Animal of the Week, February 20, 2019 — When is a sea slug like a leaf?

Karen N. Pelletreau et al

This week's animal of the week Elysia chlorotica is a peculiar sea slug. First off it's not a nudibranch like the other familiar sea slugs. Instead it is a member of a different branch of the gastropod class.

The main thing about this particular marine mollusc is that it can photosynthesise for long periods of time. Various animals, notably corals, form symbiotic relationships with algae in which the the animal provides a home and protection for algae and the algae provide food for the animal. But this curious sea slug goes a step further—it eats a particular type of algae, Vaucheria litorea, and actually assimilates chloroplasts, tiny light absorbing subcellular units that make energy from sunlight.

Other relatives of E chlorotica do the same, but usually, the choloroplasts, lacking the supportive environment of the algae die in a few days. Somehow, E chlorotica keeps the algae alive for months, sometimes until the sea slug itself reaches old age and dies. The thing I find most pleasing about this whole arrangement is how much like a leaf this sea slug looks.

E chlorotica lives in a vanishingly small range on the eastern seaboard of the USA, and it's poorly studied. How it keeps the chloroplasts functioning for so long might be because the slug itself has integrated some of the algal genes that support the chloroplasts, although the science on this is out. And the rareness of the animal and the difficulties with studying it in the lab mean answers might not be forthcoming any time soon.


Picture source: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097477

Animal of the Week, February 5, 2019 — one of our pandas is missing

A little bit belatedly to this week's animal, for it is the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), one of which had a brief excursion in the Northern Irish city of Belfast. This particular fluffball escaped from Belfast Zoo on Sunday January 27 had a merry stroll around the area of Glengormley before being captured on Monday an returned to its enclosure.

Poor panda must have been pretty confused, because Belfast (although I have never been) can't be much like the temperate montane forests of the Himalayas (Nepal, Tibet, and India) and Burma and China whence the red panda originates. Although their ranges and food sources overlap, red pandas aren't that closely related to giant pandas. In a family of their own (Ailuridae), red pandas are more closely related to raccoons, skunks, and weasels than to bears, the family to which giant pandas belong.

Nonetheless, both species of pandas have endearing facial markings and a penchant for bamboo. Another quirk possessed by both species is the so-called panda's thumb. Not a thumb at all, but a projection of a wrist bone, the appendage helps both species grasp onto and manipulate bamboo while feeding.

Both species of panda are also endangered, with wild individuals threatened by habitat loss and poaching. But fortunately for both species, their attractiveness makes them popular zoo animals and captive breeding programmes can help to conserve red panda, which is somewhat more reliable as a breeding animal in captivity than it's black and white namesake.

The Latin name, Ailurus fulgens, means "shining cat".


The zoo escape gave a brief foray into the urban environment for the panda and a tiny bit of a break from Northern Ireland only ever being mentioned in conjunction with the word "backstop". Still, the pandas home now and normal service has resumed.

Animal of the Week, January 23, 2019—megacharm

Gonna be a brief one this week, because, well, the numbers speak for themselves. A flock of 5 million bramblings (Fringilla montifringilla) have gathered in a patch of trees with a radius of about 250 m (5 hectares) in Slovenia southern Europe.

These beautiful little finches breed in the taiga forests of northern Eurasia and in winter head south to feed on beech and hornbeam seeds in the forests of more temperate regions (a few birds make it to the UK each winter). Extreme weather in central Europe has covered potential food there in metres of snow forcing all the birds that would normally spread out across the region to head south. Droughts earlier in the year mean that potential winter food is limited to densely forested regions such as Slovenia. The full explanation and amazing pictures of the megacharm is available on Rare Bird Alert.

Bramblings are closely related to chaffinches, to which they bear a passing resemblance. A group of finches is known as a charm—so I'm calling this a megacharm. The origin of the name brambling is uncertain, perhaps related to brambles, or perhaps to brandling (the striped worms that you find in your compost bins). I have never seen a brambling, but would very much like to one day as they are, I hope you agree, quite stunning birds.

Animal of the Week, January 8, 2019 — probably the rarest bird in the world

This week's animal currently holds the title of the rarest bird in the world. The Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata) is an unassuming brown duck, so unremarkable in appearance it went unremarked for years. Long thought to be a Madagascan wing of the ferruginous duck family, it was not recognised as a distinct species until 1894. 100 years later, by the mid-1990s the Madagascar pochard was thought to be extinct. Then, in 2006 a tiny remnant population was discovered on a remote lake in Madagascar.

Lake Matsaborimena, where the nine adults and a handful of chicks clung to life was far from ideal and the dwindling population would likely have vanished without intervention. Clutches of eggs were collected from the wild and hand-reared in captivity. In late December, 21 birds were released onto Lake Sofia, a more suitable habitat. Conservationists from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, The Peregrine Fund and the Government of Madagascar have worked with local communities to give the reintroduced birds the best chance.

With around about 90 individuals in the world, there's probably no rarer bird. Other thoroughly uncommon birds includ the Spix macaw, which has a similar number, all in captivity, and the kakapo, the flightless New Zealand parrot which is now up to about 130 birds on predator free island refuges surrounding New Zealand.

