Animal of the Week -- December 22, 2008

If you have ever wondered why Santa, living somewhere around the North Pole, didn't turn to huskies to pull his sleigh, or maybe polar bears, or musk ox, all you need to know that all those animals have morbid fear of heights; they'd be no good -- seriously, if you've ever tried to talk a musk ox down a steep flight of stairs, you'll know what I'm talking about. But Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, and Blixem, aided by a little Christmas magic, merrily take to the sky to distribute presents to all the kiddywinks who have been good throughout the year.

Reindeer, or caribou as they are known in North America, are the archetypal herbivore of the Arctic distributed from Norway to Norway all the way around wherever there is land and a smattering of lichen. With their large noses for warming ingoing air and collecting precious water from exhaled air, their thick double coats that are so well insulated the animals can lie on snow without causing it to melt, and their feet that change with the season to provide traction on ice in the winter and mud in the summer, no animals could be better suited to the snow spangled taiga forest of Siberia or the open frozen tundra of Canada.

Throughout Eurasia, native peoples of the high arctic have commonly domesticated, or partly domesticated reindeer, and the appearance of the animals in cave paintings suggests that for millenia reindeer have been important to humans as a source of food and materials for clothing and food. Now, only a few truly wild populations remain in Europe, but huge wild herds remain in Canada and the US. Across their range there are various subspecies: the small Svalbard reindeer (R. tarandus platyrhynchus), European wild reindeer (R. tarandus fennicus), and the porcupine caribou (R. tarandus granti). Perhaps the best known subspecies is R. tarandus rufinostris.

Reindeer mostly eat lichen,but they also browse on shrubs and, in the autumn, they have a particular fondness for mushrooms. Some reindeer herders exploit the deer's love of mushrooms -- after feeding their herds with fly agarics (fat red mushrooms with white spots), the herders drink the reindeers urine which contains hallucinogenic chemicals from the mushroom. Strangely, drinking reindeer wizz makes the herders less sick than would eating the mushrooms themselves. Suddenly, the origins of the idea of a jolly fat man clad in red and white traversing the heavens on a sleigh pulled by flying deer start to become clear.

Merry Chrimble One and All

Animal of the Week -- November 10, 2008

"The sea has its large rivers like the continents. They are special currents known by their temperature and their colour. The most remarkable of these is known by the name of the Gulf Stream. Science has decided on the globe the direction of five principal currents: one in the North Atlantic, a second in the South, a third in the North Pacific, a fourth in the South, and a fifth in the southern Indian Ocean. It is even probable that a sixth current existed at one time or another in the northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral seas formed but one vast sheet of water."

So mused Professor Aronnax aboard Captain Nemo's Nautilus in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

It is such rivers that helped this week's animal, Megaleledone setebos become the forebear of many species of deep sea octopus. A study from the Census of Marine Life show that this unassuming octopus of shallow Antarctic waters is the likely forebear for many diverse species of deep-sea octopuses. Researchers believe that ocean currents, such as Professor Aronnax's rivers, carried larvae from the shallow Antarctic waters to the deep sea where, in isolation, and under the new selective pressure (quite literally in the deep oceans) they diverged into separate species. The idea that a living species is the ancestor of others is mighty exciting. It's like stumbling across the last common ancestor of chimps and humans alive [Have you been to Norfolk lately? -- Ed].

The development of these rivers, or thermohaline expressways, is associated with expansion of the ice caps, as fresh water is sequestered in ice caps, concentrated cold salt water sinks helping to create the currents that then flow into the deep oceans -- carrying species from shallower waters with them. Successive periods of activity of these currents related to global warming and cooling create successive waves of immigration to deep sea areas leading to a greater diversity.

As cold waters sink away from the poles, warm waters are pushed and drawn towards them, hence the Gulf Stream keeps the UK and other parts of northwestern Europe, which should be as cold as Canada, ice free. As human-generated global warming melts the ice caps, the Gulf Stream may be disrupted, actually causing temporary cooling of the British Isles and Norway... before we all fry, starve, and die in wars over access to water and Ambre Solaire.

Happy days

Animal of the Week -- October 6, 2008

As I am sure that you are all aware, in the UK Red Squirrel Week started on October 4. And during this period we are all asked keep in mind the much beleagured European Red Squirrel. And so, in honour of Red Squirrel Week, although totally without ties or affiliation, this week's animal is Scuirus vulgaris.

