Animal of the Week February 12, 2007 -- Funny little frog in your throat

Happy Chinese New Year! I have already done pigs, look http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_archive.html, there they are.

So this week's animal of the week is not inspired by the Chinese zodiac. Rather, it is Rheobatrachus silus (platypus frog, southern gastric brooding frog). This tiny Australian frog sadly is no longer with us, but until the early 1980s the Blackall and Conondale Ranges in Southeastern Queensland, Australia, rang with the chirruping of thousands froggies going a courting. Small, green, and quite froglike, they would be unremarkable but for their novel approach to reproduction.

Once her clutch of eggs was fertilised, the female would proceed to eat them. But rather than being dissolved by stomach acids, a compound secreted by the eggs switched off the female's normal digestive function and there the eggs developed. Tadpoles then hatched from the eggs and developed into little froglets. The female could not eat while brooding her offspring and her stomach would swell to fill nearly the entire body cavity, to accomodate the froglets. When the young had developed into fully formed little frogs, the female then would vomit up her children ("midwife, can I have a glass of water, I have a froglet in my throat")!

If surprised or threatened, the gravid female could vomit up her young at any time, and the young could mature successfully outside of the body. Although they laid about 40 eggs, only 20 or so young would ever hatch, perhaps the earlier eggs were digested and were sacrificed in order to switch off the usual gastric machinations, or perhaps the tadpoles and froglets used them as a source of food whil confined to the maternal belly.

I am not the only person captivated by these bizarre things, I found this on a site dedicated to refuting evolutionary science with the argument of irreducible complexity. Although it is an old piece, there argument is slightly undermined by the last sentence of the first para, the frogs have not been seen since 1981 and are listed as extinct by the IUCN.

http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/irreducible_complexity_09.html

"The miraculous reproduction system of Rheobatrachus silus explicitly invalidates the theory of evolution, since the whole system is irreducibly complex. Every step has to take place fully in order for the frogs to survive. The mother has to swallow the eggs, and has to stop feeding completely for six weeks. The eggs have to release a hormonelike substance to neutralize stomach acids. The addition of the extra protein-rich yolk to the egg is another necessity. The widening of the female's oesophagus cannot be coincidental. If all these things failed to happen in the requisite sequence, the froglets would not survive, and the species would face extinction [PH: face it, they're looking at it's rear view].

Therefore, this system cannot have developed step-by-step, as asserted by the theory of evolution. The species has existed with this entire system intact since its first member came into existence. Another way of putting it is, they were created."

Not really a believer in that view myself, but I'll leave y'all to make up your own minds.

Ciao!

Peter Hayward
Head Keeper
Animal of the Week

Animal of the Week February 12, 2007 -- Bird-eating bats

This week's animal of the week is the most large of all the bats that live in Europe and the only bat in the whole world that catches birds in mid-air. For this week's animal of the week is Nyctalus lasiopterus (greater noctule bat).

50 g in weight and a wingspan of 45 cm might not seem that big, but compared with Europe's other scrunchy faced insect guzzling flying furballs, most of which are no bigger than a ping-pong ball, the greater noctule is a gargantuan bat. And insects do not quite satisfy their giant appetite.

Fortunately for the greater noctule bats, they live on migratory routes of small brown songbirds such as wood warblers. The wood warblers and the like think they are being smart by flying at night and avoiding the birds that might otherwise try to snaffle small flying things. But the world's only known mammalian aerial predatory carnivore has a different idea. Scientists investigating these leatherwinged beasts have found a large amount of feather remnants in their droppings, especially during the autumn migration when the number of birds passing through is greatest.

Unlike other noctule bats, which are better adapted for forest flying, these are well adapted to open environments and their echolocation is set at a frequency above that audible to the birds they hunt. Clever bats.

Animal of the Week February 05, 2007 -- Philistine fish

Good Monday mes petit choufleurs,

It is indeed that time of the week again. And while there have been plenty of animals in the news that I could opt for (turkeys[done], quagga mussels[there's still a couple of cm left in this barrel], and killer whales in Edinburgh), as they say on the internet, meh! This one hasn't been in the news but it (like all the animals) is worth it; this week's AOTW is Epinephelus itajara (itajara, goliath grouper, jewfish).