Animal of the Week January 1, 2019 — not a giraffe

What do the Thames and Melania Trump's twitter feed have in common?

They both have an unexplained beluga whale in them.

Beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) are a an Arctic species that live in groups around the ice cap in winter but then move to estuaries and coastal waters when ice recedes in summer. Although these seasonal migrations mean that beluga whales do get about a bit, they are unexpected visitors so far south as the UK, let alone the southeast of England. Nonetheless, here we are, with a lone beluga whale pratting around near Gravesend, first identified in September, the whale was probably actually first sighted in August.

What brought the beluga whale to the Thames is a mystery, as is the 2012 tweet from Melania Trump, in which the first lady, pondered "What is she thinking?" Odd enough in itself, but then on Sunday night just gone, the tweet miraculously changed so that the photo of the whale was replaced with one of a giraffe. "WTF?!", the twittersphere thought. "Can the Trumps now edit their old tweets?" But then to further muddy the waters, the giraffe was showing up on some browsers and not on others, turns out it was some coding glitch that I won't pretend to understand. Order has been restored and the whale is back as it should be. But what is she thinking? Melania, the whale, the giraffe?

Beluga whales are part of the toothed whale family and their closest relatives are narwals. The name, beluga, comes from the Russian for "white", which is also the origin for the name of the beluga sturgeon, whence the caviar. Sturgeon and whale are no more closely related than any other mammal and fish. Known as the canary of the sea for their high-pitched vocalisations, belugas are unfortunately frequently kept in captivity, which is no place for a cetacean, but one or two captive belugas have been able to mimic human speech patters—what clever fellows.


News that a beluga whale was spotted in the Thames brought back memories of Wally the Whale, a northern bottlenose whale that found itself stranded in Vauxhall, exhausted and disoriented (god knows I know that feeling). While the newest cetacean visitor seems to be thriving, Wally was less fortunate and died (god knows I know that feeling).

Animal of the Week, August 9, 2017—new grass snake, you're barred!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40853286 Aug 9, 2017

You can't have failed to notice the news come alive this week with reports of a new species of grass snake identified in the UK. Amazing, stunning! The new species (the barred grass snake; Natrix helvetica) can be distinguished by its less pronounced collar, more pronounced barring along its body, and less vibrant colour (khaki rather than green) compared with other grass snakes (Natrix natrix). Several news outlets reported that the addition of the new species raised the number of snake species living in the UK from three (adder, grass snake, and smooth snake) to four (those three plus the barred grass snake).

But hold on! Should you be asked, in say, a pub quiz, how many species of snake are native to the UK, the answer is still three. If, indeed, the barred grass snake is a separate species, it is the only grass snake species in the UK. The barred grass snake's range in Europe can largely be described as north of the Alps and Pyrenees and west of the Rhine, no other grass snakes are found in this area.

From the original research paper, the blue symbols show the distribution of Natrix natrix helvetica

Scientist analysed genetic samples from snake skins, roadkill, and museum specimens across the northern and eastern European rang of the grass snake. According to the research, the barred grass snake should be recognised as a distinct species from the other subspecies in the Natrix natrix group: whereas the other subspecies have substantial range overlap in which they crossbreed, interbreeding between helvetica and its neighbour natrix is very rare.

Font fans and graphic designers will find it ironic that the helvetica species is distinguished by its pronounced bars.

Animal of the Week, August 2, 2017—could krill save the world?

In the Animal of the Week archives, charismatic birds and mammals far outweigh other creatures, and invertebrates especially are fairly lightly represented. This week let's go some way to reddress that imbalance. By weight, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), are the single most abundant animal on Earth.

The most recent AOTW, blue whales, might be the largest animal ever to have lived, but if you were collect all the blue whales together, they might just tip the (very large pair of) scales at approaching 1 million tonnes, all the Antarctic krill in the world would weigh almost 500 times as much—which is just as well, because they are the main source of food for blue whales and numerous other species.

The total numbers of krill in this half a billion tonnes are immense—as many as 500 trillion (that's half a quadrillion) might be alive at any one time. They form swarms of immeasurable number, although the density of these swarms can reach 30 000 individuals per cubic metre. As you might expect for something that exists in such a multitude the individuals are pretty small: the bioluminescent free-swimming shrimp like creatures might reach 6 cm in length and weigh up to 2 grammes.

The importance of Antarctic krill to the world probably cannot be overstated—as well as providing the main food source of a host of whales, seals, penguins, seabirds, fish, and squid, they are thought to be key players in the global carbon cycle and, as such, probably have an important role in moderating climate. Krill migrate up and down the water column, rising to the surface to feed on microscopic plants (phytoplankton) and some animals (zooplankton) but when they are full, they stop swimming and sink while they digest their food (same). The outcome of this is that they transfer carbon from the surface of the water (trapped in photosynthesising plants) to the lower levels (as faeces and their own bodies). The krill's waste sinks to the ocean floor where it is sequestered—were the krill not dragging the carbon down, the plankton would decay in the surface waters releasing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

As well as providing food for a multitude of sea creatures, krill are also popular with people—in Japan and Korea krill have been consumed as food for a while, but in the past couple of decades krill oil has become a popular dietary supplement and krill products are increasingly used in aquaculture as fish food and in other pet foods. But given their role in ocean food webs and the potential impact on climate change of depleting krill numbers, we must be careful not to overexploit the remarkable creatures.