It's may not be a coincidence that almost three years ago to the day animal of the week recognised the crazy crack squirrels of Lambeth— which, judging by the erratic behaviour of one that leapt onto my friend Talha while walking through Elephant and Castle the other week, have now spread to Southwark. But those were the eastern grey squirrels, invaders from the USA that have outcompeted the native red squirrel and spread diseases that have pushed our reds to the fringes of their former range. During Red Squirrel Week, we are asked to report sightings of red squirrels, particularly any ill looking ones that might have caught squirrel pox from their grey usurpers to help gain a better picture of the extent of the species and the extent of the disease. Your best chances of spotting reds in the UK are around Poole Harbour, the Isle of Wight, Anglesey, Cumbria, Northumberland and Scotland.

Outside the UK the red squirrel is still quite common, grey squirrels having failed to make it to continental Europe (although in Piedmont, Italy, a population of greys has become established and is squeezing the reds from their former range). Greys outcompete reds because they are larger and able to exploit more foodstuffs than the reds -- such as acorns, which give the native reds bellyache.

Confusingly, grey squirrels can appear quite red, and red squirrels come in a variety for shades, from auburn to black, from ginger to, er, grey. If you see a red-tinted squirrel throughout most of the UK, not in the areas above, it is probably a grey squirrel and certainly not, as has been suggested to me before, the result of cross-breeding between the two species. If you see a red squirrel in North America, it will be an unrelated North American red squirrel. The best way to spot a European red is to look for the ear tufts, these little fluffies have prominent squirrel nutkin tufts; whereas greys and other reds do not.

In norse mythology Ratatoskr is a squirrel who runs up and down the World Tree (from which the nine planes of existences hang), spreading news, rumours, and gossip, and ferrying isults between the eagle in Asgard atop the highest branches and the dragon curled up in Hel beneath its roots.

Many thanks,

Peter Hayward
Head Keeper
Animal of the Week

Animal of the Week -- September 15, 2008

Wherever you look in the news this week, one thing is for sure: ants are where it's at.

First off the news that a blind, subterranean species of ant with huge mandibles discovered in the Amazon a couple of years ago represents a whole new ant subfamily, provides unique insights into the origins of ants. Ants arose from wasps, but perhaps all living ants are descended from ancestors that once lived underground permanently. So weird is this ant that it's name, Martialis heureka, suggests that it might have come from the planet Mars (Martialis). The huereka presumably harking back to the Archimedean cry of scientific enlightenment. Taxonomists are crazy!

By contrast, this week's actual animal of the week is an example of totally uninspired taxonomy: Formica rufibarbis. Now, you may well think that this is a cocktail of downers mixed on a 1970s composite plastic worksurface, but it's actually the red (rufi) barbed (barbis) ant (Formica -- the most familiar ant genus). The naming of this ant is totally lazy, it is indeed, a bit red and what's more it has little barbs on its back... and it's an ant. Taxonomists are, most of the time, boring! But for all that laziness, there is currently a great effort to save this ant from extinction in the UK.

Although widely distributed, the red-barbed ant is never common within it's range from Portugal to Siberia, and in the UK, its highly picky living requirements mean that it can only be found on St Martin's in the Scilly Isles (and why not, that's nice enough) and Chobham in Surrey -- presumably moved there for the schools. However, the mainland population has declined so much that only one colony remained, and due to a reproductive quirk of the species that only produced females. Now the Zoological Society of London and partners are reintroducing captive bred nests, some of males, some of females, onto heathland in Surrey.

The ants have fared poorly in the UK due to habitat destruction. To ease the tranisition for the captive bred ants great effort has gone, not only to preparing suitable habitat for them, but into trying to remove one of their main enemies in the natural world -- Formica sanguinea. This latter ant steels larvae from other colonies and raises them (ahhhhh, that sounds alright -- sort of like Madonna or Angelina Jolie) but then makes the matured ants do all their work for them! As the red barbed ants are released on Chobham downs on Monday, I wish them all the success in the world and salute the work of the tireless souls who work to ensure their continued presence on this sceptered isle.

Animal of the Week -- August 18, 2008

Look! What's that over there in the bushes? Pass the me the binoculars will you. OH MY GOD! It's a lesser spotter Animal of the week.

It's all been crazy talk of bigfoot and chupacabras from the states recently -- but predictably they turn out to be a monkey suit in a block of ice and a manky old dog. So, I am going for something totally unsensationalist.

