Animal of the Week September 20, 2013 — thrush with a taste for flesh

I often am amazed by just how many bleeding animals there are in the world, and despite my lifelong dedication to finding out about them, I can be totally astounded by something. I came across this week's animal of the week, appropriately enough, through Twitter: last week @BirdLife_News posed the question what's the smallest flightless bird (one extant/one extinct)?

Inaccessible Island rail: Brian Gratwicke

Now, the extinct one I knew, it's the Stephen's island wren, a tiny dot of a bird endemic to an island between the two large islands of New Zealand the last of which was killed by the lighthouse keeper's cat. That's one of the classic stories of extinction, one I'd heard and told many times before. But the living one was completely new to me: the Inaccessible Island rail. Not only did I not know there was an island called Inaccessible Island (part of the Tristan archipelago in the southern Atlantic, but also, I didn't know that living on it was the 17 cm, 30 g flightless relative of coots, moorhens, and the like*. Now rails are one of the most widespread groups of birds with species, some flightless, settled  on islands around the globe.

Tristan thrush: Brian Gratwicke

But it's not even the Inaccessible Island rail that's this week's animal. A quick google led me on a bit of a wikipedia trail. The rail has been able to miniaturise and lose the power of flight owing to the dearth of predators on inaccessible island. But nature abhors a vacuum, and eventually something will fill a vacant niche. And here we meet this week's actual animal, Nesicichla eremita (Tristan thrush; really it should be Turdus eremita, I am  picky). While it's mainland relatives are usually happy eating berries and insects with the occasional snail or worm thrown in, the Tristan thrush has developed a taste for seabirds, eggs, and chicks. Across the archipelago, the Tristan thrush raids the nests of petrels, rails, and even albatrosses (their eggs, not like a whole one); the thrushes have even evolved a brush like structure on their tongues to help them extract the filling of delicious seabird eggs.

Like the vampire ground finch of Wolf Island in the Galapagos, the Tristan thrush is another great example of how life on an island can lead to unexpected behaviour among unassuming looking creatures. Of course, if there was just a pharmacy on Inaccessible Island, the rails could get themselves a tube of canesten to rid themselves of their problem thrush.

*I used to really like coots, moorhens, crakes and gallinules, but not so much anymore. I've gone off the rails.

Animal of the Week August 16, 2013 -- Olinguito

Sorry grouse, but with my history of giving newly described species their dues, you've been bumped. For this week's Animal of the Week is now Bassaricyon neblina (olinguito).

Mark Gurney

While trying to describe the different subspecies of olingos from the collection and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Kristopher Helgen discovered a drawer full of skins that looked substantially different—he described it as a hairs on the back of the neck, spine tingling sort of moment in the news report I saw. Some careful measurements and DNA confirmation later, Helgman realised that the skins and skulls came from a previously unrecognised species.

The four species of olingo and the olinguito are members of the same family of animals as raccoons, kinkajous, and coatis. The olingo is the smallest member of that family, and differs from the olingos by having bushier hair, smaller ears, and living at higher altitudes in the montain rainforests of the Andes. Having found the museum specimens, scientists then went to look for it in the wild, and sure enough, they found one. Based on the specimens collected, the olinguito likely has a range from central Columbia to Ecuador.

Although they belong to the Carnivora group of animals, olingos and olinguitos seem to eat more fruit than anything else, occasionally supplementing their diet with nectar and insects. The label Carnivora links those animals (from seals to weasels, to cats, dogs, and hyenas) all descended from a single ancestor, and doesn't always mean that the animal is a carnivore—just look at that bamboo guzzling idiot the panda.

Several olinguitos have been kept in zoos, so this isn't the case where an expedition has stumbled across an animal new to western science as happened with the kipunji, the world's smallest frog, or this animal of the week from 2005. Rather, it was the recognition that had previously been thought to be one thing, was actually something different, as happened with the Arunachal macaque or the clouded leopard of Borneo...and also with the recognition of orangutans as two species, and African elephants as two species. So while I've personally nothing agains the olinguito, I doubt the story would have attracted so much attention had it happened in any other month than August.

Animal of the August 12, 2013 -- Glorious, for whom?

It may well have escaped your notice that today is August 12, dubbed the Glorious 12th by fans of shooting. Although most shooting seasons will not start until September 1, hundreds if not thousands of this week's animal of the week Lagopus lagopus scotica (red grouse) might have been shot today in the UK.

