Damu the Greater Angle-Winged Katydid!

A few months ago, I looked up at the dorm room wall and there was a katydid perched there!  I captured him and put him in a container for a week!  I learned a little bit about katydids, so put your listening ears on!

Damu in his container.  "Damu" means "blood" in Swahili, and for good reason.  This little insect was a bloodthirsty demon, I tell you what.  Which is a joke because it eats leaves.  Ha.

I figured out that Damu was probably a greater angle-winged katydid (Microcentrum rhombifolium), native to the southwestern and eastern United States.  The adults are only around from between July and October, except in Florida, where the higher year round temperatures allow the species to live year round.

The greater angle-wing is pretty large as insects go (especially here in Colorado), and looks quite cool!  As you can probably tell from the picture below, the katydid has evolved to superbly mimic its surroundings: i.e., the leaves of trees!  This makes the katydid one of my Top Ten Favorite Camouflagers, one of four insects to make the cut!

Top Ten Favorite Camouflagers
By Zack Neher

1.  Octopus
2.  Walking Leaves
3.  Leafy Sea Dragon
4.  Katydid
5.  Ghost Mantis
6.  Harry Potter Under the Invisiblity Cloak
7.  Arctic Fox
8.  Walking Stick
9.  Optimus Prime
10.  Ptarmigan
11.  Leaf-Tailed Gecko


If you live in much of the United States (refer to the map below), you can probably see the greater angle-winged katydid!  Or, at least, hear it!  I know for me personally, once I knew what I was listening to, I heard them ALL the time!  Click the link to hear a sound clip of the male making its distinctive clicking sound!  (Damu made these sounds, which is why I am almost positive of him being a male).

Male Katydid Clicking Sounds

Damu is sadly no longer with us: I kept him for about a week, and decided to let him go.  He spent a lot of time making his clicking sounds (which are surprisingly loud for a critter of his size), especially at night when we were trying to sleep.  It got quite annoying, and I wanted him to be free, so I released him from his prison.  Plus he pooped WAY more than an insect of his size should.

I caught another katydid later on, this time a female.  You could tell that Damu Mbili (Damu II in Swahili) was a female because she never clicked and had an ovipositor, an organ possessed by some animals to aid in egg laying.  She died in the middle of October, right around when you would expect these katydids to pass away, though I did hear male katydids clicking away intermittently through the 27th of October.  Here are a few pictures.

Check back soon for our next post, where we look at some insects that I saw at my recent visit to the San Diego Zoo, many of which are expert camouflagers!

Works Referenced:

The New World Vultures: Top Ten Vultures (Part 2)

On Thursday, I published the first of our two-parter "Top Ten Vultures" posts, all in honor of International Vulture Awareness Day!  (Learn more HERE.)  In the last post, we looked at only the Old World Vultures, a group of birds that are native to Asia, Africa, and Europe.  Today, we will be looking at the New World Vultures who, despite their name, are not actually very closely related to the Old World Vultures at all!  Instead, the similarities in body design between the two different groups is a result of one of my favorite topics of all time, convergent evolution!  So let's do it: the last five of the top ten!  Meet my favorite five New World Vultures!  (For the previous post in the Top Ten Vultures duology, click HERE.)

5.  Number five on the list is the turkey vulture, a classic vulture for us Coloradans!  The only vulture alive today in Colorado (I suppose the occasional black vulture may wander in from the south), the turkey vulture is what many people think of when they hear the word "vulture."  I have noticed a lot (thirty or more) of turkey vultures circling this one place on the CU Boulder campus, so I am planning a little excursion to figure out what it is that is drawing them to that particular spot in such large numbers!  Recently, the folks at the Raptor Education Foundation brought a turkey vulture in to the Best Western Denver Southwest, a fun hotel that is currently undergoing renovations to become a functioning natural history museum!  (REF website HERE, BWDS website HERE.)  So here are some awesome pictures from that event!  If you guys ever get a chance to check out one of the presentations given by the folks at the Raptor Education Foundation, you definitely should go, it is a REAL treat!  In the pictures below, you can see the curator of the foundation, Anne Price, holding the turkey vulture, while the director, Peter Reshetniak (background), tells us a great deal about the bird!

