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 Tuesday: The Polar Bear!

Everyone loves polar bears, so today, for the birthday post of Brooke Harrower, we are going to be taking a 23-Fact Tuesday look at them!  Allons-y!

1.  Despite the fact that the polar bear can be quite a fierce animal, it can also be very playful and gentle.  For proof, click HERE to see a very cute video of polar bears playing with sled dogs!

2.  A group of polar bears is called a celebration.

3.  In an attempt to safely film polar bears up close and personal without disturbing them, one production company resorted to an interesting array of spy cameras.  To see an awesome video of the polar bears playing with the spy cameras, click HERE.

4.  As we saw in the previous video clip, the polar bear is quite the curious animal.  It has to be, to survive in such harsh conditions!  The polar bear is also a lot smarter than many other bears, as can be seen in a comparison of a few different bear brains, below!  Look at how much larger (comparatively) the brain of the polar bear is than that of the American black bear!  Also keep in mind that more wrinkles=a greater surface area=a smarter animal!

5.  Unlike the color of its fur, the skin of the polar bear is actually jet black!

6.  Despite the fact that they are often erroneously pictured together, it is almost entirely impossible for penguins and polar bears to meet naturally in the wild, as no penguins ever really make it past the Equator, with the Galápagos penguin living the furthest north, right on the Equator!  For more information on the subject (as well as some really funny stories) click on the link HERE, to check out a page on the awesome blog March of the Fossil Penguins.

7.  As you can see in the video clip HERE, filming the polar bears for the excellent BBC series Planet Earth could be quite a challenge (see the full post HERE), especially when they come knocking at your door!

8.  The polar bear is the largest extant (still living, opposite of extinct) mammalian carnivore.  The males can grow up to a whopping 1,500 pounds! 

9.  It occurs to me as I eat this delicious cherry popsicle that the polar bear must have some sort of special evolutionary adaptation to prevent brain freeze as it consumes a cold and frozen meal.  Research should be done into this.

10.  Polar bears, after their emergence from their dens following the harsh Arctic winters, have been observed sledding down the hills on which the dens are associated.  Some scientists believe that this action is solely intended to clean the fur, but many others (myself included) believe that it is probably more for fun!  Check out the video HERE.

11.  The polar bear is native to only five countries.  These are Russia, Denmark owned Greenland, Norway owned Svalbard, Alaska, and Canada.

12.  The polar bear is a descendant of the grizzly bear, and was once thought to have diverged from the grizzly possibly only even around 70-100,000 years ago.  Others are more conservative in their estimations, as DNA analysis on one particular fossil specimen indicates that the polar bear diverged from the grizzly bear around 160,000 years ago.  It now seems more likely that the age of divergence of was much earlier in time than even 100,000 years ago, and polar bear fossils dating from earlier than that (round 115,000 years ago) have actually been discovered.

A picture of one of the grizzly bears at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo doing what the zookeepers call the "Yoga Bear."  This was from the behind the scenes experience that my dad, grandma and grandpa, my friend Masaki and I got to do with Kelley Parker a few months back!  Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf.

Another picture of one of the grizzly bears at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo doing what the zookeepers call the "Yoga Bear."  This was from the behind the scenes experience that my dad, grandma and grandpa, my friend Masaki and I got to do with Kelley Parker a few months back!  Photo Credit: Masaki Kleinkopf.

13.  The oldest polar bear fossil known to science, the lower jaw of a male, was discovered in 2004.  It's age is thought to be between around 110,000 and 130,000 years old. 

14.  The scientific name for the polar bear, Ursus maritimus is "sumitiram susru" spelled backwards.  This means absolutely nothing and is really not that exciting, unless you are me and think it's funny and clever to spell things backwards and make stupid jokes about it.

15.  Algae, while not threatening to a polar bear in any significant way, can be extremely hard to wash out of the bears fur.  So therefore, in the summer of 2008 when three bears at Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Japan got a bunch of algae stuck in their fur, they were green for the entire summer!  True story!

