their eyes are unable to move in their sockets!  That's why both of these animals have such an enormous range of motion in their neck: to look to either side, they have to move their entire head around!

Craziest Animal Fathers

Today, in honor of Father's Day, we are going to be looking at a few animal fathers who go above and beyond to help raise their children, or do so in a surprising way!  Let's start with one of the most famous animal fathers: the seahorse!

One myth regarding the seahorse is that the male seahorse actually becomes pregnant with the babies.  This is not really true: it's more accurate to say that the male seahorse is the surrogate mother for his own babies!  The female seahorse deposits her eggs, up to 2,000 of them, into the male's special pouch, where he hangs onto them during the 10 - 25 day pregnancy.

The African namaqua sandgrouse father actually has its babies drink water from its belly!  Let me explain a little further: the belly feathers of the sandgrouse have evolved to retain water.  When its chicks are thirsty, the poppa sandgrouse finds a watering hole and dunks his belly into it.  Then, he goes back to his nest, summons his children, and lets them drink from his belly!

Marmoset fathers also are quite involved when it comes to their children, mostly due to the fact that the babies require so much energy from their mother.  Before their birth, the babies may compose up to around 25% of their mother's body weight.  To compare this to a human female, if the pregnant female weighed around 120 pounds, then the newborn baby would weigh around 30 pounds!!

Just like the heavy energy investment required of the marmoset babies, so too do some birds invest a great deal of energy into their offspring.  One of these is the large flightless bird called the rhea, related to the ostrich and the emu.  Native to South America, the male rhea will make the nest, incubate the eggs (sometimes up to fifty of them), and will chase away any animals that approach the nest (including the females!)

Next, we have a fascinating fish called the arowana.  The arowana, like many other animals, is a mouthbrooder, which means that one of the parents incubates the babies in its mouth!  In the case of the arowana, the female layes the eggs on the ground, and the male scoops them up, where he incubates them for 4 - 6 weeks!

Our second to last animal father is the barking frog.  Native to Texas, the male barking frog will guard his offspring, urinating on them periodically to keep them wet.  Male frogs often invest a great deal of energy into their young, with some of them practicing mouth brooding like the arowana, and others carrying the babies around on their backs!

Finally, our last animal father is quite possibly the most famous of all time (other than humans), whose incredible feat of strength is known by millions of people world-wide: the emperor penguin!  For around four months, the male emperor penguin will sit on its egg in the coldest and most inhospitable place on the planet: the frigid desert of the Antarctic.  During this four month period, the males huddle together, slowly running through their limited food supply: they don't eat that entire time!  I have often wondered how such a complicated behavior could have evolved!

Happy Father's Day to my father, Mark Neher!  You have had to put up with a lot over the years!  Thanks again!

Top Ten Most Interesting Arboreal Mammals (Part 1)

Today, in honor of the birthday of Charlie Bowers, we are going to be taking a "Top Ten" approach to some pretty cool arboreal mammals.  FYI, for those of you who don't know, arboreal means an animal that lives in the trees!  So let's dive right in!  For Part 2 of this duology, click HERE.

10.  Squirrel - Although a fairly common animal and really not that exciting at first glance, the squirrel is actually quite the exciting animal!  Incredibly acrobatic, the squirrel is superbly adapted for an arboreal lifestyle.  Need more proof?  Click the link right HERE to be amazed!

One of the koalas at the San Diego Zoo in California.  Photo Credit: Julie Neher

9.  Koala -  Other than the kangaroo, the koala is probably the most iconic Australian marsupial.  Many myths abound in regards to the koala.  For example, many people believe that the koala is constantly "adjusting its altitude," so to speak, due to something in the leaves of the eucalyptus trees that they consume.  While it seems quite likely that the koala is constantly baked due to its lackadaisical attitude, it's not actually true: the koala just spends a great deal of its day asleep in order to digest the tough vegetation that composes its diet.  As a matter of fact, the 20-22 hours a day the koala sleeps makes it the sleepiest  mammal!  (For more information about the koala and its digestion, click HERE). 

8.  Primates - Perhaps the order of mammals that is most superbly adapted to a life in the trees, the primates include everything from the aye-aye to the orangutan, from the tarsier to us humans!  Thought to have started evolving in North America or Asia around 65 MYA or so, before even the dinosaurs died out, today there are over 200 extant species, with new ones still being discovered, like the lesula monkey that was discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2012 (pictured above).

7.  Binturong - Often called the "Bear-cat," the binturong is the largest of the strange group of animals known as the civets.  (For more about civets and their relatives, click HERE).  Native to southeastern Asia, the binturong is omnivorous, but seems to consume fruit the most in its diet, and is particularly partial to figs.  Although the binturong is labeled as "Critically Endangered" in China, the IUCN labels the species as a whole as merely "Vulnerable."

