Compliments of Matt Stark

Tigger would be jealous

These springboks (jumping goats), a type of gazelle, are found in southwest Africa, and can jump up to 13 feet in the air!  The jumping behavior is known as "stotting" or in Afrikaans, "pronking", and is thought to be a predator evasion tactic. The gazelles jump into the air when a predator is around in order to demonstrate their "uncatchability". The reasoning behind this is that predators may not waste their time with certain springboks that jump higher and thus may require more energy to catch than weaker ones that can not jump as high or as much. Other ungulates, such as deer, also employ stotting behavior to deter predators.
Another interesting feature of the springbok is that they hardly ever drink water. In fact, in extreme cases, this animal can go an entire lifetime without drinking once. Instead, these animals get the water they need by eating succulent flowers, seeds, and leaves of shrubs.

Sneaky cephalopods

I know, I haven't posted in a while...
Here is an awesome  TED talk about cephalopods. Specifically, cephalopods include squids, octopuses and cuttlefish as well as the nautilus and allonautilus. We have already seen a friggin' awesome cephalopod the Humboldt Squid. Here, the host of the talk, David Gallo, known best for his work mapping the ocean world with manned submersibles and robots discusses the use of cephalopod cromatophores for evading predators, intimidating competitors, and pandering to the ladies. The camouflage in these videos is incredible. 

The legends behind JAWS

What if 5 of the people in the picture below were viciously attacked by a 9 foot long bull shark while at the beach and 4 of them died?

Some of you would be sad, others of you would celebrate. And others still would think "hey! what a great idea for a movie!".

At least this is what Steven Spielberg thought when adapting the film Jaws from Peter Benchley's novel inspired by the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks. Well, aside from the guidos and guidettes that is- I think those are a modern addition to soceity. Instead the victims were Charles Vansant (25), Charles Bruder (27), Lester Stillwell (12), Watson Fisher (24), and Joseph Dunn (14). Only Joseph survived. The attacks occurred during a 12 day period in July and the last three victims were attacked within the same hour in Matawan Creek. 

For a while, scientists and the general population blamed the great white shark, which is an extremely aggressive shark that can sometimes weigh over two tons and be more than 20 feet long. And the man-eater in Spielberg's film is represented as one of these enormous beasts.

But another theory exists: that the attacks were the responsibility of a Zambezi River shark, or "Bull shark" since three of the attacks occurred in a creek where great whites are not found. Also, Great Whites are pickier eaters than bull sharks and prefer not to eat humans. Most great white attacks are due to "mistaken identity" as one of their preferred prey, marine mammals, or territory defense. Bull sharks, however, eat almost any animal they can.

This guy may look a little less scary, but is still one of the three most aggressive sharks in the world, alongside the great whites and tiger sharks. Bull sharks live all over the world in oceans, rivers, lakes, and salt as well as freshwater streams. They are known for a "bump and bite" approach and will often unpredictably accelerate to attack an animal. 

Check out this video to see some people with sweet jobs working with this badass cartilagenous fish.

Straight out of Jurassic Park

Very few people have been killed directly by bird attacks. One of these instances involved a 16 year old Australian boy, Phillip Mclean, who died from an attack by a cassowary in the 20s. The boy and his brother were chasing down the bird and hitting it repeatedly with clubs. Driven to defend itself, the cassowary kicked Phillip's brother who ran away, and then kicked Phillip who fell to the ground. Phillip's neck was sliced open after another kick, and the boy died shortly afterward from hemorrhaging.
150 cassowary attacks on humans have been recorded, and at least one other on a zookeeper has resulted in death of the person.
These flightless birds, coming from 3 extant species, live in northern Australia and parts of New Guinea. Usually they are shy and harmless creatures eating mostly berries. But when provoked, they have a variety of hardcore defenses that could do serious harm to their attackers. They weigh up to 130 pounds, can run 30 mph, are great swimmers, can jump 5 feet high, have a "helmet" to protect their heads and have 5 inch long claws on their 3 toes. Essentially, they are modern-day Velociraptors.