If you were to ask me what my favourite animal was, I'd be hard pushed to come up with an answer -- I mean there are bloody loads of them. Would it be a majestic lion, or a honey-making bee? The vanishingly rare Vancouver Island Marmot, perhaps? Maybe it's a fluffy viscacha, or the parasitic carandiru that swims up people in the Amazon? Or a barnacle that replaces the body of a crab in while the crab is alive? There is so much fluffy-cute, crazy-arsed weird-shizzle going down in kingdom animalia that really I wouldn't know where to start picking a favourite. But then, maybe, just maybe...

While visiting my ma's recently to catsit while she took a holiday, I was gazing out over the patio when I noticed a commotion in the hedgerow -- 20 or so tiny black dots fizzing around from tree to tree, and I suddenly felt full of joy and realised that nothing warms the cockles of my heart as much as a flock of this week's Animal Aegithalos caudatus (long-tailed tits).

These birds are small about 8 cm long, more than half of which is their tail, they are fairly common throughout Europe and western Asia, and they are not endangered, particularly useful to people, or really in any way remarkable. But there is something about these tiny balls of feathery fluff, as they swarm over individual bushes, their black and white bodies flecked with pink bars on their wing, swapping places, following one another, emitting shrill, almost supersonic, three-note chirping calls, picking off small insects from among the bark and leaves. They are like tiny clowns -- but nice clowns, not fright-wigged, red-lipped, custard-in-the-pants, It clowns. Just following the path of a flock of these little tits down a hedgerow, or across a scrubby heath, or through a stand of trees in an inner city park or cemetery is one of life's great joys.

Also, now as we head into late summer, while you are out blackberrying, if you spot in some dense scrub a small round ball of moss, feathers, and lint stuck together with spiderwebs, you have probably found a long-tailed tits nest, incredibly well camouflaged and hidden, they are not uncommon but they are hard to spot.

So keep your eyes and ears peeled, if you see little round birds with long tails bubbling through a hedge, singing a high pitched song, take a few minutes to enjoy these charming little tits.

Animal of the Week -- July 28, 2008

I suppose that the name "Animal of the Week" doesn't necessarily imply there has to be an animal every week, just that when there is one, that's the animal of that week. And a week is pretty much undefined, there's the strict Monday to Sunday concept, but then any group of seven adjacent days is also a week. So the animal of this week is Ptilocercus lowii (pen-tail tree shrew).

Now, as someone who is not averse to the odd jar myself -- I was impressed to read in the newspapers earlier this week that these diminutive distant relatives also actively seek out alcohol and drink enough to be drunk 36% of the time. In the forests of Thailand and Malaysia they are to be found supping on fermented nectar from the flowers of bertam palms. However, the reasearch, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA shows that rather than get drunk, the alcohol is disposed of in the tree shrews' hair as a chemical that is also found in the hair of humans with chronic alcoholism [those that have hair, eh? -- Ed][Shut it you! And who the hell is this ed anyway? -- PH].

Thought to be similar to the last common ancestor of all primates that lived about 55 million years ago, pen tail tree shrews, named for their mostly naked tail fringed with lateral hairs like a quill on the last third, are the only nocturnal tree shrews. If disturbed during the day they are sluggish, responding by rolling on their back, hissing, urinating, and defecating in defence. I think the researchers who say these critters aren't affected by the booze had better think again.

Much has been made of their prodigious alcohol consumption -- but it turns out the nectar of the bertam palm is only 0.5–3.8% alcohol. It's hardly a bottle of tanqueray now is it? I'll let them off though, at only 50g, they're definitely not lightweights

Animal of the Week -- July 7, 2008

After the most recent animal of the week a goodly number of folk contacted me to let me know that they had recently seen silverfish, a surprisingly small number, or zero, of these correspondents felt as well disposed towards the graceful little darlings as I do -- most feeling repulsion, disgust, or even fear.

I suspect that this week's animal might also divide opinion, but I'll probably have one or two more people on my side, as this week's animal is the scourge of one of the biggest causes of animosity among neighbours in modern day towns, villages, and suburbs. Although they are a gift to the producers of TV shows about societal conflict in the form of boundary disputes, a great many people abhor leyland cyprus arbors; but across the land, there is a new friend to those living in the shadow of the much loathed conifers -- Cinara cupressi (cypress aphid).

Probably originating in southeastern Europe, these grey 2–3 mm aphids are now found on every continent but Antarctica where it is warm enough for them to breed. In the UK their numbers are largely kept in check as cold winters kill off large numbers of them. However, due to global warming caused by people reading ridiculous almost-weekly emails about animals and the like, last winter the temperature in the southeast was practically tropical throughout. As a consequence these little beasties survived in large numbers. A couple of months ago they began their onslaught, sucking the sap from leylandii hedges up and down the country. Now, the damaged plants are turning brown, whole section and some complete plants dying.

