Zoo Babies: Lion Cubs at the Denver Zoo

On Saturday, my family and I went to the Denver Zoo.  We saw many awesome animals, but probably my favorite animals that we saw were the three new baby lion cubs!  Born in June of 2012, the cubs were sent to the zoo from Qatar, and will likely be shipped somewhere else once any long-term plans have been established regarding where they will stay.  For now, though, we get to enjoy the pleasure of these cubs, and now you can too!  Enjoy the pictures!

Hello there!

King of Pride Rock

The cubs look up as a HUGE flock of geese flies by overhead!  Nice timing, mother!  (That sounds like I'm being sarcastic but I actually am not.)

Ready to pounce!

Right before the goose flyover!

Master of all he surveys

More Squirrel Prints, Plus Some Bird Ones, Too!

As I MENTIONED YESTERDAY, we got our first real snow yesterday, and there were some squirrel footprints in our driveway.  After I made the post, when I got home, my father pointed out some bird footprints on the back porch, and this morning I saw some more, better squirrel prints on our back stoop.  I decided to share these cool prints with you as well, since squirrels and birds are quite rare in North America!  (Sarcasm).  The first two picture are of the bird tracks, and then all of the rest are from the eastern fox squirrel.

Bird tracks

I forgot the flash for this one, but I thought that the bird footprints still looked pretty cool with the green light coming from our back-porch light!

Your Dog May Be Dumb, But It's Brain Has More Folds Than a Cat's

When it comes to the anatomy of the brain, the more folds it has, the better.  This is because the folds create more surface area on the brain, which in turn creates more area for neurons to be, which in turn allows for more storing of information.  A month or two ago in my Psychology class, we briefly touched upon the brains of other animals.  I particularly remember the brains of the domestic dog and the domestic cat.  Even though it often seems, especially in my house, that my cat is a whole lot smarter than my dog, a quick look at the brains of both pets indicates otherwise.  The cats brain is pretty smooth in comparison to the brain of the dog.  If you think about the major differences between these two carnivores, one obvious difference sticks out like a football player in a group of people going to see the Hobbit premiere this weekend who are fully decked out in Lord of the Rings gear and are all Hobbit-sized: dogs are social creatures, while cats have a much more limited social capacity.  This probably helps to explain why your cat will suddenly and randomly bite you after you have been so lovingly petting her in your lap while she is purring.  They just don't know how to handle that much attention!  They also don't have any built-in social protocol.  Think about a socially awkward child: the situation is similar, except for the child it is simply that they had a different upbringing and not usually a matter of brain size.  Or maybe cats are just insane.

Anyways, as you can see by comparing the brains of the cat (above) and the dog (below), the dog has many more folds in its brain.  This makes sense, because the social interaction component would need more brain area to successfully function.

REAL FAST:  BELOW IS A HUMAN BRAIN FOR COMPARISON.

So with this in mind, it would make sense that the brain of the lion would be larger than, say, the brain of the leopard, now, wouldn't it?  Since the lion is a social animal, you would definitely think that.  This doesn't seem to be the case, however.  I did a little digging and couldn't really come up with much, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say its because the lion has the pride to fall back upon, so they don't necessarily need to be smart ALL of the time.  Also, leopards are extremely acrobatic, and spend a lot of time in the trees.  I suspect that this might also affect things, but I guess I don't know!  When I attempted to research it, literally all I could find was a bunch of Internet people comparing operating systems (?) called "Lion" and "Snow Leopard." 

Next we are going to compare the brains of the wolf and the red fox.  As you can see below, here our "Social Interaction=Big Brain" hypothesis is sound.  Not only does the wolf have a lot more folds in its brain, you can also see that the canyons created by the folds themselves are much, much deeper, which creates more surface area. 

Finally, let us compare the brains of the polar bear and the black bear.  HOLY.  COW.  As you can quite clearly see in the pictures below, the polar bear has MUCH more surface area on its brain than the black bear.  Now if you think about it, the environment that the polar bear is forced to survive in is much harsher than that of the black bear.  IN OUR POST ABOUT THE POLAR BEAR, we featured a video IN WHICH THE POLAR BEARS ARE PLAYING WITH SPY CAMERAS.  As the narrator points out, the curiosity of the polar bears is their "best hope for the future."  In their ever-changing world of ice and snow, which is now unfortunately melting, this curiosity is often what helps them survive the long, lean summers after the melting of the pack-ice, as well as the long, dark and cold winters.  Hopefully this brain power will be enough to sustain their populations in the future!

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

Squirrel Footprints on Our Doorstep!