P.I.M.P.

I am ultra-busy with schoolwork and research for the next two weeks, so I'll be taking a brief break from posting. But, enjoy this video of a real man; the elephant seal. (or did I mean Sir David?)

Octopuses, octopi, octopodes

Chances are, you are familiar with the overall structure with these 8-legged sea mollusks; a hard parrot-like beak, practically no internal skeleton, and suction-cup arms make these animals pretty bad ass to begin with. 

The picture above depicts the only octopus with a venom deadly enough to kill humans, the Blue-ringed Octopus, but all are venomous.

You may have also heard that octopuses are smart, and generally they are accepted as the smartest invertebrates around. In fact, many nations deem these animals "honorary vertebrates" and as such are protected by their vertebrate animal rights laws.  However, this is just a general concept... how smart are these creatures? Studies have shown that they posses long- and short- term memory thru maze and problem-solving tests. They also have been known to easily escape aquarium tanks and move to feeder tanks to feast on fish. Some octopuses have boarded fishing boats, opened crab holds, and nom'd on fisherman goodies before jumping back in the ocean.
They also posses some pretty awesome defense mechanisms. They hide with camouflage by changing color with their chromatophore cells, and eject ink to make a cloud to lose predators. The mimic octopus has a remarkable ability to confuse predators by changing structure, movement, and color to look like more dangerous fish.

These octopuses have been known to imitate 15 other fish.
Unfortunately, octopuses have a short life span, which limits their intellectual capacity. Some live only 6 months, while others can live for 5 years. But, males and females die shortly after reproduction. The male implants its sperm packet into the female and will die shortly after, whereas the female, when her eggs have matured, tends to her egg nest for months. She blows air on the eggs to keep enough oxygen in their  environment and guards the nest for the entirety of their development which can take months. After the babies, around 60,000 of them, have hatched, she is very weak and is sometimes attacked and consumed by predators, dies from starvation, or dies from an endocrine-signaled programmed death.

Feelin' crabby ain't so bad

Evolving over 200 million years ago, horseshoe crabs have been pretty successful throughout the test of time. Currently, there are 4 extant species of horseshoe crab, and if you live on the east coast like me, you might have seen a member of the species Limulus polyphemus before (perhaps you've held one at the Baltimore Aquarium). While these animals may look intimidating, they are completely harmless to humans. These chelicerate (which refers to their mouth structure, shared with arachnids) arthropods are the closest living ancestors of the ancient trilobites, and are closely related to spiders, ticks and scorpions. There are a couple of unique characteristics which have allowed these animals, above others, to be so successful. They have a unique ability to re-grow limbs similar to sea-stars, they have a tough exoskeleton like all arthropods, and have special blood. Instead of hemoglobin, horseshoe crabs use copper-containing hemocyanin to carry oxygen. But it is their "amebocytes", specialized blood cells, which make them particularly interesting. These cells contain a special coagulant which forms a clot whenever a bacterial endotoxin is encountered. This ability is exploited by humans in purity testing of medicines by collecting their blood:

Unfortunately, horseshoe crab populations are in decline due to over-harvesting in the 90's for use in fertilizers. This trend could limit our ability for medical testing because alternative methods are much more costly. Their decline has also lead to a downfall in the red knot, which feeds on the horseshoe crabs during a stop made during their long migration.
The horseshoe crab has also been used extensively in vision research.

Fly like a.... snake?

There are a number of animals that have the ability to fly, or more technically, glide, from one point to another without having wings. Although it is different from active flight, sugar gliders, fliying squirrels, draco lizards, some ants, snakes and others all have this feature. The flying snakes, of the genus Chrysopelea, are interesting because it is difficult to imagine how an animal without arms or legs can jump off and successfully maneuver itself in the air. Once upon a branch of a tree, these five species of snakes make a J-shaped bend in their bodies before propelling themselves off of the tree. While they are airborne, they pull in their bellies and are able to get more lift from flattening their ribs making a pseudo-wing and continuing to undulate in the air. They can glide for longer horizontal distances than flying squirrels and have a remarkable ability to change directions in air.