16.  The polar bear is a fantastic swimmer, aided by its streamlined body and skull as well as its partially webbed feet, and have been spotted swimming strongly in open waters as much as 200 miles from the shore!

17.  The polar bear will consume a wide variety of foods, including everything from seals to walrus, beluga whales to bowhead whale carcasses, birds, and even kelp!

18.  The polar bear is labeled as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN, a position which may deteriorate in years to come with the further melting of the ice caps.

19.  Hybrids of the polar bear and the grizzly bear, sometimes called grolars, have been known to occur both in the wild and in captivity, a further testament to the close genetic relationship between the two bears.

20.  Baby polar bears are possibly some of the cutest animals on the planet, as can be evidenced by the picture below of baby Anori from Germany's Wuppertal Zoo.

21.  Humans are the only animal that hunt polar bears.

22.  So well protected against the cold is the polar bear that they can quickly overheat, even when the temperature is below zero!  In order to combat this, the polar bear will try to avoid running and will rest for many many hours at a time.  Maybe my cat's a polar bear.

23.  Polar bears, like myself when Windows Movie Maker refuses to work, have actually been observed by scientists to throw tantrums when they fail to catch their prey!  The bears have been observed growling disappointedly, kicking piles of snow, and even throwing ice chunks!

Happy birthday Brooke, hope you enjoy!  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!

Animal of the Day: Beira Antelope

The Beira Antelope (Dorcatragus megalotis) is a small, 1.5 to two foot tall (at the shoulder) antelope that is native to the arid and mountainous regions of Djibouti, Somalia, and eastern Ethiopia.  The males have straight, short horns, and they are currently listed as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN.  The captive breeding program in Qatar, at the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation center, reached its height in 2005 when it had 58 Beira Antelope.  The center has around 2,000 animals, including gerenuk, Somali wildass, sand cats, and cheetahs.  According to their posters on their website, they also have other felines, including the African wildcat, the caracal, the jungle cat, and even a king cheetah, which is a melanistic form of the regular cheetah.  As well as having many different types of felines, they do have lots of ungulates, as well as many types of birds, and some reptiles to boot.

HERE is the page on the Beira Antelope from the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation center's website.

Animal of the Day: Rusty-Spotted Cat

The Rusty-spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus), found only in Sri Lanka and India, and is the smallest member of the cat family.  The IUCN has the Rusty-spotted cat listed as "Vulnerable" since 2002, and according to a study taken in 2007, it is suspected that fewer than 10,000 mature individuals remain in the wild.  These numbers are in continuous loss due to habitat loss and hunting for the cat's pelt.  However, they have been observed with increasing frequency, sometimes even appearing nearby and within villages, although in other parts of the cat's range it is glimpsed with increasing rarity.  They tend to occupy moist and dry deciduous forests as well as scrub and grassland, and do not appear in the evergreen forests of India.

Animal Spotlight: The Red Panda

So for today's "Animal Spotlight," we are going to be taking a look at a very interesting creature: the red panda.  But how did I know this?  If you were an expert in logic and detective work, you might have already come to that conclusion, however, given the fact that not only did I post the title in the last "A Look Ahead," as well as by looking at the title of this post.  However, what you probably failed to take into account was that I, Zack Neher, and I alone, am the creator of this blog.  Therefore all executive decisions (i.e. what today's post is about) are made by me and my sole business partner, Chessney Von Pawncheck. 

OK, that is quite enough.  All long-winded explanations put aside, today's "Animal Spotlight" is, indeed the red panda.  The red panda is something of a misnomer.  Its scientific name, Ailurus fulgens, translates to "Shining Cat"; but the red panda is no cat.  Neither is the red panda a panda, as its name might imply.  Previously classified with the bears, and at another time with the raccoons (neither of which is the red panda), scientists now believe that the red panda deserves its own, special family, Ailuridae, within the superfamily of Musteloidea.  Within Musteloidea, besides the red panda, reside the weasels and kin, skunks and kin, and the raccoon, coati (the subject of this Friday's "Animal Spotlight") and kin.