Red grouse are a sub-species of the willow grouse (or willow ptarmigan), unique to the UK and Ireland—they differ from other subspecies of willow grouse (found elsewhere in the northern hemisphere) in their lack of white markings, their red eye com

bs, and their failure to turn white during winter.

While the hunting of grouse is in some ways pretty good for grouse, as shooting moors are managed to increase their numbers: heather is burned to encourage new shoots that the grouse eat, and medicated grit is left out to treat infection with gut parasites. Moreover, some predators are removed or excluded.

The charismatic birds of prey, hen harriers (named for their supposed predilection for young game birds), should be common across the UK, but their habitat has been fragmented and the most suitable areas for them are managed grouse moors. While it is illegal to kill hen harriers, a protected species in the UK, many suspect that part of the "management" of grouse moors involves killing these birds by shooting, trapping, or poisoning. The numbers of hen harriers in the UK have plummeted in the past century. And this year, of the last few pairs in England, not one bred successfully.

Now, I'm in no way against game shooting and that sort of whatnot. While it's not something I'm necessarily keen to have a go at, I don't mind hunting as long as it's done responsibly and safely, and potentially game animals have had a slightly more enjoyable life than your average broiler. Furthermore, protecting areas for game can be part of conservation—but only when managed responsibly, and when all the inhabitants of the area are allowed space. Perhaps grouse moors should be managed for both the grouse and the hen harrier, so that they would remain even more exciting places to visit all year round, not just in the open season for the shoot?

So, the glorious 12th is probably only really glorious for the estate managers who charge per the bird shot.

Animal of the Week May 20, 2013 -- Congratulations! It's an egg!

c Kallerna

After several hundred years, this week's animal of the week, Grus grus (common crane), has laid it's first egg in the southwest of England. A tremendous success for the Great Crane Project, which has been re-introducing the birds since 2010, releasing chicks that have been hand-reared by people dressed as cranes.

Cranes are some of the largest birds to be found in the UK. At up to 120 cm (4 ft) tall, they stand head and beak above any heron, and with a wingspan of around two-and-a-half metres (8 ft), they match the white-tailed sea eagle. Copy in their shaggy tail of feathers and ear-splitting krrruuuhuu-krrrruuu trumpeting, and they are truly impressive birds. It's the bright red bald patch that makes me particularly fond of these birds (kindred spirits).

While not globally endangered (thousands upon thousands live in Europe and their stronghold Russia), the draining of wetlands and hunting led to the extinction of these magnificent birds from these shores. A few have naturally colonised the east of the country, with as many as 20 breeding pairs to be found in East Anglia and around. But the Great Crane Project was established to reintroduce cranes to the Somerset levels; so OK the breeding pair have nested at the carefully managed Wildfowl and Wetland Trust at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire where they were reared as chicks, but that was their choice to go "home".

Although this is eggciting news, hopes should not be raised too high for this years egg as birds do not usually breed successfully until they are five years old—and this pair is graduates of the 2010 release. However, just as failed nesting attempts for former AOTW great bustards pressaged future success, the same can be hoped for the west-country cranes.

Some urban animals

Please note, I have written three columns for the wonderful Kentishtowner. Visit these, like them, share them...and enjoy the Kentishtowner

Foxes

Tube mice

Parakeets

Animal of the Week April 10, 2013 -- Possibly the rarest animal in the world

Red-River giant softshell turtle, IUCN

I often wonder to myself "What's the rarest animal?" Previous animals of the week have explored the theme, with the baiji and Pinta island giant tortoise having breathed their last since this blog started, and the Iberian lynx being vanishingly rare... but then this week's animal is even rarer still, sitting right on the fence between extant and extinct: Rafetus swinhoei (Yangtze giant softshell turtle, Red-River giant softshell turtle), one of the largest freshwater turtle species in the world of which only four known individuals remain.

The four turtles are found in three different locations: two (probably males) live in different lakes in Hanoi, Vietnam, and a male and the only known female are kept in Suzhou Zoo, China. Conservationists hope that the Chinese pair will breed; but despite attempts at mating, of the 100s of eggs laid over the past few years, none has hatched—many are unfertilised, and any that begin to develop stop at a very early stage. The male is at least 100 years old and the female 80, while turtles can live for a long time, these are no spring chickens.

The species has become rare through the familiar depredations of habitat destruction and exploitation. Within their native range, various species of softshell turtle are popular on dinner tables. Some smaller species are farmed, but over the years, many have been taken from the wild, and larger slow-breeding species such as the Red-River giant are particularly vulnerable.