Obviously, this is pestilent behaviour by the aphids, but the hedges are stupid, so good on them I say. Except for those attacking mazes, the only acceptable use for a leylandii. I love a maze, even though I know how to do them and have to resist the temptation to cheat.

Throughout the summer the aphids reproduce parthenogenetically -- ie, the females spew out identical miniatures of themselves without the involvement of any male aphids. A female may contain another female that is already pregnant with the first female's granddaughter, like an entomological russian doll. As winter approaches males are produced by withholding one of the sex chromosomes from some offspring, these mate with females who then lay eggs which overwinter. I like this about aphids, it's neat.

Next week, I hope there will be an animal and maybe even not an insect.

Until then, stay safe, and look out for dying shrubberies.

Animal of the Week -- June 23, 2008

It can't possibly have escaped your attention that this week in the UK is National Insect Week -- so naturally I am going to join in the celebrations by nominating an insect as this week's animal. But what to go for? Something gaudy and noticeable, such as the swallowtail butterfly or hummingbird hawk moth, both occasional visitors to these shores? Or maybe our largest insect, the stag beetle, which reaches lengths of up to 7 cm including its antlers? Perhaps a lovely lazy bumble bee, many species of which are in decline all over the UK, or our rarest insect the streaked bombardier beetle, which repels predators by squirting a noxious combination of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone that explodes with a noisome smell and a loud pop. Damn it! Perhaps I should do all insects. The most diverse group of organisms on the planet perhaps accounting for 90% of species diversity -- although that might take me some time.

Nah, tell you what, among all the glamorous options, let's celebrate a much maligned species which is one of my favourites, Lepisma saccharina (silverfish). These primitive wingless insects (contrary to some misinformation, not all have wings) have remained largely unchanged for the past 300 million years. I guess they get a bad rep for living among rotting wood and damp places in bathrooms, but really they are just probably eating shampoo residue and other stray starch and cellulose based products such as wallpaper paste, glues, or toast. While they might occasionally start nibbling at the gum holding books together, or in rare times of famine nibble at leather or natural fibres, they're probably not doing much damage to your stuff, they just like damp places... and if your books are damp enough to attract silverfish, you've got damp books anyway.

Most commonly seen fleetingly as they retreat from bright light, nocturnal silverfish glide gracefully with glaucous iridescence, undulating like a minnow across your bathroom floor. I think they are quite beautiful. According to wikipedia, "The reproduction of silverfish is preceded by a "love dance", involving three phases, which may last over half an hour. In the first phase, the male and female stand face to face, their trembling antennae touching, then repeatedly back off and return to this position. In the second phase the male runs away and the female chases him. In the third phase the male and female stand side by side and head-to-tail, with the male vibrating his tail against the female", after which the male deposits a gift of sperm, wrapped in gossamer, which the female picks up. How much of the first bit is true I am not sure, the second bit about the giftwrapped seminal present, however, is true. Although they stop short of a post-coital smoke.

So cut these most ancient but graceful creatures some slack for the remainder of National Insect Week, June 23–29.

Animal of the Week -- June 16, 2008

Many thanks for all the messages I received during the hiatus; sadly many people contacted me to tell of long distant relatives who had died leaving me a fortune in a foreign country or even of offers whereby I help someone with a simple money transfer of a few million dollars, from which I can take a sizable percentage for my troubles. Well, with money like that coming in I doubt there'd ever be the need for a break in AOTW again, so Bayo Bashan, Moham Bello, Mrs Awa Zoundi et al, I shall be sending you my bank details as soon as I have got this week's (or more correctly, this quarter's) AOTW out of the way.I have said before that I will never do a fictional or mythical animal, despite the temptation to do a phoenix this week (although that might be building up my return a little too much), but this week's animal of the week is.... wait for it.... A UNICORN.