A picture of the giant panda that my mother took at the San Diego Zoo

As you probably know, the Himalayas can get quite chilly at times.  To protect itself from the cold, the red panda has thick fur, as well as fur on the soles of its feet, which serves the double purpose of keeping its feet warm, but also helps to provide a bit of traction on ice.  When the snow melts, the hair-created traction also assists the red panda in obtaining a grip on the wet, slippery branches of its forest home. 

Although mostly a vegetarian, the red panda is certainly not above scavenging eggs from a birds nest.  They consume a great deal of bamboo, just as their namesake does. 

Listed as "Vulnerable" by the IUCN, the red panda lives in the Himalayan temperate forests of Nepal, China, Tibet, India, Bhutan, and Burma, as you can see in the map.
 But for those of you who want a bit more happiness when it comes to the red panda, simply click on the amusing video link below!

Red Panda Vs. Pumpkin

Animal Spotlight: The Okapi

For years, Europeans who traveled to Africa heard tell of a mysterious rainforest animal that they came to refer to as the "African Unicorn."  Apparently, Sir Harry Johnston, the British governor of Uganda, rescued a small group of the native inhabitants, often called the pygmies, from a foreign show person, who, sadly, was most likely going to use his abductees for a circus or freak show.  Upon their rescue at Johnston's hand, they repaid him by giving him information about the animal.

Now we know the animal as the okapi, or Okapia johnstoni, named in honor of Sir Harry Johnston.  Despite the zebra-like stripes on its tail, the okapi is not all that closely related to the zebra, and is actually a very close relative of the giraffe.  Although they may not look super similar, they both have ossicones on their head, similar to the base of DEER antlers.  Ossicones are not only possessed by both the okapi and the giraffe, but also by extinct relatives of both, such as Sivatherium and Climacoceras.

The okapi is listed as "NEAR THREATENED" by the IUCN.  Honestly, I was surprised that it wasn't at least listed as "VULNERABLE," and "ENDANGERED" or worse would not have surprised me at all, given its reclusive nature, its beautiful pelt, and the very fact that humans didn't have much proof of its existence until 1901, when Sir Henry Johnston sent back a carcass to England.  I suppose, however, that its reclusive nature likely helps it to evade human influences a great deal, coupled with the fact that the rainforest that it inhabits is not too heavily tread.  And I guess the fact that it was really made known to science only a little more than one hundred years ago couldn't have hurt either, as it would be soon entering into an age when nature was offered greater protection than in the 1800s. 

Like the COELACANTH and THE MOUNTAIN PYGMY POSSUM, the okapi is often referred to as a "LIVING FOSSIL."  Its habitat consists of montane rainforests in the Central African Republic (CAR) and the DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO (DRC).

Animal Spotlight: The Tapir

This post has been made into a Video Blog Post.  To view it on YouTube, click HERE, or below.

Today's featured animal is the tapir, an odd, pig-like creature from South and Central America, as well as parts of south-east Asia.  There are four different types of tapir: Brazilian, Baird's, mountain, and Malayan.  Collectively, their closest living relatives are the rhinos and horses.  Unfortunately, all four of the tapirs are classified by the IUCN as "Vulnerable," or "Endangered."

Despite their bulky appearance (between 300 and 700 pounds, and around seven feet long), tapirs can run surprisingly fast.  This, along with the thick skin that helps to protect the back of their necks, helps them to avoid their main predators, like jaguars, tigers, caimans, and anacondas.  Although the distinctive coat patterns of adult tapir help to camouflauge them a bit, the young are especially camouflaged, with spots and stripes, much like two of their main predators, the jaguar and tiger, respectively.

