mammalogy
tetrapodzoology | July 13, 2009
Some time during the last several hours (while I was asleep), Tet Zoo reached the three million hits mark. Yes, three million hits in two years (Tet Zoo ver 2 was launched on Jan 31st 2007). A noble achievement, I'm sure you'll agree. Due to workload and assorted other commitments, I still don't have anything major new to post (how the hell do the more prolific bloggers do it?), though there was the new salamander thing yesterday - knocked up very quickly on the spur of the moment - and I've also just produced a new SV-POW! article. Inspired by a comment Nathan Myers left here recently…
tetrapodzoology | July 10, 2009In time-honoured tradition, here are some slides from one of my talks. They're self-explanatory, but let me know if elaboration is required...
Anecdotal data and modelling work suggests that a few more species are yet to come - and more on those at some stage in the future. And if you want references for the new species featured above...
Beasley, I., Robertson, K. M. & Arnold, P. 2005. Description of a new dolphin, the Australian snubfin dolphin Orcaella heinsohni sp. n. (Cetacea, Delphinidae). Marine Mammal Science 21, 365-400.
Dalebout, M. L. 2002., Mead, J. G., Baker, C. S., Baker, A…
tetrapodzoology | July 8, 2009Back in April 2008 (my god - where does the time go?) I wrote a brief article about the Animal Life and The Private Lives of Animals books, published by Casa Editrice AMZ. These first came out during the late 1960s and were written in Italian; they were then translated into English during the 70s. As I said last year, the art in these books is generally pretty fantastic and a joy to look it. However, the artists were, evidently, sometimes asked to paint things that they'd never seen (example: the sexual dimorphism present in Sable antelopes Hippotragus niger).
What also makes the books…
tetrapodzoology | July 8, 2009Like many of us, I'm sure, I have a great interest in the life-sized replica cetaceans that have often been made for museum displays. Making such models is an incredibly skilled process with an honourable tradition, and it requires a huge amount of research and experience if the results are to be at all accurate.
Over the winter of 2008-9, marine mammal expert Paul Brodie - who you might recall from my discussion of his work on rorqual feeding mechanics (Brodie 1993) - completed construction of a life-sized Beluga Delphinapterus leucas mother and calf. The models were destined for display in…
tetrapodzoology | July 5, 2009On the way out last night (happy birthday Dad!) we drove past a dead hedgehog at the side of the road. A not uncommon sight, I'm sorry to say. The good news is that the body was still there today, so - naturally - I went and collected it. So, finally, I have a whole, intact hedgehog in my collection. I'll have more news on its development into a skeletonised study specimen in months to come...
As you can see, this individual was HUGE (though not the largest hedgehog I've ever seen).
For previous Tet Zoo articles on dead bodies and what to do with them, see...
The Bere Regis polecat corpse…
tetrapodzoology | June 28, 2009The Leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis is native to southern and eastern Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia. It's a highly variable little cat, regarded by some workers as consisting of at least ten subspecies. Some (like the Sumatran leopard cat P. b. sumatranus) are small and with relatively few markings, others are large with thick, greyish fur and indistinct spotting (the Manchurian leopard cat P. b. euptilura), while others are distinctly marked and with a reddish background colour (like Bornean leopard cats P. b. borneoensis). It inhabits forest, woodland and scrub (the…
tetrapodzoology | June 25, 2009
It's well known that elephants have a major impact on their environment: indeed, they're what's known as ecosystem engineers. In a new study, Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of the University of Tokyo reports that Asian elephant dung might serve a hitherto unreported role as a microhabitat for certain small frog species. While inspecting Asian elephant Elephas maximus dung piles on Sri Lanka in 2008, Campos-Arceiz was surprised to discover individuals of the microhylid frogs Microhyla ornata and M. rubra and a species of the dicroglossid Sphaerotheca [shown here] hiding inside or under the piles (if…
tetrapodzoology | June 13, 2009I'm sure you'll agree that there have been way too many dinosaurs on Tet Zoo over the past few weeks. Let's balance things out by showing a cute little rodent. Your challenge: to identify it to species and - if at all possible - to say something quite interesting about the animal, or about the group to which it belongs. Good luck, and don't stop until we get to 100 comments...
tetrapodzoology | May 15, 2009Ever one to jump on a bandwagon, and with another 'mystery carcass' case still all too fresh on the Tet Zoo list of articles, I've decided to blog about this new 'Montauk monster' carcass. In case you've forgotten, back in July 2008 the global media went absolutely apeshit over a rotten raccoon carcass, informally dubbed the 'Montauk monster', and suggested by the uninformed to be some weird genetic experiment, a dead turtle without its shell (duh: THE SHELL IS THE RIBCAGE, IT CANNOT BE MAGICALLY DETACHED FROM THE REST OF THE BODY), or some sort of beaked dinosaur-monster. Yes, if you ever…
tetrapodzoology | May 10, 2009Yet again I became distracted the other day, this time by that 'Jaws' photo. The previous article is required reading. Thanks to everyone who provided comments, and had a go at identifying the carcass. While many people suggested 'short-faced dog', a cat identification seems to have been more popular. Time to try to provide some answers...