A few years back, a flood washed one of the Vietnamese turtles from its urban lake home into the garden of a local fisherman. After an extensive search the fisherman came forward asking for over $1000 dollars for the turtle to be returned rather than sold to a restaurant that had offered over $4000 for it.

Efforts to save the species include surveys of suitable habitat, but the last specimen in the wild was caught in 1998. Local conservationists have also been looking for specimens in food markets, but until recently the only criterion for identification of potential specimens has been that they are looking for massive turtles, so any adolescents might still have passed under their noses and ended up in cooking pots.

Given that animals were in the wild in the 90s, one might realistically hope that some young wild turtles remain in the native habitat, but if these cannot be found and protected, with each passing year that the pair in China don't produce offspring, the future for the species looks to be fairly short.

Animal of the Week March 15, 2013 -- Twit-whoooo's laughing now

Bad news for this week's animal. At a Bangkok meeting, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) struck several extinct species of the antipodes off its register. So, the crescent nail-tail wallaby (an animal whose bones passed through my calipers during my MSc; extinct 1956) and the Tasmanian tiger (1936) are no longer on their watch-list, and neither is Sceloglaux albifacies (laughing owl; 1914).

The laughing owl was one of two species of owl native to New Zealand, but unlike the morepork, the soft 'ruru' call of which still echoes across the country's green spaces, the laughing owl, like so many other of New Zealand's birds succumbed to the introduction of alien species with the arrival of man.

Unlike Haast's Eagle these owls were not a victim of Polynesian colonisation, they perhaps even experienced a boon following the introduction of the Polynesian rat, to which they took a liking. Rather, their habit of hunting for their prey on the ground left them vulnerable to cats and stoats introduced by Europeans in the mid-1800s, which not only killed the owls but also competed for their prey.

The laughing owl was still common at the time of European colonisation of New Zealand, its cries were described variously as "A peculiar barking noise ... just like the barking of a young dog" or "A melancholy hooting note". Presumably at times their calls were also like laughter. My favourite description, clearly from someone who has spent time in a sizeable gay bar before it fills up: "Precisely the same as two men "cooeying" to each other from a distance".

Animal of the week February 27, 2013 -- chomping on the wonder horse

AOTW hardly has its talon on the pulse of current affairs, but I was slow to react to the major UK news event of 2013 because I was convinced that Equus ferus caballus (horse) had already been animal of the week. But having gone back through the entire archive (how I suffer), I can confirm that it hasn’t. So, perhaps, given that so many of us are likely now intimately acquainted with horse through digestion, we should find out a little more about it.

Although there is a superficial similarity between horses, antelopes, and indeed cattle, the closest living relatives of horses are rhinoceroses and tapirs, which together form a group called the odd-toed ungulates (hoofed animals with an odd number of toes). This group is distantly related to the even-toed ungulates—the group that includes pigs, camels, cows, deer, and even hippos and whales. So whales and cows are more closely related to each other than either is to a horse.

Mustangs (feral horses) in Utah, Jamie Jackon wikicommons

Until around 10 000 years ago, wild horses lived across the Eurasia and North America, but at the end of the ice age, the numbers decreased rapidly, and horses vanished from North America and dwindled across the rest of their range. Only the Przewalski's horse (E ferus przewalski) and tarpan (E ferus ferus) survived into modern times: a few Prezewalski's survived in zoos and have now been reintroduced onto the Mongolian steppes, and the last tarpan died in the early 1900s. But their usefulness to humans gave domestic horses a new lease of life: they are now found throughout the world and feral populations have recolonised North America and established themselves in areas where previously horses were never found -- such as in Australia.

Genetic evidence suggests horses were domesticated around 6000 years ago, with most archaeological evidence pointing to a similar date, somewhere around the steps of the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and southwest Russia, although recent archaeological finds suggest that horses might have been domesticated in Arabia some 9000 years ago. The genes of domestic horses tell us that they are descended from a few original stallions, but the domestic stocks were often supplemented with wild caught mares over the centuries. Whenever domestication happened, the relationship between humans and horses is an ancient one. And as a source of meat, milk, hair, hides, transport, and labour horses have played an integral part in the development of human culture, perhaps moreso than any other animal.

