writer Seth Borenstein can’t seem to figure out just what Indohyus is. His confusion is apparent from the first line of the article;
It sounds like a stretch, but a new study suggests that the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd raccoon-sized animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers. Or an overgrown long-legged rat.
Borenstein scrabbles1 to lump Indohyus in with some modern animals in a feeble attempt to get people to understand the fossil find, but I can’t help but wonder if such a comparison does more harm than good.
As I noted in a comment on Brian’s blog however, Borenstein cribbed his ungainly comparison from the lead author on the Indohyus paper Hans Thewissen, at least in part:
“The earliest whales didn’t look like whales at all,” Thewissen said. “It looked like a cross between a pig and a dog.” They lost their legs and ability to walk on land about 40 million years ago, he said.
And the Indohyus? “A tiny little deer maybe the size of a raccoon and no antlers,” Thewissen said. He said it most resembles the current African mousedeer, which has a rat-like nose and “when danger approaches, it jumps in the water and hides.”
Sure, maybe it’s a misleading oversimplification to cast the cetacean ancestry debate as a war between the “racoon-deer campus” and the “hippo campus2.” Sure, trying to shoehorn every strange animal into this or that familiar category or combo of categories is a dubious (though longstanding and universal) habit. But, as long as we’re not ‘calling whale evolution into question’ hey, I’m pretty happy.
Well, calling Charles Willson Peale a polymath may be rather generous. Then again, if I had run a failed saddle shop, painted some bossy white dudes, and created the first American Natural History Museum, I think I’d probably feel pretty worthy of the title. Anyway, when was the last time you went to a glass harmonica concert or whatever? [well, knowing microecos readers, it was probably last weekend]
At any rate, before we tossed his geriatric remains from the bell jar, I figured it was worth giving the bloke a proper post. Exhumation of the Mastadon [sic] (1806)(pictured above) remains probably the best American painting to date, though some of Richard Estes’ stuff comes close. That is, of course, ol’ Pealey himself in the jacket and slacks. Much, much more Peale info here.
Biking home today, I almost crashed into a tree when a small Accipiter clutching a ginormous Fox Squirrel flew just overhead and into a cork oak. I glanced around to see who else might have seen to share my amazement. Among the fifty or so cyclists and pedestrians who should have had as clear a view as I did, not a single person had noticed. Or if they had, they simply didn’t care, which is worse.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t an eagle taking out a deer but still. Massive, awesome carnage taking place just overhead and you people don’t even notice?
During a 5th grade dodge ball match I glanced up and noticed a strange bird circling with the omnipresent Turkey Condors. White head, white tail, dark body. I had never seen a Bald Eagle before. I leaped up and down and shouted “Everyone, look! A Bald Eagle.” Then I got tagged in the face.
Sports suck. Animals rule. Wake the hell up folks.
I wonder if by ditching the (smog) moniker, Bill Callahan is suggesting that he has in fact finally made good?
Yesterday afternoon, as I was biking down to the garden to fetch some oregano for the posole, a gigantic male raccoon came waddling up beside me.
“Hey!” I shouted, bringing the bike to a squeaking stop “What are you doing out this time of day?” The raccoon gave me a sneer then loped across the street and disappeared into a storm drain.
I rode over to the drain and peered down through the metal grate. I could see a pointy nose, and two beady eyes staring back up at me for a moment then they disappeared and I heard him clamber down the culvert.
“See you at the Bill Callahan show!” I shouted into the drain.
POSTSCRIPTO: Sad news, the little bugger didn’t make it. We saw him creamed on the center-line of Turk street. All the way from Davis to San Francisco…so close, so far, so it goes. The show was amazing though.
Here’s how the lead author, Colin McHenry, visualizes the killing strategy of Smilodon, as quoted in the totally decent BBC article on the new study:
I think it was using its huge limbs and thumb-claws to wrestle large animals to the ground, and then when it’s got them there under control, that’s when the teeth come into play, and there’s one instantly fatal bite to the neck, severing the airway and carotid arteries to the brain. Death is more or less instantaneous.
You know…just like a “pussycat”!
Saber-toothed predators appear in several felid and non-felid lineages, including some marsupial lines (!), throughout the Cenozoic. But, without any surviving examples to draw on, many, many, many hypotheses have been put forward about saber-tooth function and purpose. The present modelling study is really interesting, but will hardly be the final word on the subject.
The last time I got tagged with a meme…well Decimating Birds: Episode V is coming any day now. I swear.
Now Brian has tagged me with the “Cool Animal Meme” that’s been racing around the interwebs like a Chinchilla on crystal meth. So…here it goes (I’ve broken things down by vert and invert so I could squeeze a bit more in):
An Interesting Animal I Had
vertebrate:
Interesting is certainly one way to describe Clyde. He has acres of personality and makes some of the strangest noises I’ve ever heard come from a dog. Here are three videos of Clyde interacting with a log in Tomales Bay (which he liked), a hawk feather, and a snake skin shed (both of which he did not like).
invertebrate:
A couple of springs ago I brought in a mantis egg case from the garden and put in on our window sill. I watched it carefully for a couple of weeks then promptly forgot about it. A couple of months later, while enjoying a cup of coffee, I glanced over at the sill and saw this:
I set most of the hatchlings free, but kept one which survived until about Christmas. My manticulture experiments this year didn’t fare so well, I accidentally left the container open and the mantis fled. Oh, well there’s always next year…
An Interesting Animal I Ate
vertebrate:
Okay, this is going to sound weird. Bobcat. Let me explain (not that it will help)…
When I was a kid my dad hit a bobcat on the way home. Always one to seize an opportunity, my father threw the cat in in the back of the pickup with the idea of salvaging the pelt (which is still around some place). We also got a fair amount of venison this way. My dad also cooked up some of the bobcat meat because, you know, why not?