What can we see from the one existing photo? First off, this animal definitely has small incisors, large canines, and then an assortment of post-canine teeth. This combination immediately rules out loads of possible contenders, most notably diprotodontian…
tetrapodzoology | May 8, 2009The Australian mainland's largest extant native mammalian predator is the Spotted-tailed quoll or Tiger quoll Dasyurus maculatus. It weighs, at most, 7 kg. While rumours of Thylacine Thylacinus cynocephalus (15-30 kg) survival persist both in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland (and, incidentally, in New Guinea too), no compelling evidence has yet been presented which might demonstrate survival to recent decades (though there is at least some suggestive evidence). It has been claimed by some that Tasmanian devils Sarcophilus harrisii (maximum weight 11.8 kg) might also still be extant on…
tetrapodzoology | April 15, 2009Cattle are another of those groups of animals that, while they're familiar and while we take them for granted, are really pretty incredible. The size, power and awesome appearance of many wild cattle never fails to amaze me. Markus Bühler (of Bestiarium) has been good enough to share these photos he took of Banteng Bos javanicus and Gaur B. gaurus at Berlin Zoo.
These are Banteng, also known as Tsaine or Tembadau, a wild cattle of southeast Asia, Borneo and Java: the sexual dimorphism is obvious, as is the distinctive white rump patch and 'stockings'. Three subspecies are recognised, of…
tetrapodzoology | April 10, 2009How do you stuff an elephant? The - ha ha - obvious answer is 'with great difficulty'. As for the actual answer: funnily enough, the preparation and mounting of elephants for museums is quite well recorded. These African bush elephants Loxodonta africana are on display at the Field Museum in Chicago (thanks to Matt Wedel for the photo). Just look at their size, and wonder... how do these dead animals get to look so alive?
All too few people realise that, when you look at a 'stuffed' animal, you're looking at a tanned skin that's been skillfully fitted over a postured mannequin* or replica of…
tetrapodzoology | April 8, 2009Yay: day.... err, 4 of Stuffed Megamammal Week (day 1: Khama, day 2; Eland, day 3: Okapi). And now for something completely different... a perissodactyl. Specifically, a rhino and, more specifically still, the weirdest rhino of them all (among extant forms at least): the Sumatran rhino Dicerorhinus sumatrensis. You might have noticed that the claim made earlier in the week that I would go all 'text-lite' for a while hasn't really panned out, so this time I'm going to make a real concerted effort to add nothing new. The good news is that I previously produced a long article on the Sumatran…
tetrapodzoology | April 7, 2009Welcome to day 3 of Stuffed Megamammal Week. So far (day 1, day 2) we've looked at bovids. Now for something completely different. Yes, it's that wonderful, charismatic, beautiful African mammal, the Okapi Okapia johnstoni. Again, this specimen is on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, and sorry the photos aren't that great: the specimen is faded relative to the real thing, and this photo has been further muted by my atrocious camera skills [Gareth Dyke in background].
Okapis are very neat beasts, well known for their velvety, dark brown to purplish, striped coat. Their fur…
tetrapodzoology | April 6, 2009Welcome to day 2 of Stuffed Megamammal Week! [day 1 here]. This time round, it's an eland. The individual's slim, pointed ears and prominent forehead tuft show that it's a Common eland Taurotragus oryx rather than a Giant or Derby's eland T. derbianus. Elands are the largest antelopes, weighing up to a ton.
I love elands: like certain other artiodactyls, they have inherited such things as distinctive colour patches, hair tufts, manes and dewlaps, but have developed them to an extreme, such that they are now super-endowed, flamboyant, extreme members of their group. In a fine, fully mature…
tetrapodzoology | April 5, 2009I said the other day that I was going to have go all 'text lite' for a while. Here is my solution: a series of short posts, one per day, each of which features a different stuffed megamammal. Yes, welcome to day 1 of stuffed megamammal week. All of the stuffed megamammals you're going to see were photographed in the excellent collection at the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin. So here we go.
This remarkable creature is a Hartebeest Alcelaphus buselaphus, and, specifically, it's a female hartebeest belonging to the subspecies known as the Khama, Cape or Red hartebeest A. b. caama. Like so…
tetrapodzoology | April 1, 2009
.... but the whale had been sitting around, decomposing, for several days...
Pity the person who came back to collect their parked scooter at the end of the day...
tetrapodzoology | March 29, 2009
Every now and again a carcass of a large marine animal washes up on a beach somewhere: local people and journalists identify it as a monster, and all hell breaks loose. Inevitably, the carcass turns out to be a decomposing whale or shark. Typically, it now becomes known that a person who arrived at the scene early on stated exactly this, but, because their conclusion was rather boring, it was ignored - or mentioned only in the very last paragraph of a newspaper article. We've looked at this sort of thing before, many times, on Tet Zoo: see the links below.
Last year cryptozoological…
tetrapodzoology | March 28, 2009I may as well finish what I started. Inspired by the two recent brontothere articles, Dan Varner and Mike P. Taylor were kind enough to supply the pictures you see here. Both feature Megacerops specimens displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
This classic photo shows Erwin S. Christman (1885-1921) working on the life-sized Megacerops head that he and William K. Gregory created for what's now the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives at the AMNH [we looked briefly at Christman's work on theropod dinosaurs back here]. At the time (c. 1911),…