Now, I've never intentionally eaten horse, but I'm not too bothered with the idea: if the animal has been well looked after or lived a fairly natural life, if I know what I'm eating, and the species is not endangered and I don't think the animal has suffered unduly in the process of it reaching my plate, I'll pretty much eat anything. The recent horsemeat in beef scandal that has erupted in Europe, however, is an indictment of our food production chains and a symptom of the dire economic straits in which many people find themselves, so that they can be exploited by unscrupulous food manufacturers and supermarkets. But this sort of talk is galloping beyond the remit of AOTW.

Anyway, horses, aren't they great? Let me sum up my feelings with the annotated jingle from a much loved advert. I love horses, best of all the animals (along with all the rest; AOTW has no favourites); I love horses, they're my friends (they're not really, I find horses a bit weird, as though they think they are people trapped in an animal's body, unable to comprehend why they don't have opposable thumbs and can't ride humans or smoke a fag, I guess that's what comes of living so closely with people for so long)!

Animal of the Week, February 18 2013 -- Go while you can

A starling, Philip Heron wikimedia commons

This week's animal, Sturnus vulgaris (European starling), is responsible for one of the most spectacular sights of winter, nay of any time of the year: a murmuration. This is when large flocks gather over popular winter roosting sites and put on fantastic aerial displays, with thousands of birds shifting like clouds of smoke, coalescing in tight balls, and then stringing themselves out across the sky, all happening in the blink of an eye seemingly unpredictably.

Testimony to the wonder of such an event, last year an amazing video of a murmuration went viral on the internet. Although you don't have to be paddling a canoe along a country river in the rain to witness one. This weekend I went to see if one would happen in Brighton, and it did, right over the pier, with the sounds of Jamiroquai and the arcade games in the background, I stood mesmerised by the gathering, certainly not as big as the one those girls saw, it was nonetheless a wonderful sight as the sun set with the birds swarming overhead; it was worth putting up with Jamiroquai (muted on my shitty video below; I'm so good to you). In the UK murmuations happen from November to February, so you've a week or so left with a chance to witness this most wonderful vision. Or wait until next year.

Starlings over Brighton, all the dots are starlings

In winter, birds escaping the harsh continental winter swell the numbers of starlings in this country, with our relatively benign, mild climate. These birds gather to benefit from communal warmth and safety in numbers. Small flocks begin to gather around the roosts before dusk, with groups of five, ten, or twenty birds amassing into ever larger aggregations. The largest murmurations can involve millions of birds, but a gathering of a hundred or so birds is mesmerising.

Why starlings form these amazing spectacles is a matter of debate, they probably help to deter predators: any falcon trying to snatch a bird would have to pick one out of large group, and then, thousands of pairs of eyes are better than one. It's thought the individual members of the flock keep track of their six or seven closest neighbours and move with them, vagaries in the distances between the birds mean that the "closest neighbours" can change very rapidly after periods of stasis, leading to the stunning sudden changes in the conformation of the flocks. And if you're a starling, you'd begin evasive behaviour any time one of your seven closest neighbours did -- and that allows the flock to respond rapidly to threats.

Starlings against the Brighton sunset

Perhaps overfamiliar, we often overlook starlings, but they have always been one of my favourite birds. From a distance, dark, drab, and too common to be worthy of inspection, but up close their irridescent green and purple spotted plumage is quite beautiful. Their unmelodic vocalisations warrant further attention too, as they are incredibly complex, a series of whistles, clicks, and mechanical whirrs.

European starlings were one of the bird species introduced to North America by the American Acclimatisation Society. The society sought to bring some familiar European animals to help brighten up the parks and gardens of the USA. While the pheasants and chaffinches didn't really take, the hundred or so starlings released into Central Park took flight, now more than 200 million birds have colonised  North America from Canada to Mexico. And murmurations can be seen across the pond too.

Animal of the Week, February 12, 2013 -- Darwin Day

A depiction of the last common ancestor.

If asked whether I'd ever do a mythical AOTW, I’ve always answered “no”. No dragons, no unicorns, no griffins or minotaurs. And while the Androscoggin beast, supposed big cats in the UK, and yetis have had mentions over the years, all were based on real animals. But this week’s animal breaks the only rule of AOTW: it's a work of science fiction, created by phylogenetic wizardry, and lacking a name. It’s the last common ancestor of all placental mammals (the 5000 species or so that give birth after a placenta nourished gestation, rather than lay eggs (platypuses and echidnas) or raise young in pouches (marsupials)).