Goliath groupers are potentially huge reef fish that can be found in the eastern Pacific, the Caribbean, and the west coast of Africa. They can weigh in excess of 400 kg and reach lengths of well over 2 m, although 40 kg is a more typical weight. With their huge gaping mouths and impressive size, they eat pretty much what they like, although lobsters and other large crustaceans form a large part of their diets. In this week's picture, the fish has been placed next to an American to give you some impression of its size.

Most female goliath groupers are small, and most males are large, in fact, all the really large groupers are male. This observations suggests that like other several other species of grouper they are protogynous, that is, they start out their lives as females, and only when they mature or reach a certain size, do they become male. So there are a few very large males. Once a popular food and game fish, the goliath grouper has been protected since the early 1990s and is globally critically endangered. Where they are plentiful goliath groupers can still be caught. Although they are best approached with caution: a spear fisherman was dragged into a cave and drowned by a large one last year.

In 1991, the American Fisheries Society felt that the name jewfish might be offensive, so they renamed it the goliath grouper after the Philistine champion thwarted by the Hebrew hero in the story from the Old Testament and Qur'an. Perhaps they chose to name the fish after the famous philistine giant because of its size, although I like to think the rebranding is because of the fish's disregard for high-brow culture.

Until next week my dears,

Animal of the Week January 29, 2007 -- Freaky freak shark sighting

Hooray, hooray, it's ANIMAL DAY!!

This week's animal is inspired by a rare sighting of a beast washed up from the briny depths: Chlamydoselachus anguineus (frilled shark), which was spotted in the Awashima marine park in Japan a week ago.

Fishermen reported having caught an eel-like creature with razor-sharp teeth, so rarely are these seen in surface waters they had no clue what it was. The shark died a few hours after being identified. Frilled sharks typically live at 120 m to 1280 m down and feed on squid, other sharks, and deep-sea fish. The individual sighted was likely ill, hence the death, and disoriented.
Their fierce looking W shaped teeth are, like those of all sharks, replaced from behind in a continuous conveyer belt of piscine death. Although at only 2 m in length (and at 120 m below the surface) humans have little to fear. Also like many other sharks, they are oviviparous—their eggs incubate and then hatch internally right before the pups are born, they have 2–12 pups at a time.

One of the oddities of the shark world, the one species of frilled shark (or possibly two if the advocates of the South African frilled shark as a species are correct) is in a family all of it's own, in a group comprising the most primitive sharks—the six-gill sharks. Although frilled sharks are that different from the others in this group that they may be even more isolated on the shark family tree.

And why is this cartilaginous monstrosity called a frilled shark? I hear you ask. Because it's gill tissue pokes out of the gill slits, like a herniated lung. Gross.

And look: more you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X6GKcLkdRE

Animal of the Week January 22, 2007 -- Pull tiger tail

So sorry I'm late again. My zoological and Prisoner Cell Block H knowledge was needed in a pub quiz. Anyhooos, here I am finally embracing the multimedia revolution and sending you a link to a youtube video. Don't get used to it, mind.

Of course, as is the tendency with youtube videos, you have probably already all seen this. Please reply with the phrase "yawn head keeper, yawn" in the subject line if you have. Anyway, this week's animal of the week is a Hylobates lar (white handed gibbon, lar gibbon). Watch the video and you'll see why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AZn5nWIj_g

(the soundtrack is awful, I suggest you download something by jerky indie poseurs Pull Tiger Tail and make your own appropriate bed). Quite why the gibbon is behaving like this is a mystery to me. But it certainly looks to be having fun.

Worry not fact fans, the lesson endeth not here. One of 13 species, lar gibbons of Southeast Asia, China, and Indonesia, are pretty standard gibbons: about 5.5 kg, at home in the treetops, rarely on the ground, and monogamous. Although they typically mate for life, pairs sometimes divorce; and even more saucily, females in estrus sometimes sneak across to another pair's territory and have it away with a different male.

Cheeky gibbons!