OK, it's not a unicorn, but the story reported in the unpopular press of the London Underground of a one-horned roe deer, nicknamed unicorn, roaming an Italian forest piqued my interest. This genetic aberration is one of the more mundane possible sources of unicorn myths -- although a very likely source of the myth of the Kirin, the one horned beer, er deer, of Japanese myth.My personal favourite contender for the origin of the unicorn in mythology -- which has it origins in Persia and China -- is this week's Animal of the Week, the extinct giant rhinoceros Elasmotherium sibiricus. Two metres tall, six long, covered in fur, and sporting a metre long horn on the centre of it's nose, E sibiricus was the largest of the extinct genus and lived on the steppes of Russia. The latest fossil evidence of the animal comes from about 1 million years ago, but there are some who believe that this animal could have survived into the folk memory of people who lived on or passed through the steppes. There are even some accounts by mediaeval travellers of a giant one horned beast that would run down horsemen, picking the rider from the back of his or her steed, gore them to death, but leave the horse unharmed that some suspect might have been remnany populations of one elasmotherium or another. Although more closely related to rhinos than to horses, elasmotheriums were more equine in many ways as they were adapted to a cursorial existence on the open plains of Asia.

Other putative candidates for the source of unicron myths include oryx (Middle Eastern antelope) and aurochs (wild oxen), both of which, when viewed in profile as they would commonly have been painted or carved in ancient artwork, both appear to have a single horn. Of course, other genetic mishaps among antelope, deer, and goats such as created the unicorn deer are possible, and some travelling circuses and inventive scientists supposedly have created unicorn goats by fusing the horn buds of newborn goats. Poor goats.

But I like the the elasmotherium theory, the elasmotheorem if you will, of unicorn origins.

Animal of the Week -- March 10, 2008

Where the hell has the time gone? March is half way over already. But the rapid passing of a few months is nothing for this week's animal of the week Pseudobulweria becki (Beck's petrel), which has been missing, presumed extinct, for the past 80 years.

Petrels are sea birds related to fulmars and albatrosses, collectively known as the tubenoses due to the structure of their nostrils atop their bills. Some petrels are among the most numerous species of sea birds. But not Beck's petrel -- known from two specimens collected in the 1920s, it had not been reliably spotted since 1929. Repeated unconfirmed sitings kept alive the hopes that a population of this species was clinging on in the western Pacific, but the similarity of Beck's and the closely related Tahiti petrel made many ornithologists sceptical of their survival.

Last week, however, Hadoram Shirihai -- an Israeli ornithologist with a rep for discovering new species and the only person to have visited all sub-Antarctic islands to see all the species of albatross -- reported photographing 30 or so birds feeding alongside Tahiti petrels in the Bismark Archipelago northeast of New Guinea. Smaller in size than their companions, he recognised them as the errant Beck's petrel. The group contained adults and juvenile birds, showing that a breeding population is hanging on somewhere in the region. The discoverer of the species, Rollo Beck, suggested that this species bred in low lying atolls in Melanesia. Secretive birds, most petrels return to breeding grounds at night making them especially difficult to track.

Petrels have a habit of hovering above the surface of the sea, their feet just touching the water as they pick off surface dwelling plankton and small fish. This habit is the origin of their name, which is derived from St Peter who was said to have walked on water, his feelings towards plankton, however, are lost to hagiography.

The exciting news about the rediscovery of the Beck's petrel resurrects hope for other missing species such as the Newcastle Brown Whale, the Guiness Black Stoat, the Famous Grouse and the Kronenbourg sixteen-sixty-doormouse.

Sorry!

Animal of the Week -- March 03, 2008

Hello All!

I apologise if any of you chaps had nightmares about the snakeheads slithering their way to your doors with the limb-like fins and toothy jaws. I dare say that the majority of you living in the UK had any piscine pursuers shaken from your dreams as you were shaken from your beds. It is a curious coincidence that shortly before Britain's biggest earthquake in nearly 20 years, I was reading a passage in Darwin's peerless journal The Voyage of the Beagle that described an enormous earthquake in Chile. On February 20, 1835, the edge of Chile was shifted nearly a foot upwards by tectonic activity. Fortunately for Darwin, at that time visiting the Chiloe archipelago, he experienced only tremors of the earthquake. Concepcion, the city above the epicentre was utterly ruined when Darwin arrived a few days later, the devestation too harrowing for Darwin to put into words.

Also present on the Chiloe archipelago on February 20, 1835 were representatives of this week's animal of the week Pseudalopex fulvipes (Darwin's fox or Darwin's zorro). This small fox-like dog, dark grey with rufous trim, is related to other South American grey foxes on the mainland, but is proportionately longer in body and shorter in limb. Until the 1970s, the species was thought confined to Chiloe, but a small population was discovered some 600 km away on the mainland, at the other end of the now submerged land bridge that linked Chiloe to the mainland until sea-levels rose at the end of the last ice age.