4.  With nearly a ten foot wingspan, the California condor is the largest flying bird in North America!  (If you're having trouble visualizing ten feet, either go purchase ten one-foot long rulers and lay them end to end or, more simply, go find a good-sized California condor and stretch out its wings.  That's probably the best visual right there.)  The California condor is unfortunately labeled "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN, and it has experienced a pretty good comeback, and hopefully will continue to do so well into the future!  According to the IUCN website, the last six remaining wild individuals were brought into captivity for captive breeding purposes, making the species "Extinct in the Wild."  However, due to intense involvement from scientists, the species is on the rise, with around 213 individuals in the wild!

3.  Meet the only fossil vulture on our Top Ten list, Phasmagyps!  Some paleontologists are unsure whether Phasmagyps is actually a vulture, and this uncertainty is definitely understandable, as Phasmagyps is known from but a single bone!  If it is a vulture, then Phasmagyps might be the oldest known New World vulture!  Discovered in a Colorado quarry containing a number of fossils belonging to a 35 million year old rhinoceros called Trigonias, this single bone is now housed in the collections facility of the University of Colorado Boulder!  I'm not really sure what I'm doing yet, but I've tried to input a request to check out the bone, we'll see how that goes!

2.  Meet the Andean condor, one of the largest flying birds alive today, with more than a ten foot wingspan!  With an incredible lifespan of over 75 years in captivity, the Andean condor, much like most animals that live for a very long time, does not reproduce very quickly: and therein lies its vulnerability.  If, say, half of the population of Andean condors was shot in one year by humans, then it would take much longer for the population density to regain its former glory.  By contrast, if you destroy half of the population of, say, rats, then they would almost certainly regain their former numbers very quickly, as they reproduce at an alarmingly fast rate.  (The same principle applies to the California condor, who we talked about above.)  Fortunately, the Andean condor is nowhere near as vulnerable to extinction as its close relative, the California condor.

1.  At last, we come to my most favorite vulture of all time: the king vulture!  This guy is absolutely ridiculous looking, resembling a cross between a vulture, a turkey, and who knows what else!  It also has a very fun scientific name: Sarcoramphus papa!  Don't exactly know what it means, but I like to think it has something to do with being the Vulture Daddy.  I found on some sources online that the blood and feathers of the king vulture were used by the ancient Mayans to help cure disease, but I couldn't find any more information on that: all I found was the exact same sentence copied over and over again: "The bird's blood and feathers were also used to cure diseases."  An enigmatic sentence for a very engimatic looking bird.  But let's face it: it just looks awesome.

Thanks again for joining us today!  I do hope I have made you more aware of vultures of an international level!  But seriously, check out their page: http://www.vultureday.org/2013/index.php

The Old World Vultures: Top Ten Vultures (Part 1)

This coming Saturday is International Vulture Awareness Day, and in honor of the event, we are going to be taking a "Top Ten" look at the vultures!  Before we dive right in, I must make an important distinction.  Despite the fact that both the Cape Griffon vulture (native to Africa) and the turkey vulture (native to North America) are called vultures, they don't all belong to the same group!  Despite the often startling similarities possessed by these two different avian families, these similarities are not the result of a common ancestor, but the result of convergent evolution!  The Old World Vultures (native to Asia, Africa, and Europe) are in the same group of birds as the hawks and eagles do.  Meanwhile, the New World Vultures (native to the Americas) are just kinda out there, not too closely related to the Old World Vultures, but still birds of prey.  In order to keep this post from rapidly getting out of control (as has been known to happen to my blog posts), I have decided to break this Top Ten list into two parts.  The first part focuses on five awesome Old World Vultures, while the second post lists the last five vultures on the Top Ten list, all five of whom are New World Vultures!  Happy International Vulture Awareness Day, everybody!