6.  Sloth - When you hear the word "sloth," you might think of someone or something being lazy.  There is a very good reason for that association: the sloth is quite sloth!  As David Attenborough says in the excellent BBC production "Life of Mammals," "The sloth moves as if it's powered by the wrong sort of batteries."  Sleeping around 20 hours a day, the sloth is the second sleepiest mammal, right after the koala.  While it sleeps, the sloth hangs upside down from tree branches.  Sounds like a lot of work, right?  Actually, it really isn't: the sloth simply hooks its claws over the tree branch, and relaxes all of its muscles.  If a human hunter shoots a sloth hanging from a tree, it will usually simply remain hanging from the tree branch, anchored by its claws!  Then the hunter actually has to physically climb up into the tree to retrieve its prize!

23 Fact Tuesdays: Ceratosaurus, Octopi, Aye-aye, and More!

Introducing:  23 Fact Tuesdays!  I'm thinking that (possibly) each week, we can look at twenty-three different groups of....things....and we can learn a fun fact about them each week!  Many of these topics feature North America, as that is where both I and most of my readers reside, but other topics include penguins, fossil horses, fossil mammals, early humans, various fish and birds, dinosaurs, and many more!
Here they are!

Don't want to read all twenty-three!  Well, in my opinion, the best ones are 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 19!  Enjoy!

1.  Alaskan Mammals:  The Sitka black-tailed deer will graze on beach plants like dune grass and kelp during the lean season.

2.  Alaskan Fish:  The whitefish may fast for eight or nine months during the lean season, surviving off of their stored fat.

3.  Dinosaurs:  In 1883, Ceratosaurus was the first large meat eating, or Theropod, dinosaur skeleton that was discovered more than half complete.  The first skeleton was discovered in Colorado.

4.  Dinosaurian Contemporaries:  Lagosuchus was either the direct ancestor, or a close relative of the ancestor, of the dinosaurs.

5.  North American Birds of Prey:  The robin-sized American Kestrel is not only the smallest hawk in North America, but it is also the most common.

6.  Tideland Treasures of South Carolina:  The palmetto, which is the state tree of South Carolina, can live for 75 years, and grow to a height of 60 feet, with a 1 or 2 foot diameter.

7.  North American Mammals:  The least chipmunk, besides eating the usual rodent foods like nuts, will also dine on insects, and occasionally small vertebrates.

8.  North American Hoofed and Marine Mammals:  The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales.

9.  North American Birds:  The common goldeneye will often take over abandoned woodpecker nests.

10.  Fossil Mammals:  Despite the fact that primates no longer live in North America, many paleontologists think that they either evolved there or in Asia.

11.  Penguins:  Despite the fact that most people think of penguins living in cold, snowy climates, the king penguin typically forms colonies in the shelter of dense tussock grass.

12.  Fossil Horses:  One species of Hypohippus, H. osborni, had weak and infrequently used side toes.  Although not very exciting sounding, this is an important step from multi-toed horse ancestors to the one-toed horses that we know today. 

13.  Dinosaurs....Again!:  Ornithomimus, one of the "ostrich-dinosaurs," lived both in the states of Colorado and Montana, but also in the country of Tibet.

14.  Extreme Abilities:  In order to protect itself from various predators and to hunt its various prey, the amazing Indo-Malayan octopus can mimic an enormous variety of different animals, including flounder, sea snakes, crinoids, jellyfish, lionfish, hermit crabs, stingrays, brittlestars, stomatopods, and sea anemones, amongst many others.

15.  Extreme Movement:  Although this dude looks like a worm or something, the caecilian is actually a close relative of newts and salamanders.  It lives strictly underground, and is rarely seen, despite the fact that they can grow up to five feet long.

16.  Extreme Growth:  The ostrich is a serious record breaker amongst birds.  Not only does it when the tallest bird and heaviest bird awards, but it also is the fastest runner, has the biggest egg, and has the largest eyes.  In fact, the smallest bird on the planet, the tiny little bee hummingbird, could easily fit inside the eye of the ostrich!

 17.  Extreme Families:  The "Biggest Nest of Any Bird" Award goes to the orange-footed megapode, or the scrubfowl.  Although these nests are just on the ground (the biggest nests in trees are built by bald eagles), they are still very, very impressive.  On average, these nests can be 11.5 feet wide and 39 feet tall!  The biggest ever recorded, however, was a whopping 164 feet wide!

18.   Remarkable Mammals:  The aye-aye, possibly one of the creepiest looking animals in the natural world, is a type of lemur whose large incisor teeth grow continuously.

19.  Remarkable Birds:  Once thought to be the missing link between reptiles and birds, the South American Hoatzin hatches out of its egg with claws on its wing greatly resembling those of the ancient Late Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx.  These wing claws are not often, and maybe even never, found on birds today, with the obvious exception of the baby Hoatzin.  As the Hoatzin grows, its wing claws disappear.  

20.  Remarkable Fish:  The electric eel can discharge fifty volts from its body.

21.  Remarkable Reptiles and Amphibians:  The Cuban tree boa will position itself in small apertures in caves, striking with deadly accuracy at bats that fly out of the cave.  Remarkably, the snake will do this in complete darkness, somehow sensing where the bats are.

22.  Prehistoric Animals:  Like Lagosuchus, Effigia is another possible relative of the dinosaurs.

23.  The Evolution of Humans:  Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have been the last common ancestor between the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and us humans, Homo sapiens.