Darwin's fox is critically endangered with fewer than 100 in the mainland population and around 250–500 on Chiloe. Charles Darwin was the first European scientist to observe the fox, specifically one fox watching curiously the officers of The Beagle work on the ship, at which point he made his own contribution to the endangerment of the canine that would come to bear his name as this, typically dry yet amusing, passage from The Voyage shows:

A fox (Canis fulvipes), of a kind said to be peculiar to the island and very rare in it, and which is a new species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise, than the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.

Genius!

Animal of the Week -- February 25, 2008

Morning/Afternoon/Evening all,

As the days lengthen and the sun makes itself felt, thoughts might turn to long summer days whiled away on the banks of a river...especially if a friend of your posts photos of your teenage selves enjoying such a halcyon day on Facebook. But how keen would we have been launch ourselves from the overhanging tree into the turbid stream had we suspected the presence of Channa argus (northern snakehead) or C micropeltus (giant snakehead) in the slow-moving muddy-bottomed river?

Last week, a Lincolnshire angler fishing for pike got a surprise when his sprat attracted the attention of a more exotic fresh water predator 60 cm long and with a mouth crammed with nasty sharp pointy teeth. The fish was later identified as a giant snakehead, a voracious predator from southeast Asia. Capable of growing 2 m long, giant snakeheads are valued as sports fish and food fish, but treated with caution as mothers have been known to attack people to protect their young. Snakeheads breath air rather than extract oxygen from water with their gills as most other fish do, and they can survive several days out of water, and rather terrifyingly these toothy monsters can crawl overland from pool to pool, from one water catchment to another. If you are terrified by the idea of a 2 m giant snakehead crawling into your front room in Lincoln, fear not. These fish need warm water to survive, and the one caught in Lincolnshire had likely been released only very recently by a tropical fish enthusiast whose tanks had been outgrown.

Phew! Right? The more attentive of you will note that this week's animal is also the northern snakehead as well as the giant. The former is similar to the latter in size, habits, ferocity, and ability to crawl over land, but what makes it more terrifying for those of us in temperate latitudes, is that, living in northern China and Russia, these fish can very happily survive in colder climes. Already across the USA, northern snakeheads have invaded lakes and rivers, wreaking destruction to fisheries and wildlife in their wake. One population in Maryland was thought to have become established after a man purchased a pair from a Chinese food shop to make his sick sister a traditional remedy.

Fortunately for us Europeans, trade in these leviathans is banned for both aquarists and enthusiasts of Chinese gastronomic remedies. So we are protected from the northerns for now... but what if that giant snakehead wasn't a recent escapee, it's been a mild winter after all, and what with global warming, perhaps they are breeding in the UK!! Perhaps there's a giant snakehead slithering to your door right now!!!

Thank god I live on the third floor; although I may have to rethink my summer swims in Hampstead ponds. Dammit!

Animal of the Week -- January 11, 2008

Hello and apologies for slackness,

I so enjoyed the mole the other week that I wanted to give it plenty of time to be AOTW... or I just spent the last week drunk... one of the two, let's go with the mole story.

This week's animal of the week is kind of one animal used as a representative of a whole species. For this week's animal of the week is Electra the golden eagle who has become the first eagle recipient of successful cataract removal. Golden eagles (Aquila chriseatos) are widely regarded as some of the best hunters among the birds of prey. Soaring high over highlands and wild spaces across the entire northern hemisphere from Kamchatka to Kinross in either direction, they are able to spot a mountain hair loping through the furze from two miles away.

Electra of Greek myth was complicit in the murder of her mother Clytemnestra and step father Aegisthus to avenge their murder of her father Agamemnon. Electra the eagle was named after her failure to spot -- eagle eyed indeed -- an electricity pylon in Mull. The collision resulted in severe burns. Apparently the eagle's slack judgement was not due to already poor eyesight but actually caused the traumatic cataracts, leaving poor Electra as blind as a bat -- though presumably not as blind as a spectacled bat (Pteropus conspicillatus).

Fortunately Electra was rescued and taken to Wings Over Mull, a centre for sick and injured birds in the highlands and islands. Staff noticed Electra's problem sight and ordered the first ever operation to remove cataracts from a golden Eagle. A short surgery later and Electra now has good eyesight in one eye. Though not a clean bill of health, because her eyesight is not fully recovered in both eyes she will not be able to return to the wild, but she has been housed with a male golden eagle with a broken wing.

Such pioneering operations offer hope for other animals with poor eyesight: such as the spectacled bear, the monocled fox, and the astigmatism weevil (some or none of which may be fictional).