10.  We'll start off with the lammergeier!  I remembered this one from a David Attenborough special that I saw several years ago!  This particular Old World Vulture was featured in a brief segment of "The Living Planet," and it was smashing good fun!  (That was a pun.  Unless you display a higher than average familiarity with your Old World Vultures, you probably won't get it.  But you will).  The lammergeier enjoys a nice meal of animal bones, especially the marrow on the insides, but oftentimes these bones are simply too tough for the bird to crack.  To successfully reach the innards, the lammergeier launches itself into the air, bone in hand, and flies upwards.  Once it has reached a satisfying height, the lammergeier will release the bone and, if all goes well, the bone will crack open upon impact with the hard rock below!  To see a video of this fantastic bird in action, make sure to click the link HERE!

2.  The smallest of the Old World Vultures, the palm-nut vulture is definitely quite distinctive, and, at least to my eye, looks a lot like an eagle!  (Not so much in the picture below, though, there it just looks like a bat!)  The palm-nut vulture, unlike most birds of prey, regularly consumes vegetable matter, with the primary component of its diet being the fruit of the oil-palm!  The palm-nut vulture does eat other foods as well, though, including crabs, fish, small mammals, reptiles, and birds.  Unlike most other vultures, rarely will a palm-nut vulture be spotted at a large carcass.

3.  The Egyptian vulture, much like the palm-nut vulture, also has a very varied diet.  This particular vulture also has ties to the lammergeier in the ways it gets to its food!  As is typical of vultures, the Egyptian will scavenge large carcasses, and this carrion is the primary component of its diet.  Just like the palm-nut, the Egyptian vulture will also consume rotting vegetables and fruits and, even grosser, it will eat poop!  (Although it may be gross, it is thought by many scientists today that part of the reason that so many people have allergies is because we don't eat poop!  Well....kind of.  Just read the post HERE.)  The Egyptian vulture also loves to eat eggs, but to get at the soft interior, the bird employs the use of tools, throwing rocks at the eggs to break them open!  To see a video of this, check out the YouTube link below!  But honestly, you might want to mute the video, the guy's voice is SOOOO annoying....

4.  Although this guy doesn't look quite as funky as some of the other vultures that we have already looked at, I really like the Cape griffon vulture (oftentimes simply called the Cape vulture, not to be confused with the griffon vulture) because I get to see them in the giraffe exhibit at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo most times we go down!  I was unable to figure out what the scientific name of the Cape griffon vulture, Gyps coprotheres, means.  I found that the genus name, Gyps, means "Condor" in Greek, and I am thinking that the species name, coprotheres, might have something to do with poop, given the fact that the Greek root "copros" means dung or excrement (i.e. coprolites are fossil poop).  However, I couldn't find anything on the Internet that would either confirm or deny my assumptions, so instead of hearing about some fascinating aspect of the Cape griffon vulture's feces, you instead can view some pictures and a video that myself and Grace Albers took at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!

The video is indeed the link below, I didn't just accidentally upload two of the same picture!

5.  Finally: number 5, the last Old World Vulture on our Top Ten list!  Meet the white-headed vulture, aptly named due to the fact that it has a white head and it is a vulture.  The white-headed vulture is an early riser, often the first vulture to arrive at a carcass.  Because of this, it would have been funnier for me to put the white-headed vulture at the very top of this list, but I'm too lazy to change it so you will have to get by with me just telling you about how funny it is.  Often considered to be an "aloof" vulture (meaning that it generally sticks to the outskirts of a group of feeding vultures), the white-headed vulture can be very aggressive, rushing into the midst of a large group of vultures to grab a scrap of food, and then rushing right back out!

This concludes the first half of our "Top Ten Vulture" posts.  Check back soon for the second half, the New World Vultures half of the posts!

Top Ten Pokémon Inspired By Real Animals

Many of you are probably familiar with the popular video game and TV series "Pokémon."  While I myself never got into it, a few months ago, I did a post about the axolotl, a fascinating little salamander. While I was researching the post (which you can view by clicking HERE), I found that a Pokémon called Wooper was based off of the axolotl.  I thought this was pretty funny, as I thought that no one had ever really heard of the axolotl, much less based a video game character after it!  The more digging I did, the more I realized that this is a fairly common theme: a great many Pokémon are based off of real animals, both living and dead!  So I thought that for the birthday post of my good friend Masaki Kleinkopf, we could look at the Top Ten Pokémon Inspired By Real Animals!