Using a large database of morphological characteristics of living and fossil mammals, genetic data, and dates from fossil record, research published in the journal Science back-modelled the evolution of mammals since their divergence and determined that the last common ancestor of anteaters, cows, camels, elephants, humans, and whales was a small insectivorous shrew-like thing living about 64.85 million years ago (give or take 100 000 years). The latest estimates for the asteroid impact that did for the dinosaurs (those that aren't birds) is 66.04 million years ago. Researchers had previously thought the splits between major groups of placental mammals happened while dinosaurs still walked the earth. The new research shows that these groups probably split in the first few hundred thousand years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. This is not to say that other groups of placental mammals weren't alive with the dinosaurs, but that they went extinct too, without leaving any descendents, perhaps in the same event.

We already knew that the animal would be quite shrew-like, because most fossil mammals from the time of the dinosaurs were. But according to the analysis tracing back the evolution of thousands of characters described in extant and extinct mammals, the animal weighed 6-245 g, ate insects, and likely gave birth to one hairless baby. Of course, this is science, and it could all be proven to be wrong. But the last common ancestor definitely did exist, and maybe this is what it was like and when it lived.

February 12 is Darwin Day, honouring the man whose work laid the foundations for the science of evolutionary biology, so I think this wonderful story is a fitting AOTW to mark the occasion.

Animal of the Week: Jan 29, 2013 -- Carry on animal

Well, the snowfall in the UK seems like a distant memory now doesn't it? But wasn't it wonderful? Sure we grumbled. And we stood forlorn on platforms wearing Ugg boots or other unsuitable footwear soaking up the puddles of slush, waiting for trains that we knew would never come. We knew the trains wouldn't run and that it was snowing before we left the house, and yet we left the house, and we complained.

BUT THEN WE ALSO HAD LOADS OF FUN! We went sledging using whatever we could find as a sledge, we walked through the hushed woods early in the mornings after fresh snow. We had snowball fights, and we built all manner of exciting snow sculptures. Newspapers, Twitter, and Facebook feeds were filled with great examples of snowmen, snowpugs, snow henges, snow Easter-Island heads, snowdragons, snow-Buzz Lightyears; people's imagination seemed to know no bounds, and, in some cases, no decency...

Tibetan snowcock, the eastermost species.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/

Snowcocks are five species of bird in the genus Tetraogallus. They are related to partridges and pheasants which they  broadly resemble. The five species in range across the mountains and plateaus of Eurasia, from the Caucasian snowcock in the west to the Tibetan snowcock in the east. The birds live at altitude, sometimes migrating up and down mountains with the seasons.

All species are monogamous, with females incubating the eggs and males standing guard. When not incubating some species are social, forming mixed flocks, providing safety in numbers from their predators such as foxes and eagles.

In defense of the shoebill

Last night many people were gripped by the BBC’s visually stunning new wildlife series Africa. As has been the wont of wildlife filmmakers since the dawn of time, the Africa crew toyed with our emotions throughout. Baby gorillas stared the camera in its lens and the viewer in her primeval ovaries, a drought-starved baby elephant breathed its last as its mother tried to nudge it back to life tenderly with a foot the size of a tree stump, later a new baby elephant frolicked in rain-refreshed pastures (you could almost hear strains of Sir Elton John’s Circle of Life begin to play beneath the already intrusive underscoring). But the thing that riled Twitter the most was the outright evil of the shoebill.

A shoebill, not a human

A nest of two chicks, one of the chicks was a few days older than the other, its head-start in life meant that it was bigger and could muscle its way to food ahead of its sibling, meaning that it grew faster and the size gap increased. As the difference grew, the larger chick got even more food, and eventually, seizing every advantage while the mother was away searching for catfish in the limpid pools of a dense swamp, we saw the large chick pummelling the other with its massive beak. Feathers flying, the weaker chick seemed done for. But then the mother returned to restore order…oh, wait. The mother returned, but shunning the weaker embattled chick she gives the bigger one food and lavishes all her care on this avian Cain. WHY? WHY CAN’T SHE LOOK AFTER THE WEAK? Twitter was alive with people shocked and appalled: for at least half an hour shoebills were officially more despicable, less caring, and warranted our opprobrium more than the Coalition Government on welfare-reform Tuesday.