This video shows that J-shape the snakes make before gliding:

And check out this video for some snake and lizard gliding:

Shout-out to Dr. Socha, the man handling snakes in the first vid.

Save the frogs!

Many of you may know that amphibian species have been in major decline lately, especially in the Americas. In fact, somewhere near 120 species of frogs have become extinct since 1980. But not all of you may be aware that a major cause of the massive extinctions of these species is the fairly recent outbreak of Chytrid fungus, which can often result in fatality. I recently attended a seminar to learn about the mechanisms of Chytrid infection and a conservation project that is currently being employed to help save these awesome little guys. It seems that the fungus spreads thru water and frog-to-frog contact, and  it can result in the loss of around 50% of the amphibian species in any population it reaches. This is obviously terrible news, since a loss in biodiversity results in a weakened ability for the frogs to overcome future threats.
Right now the fungus has spread from areas north of Mexico, all the way thru Central America, and is now centered in Panama. But not all is lost... The Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, along with collaborators are currently working on capturing frogs before the fungus arrives, and keeping them in captivity until a solution (potentially in the form of a topical anti-Chytrid "vaccine") is possible. Then, the species may be reintroduced and saved! If you're interested in this awesome project check out their facebook page: PARCP.
Here are some cool pictures and information about the frogs they are trying to save:

 Centrolene ilex: A "glass frog" has a translucent belly and lives in bushes and shrubs. These frogs lay eggs on leaves overhanging streams, and then their larvae develop in the streams. There are 3 Glass frogs the organization is trying to save.

Hemiphractus fasciatus: This frog species is one of two Marsupial frogs listed for conservation by the group. Although they may look strange, their reproductive habits are even more unusual! The eggs are placed on the mother's back, and she carries them with her throughout the babies' entire development from embryo to froglet. Talk about motherly love!

Dendrobates fulguritus: One of Celtral America's renowned Poison Dart frogs. Poison dart frogs are especially threatened because they spend most of their time on the land surrounding the streams where Chytrid can be transmitted. These species produce toxins which have been used by natives in the creation of poison blowgun darts.

Hylomantis lemur: This frog is one of about 800 species of tree-living frogs. They are very well adapted to tree-climbing and have sticky toes! Some tree frogs lay their eggs on trees overhanging water and the tadpoles will fall into the water when they hatch, while others lay their eggs in holes of the tree which collect water. 3 Tree frogs are listed for conservation by the Panama Amphibian Rescue, along with several other species. Check them all out! http://amphibianrescue.org/?page_id=97

Good 'rents

After visiting Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology, I saw a show on Animal Planet on EXtreme Mothers, and was disappointed to see no mention of my favorite seabird, the arctic tern. Arctic terns are best known for their migration, which is the longest of any normal migration in birds, traveling from arctic regions, to Antarctica and back every year (around 71,000 miles). This traveling means that the bird pretty much does everything in the air... landing once every one to three years to nest. Interestingly, this bird species mates for life, which is highly unusual bird behavior. And when they do reproduce, they make damn sure those babies are safe. Arctic terns of both sexes are extremely aggressive defenders of their nests and offspring, and will try to attack humans and other large predators
as shown in the video above where the birds try to attack the cameraman. Although they can't do much damage, they have been known to draw blood.

But that's not all that's involved in child care-a kid's gotta eat. And male arctic terns are responsible for most of the feeding... ah, the perfect man.

Today is My Birthday!!!

So here is a silly video of a not-entirely-bad-ass-animal, but surely the sweetest pet anyone could ask for:

Little pigges >>>>>>>> cats.
Sorry for the delay in posts readers, I'll be back to regular posting in a few weeks when my computer is fixed!