1.  Farfetch'd - Duck

According to my Pokémon sources (AKA the Internet), the Farfetch'd is supposed to live in and around water, just like a real duck!  It's also supposed to taste pretty good: again, like a real duck!

2.  Lanturn - Anglerfish

Probably one of the freakiest animals in the animal kingdom, the deep-sea loving anglerfish bait other fish closer with the so-called "esca" on its head.  The little fish swim closer, attracted to the bioluminescence emanating from the esca, and then the anglerfish snaps them up.  The name of this Pokémon is clearly an homage to this glowing appendage.

3.  Shieldon - Ceratopsian

The ceratopsians are a large group of dinosaurs containing one of the most famous dinosaurs of all time: Triceratops.  Although most sources state that Shieldon is based off of Triceratops, the Pokémon differs in that it has no horns.  This makes a more likely candidate for the origin of Shieldon another, more primitive ceratopsian called Protoceratops.  If you click on the link to a post HERE and scroll down to the second picture, you can see a picture of the skull of Protoceratops.

4.  Sandslash - Pangolin

The Pokémon called Sandslash is clearly based off of a funny, but quite fascinating, animal called the pangolin.  Sandlash features the dermal armor of the pangolin (a fancy way of saying "armor formed from hardened skin, akin to the armadillo"), as well as the massive claws.  The claws, in both the pangolin and, apparently, Sandslash, can be used to attack potential threats, as well as burrowing.  The pangolin uses its claws to burrow into termite mounds, consuming them by the thousands.  Sandslash can also roll into a ball to defend itself from attack, just like the pangolin: however, I don't think that the pangolin can roll away from its attacker while in "ball mode."  For a song about dermal armor that features, amongst many other things, the pangolin, click HERE!

5.  Relicanth - Coelacanth

Relicanth is based off of a very unassuming, but entirely fascinating, fish called the coelacanth.  For many, many years, conventional wisdom had dictated that the coelacanth went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period, along with the non-avian dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, and the massive marine reptiles. This assumed extinction was backed up by the fact that no fossils had been discovered, at least none that had been positively attributed to the coelacanth.  It wasn't until 1938, when a live coelacanth was pulled up off the coast of Madagascar, that scientists realized that perhaps the coelacanth wasn't quite as dead as they thought it was.  Since then, other sites along the coast of Africa, as well as in Indonesia, have yielded live coelacanths, giving the prehistoric fish a title it very much deserves: a living fossil.  According to the Pokédex in the game (a sort of encyclopedia that talks all about the different Pokémon), the Relicanth was also recently discovered, and is also labeled as a "living fossil."

6.  Tirtouga - Archelon

So apparently, some Pokémon can evolve, which is another cool and clever way of adding science into video games without making the video games dumb and boring.  Apparently, the Pokémon Tirtouga isn't necessarily based off of the massive sea turtle Archelon, but Tirtouga actually evolved into another Pokémon called Carracosta that is based off of Archelon.  Tirtouga appears to be based off of either the extant (still living, opposite of extinct) leatherback sea turtle, or perhaps another extinct sea turtle called Protostega.  Either way, all three sea turtles look pretty much the same!

7.  Archen - Archaeopteryx

It's in the name: clearly, the name Archen is based off of the name Archaeopteryx, a fossil bird that is widely considered to be the missing link (at least the first in a long line of links) between dinosaurs and birds.  First discovered in the 1800s, the feathered fossil of Archaeopteryx helped famed naturalist Charles Darwin and his followers to promote his ideas about evolution and natural selection.  According to the Pokédex, Archen is not able to fly, leading people to speculate that Archen is also based partly off of other, non-flying feathered dinosaurs, such as Velociraptor or Deinonychus.