I don’t remember what it tasted like, but my dad sent me to my mom’s house with a little tupperware of cooked bobcat meat. This of course, totally freaked out my mother (which was surely my father’s intention) but my mom’s pot dealing/gourmet chef landlord raved “It tastes like filet mignon!”
invertebrate:
I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I’ve never intentionally eaten a terrestrial arthropod. We did have an “invertabrate dinner” at the end of my invertebrate biology course but all of the goodies were of the marine and/or molluscan persuasion. I can’t say I’m terribly fond of land snail, but fried conch is delicious.
Probably the tastiest invertebrate eats I’ve had was in El Rocío, Andalucía. After rolling into the dusty Spanish town we parked next to a hitching post and walked down the dirt roads till we found a little tapas bar, complete with horses hitched outside. We ordered up a round chipirones: whole baby squid with garlic and lemon. You had to pick the tiny beaks out of your teeth. Washed down with a cold bottle of Alhambra..yum!
With the prospect of doing field work in Southern China, I imagine my interesting animals I have eaten list is set to grow considerably.
This one’s easy. This juvenile blue whale from the Göteburg Naturhistoriska Museum is surely the most pimped out whale mount on the planet. I tweaked the photo a bit to try to expose the interior a little better, here is how the museum website describes it:
The great blue whale which was preparated in 1865, is exhibited beside its own skeleton and other whales and seals in “Valsalen”. This 15 meter long baby whale is the only stuffed blue whale in the world! Its jaws can be opened, and once a year you can inspect its inside with its wooden floor, flowered tapestry and mahogany benches.
I guess we had good timing because when we visited the whale was open and we climbed on inside, Jonah-style. Being inside a large animal is rather surreal, but I have to say, with the handsome wooden benches and the upholstered walls, the inside of a whale is far cozier than either the Bible or Pinocchio would have you believe.
invertebrate:
Explorit’s giant cave cockroaches (Blaberus giganteus) are pretty fun to share with kids and especially parents. They are much more lively than the hissing cockroaches (though I like them too). They secret a mild vinegary chemical predator deterrent and are freaking huge.
An Interesting Thing I Did With Or To An Animal
vertebrate:
My first ever field biology project at eight or nine, was to tie colored thread to the wrists of toads to try and track their movement and figure out how many individuals were living in our yard. I have no recollection of the results although I do remember recapturing several.
invertebrate:
I’ve done some interesting things to the cave roaches. They have wings but they can’t really fly. However, they can flutter their wings to glide to the ground when tossed in the air. They can also use them to flip back over when they are put on their back. I know, it seems mean, but think about what most people do to cockroaches.
An Interesting Animal In Its Natural Habitat
vertebrate:
Well, I don’t really remember this, but when my parents were first bringing me home from the hospital it was a rainy, bleak day. On the way home they spotted a sodden Golden Eagle walking alongside the road. In true hippie fashion they promptly gave me an ‘indian name’: ‘Walking Eagle.’ Here’s the tattoo I have that commemorates that moment:
A few years ago, when I was working as an intern at Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming I had my most memorable Eagle encounter. I was prospecting for Eocene mammal fossils in the Wasatch Formation. As I came over the crest of Cundick Ridge I came face to beak with an Eagle roosting on a rock. I was probably several meters away but it felt like I could have reached out and touched it.
My heart skipped a beat as I stood there awestruck and paralyzed in the presence of this gigantic bird. After what felt like minutes, but must have been a split second, the eagle casually leapt off the rock into empty space, unfurled its wings, beat them twice and sailed off. It was out of sight in a few moments, replaced by a few stray fluffs of down slowly tumbling down the cliff.
invertebrate:
Again, it’s tough to pick just one. Finding adult ant lions with kids this spring was pretty awesome. And lately I’ve become obsessed with scorpion hunting. Most recently I got a big kick out of seeing an octopus while exploring tidepools in Cambria. None of the photos turned out really well but this was the best of the lot (its the brownish thing center left).
In that eerie way that often happens with exciting animal encounters, I somehow anticipated the whole thing. As I watched hermit crabs and bat stars I had this ‘octopodial’ feeling. But I certainly didn’t expect to see one of these cryptic masters of disguise, even though I knew that they were probably around.
I was leaning over to examine a chunk of blueschist or something, when I heard a sudden squirt and turned to see a fist-sized cephalopod inching away. It morphed from a deep red, to brown, to almost black then back to brown. I got a short video, you can hear the excitement in my annoying nasal drone:
I still wish I had picked it up, damn it.
Okay, I spent waay too much time on this. It seems like everyone and their mom has already picked up this meme. But I’d be nice to see what Carel has to say after he gets back from his blogging vacation.
Oh yeah and Jessica of the brand new blog Inorganics should give it a shot, although I’m predicting some overlap!