Los Perezosos

It's been a while since my last post because my personal computer is dead, and I'll have to wait a few weeks for someone to revive it (*fingers crossed*). However, because most of you probably thought I was just being a lazy blogger, here is some information about an animal who knows how to do lazy right- the Sloth.
There are 6 living species that make up the sloths, which belong to the suborder Folivora, meaning leaf-eaters. While there used to be more species that lived on the ground in North America and South America, these disappeared with the introduction of humans to these continents. Now we are left with only the tree-dwellers, two-toed and three-toed, who spend almost their entire lives up in the air. In fact, as David Attenborough explains in this video,

the sloth only comes down from it's tree to defaecate. They breed, sleep, eat and do almost every other activity in the trees, which gives them some protection from much faster land predators (but does not make them much safer to some birds of prey known to hunt them). However, when they do come down from their trees, they have been known to swim aptly.

But, why are they so slow? Due to their diet of mostly leaves (which is sometimes supplemented by the occasional small reptile or bird) they must have an extremely slow metabolism, because leaves are not rich in usable energy. It has been estimated that it normally takes a sloth about a month to digest the leaves it eats.
It used to be thought that the sloth was one of the longest-sleeping animals, sleeping for nearly 18 hours a day, but due to a recent study of sloths in the wild it was determined that sloths sleep just under 10 hours... quite similar to that of the elusive american teenager.

Happy Valentine's Day!

At the suggestion of my friend Rena, today's post will be a timely special on animal lovin'. But, since there are so many extreme courtship and mating rituals out there, it will be limited to mammals.
As you are probably aware-unless you're in the dog house for not buying your sweetie chocolates and flowers- mammals spend large amounts of time and energy in hopes of a chance at reproduction. This courtship behavior can involve touching, singing, dancing, and displays of beauty or strength. 
Here are just a few remarkable animal's mating behaviors:
1. The bonobo monkey: Share the Love. Bonobo monkeys don't see a reason to get jealous and confine themselves to one mate, or even one sex when it comes to making whoopy. And they're kinky too! They are one of the only mammals besides humans to engage in face-to-face genital sex, tongue kissing, and oral sex, and are often found to move from one partner to the next. 

2. Lions: Love hurts. During a mating period, lions will have sex on average 30+ times a day, and often forget altogether about eating. It may sound enjoyable, but the repeated copulations are to encourage the female to ovulate, which may occur when the spines of the male's penis rake the walls of the lioness'  vagina.  Not so fun.

She doesn't look too happy.

3. Elephants: Big Love. Due to their large mass and the fact that bulls are much larger than females (a phenomenon given the term "sexual dimorphism"), elephant mating can be a little tricky. After the nuzzling and trunk-play,

elephants deal with this size issue by having a prehensile penis, which means it can move separately from the rest of his body. 

Unfortunately, if you're a human male, you won't be able to use that feature to seduce the ladies, but I wish you all luck in your quest for love. 

Extreme Monotremes

5 species of egg-laying mammals are in existence today; 4 of these are species of echidna, or "spiny anteaters", 

while the other is the platypus, 

whose true scientific name is "Ornithorhynchus", meaning "duck-billed".

These animals are also unique to Mammalia in several other ways. For example,  while they do secrete concentrated milk from mammary glands, they do not possess nipples or teats, and instead the milk comes directly from the milk-line region of their skin. It is also notable that the name monotreme means "one opening" which refers to their common urogenital pore called a cloaca, a feature which suggests these species are the most primitive of the mammals around today. The males of these species also posses a poison spur on their hind leg (poison production is a very rare trait for mammals). One sting from a platypus spur can actually kill small pets!

  

Coping with the wintry weather.