8.  Lileep - Crinoids

Up until last week, I'd never devoted a whole lot of thought to the evolutionary relationships of a fascinating group of creatures called crinoids.  In my mind, if they look like plants, they're probably plants!  Well, I was wrong: the crinoids are actually echinoderms, just like sea urchins and sea stars, and are actually animals!  I also didn't realize that crinoids were still around today: I knew that there were a ton of them in the past, but I didn't realize that some of them had survived to the present day!  Many people believe that Lileep is based off of these strange animals, and it's not too hard to see the resemblance!

9.  Cranidos - Pachycephalosaurus

Of all of the pachycephalosaurs, Pachycephalosaurus seems like the most likely candidate for the inspiration of the strange Pokémon called Cranidos.  The main means of attack of this Pokémon is by head-butting its opponents, a means of combat long attributed to the pachycephalosaurs.  This head-butting is currently under a lot of scrutiny, with some paleontologists saying that yes, of course pachycephalosaurs head-butted each other, in the same fashion that bighorn sheep do today.  On the other hand, some paleontologists say that there is no way these guys could head-butt each other, as their necks would simply snap after a few impacts.  Other paleontologists believe that they did use their heads for head-butting, but not in the way that the previous two groups were hypothesizing: instead of getting a running start and then cracking heads, bighorn sheep style, they would instead just lock heads without the running start, like many types of deer and elk that spar today.  Still others propose that maybe these dinosaurs were smacking each other in the side or in the flank.  Like many facets of paleontology, we may never know what, exactly, they did with their craniums. 

10.  Anorith - Anomalocaris

This is the Pokémon that really inspired me to do a post like this.  Anomalocaris is one of my favorite animals because it is just so weird looking!  Living in the Cambrian Period, about 500 million years ago (MYA), Anomalocaris is definitely one of those animals that does not get a lot of the limelight.  Often found amongst the various and assorted crazies from the Burgess Shale in Canada, Anomalocaris is definitely something that I never expected to be in a video game!  Nevertheless, here it is!

This was the birthday post of Masaki Kleinkopf! Happy birthday, Masaki! If you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animals, and I will do my best to get a post in! And if you like what you are reading, please feel free to follow us here or via Facebook!

Top Ten Most Interesting Arboreal Mammals (Part 2)

Welcome to Part 2 of the Top Ten Most Interesting Arboreal Mammals in honor of the birthday of Charlie Bowers!  FYI, for those of you who don't know, arboreal means an animal that lives in the trees!  For Part 1 of this duology, click HERE.

5.  Fossa - The fossa has one of the most interesting and amusing scientific names: Cryptoprocta ferox.  Any guesses as to what that means?  If you guessed "Fierce Hidden-Anus," then you are spot-on!  Native to Madagascar (and, in fact, the largest carnivore of the "Lost Continent"), this cat-like creature is not actually a cat.  Instead, it is closely related to the civets and the genets, like the binturong.  To see a video of how incredibly acrobatic the fossa is, click HERE. 

4.  Cats - We talk about cats a LOT on this blog, and we are going to talk about them again today!  Quite simply put, cats are quite possibly the most acrobatic group of carnivores in the world.  Many of them are acrobatic on the ground (like the caracal, serval, and cheetah), while others are acrobatic in the trees.  Some of these are larger cats, like the leopard and the jaguar.  Others are smaller cats, like the ocelot and the margay, the latter of which can rotate its ankles around 180 degrees in order to climb down the trunks of trees head first!

3.  Ringtail/Cacomistle -  A member of the raccoon family Procyonidae like their relatives the coatis and olingos, the ringtail and the cacomistle are pretty obscure animals.  The ringtail actually lives as far north as southern Oregon, and throughout the southwestern United States, as well as in Mexico.  The range of the cacomistle actually overlaps that of the ringtail in Mexico, but the cacomistle also lives as far south as Panama.  They are both omnivorous, and insects, fruits, arthropods, and small vertebrates are important components of their diets.  They are also both listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN.