On January 30th, the day I eventually sent the last animal of the week, by pure coincidence, the rare genius that is Howard Hardiman did a mole in his excellent when pigeons weep web cartoon series, Do have a browse, but be warned, some of the entries are a little, er, racey.

All the best!

Animal of the Week -- January 28, 2008

Hello Ani-freaks!

Go see a wonderful post-it comic featuring animals (and other things) called When Pigeons Weep, on Jan 16 there is a troglobyte!

This week's animal of the week is a bane of the lives those two guardian-occupations of the UK landscape: farmers and gardeners. Although these two groups of people are renowned for their compassion and tolerance towards wildlife, nothing gets their backs up so much as this week's animal Talpa europaea (European mole) -- well, except maybe mice, rats, mealy bugs, birds of prey, slugs, deer, pigeons, badgers, rooks, aphids, pheasants, cats, and vine weevils. And foxes.

Their habit of digging extensive underground tunnels terminating in small mounds of earth has pitted moles the world over against lawn-proud gardeners. But actually the moles' toils not only aerate and break up soil, but their prodigious consumption of leatherjackets and other pests of crops and garden plants are actually a benefit to people who work the land. And while they may eat those other great processors of soil, earthworms, they cannot consume enough to affect the latter's benefit to gardeners and farmers.

Immortalised in Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows as home-loving, timid fellows, moles may be nearly blind but they are voracious predators, consuming nearly two-thirds their own body weight a day in grubs and worms. They have toxic saliva that paralyses their invertebrate prey enabling them to build up a larder for lean times. It was a pondering about the nature of toxic mammals that started animal of the week some3 and a bit years ago, turns out loads of insectivorous mammals have toxic saliva.

Among all the crocodiles, mosquitoes, tigers, sharks, tyrannosaurs, and snakes that have been animal of the week, European moles are only the second to be blamed for the death of an English king. William III, of Orange, was out riding in the early 18th century when his horse trod in a mole tunnel and threw its rider. The resulting broken collarbone led to pneumonia (ED: can that happen? PH: ED, who is ED?), and the pneumonia led to the accession of Queen Anne, prior to which the Jacobites, hoping to seize the opportunity to reinstate a Scottish monarch, were commonly heard to toast "the little man in his velvet jacket". The other regicidal AOTW is, of course, the lamprey

Want to help people find out about moles? Join the People's Trust for Endangered Species in their MOLEWATCH. Report sighting of moles or more likely molehills here: http://www.ptes.org/molewatch/. Though not endangered, changing land use and increasing floods may threaten moles. When I was a kiddywink on the farm, if the river flooded the moles would gather on the small patches of unsubmerged ground, the dogs -- Goldie, Shelly, and Bella -- would like nothing more than unearthing the stranded moles. The carnage was a horrific sight. I am sorry moles. I couldn't stop it!

All the best!

Animal of the Week -- January 21, 2008

Word!

I am again amazed by the early appearance of a harbinger of spring, but I fear that I bang on about this every year, so I'll skirt around the issue by not mentioning the full name of the animal -- despite it being mid January, I saw five or six "Bs" this weekend just gone! But anyway, this sign of climate change has nothing to do with this week's animal of the week, or does it? This week's animal is Boulengerula niedeni (the Sagalla caecilian).

This limbless animal has been picked as one of ten amphibians to be the focus of conservation efforts in the next wave of the EDGE (Evolutionarily Distinct & Globally Endangered) programme, which is run by the Zoological Society of London to protect the most vulnerable and evolutionary isolated animals, drawing attention to some of the less glamorous species. Caecilians may look like earthworms, but they are actually a highly specialised offshoot of the amphibian family tree inhabiting the leaf litter and top soil of equatorial forests.

Sagalla caecilians are found in a 30 km square region of southern Kenya, and while they might be quite numerous in that small area, being found nowhere else, they are incredibly sensitive to changes in or degradation of that environment. In a marvellous coincidence with last week's animal, Sagalla caecilians have tentacles beneath their eyes, or rather below where their eyes should be, for they, like many other caecilians are blind. A close relative of the Sagalla caecilian, Boulengerula taitanus, has a bizarre maternal habit -- females brooding a clutch of eggs develop a thick layer of skin on which the young, unable to eat other foods, nourish themselves without apparent detriment to their mother's wellbeing.