Those of you who live on the east coast know we have been getting some serious snow this winter, which usually isn't the best weather for us primates. However, the Japanese macaque, which lives in the highest mountains in Japan has learned to deal with temperatures around -15 degrees F, which makes it the most northern-living non-human primate.

But it's the macaque's intelligence, not just it's ability to withstand the cold, that is most interesting. These mammals are one of three, along with humans and raccoons, that wash their food before eating. They also have highly developed language, with different accents belonging to isolated populations (similar to the way a person from Chicago has a different accent from someone in the deep south). And, to top that off, during the winter they throw snowballs, go "sledding" and have learned from the Japanese people to take refuge in the hot springs of their mountains.

Keep that mouth away from me!

Endemic to islands of Indonesia, the Komodo Dragon is the largest lizard in the world. Due to their large size, and the virulent strains of bacteria living in their mouths (close to 60 different strains can be found in just one lizard's mouth at one time), they are the top predators of their ecosystem. In fact, one bite from one of these animals can be lethal! 

And they will eat ANYTHING! Birds, invertebrates, other reptiles, monkeys, wild boar, you name it.
In the wild, these animals are mostly loners, and come together only for eating and reproduction. But, if a female Komodo is not able to find a mate for an extended period of time, the species is capable of parthenogenesis, which means they can produce eggs that will develop into offspring without mating. 
Thanks Alexa for suggesting this ruthless carnivore and National Geographic for video evidence.

This turtle is bigger than your turtle

Due to their status as "critically endangered", and their tendency to live in open ocean aside from nesting, Leatherback Sea Turtles are not often encountered, much less photographed, so many people do not know about these enormous animals. Besides members of class Crocodilia, the Leatherback Turtle is the largest member of the phylum Reptilia, and feed entirely on jellyfish! These turtles are unique to other tunicates (turtles) because their carapaces are made of skin and oily flesh instead of a hard bony material. What's the coolest things about these cold-blooded jelly killers? They migrate enormous distances across entire oceans between nesting periods.
All sea turtles are endangered but you can help the Leatherback specifically by not polluting our oceans with plastic bags which look similar to their jellyfish food source.

So.. they are a little slow, but pretty awesome creatures.

More Water Monsters

Humboldt squid (mollusks) are skilled hunters found off the coast of California. Fisherman who work around these beasts have coined the term "Diablos Rojos", or "Red Devils" due to their  sharp ringed suckers, strong beaks, and speed (up to 25mph). Despite having relatively large brains, their rapid development (think macroscopic to 6 feet long within a year and a half) leads to extremely aggressive behavior, and they have been known to injure fisherman and divers
This video from KQED is long, but pretty alarming, since it explains these squids are basically taking over the oceans on the West coast.

Oh shit! Don't go in the water

Animals in the Cnidaria phylum, have specialized stinging cells called cnidocytes, which you may already know. But you may not know that a jellyfish, or medusa, is just the most conspicuous life stage of this type of  animal. They begin as bottom-dwelling polyps and then develop into the open ocean killers you may know. They come in different sizes;
BIG...

and small...

Either way, thanks National Geographic, for making me scared to visit a beach ever again.

WTF is that thing?!

OK, so probably most of you have not seen this animal before because it lives in the tropics. It's commonly called a "velvet worm" and is the only type of animal in the phylum Onychophora (which is somewhere between an annelid and an arthropod). It looks friendly, but watch as it attacks an unsuspecting beetle with its slime glands!

Another cool thing about onychophorans; they have hydraulic legs!

What is this blog about?

Welcome! I'm Meg, a college student who spends most of her time studying, observing, looking at pictures and watching videos of extraordinary animals with extraordinary behaviors. This blog is my way of showing all of you those the videos and pictures I find!
Along the way, I'll tell you a few interesting facts about the animals and their taxonomical classes which you can choose to ignore or read as you wish.
First, here is a video of a golden eagle which my friend Colin showed me, and is still a favorite of mine. It shows just how awesome and powerful birds (aves) can be.