2.  Tamandua -  Like all anteaters, the tree anteaters, such as the tamandua (pictured above) have very strong, large, and powerful claws, made to access the nests of ants.  These claws also happen to be perfect for climbing.  It's tail, like many other arboreal creatures, has evolved to be prehensile, which is an enormous benefit when climbing in the trees.  This fifth limb, if you will, is especially important when the tamandua has to tear into the bark of trees to expose the tasty insect treats within, helping to keep the tamandua from falling from the trees.  The tail is actually powerful enough to support the weight of the entire animal!  You don't often think of anteaters climbing around in the trees, which is why I think that the tree anteaters are excellent candidates for our number two spot on the list.  To see a video of the tamandua in action, albeit in Russian or something (it doesn't really matter, just watch without audio or something, but make sure to watch from 1:00 onwards) click HERE.

1.  Tree Kangaroos - Sometimes, nothing is quite as funny as a kangaroo.  But imagine a smallish kangaroo hopping around in the trees, a hundred feet or more above the ground.  Believe it or not, such a thing exists!  Having evolved from the rock-wallabies (who are in turn thought to have evolved from the pademelons), the tree kangaroos are pretty awesome creatures!  Reportedly pretty clumsy in the trees, it is hypothesized that, if there were any significant predators in the area (like many of the carnivores that we have been talking about in these two posts), the tree kangaroo would have either have had to evolve, or they would have been hunted into extinction by these predators.  Since it is so clumsy, and it spends so much of its time between 70 and 100 feet above the rainforest floor, the tree kangaroo has adapted to large and significant falls from high in the sky.  They can fall around 60 or 70 feet with no physical harm!  Don't believe me?  Once you click the video link HERE to learn more, go ahead to about 5:10 if you want the skinny.  You will be able to enjoy a tree kangaroo falling!  And don't worry, it won't be hurt: just check out the video!

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!

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! 

Top Ten Mammals That Look Like Something They Aren't (Part 1)

Today, 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! (For Part 2, animals 5-1 of the countdown, click HERE.)

10.  Bear Dogs - As their name implies, the bear-dogs are a group of mammalian carnivores that greatly resemble both bears and dogs.  However, they are neither!  According to The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives by Alan Turner, they are thought to be fairly closely related to dogs, and more distantly related to bears.  Their remains are most commonly found in North America, although they are also found in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Temporally, these animals lived during the Miocene Epoch, and are though to have arisen about 15 MYA, and fallen into extinction around 12 million years ago (MYA).

9.  Entelodonts - The Entelodonts, frequently referred to as "Hell" or "Terminator Pigs" greatly resemble the extant (still around, opposite of extinct) pigs and peccaries.  However, they are in a separate family from both the pigs and the peccaries, the family Entelodontidae, but all three do reside in the order Artiodactyla.  Some paleontologists believe that these guys are more closely related to whales and their relatives than pigs, but their exact phylogenetic relationship is unclear.  They inhabited North America and Europe during the Oligocene Epoch, around 34-32 MYA. 

8.  Hyrax - This little guy looks like he would be a rodent, but his true relatives are actually much more surprising!  Weighing between about 5 and 10 pounds, the hyraxes are actually fairly closely related to the members of the family Proboscidea, or the elephants and their relatives!  The extant hyraxes have their own family, Hyracoidea, but their ancient ancestors are thought to have branched into the extant hyraxes, the elephants and kin, and most likely the manatee and its relatives!  Hyraxes are found exclusively in Africa and the Middle East.

7.  Red Panda - The red panda has a long history of uncertainty in regards to its phylogenetic relationship to other animals, as has its namesake, the giant panda.  However, now we know that the giant panda is in the family Ursidae, or the bear family, and the red panda is now classified in its own family, Ailuridae, closely related to the mustelids, raccoons, and more, distantly bears.  For more information about the red panda, click HERE.  For more information about the giant panda, click HERE.

6.  Rabbits and Pikas - Even up until just a few years ago, I had assumed that the rabbits and the pikas were both rodents.  They look a lot like them, and they share the trait of continually growing teeth.  However, the members of the order Lagomorpha, which is the order that includes the rabbits and the pikas, differs from the order Rodentia in that they possess four incisors, as opposed to two for the rodents.  Furthermore, most rodents are omnivorous, while the lagomorphs are almost entirely strictly herbivorous.