A statue depicting the struggle between a pair of jaguars and their tapir prey.  The statue was one of many at the fantastic Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.

According to Japanese folklore, the tapir will eat your dreams.  It also features in both Chinese and Korean mythology, as well. 

Each species of tapir has its own range, generally with little or no overlap.  The Brazilian tapir inhabits most of northern South America, generally not venturing much further south than the Tropic of Capricorn.  Meanwhile, the Baird's tapir lives in southern Mexico, Central America, as well as the South American country of Colombia.  It is also possible that it lives in Ecuador.  Next, the mountain tapir lives in just a small strip of land in the South American countries of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, in the Cordilerras Mountains.  Finally, the Malayan tapir is found in the lowland rainforests in the countries of Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. 

Don't forget to check in later in the day for this weeks "A Look Ahead!"

Animal Spotlight: The Polar Bear

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is the world's largest extant, terrestrial carnivore, with males growing up to 1,500 pounds.  Like many animals that spend a good amount of time in the water, their feet are partially webbed to aid in swimming.  Although the fur of the polar bear is white, to help it blend into the ice and snow when it is hunting seals, its skin underneath is black, to aid in heat absorption.

In the picture above, it certainly looks like the polar bear is just enjoying itself, and having a good time.  While both of these may be true, the polar bear is actually cleaning its fur, presumably after a kill, given the blood-stained snow off in the left of the picture.  Below the picture is a link to a video clip from BBC's "Planet Earth," narrated by one of my personal heroes, David Attenborough.  In the video, make sure to watch for the fur cleaning.

This is the link to the Planet Earth link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwZH_aT0FGI

The polar bear, due to its immense size and lack of natural predators, fears nothing, humans included.  This, coupled with a natural, and insatiable, curiosity, often brings bears and humans into contact.  The video clip below is from another BBC show, called "Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice."  I first saw this show when we were in South Carolina this summer, and found it really interesting!  This clip is one of my favorite parts from it.

Polar Bears Attacking Spy Cameras:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvduCPXO_FE

Finally, we have another interesting YouTube video that I discovered today.  Watch and enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Nyt4Bmi8

The polar bear's range covers five different countries: Russia, Denmark owned Greenland, Norway owned Svalbard, Alaska, and Canada.

The Komodo Dragon: Deadly Drooler or Poisonous Predator?

The Komodo dragon (labeled "Vulnerable" by the IUCN) has long had the title of "World's Deadliest Drooler."  Native only to the Komodo Islands in Indonesia, The story went that the Komodo would bite its prey and let it slowly die, eaten away from the inside out by all of the deadly bacteria that fermented in its mouth.  It ends up that this story, as that is all it is, a story, originated from just one or two accounts of the creature almost a century or so ago, and that they were based almost entirely upon observation.  After these accounts were made public, more and more researchers and scientists tagged on to this idea until, eventually, it was a scientifically accepted fact.

Further support for this hypothesis was observations of Komodos biting buffalo, a main food source, and simply hanging around for days, weeks, and (I believe) on at least one occasion, a month.  Scientists believed that the animals would slowly succumb to the copious amounts of bacteria that were at home in the mouth of the worlds largest extant lizard. 

While it is true that the mouth of the Komodo dragon was, in fact, home to a number of very virulent strains of bacteria, it seems that there are other players at work.  A group of scientists noticed that the Komodo dragon, and other closely related monitor lizards, all had interesting bulges in the sides of their mouths.  These bulges they thought resembled those seen in the Gila monster, one of just two lizards that were previously known to have venom, the other being Mexico's beaded lizard.  Komodo skulls are hard to get a hold of, however, and it wasn't until 2009 that the team of researchers were finally able to get ahold of a Komodo dragon skull to put through an MRI machine.  The MRI scan showed that the Komodo did indeed have venom glands.  Although the venom appeared not to be deadly, it was potent enough to act as a sedative.  This, the team concluded, was how the Komodo would kill its victims: sedate them with its mildly potent venom, and then finish them off when they were slow and torporous. 