This morning we woke up to a fresh blanket of snow, the first (real) snow of the year for us!  Naturally this means that I must do all of my first snow traditions, including watching the Battle of Hoth scene from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and wearing my Mammoth and Mastodon Madness t-shirt from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  Anyways, on my way over to school, I saw a few footprints.  I took a few pictures on my phone so they aren't very good looking, but I believe them to be from the eastern fox squirrel, the type of squirrel that is just so common around here in Boulder, Colorado!  If anyone knows otherwise please let me know, but I am 99.99% sure that this is what we are looking at!  The first two pictures are the ones that I took with my phone.  The first picture has an impression of my right index finger in the snow next to the footprints for scale.  The third picture is a picture that someone else took of some eastern fox squirrel footprints in the snow too!

23-Fact Tuesdays: Polar Bear Celebrations, Eccentric Artists, and Unicorn Horns!

Welcome to our third "23-Fact Tuesday" which are never on Tuesdays.  I believe that this one is actually closer to a Tuesday than we ever have been before, however, so that's got to count for something!  I'd also like to thank Mona Kamath for her help on this post!  Enjoy!

1.  Despite the fact that polar bears are generally solitary, they gather annually in places like the city of Churchill in Manitoba, Canada, where they congregate together prior to the freezing of the sea ice.  When they gather in groups like this, the group is called a "Celebration." 

2.  The eccentric and incredibly odd (though undeniably gifted) artist Salvador Dalí had a pet ocelot named Babou.  He also had a pretty righteous mustache, if I do say so myself.

3.  In 1663, the German scientist Otto von Guericke "reconstructed" the mythical unicorn using the fossilized bones of a mammoth, a woolly rhinoceros, and the horn of a narwhal.  This reconstruction managed to legitimately fool some people, including Gottfriend Wilhelm Leibniz, the famous German philosopher and mathematician, who reportedly was dubious about the existence of the unicorn prior to this "reconstruction," but was convinced by Guericke's "fossil."  

4.  From wing tip to wing tip, Hatzegopteryx measured an astonishing 46 feet!

5.  Gasosaurus, a dinosaur that was described in the year 1985, was named "Gas-Lizard" because it was discovered by a Chinese gas-mining company.

6.  In order to hover and move in any direction, the hummingbird, often nick-named "nature's helicopter" moves its wings in a figure-eight pattern, as opposed to the up-and-down motion typical of other birds.

7.  Cotylorhynchus, one of the largest pelycosaurs, is quite possibly the funniest-looking extinct animal I have ever, ever seen.  It was also discovered by my 9th grade Language Arts teacher's great great uncle, J. Willis Stovall, a famous paleontologist. 

8.  One of the elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is named Kimba, which means "Poop" (I used the nicer term for what the word actually means there) or "Corpse" in Swahili.

9.  Speaking of poop, fossil poop is known as a "coprolite."

10.  The acrobatic margay can rotate its ankles 180 degrees, which allows it to descend tree trunks head-first and hold on to branches with either their front or back paws.

11.  The white-tailed deer is named for the white patch on its rump and tail, while the mule deer is named for the fact that its face resembles that of a mules.

12.  About a third of the extant mammalian species are rodents.

13.  Hopping, the method of locomotion preferred by the kangaroos, is actually much more efficient than walking.  Of course, this is only the case if you have evolved in that fashion.  It wouldn't just be more energy efficient if we started hopping around everywhere.  

14.  Although you often hear people mention the "saber-toothed tigers," this is actually a bit of a misnomer, due to the fact that the saber-toothed cats to which they are referring to are not actually tigers, and are simply just cats.  

15.  The sweat of the Hippopotamus, is red or pink, leading people to aptly refer to it as "blood-sweat."

16.  Despite the fact that the polar bear has white fur, the color of its skin is the complete opposite: jet-black.  Talk about Yin/Yang right there.

17.  Island dwarfism is suspected to have occurred in one of our human relatives, Homo floresiensis, who inhabited the island of Flores in Indonesia up until around 12,000 years ago.  The nick-name for this ancient human is "The Hobbit." 

18.  The word "Mona" means "monkey" in Spanish.  Sure would suck if that was your name now wouldn't it!

19.  In Hindu culture, owls are a sign of bad luck.  That double sucks if you are Hindi and terrified of birds.

20.  Speaking of owls, due to the fact that they have binocular, or stereoscopic, vision (unlike other birds of prey, who have an eye on each side of its head), they have evolved the ability to turn their heads around 270 degrees in either direction.  Must be tough for them to crack their necks.

21.  Despite the fact that the creature in the picture below looks like a raccoon, it is not: that, my friends, is the raccoon dog!

22.  The tusks of the elephants are actually greatly elongated incisor teeth.  For reference, tap your front two teeth on the top or bottom of your mouth, it doesn't matter which, they are the same.  Those are your incisor teeth, you have two on each side of your mouth, eight all together.  

23.  In the narwhal, however, the tusk is their canine teeth, which (at least in our mouths) are the teeth right next to our incisors, towards the outside of our mouths. 

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