For Part 2, animals 5-1 of the countdown, click HERE.

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! 

Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 5)

At long last, here we go: the final installment in my top ten list of favorite dinosaurs.  

1. Therizinosaurus

Therizinosaurus is the namesake of the odd group of herbivorous Theropod dinosaurs known collectively as the Therizinosaurs.  These guys are related to the Oviraptors, Ornithomimosaurs, and the Alvarezsaurs, all of which are thought to have a largely plant-based diet.  This seems odd when you first think about it: plant-eating meat-eating dinosaurs?  But similar things occur today.  For example, the order Carnivora today includes many meat-eating animals such as cats and dogs, but also includes the bears, where plants and berries factor into their diet a great deal.  For some, like the panda, they eat almost entirely plants.  The Therizinosaurs have been likened to the recently extinct giant ground sloths in the fact that they seemed to have pot bellies in which to ferment their food, as well as enormous claws that probably helped a great deal in protection, as these guys were most certainly not the swiftest of runners.  Therizinosaurus is just so bizarre and wacky, which is what makes it my most favorite dinosaur!

Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 4.5)

As some of you may know, right now, we are in the midst of a lis of my  top ten favorite dinosaurs.  However, on December 7th, a new dinosaur was announced, and it has immediately made my top ten list if it is, in fact, a dinosaur, which is currently being debated.  Therefore, I have decided to make this guy number 4.5 on my list, as if this creature is a dinosaur, it may very well be one of the most important finds in the history of dinosaur paleontology, as the find, named Nyasasaurus, may be the ancestor of all dinosaurs! Since this fossil dates to the Middle Triassic Period and is estimated to be about 10-15 million years older than the previously-oldest known dinosaurs like Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus, if this animal is not, in fact, a dinosaur, it resides very close to the base of the dinosaurian family tree!  People around the world eagerly await more remains of this animal from being discovered in Tanzania (where the original fossils were discovered in the 1930s) or somewhere else in the world, in the hopes that some more light can be shed upon this controversy.

 TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 5

Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 4)

Part four of my Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs list.  Enjoy!

2. Struthiosaurus

Just like Masiakasaurus, Struthiosaurus also lived during the Late Cretaceous Period.  Also like Masiakasaurus, Struthiosaurus was small.  But Struthiosaurus was small in a very different way than Masiakasaurus.  Remember when we talked about island/insular dwarfism in the context of the Channel Island fox?  Well, island dwarfism is back, in all of its glory!  A brief refresher, island dwarfism is what sometimes happens to animals that have become trapped on islands.  Over many generations, they shrink in order to match the limited food supply.  If there is a limited supply of food, then the smallest of your species, not the largest, are much more likely to survive.  Another factor that often helps island dwarfs is that predation is typically not as intense on islands as compared to mainlands, but that is not always the case.  Anyways, around 75 MYA, global sea levels were much higher.  In North America, we had the Western Interior Seaway dividing the continent, while Europe was simply reduced to a number of individual islands, one of which is now known as Hațeg Island.  And, if you are any good at guessing how stories end, you can probably see where this is going.  Yes, Struthiosaurus was an island-dwarf!  He is also really cool because he is an ankylosaur, a group of dinosaurs that are incredibly interesting!  Another thing that I absolutely have to mention here pertains to the picture of Struthiosaurus that we have below.  This picture was drawn by an incredibly talented young artist named Sam Lippincott.  Only in eighth grade, he is well on his way to achieving artistic greatness!  Below are some more pictures of his, all of them absolutely fantastic!  He made these pictures for my last lecture and I have the Struthiosaurus and Magyarosaurus pictures framed on my wall, I love them so much!  Let's all give Sam a round of applause! 

Struthiosaurus, an ankylosaur, by Sam Lippincott

Telmatosaurus, a hadrosaur, by Sam Lippincott

Magyarosaurus, a sauropod, by Sam Lippincott

Hatzegopteryx, a pterosaur, by Sam Lippincott

Europasaurus, another dwarf sauropod dinosaur, but from an island other than Hațeg Island

TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 5

Top 10 Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 3)

Part three of my Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs list.  Enjoy!