But what people seem to forget, easily done given the nature of the documentary and its wanton emotional toying with the viewer, is that THESE ARE BIRDS. It would be easy to point out 101 things more inherently preposterous, destructive, uncaring, and designed to screw over our fellow human beings that people do before midday each day (most of them on the tube in London), but that would be continuing in the anthropomorphism of the show. I could also point out that in every series of Springwatch, we watch in fear that the barn owls won’t find enough voles and the older chicks will eat their way through their younger and smaller siblings to make up the calorie deficit – so this siblicide is nothing out of the ordinary, and many birds lay extra eggs as insurance policies, expecting that some offspring will not make it. But rather, I’d like to take a paragraph to celebrate the wonderful shoebill. A bird that, when  I first saw it on a nature documentary as a youngster, helped to spark my interest in evolution and ecology.

Shoebills (Balaeniceps rex) are massive long-legged wading birds. Resembling a cross between a heron and a pelican designed by Jim Henson and viewed in a distorting mirror, they are unmistakable with anything else and utterly unique. Their uniqueness belies their evolutionary history, which is something of a mystery. The birds are in a taxonomic family on their own. On the basis of their shape and feeding habits (stalking fish in the reedbeds of East Africa’s swamps) they have been allied with storks and herons, but DNA analysis suggests they are more closely related to pelicans. Their closest living relative is almost certainly the hammerkop, another curious African bird also of murky evolutionary affinities. Shoebills specialise in hunting catfish and lungfish in shallow or dwindling pools of vast swamps; these fish come to the surface to take gulps of air, at which point a patiently waiting shoebill will strike. Their massive bills (which give them both their English name and their latin genus name Balaeniceps [meaning “whale head”]) enable them to capture larger fish than other stalking waders such as herons and storks, and unlike these birds they can also tear larger prey apart rather than having to swallow it whole. The fossil record of shoebill ancestors is sparse, with some clear relatives from 30 million to 25 million years ago, but not much else. Given their remarkable size, striking appearance, and impenetrable habitat, it’s no surprise the shoebill is one of the species top on the list of any birdwatcher visiting Africa. And when you watch Africa, just remember, they’re only doing what they need to do to survive. They may not be cute, or dying, but they are pretty fricking amazing if you ask me.

Animal of the Week January 7, 2013 -- HOW MUCH?!

What's the most expensive animal?

Well, unsurprisingly the record stands with a racehorse: the most expensive I could find was The Green Monkey, a 2 year old colt that sold in 2006 for $16 m before going on to earn his new owners around $10 000 on the racetrack and being retired in 2010 having not won a single race. The Green Monkey is now a stud horse, earning his pimps $5000 a pop. The $16 million was generated through a bidding war between two racehorse-owner rivals clearly with more money and pride than sense. Although $16 million is exceptional, it is not so outlandish: a great racehorse can earn several million in its racing career and as stud animals, tens of millions. The owners of unbeaten racehorse Frankel, for example, charge £125 000 (about $200 000) to mate a mare with him (no foal, no fee!), and stud fees of $500 000 are not unheard of.

But outside the world of equestrianism, the week's animal, Thunnus orientalis (Pacific bluefin tuna) has set a new record for fish, selling for $1.7 million. Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura Co, paid the record sum to buy the 222 kg fish for the company's Sushi-Zanmai sushi chain.

The pacific bluefin tuna is a large predatory fish of the same family as mackerel. They can reach a 3 m in length and weigh up to 450 kg. Their close relatives, the Atlantic bluefin (Thunnus thynnus) can reach up to 4.5 m in length and weigh over 600 kg. Tuna meat is popular for sushi and sashimi in Japan, and thin strips of the the fatty belly meat of bluefin tuna, called O-Toro, can cost $25 each. Some of the world's bluefin tuna stocks are in sharp decline, including the large Atlantic bluefin, but the Pacific bluefin stocks seem to be doing OK for now. But such crazy prices, and the dwindling of other stocks, are only likely to increase exploitation.

The components of the fish are in no way worth the amount paid, but the first fish sale of the year at the Tsukiji Fish Market (the largest fish market in the world) in Tokyo is traditionally a place for people to show off by paying well over the odds. Last year, Kimura set a new record, but paid only about a third of this years price for a slightly larger fish. But who can put a value on the global exposure of Sushi-Zanmai generated by this news story? How much are these inches in AOTW worth?

For those of you about to tuck into a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, it's probably not bluefin, but most likely skipjack. And skipjack tuna, despite being the 2nd most captured fish (by number) in 2009, has fairly healthy stocks. And the most captured fish? The delicious delicious anchovy.
 
Here is an interesting list of some other costly animals. Including a million dollar tibetan mastif. And here is a very striking looking million-pound sheep. I hope none of these tales is made up like that recounted in "poetic" form when sheep were AOTW.

And finally, a former sushi related AOTW