This didn't explain why it sometimes took weeks for Komodos to finish off a buffalo.  Kurt Schwenk believes it is because the Komodos often don't want to risk life and limb.  So what they do is they bite their victims, and let a combination of shock and bloodloss do the trick.  As the prey slowly starves, being surrounded by Komodo dragons and unable to retreat anywhere, more and more Komodos congregate in preparation of the coming feast.  And given their slow metabolic rates, they can afford to wait, too: unlike a lion or a cheetah, they are in no hurry to finish off their prey, and see no reason to take unnecessary risks to finish off the prey.

While all of this research is highly disputed, and subject to many different points of interpretation, it does seem like the idea of the Komodo killing by its toxic drool is indeed false, although only future research will decide all of this for certain.

Cloning the Cheetah: Why Bother?

In an attempt to discover why the cheetah has such a low fertility rate, a team of scientists, including David Wildt and Stephen O'Brien, decided to take a look at blood samples from a number of cheetahs, labeled "Vulnerable" by the IUCN.  What they found was startling, and very worrying; the cheetahs appeared to be dangerously, perilously inbred; they were all practically clones of each other. 

Wildt and O'Brien decided to confirm this hypothesis by taking skin samples from a number of cheetahs, and attempting to graft them onto a number of other cheetahs.  In a healthy population of animals, the skin grafts would be immediately rejected.  This is because the body of the animal who received the skin graft would recognize the skin to be from another individual, a foreign body, and attack it, just as it would attack any foreign body (i.e., germs or bacteria.)  Even in humans, skin grafts are often rejected, even ones from close relatives.

Normally a very majestic looking animal, this particular cheetah seems to have been caught at a bad time.  Photo Credit: Ted and Gail Neher

So when every single one of the cheetah skin grafts were accepted by the other animals, this did not bode well for the cheetah.  This meant the genetic diversity of the cheetah was incredibly, shockingly low.  But why is genetic diversity so important?  Well, without genetic diversity, the DNA of the individuals comprising a given population are very similar.  These individuals essentially become clones of each other, with many similar attributes, most important among them their immune systems.  In a healthy population of, say, cheetahs, say that fifty percent of them are immune to a certain disease, most of them evolving from a common ancestor.  The other fifty percent of the population has absolutely no protection against said disease, and the illness ravages their population.  An unfortunate (and oversimplified) event, to be sure, but fifty percent of the individuals remain to rebuild the population to what it once was.  With the low genetic diversity seen in the cheetah, if a similar disease in the hypothetical above sweeps through Africa, it is quite likely that a much lower percent than fifty would survive.  It is also possible that this disease would so ravage the global population of cheetahs that they would simply be unable to recover from this catastrophic event.

A cheetah scratching a log at the Denver Zoo.  The cheetahs incredibly slender build can help distinguish it from other cats. 

So why is the cheetah so catastrophically inbred?  Most of the time, low genetic diversity is due to a given species having passed through a "bottleneck."  20,000 years ago, cheetahs spanned the entire globe; ranging all over Europe, Asia and Africa, two species of cheetah, or "proto-cheetahs" if you will, even roamed North America (Miracinonyx inexpectatus and M. trumani.)  When the most recent Ice Age drew to a close around 10,000 years ago, the dramatic climatic changes (and likely human influences, as well) resulted in the extinction of much of the world's mammalian megafauna. Researchers think that this mass-extinction managed to knock the cheetah's numbers down to a very small population, likely comprising a mere handful of individuals.  (In fact, I remember reading once that at one time, some people thought that a single pregnant female mother was able to survive, but I don't think that this idea is all that highly regarded anymore).  While the cheetahs were obviously able to build their population numbers and density by a significant amount than that seen 10,000 years ago, this bottleneck came with a price; genetic diversity was, and is, miniscule.

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