Celebrity a-like: Andrew Marr 50% (it's in the arms)
Top speed: 10 mph
Tenacity: 4
Likelihood of hurting The Feeling: 35%
Aesthetically pleasing: 5
Violence: 3
Can be kept on a roof terrace: 1
Religiousity: 5
Special skill: Brachiating 80

Peter Hayward
Head Keeper
Animal of the Week

Animal of the Week, January 15, 2007 -- The early bee catches the erm... cold

While AOTW is vetoing birds, this week’s animal would be rather apposite, if only the sighting of two Bombus terrestris (buff-tailed bumble bees) in early January was not completely wrong! Get me the Bill on the phone.... no, not the police, Bill Oddie! For like frozen frogspawn in February or migrant martins in March, this is an early sign of Spring, which make the airing of the TV Springwatch in May rather redundant.

Clearly a sign of global warming and harbinger of impending extinction of polar bears, I shall not dwell on inevitable meteorological catastrophes. Instead, let us big up the bee! Buff-tailed bumble bees are the UK ’s largest bee, the queens (as they were that I saw) being about 2·5 cm in length (taller if you include the size 45 stilettos and Dusty Springfield bouffant wig -- queens see, boooom boooom).

Mated queens go into hibernation at the end of autumn when the frosts arrive, emerge in early spring (spring, not January… foolish bees), gather some pollen and nectar and start colony. Once she has bred a few worker daughters, the queen gives up foraging herself and becomes and egg laying machine, the colony grows throughout the early summer. Towards the end of the summer, the queen lays some unfertilised eggs that will develop into the males (drones) and some fertilised eggs that will become the new queens. As autumn ends, the breeding animals leave the nests and mate, then when the frosts arrive, all the workers, drones, and old queens die.

The queens and worker females have stings, but the drones don't. And if you leave bees alone, they are most unlikely to sting you.

If you spot any bees about over the next couple of weeks, call them silly bees and send them on their way, pitying their crazy buff tails, which will likely be frozen dead in a couple of weeks. Global warming, eh?

Number of legs: 6
Celebrity a-like: Bea Arthur 30 (queens score highly, others low)
Top speed: 10 mph
Tenacity: 4
Likelihood of hurting The Feeling: 65%
Aesthetically pleasing: 5
Violence: 2
Can be kept on a roof terrace: 30
Religiousity: 15
Special skill: Buzzing 80

Animal of the Week January 8, 2007 -- The slug it's ok to love

Belated Happy New Year,

Having pelted you with fowls in the extreme before Christmas, I made the sole new year's resolution of not touching any birds for the first few weeks of 2007, I am sure you can imagine how difficult that is going to be for me.

I must thank Doug for this week's animal of the week, he drew it to my attention some weeks back and, while I don't take requests, it is such a beautiful and crazy thing, that I really have no choice. When people ask me "What's your favourite animal?", I tend to reply "I like all the animals equally, except slugs, I don't really like slugs" (I am sure this would be to the horror of my niece, who, to the dismay of her mother, is well into slugs). But then, perhaps I should reconsider in the light of this week's animal, Glaucus atlanticus (blue sea slug).

This amazing looking creature isn't actually that closely related to land slugs, although it is a gastropod mollusc (like slugs, snails, limpits, that sort of thing) which is essentially a layer of organs sat atop one big long foot. Although in the case of the blue sea slug, the organs are not above the foot but below it, for this topsy turvy nudibranch floats upside down at the surface of the oceans with its beautifully patterned foot pointing to the sky. And what does this 4 cm long sci-fi-alike do there? Drifts around gobbling up Portuguese man-of-wars (definitely not jellyfish), one of the most stingy creatures in the sea.

While most animals are put off tackling Portuguese man-of-wars by their thirty foot long tentacles covered in some of the most vicious stings in the animal kingdom, blue sea slugs are immune to these defences and, in fact, assimilate the most potent stings into a special sack. Unwary beachgoers who happen upon one of these and choose to fiddle with it may find themselves being stung worse than if they rubbed a Portuguese man-of-war on themselves, because the slugs take on only the strongest stings.

Crikey blimey governors, I hope you agree that the upside down, floating, stinging, beast eating blue sea slug, is a most worthy first animal of the week for 2007.


Number of legs: 0
Celebrity a-like: A smurf 40
Top speed: 4 mph
Tenacity: 7
Likelihood of hurting James Blunt: 40%
Aesthetically pleasing: 10
Violence: 2
Can be kept on a roof terrace: 1
Religiousity: 5
Special skill: Stinging 80