Turns out AOTW has featured EDGE species since the start, the first edition was one of their highlighted mammals, the solenodon (http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2004/10/animal-of-week-october-25-2004-first.html), and several others flop, slither or flounder around my backfiles in the webzoo (the baiji http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2004/10/animal-of-week-october-25-2004-first.html; and the giant salamander http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2005/05/animal-of-week-may-30-2005-giant.html).

Let's just hope that the Sagalla caecilian fares better than the baiji, which is now presumed extinct. I suppose this amphibian has family on its side. You don't want to mess with caecilians, you do and you'll wake up with a horse's head in your bed.

Animal of the Week -- January 21, 2008

Word!

I am again amazed by the early appearance of a harbinger of spring, but I fear that I bang on about this every year, so I'll skirt around the issue by not mentioning the full name of the animal -- despite it being mid January, I saw five or six "Bs" this weekend just gone! But anyway, this sign of climate change has nothing to do with this week's animal of the week, or does it? This week's animal is Boulengerula niedeni (the Sagalla caecilian).

This limbless animal has been picked as one of ten amphibians to be the focus of conservation efforts in the next wave of the EDGE (Evolutionarily Distinct & Globally Endangered) programme, which is run by the Zoological Society of London to protect the most vulnerable and evolutionary isolated animals, drawing attention to some of the less glamorous species. Caecilians may look like earthworms, but they are actually a highly specialised offshoot of the amphibian family tree inhabiting the leaf litter and top soil of equatorial forests.

Sagalla caecilians are found in a 30 km square region of southern Kenya, and while they might be quite numerous in that small area, being found nowhere else, they are incredibly sensitive to changes in or degradation of that environment. In a marvellous coincidence with last week's animal, Sagalla caecilians have tentacles beneath their eyes, or rather below where their eyes should be, for they, like many other caecilians are blind. A close relative of the Sagalla caecilian, Boulengerula taitanus, has a bizarre maternal habit -- females brooding a clutch of eggs develop a thick layer of skin on which the young, unable to eat other foods, nourish themselves without apparent detriment to their mother's wellbeing.

Turns out AOTW has featured EDGE species since the start, the first edition was one of their highlighted mammals, the solenodon (http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2004/10/animal-of-week-october-25-2004-first.html), and several others flop, slither or flounder around my backfiles in the webzoo (the baiji http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2004/10/animal-of-week-october-25-2004-first.html; and the giant salamander http://animal-of-the-week.blogspot.com/2005/05/animal-of-week-may-30-2005-giant.html).

Let's just hope that the Sagalla caecilian fares better than the baiji, which is now presumed extinct. I suppose this amphibian has family on its side. You don't want to mess with caecilians, you do and you'll wake up with a horse's head in your bed.

Animal of the Week -- January 14, 2008

Good morrow good women and gentlefolk,

It was a most pleasing moment last week when a colleague forwarded me a link to a news story, not about a pair of twins getting married (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7182817.stm), but about a Pacific giant octopus playing with a Mr Potato head (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7179368.stm). The giant mollusc loves his toy, mostly because it's got crab meat inside it (which is a feature I don't recall from the Mr Potato Head that I had), but also its bright colours and moving parts. Now, as you might guess, the Pacific giant octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) is a big octopus, reports of a 272 kg, 9 m, specimen are highly doubtful, but a 71 kg live specimen is confirmed. But it turns out that this size record is rivalled among the octopodes by a bizarre freak of the molluscan world -- this week's animal of the week is Haliphron atlanticus (the seven-arm octopus). Of which a dead specimen weighed in at 61 kg, giving an estimated live weight of 75 kg, and had a mantle length (the head-like bit) of 40 cm.

What? I hear you cry. How can there be such a thing? Surely this septapode octopus is a contradiction in terms, and cephalopod oxymoron, a lie, a fabrication, a genetic freak or frankenstein fish. No, I tell you, it is real, a proper species.

The truth is that the distaff representatives of the species have the full complement of octopus legs; but once more, in the face of all we expect to be true about the natural world, the males are missing a limb. In octopuses (please, not octopi) and other cephalopods (squids, cuttlefish, and nautili), the males have a specially adapted limb, the hectocotylus, which is used to deliver sperm to the female. In many other octopuses this arm is larger than the others, but in the seven-arm octopus, this sperm arm is small and coiled up in a small pouch underneath the right eye. During the act, the male unfurls his arm from beneath his eye and makes a special delivery to a cavity under the female's gelatinous mantle. So I guess, "giving her the eye", means something much more intimate in octopus courtship than in human relations.

Bye then!

Peter Hayward
Head Keeper
Animal of the Week