3. Masiakasaurus

A fairly small dinosaur at only around six feet, Masakisaurus knopfleri, as discussed IN A PREVIOUS POST, was named for the famous musician Mark Knopfler.  The animal, found in Madagascar, was named in 2001 by Matthew Carrano, Catherine A. Forster, and Scott Sampson, the author of Dinosaur Odyssey and the dude from Dinosaur Train.  Living on what was still an island, the little dinosaur lived about 70 MYA during the  Late Cretaceous Period, and was a contemoporary of the abelisaur Majungasaurus, the bird-like Rahonavis, and the sauropod Rapetosaurus.  Although Masiakasaurus sounds pretty unremarkable thus far, a quick glance at the picture below (which many of you have no doubt already done) says otherwise: Masiakasaurus definitely had some funky teeth!  These teeth are clearly not suited tearing into food like the teeth of Allosaurus or Velociraptor would be, and many paleontologists (including myself, even though I am not really a paleontologist.  I guess it would be better to say "many paleontologists, paleontologists-in-training, and myself."  There, much better.) believe that these weird, pointy teeth are an evolutionary adaptation to a piscivorous (fish-based) diet.  A look at various marine reptiles such as the plesiosaurs (like Elasmosaurus) and Liopleurodon show a similar pattern of interlocking teeth that point outside of the mouth.  Excellent when it comes to catching fish, and not so excellent when it comes to most, if not all, other diets, be they meat- or plant-based.  

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 4

Top 10 Favorite Dinosaurs by Zack Neher (Part 2)

Part two of my Top Ten Favorite Dinosaurs list.  Enjoy!

6. Pachycephalosaurus

The largest of the pachycephalosaurs, the name Pachycephalosaurus translates to "thick-headed lizard."  A large orbital socket indicates good vision, and, according to my "Prehistoric Life" book, the small teeth in its mouth indicates either herbivory or omnivory.  I have never heard anyone ever say anything about the pachycephalosaurs being omnivorous, so I have doubts about the authenticity of the statement.  Jack Horner suggested that Pachycephalosaurus and the other two pachycephalosaurs that lived in North America at the same time, Dracorex and Stygimoloch, were actually the same dinosaur and just represented different ontogenetic stages in their growth development, but that hypothesis has been almost completely refuted.  Due to the extremely tough-looking and thick skull, many paleontologists also have suggested that the pachycephalosaurs would clash heads much like the extant bighorn sheep, but studies of the necks of these animals indicate that these animals were likely not able to do this without breaking their necks.  Needless to say, this behavior was probably not something that they would attempt to do more than once.  Remains of Pachycephalosaurus have been found in the United States in the states of Wyoming, South Dakota, and Montana.

5. Amargasaurus

A fairly small sauropod, Amargasaurus is certainly quite unusual, as you can see in the pictures below!  On each of its twelve neck, or cervical vertebrae, a pair of spikes project out.  The functions of these spikes are unknown, but many theories have been put forth, from defense, to a sail being attached between each of the spikes to make the animal look bigger, even for heat control.  If a sail was not attached to the spikes, it is likely that they were covered in a layer of horn.  Whatever was on those spikes, it doesn't look like Amargasaurus had a very wide range of vertical mobility in its neck, so it seems likely that the small sauropod would have been mostly a ground-level feeder.  Amargasaurus has been found in Argentina in South America.

4. Utahraptor

While making Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg decided that the real-life Velociraptor wasn't scary enough for his movie.  Not only was Velociraptor actually pretty small (see the size comparison chart below), it was feathered!  But while they were making the movie, remains of the creature that would one day be known as Utahraptor were uncovered, and Spielberg had his monster.  (If you want to read more about this interesting happenstance, check out the introduction to Robert T. Bakker's FANTASTIC novel, Raptor Red, one of my top five favorite books of all time).  Utahraptor remains have been discovered in (can you guess?  I hope you can!) Utah. 

TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 2