Animal of the Week, July 19, 2017—a whale of a time

A little over 6 months ago, AOTW surprised (not very) many by making an appearance in 2017. The occasion that breathed life back into the old blog was Dippy's retirement from the entrance hall at the Natural History Museum in London. Well, it seems only fitting that I should follow this up with a post on the installation of Hope, the 25 metre blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) skeleton that now presides over the space.

Open to the public on July 14, I naturally took the day off work to go see (also it was the day before my birthday so I figured, treat yo'sel grrrl), and the visit was worth the opening-day queues. One knows whales are big, for sure, and the best way to get that impression would undoubtedly be to get up close in the wild. But few people will ever get the chance to do that, and anyone lucky enough to go on a whale-watching trip might not see more than a distant fin or tail fluke. But standing next to, or underneath, the skull of the largest mammal known to have lived is a remarkable experience.

Blue whales reach up to 30 metres in length, their skull alone reaching 6 metres, and they can weigh as much as 180 tonnes (around 90 great white sharks or 12 000 badgers). Their massive size likely evolved fairly recently to adapt to a patchy food distribution of food occurring in great densities. Blue whales can travel large distances from one patch of krill to another, and when they arrive swallow the enormous amounts of food in one go. Hunted almost to extinction in the twentieth century  as part of the whaling trade, populations are recovering, although climate change and ocean pollution could severely hamper their full recovery, so any attempt to reintroduce whaling or reduce their protection would be shortsighted in the extreme.

The name Hope, given to the skeleton, is a little cringeworthy if well intentioned. The museum hopes the whale will inspire people to be interested in the wonders of natural history and to think more about making space for the creatures with which we share the planet. Although, I can't help thinking that Whaley McWhaleface would have been a better choice.

ADDENDUM: After further consideration, I think Bluey McWhaleface is a better name than Whaley McWhaleface. That opens up naming for the whole family of skeletons—Minke McWhaleface, Righty McWhaleface, Fin McWhaleface, Killer McWhaleface, Bowie McWhaleface and, of course, Spermy McWhaleface.

Animal of the Week July 5, 2017—a bird on the move

So many modern tales in natural history are about declines, extinction, and the damage humankind does to its environment. When animals do succeed, it's because people messed up the environment and to the detriment of other species: just think of all those island species wiped out by invading rats, cats, pigs, and mongooses...but this week's animal is one that bucks the trend.

Cattle egret, Cburnett CC

The cattle egret, Bubulus ibis, has undergone perhaps the most remarkable, impressive, and natural expansion of any animal. Originally found hanging around with herds of buffalo, wildebeest, and cattle in sub-Saharan Africa and India, in just a short while this small white heron has made its way west to the Americas, south and east to Australia and, recently, north as far as the UK, where at least one and perhaps several pairs are raising chicks right now.

Naturally vagrant and prone to wandering with or in search of herds of ruminants, having crossed the Atlantic under their own steam is no small feat—they arrived on the east coast of South America in the early 1900s and by the 1970s they were quite widespread across the southern half of the USA. They reached Australia in the 1940s, presumably spreading east and south through Asia; and by the 1960s they were resident in New Zealand.

Historically recorded in the Iberian peninsula, they recolonised that region in the early 20th century and began wandering further north. Increasing numbers became frequent visitors to the UK. The first recorded breeding took place here in 2008. In the winter just gone, up to 70 birds were recorded across the country and quite a few seem to have stuck around. Perhaps they will join the great white egrets and little egrets, which have recently established themselves as breeding birds in the UK.

The expansion might well have been facilitated by human activity—if not by direct transportation then by creation of large herds of cattle. The egrets specialise in gleaning insects and small vertebrates disturbed by grazing herds and picking off ticks and other nasties from the grazers themselves, and warming climate is likely a factor in their increasing presence in the UK. Nonetheless, they seemingly do little damage to other animals, filling a niche created by the herding of cattle on scale, they don't seem to compete with native herons being far less tied to the water.

With such an impressive colonisation of the globe, I, for one, welcome our new avian overlords.

Animal of the Week May 30, 2017—what's the porpoise?

This week's Animal of the Week has been in the news lately, and for the worst
reasons. The vaquita, the world's smallest porpoise, is teetering on the brink of extinction, with as few as 30 individuals remaining.

One more step on the way too extinction

Although we think of whales and dolphins as being rather large animals, quite a few of them are in length as the average human being is tall, and the vaquita, the smallest of all the cetaceans (the family of whales, dolphins, and porpoises) is only around 1.4 m long (4' 6") and weighs only 54 kg (119 lb).

Confined to the Gulf of California, the vaquita (spanish for little cow) has probably never been especially numerous, but in 1996 when the species was listed as endangered, there were 600. By 2014 there were fewer than 100, now there are 30, maybe fewer—there are fewer vaquita than pupils in an average school class in the UK...a recently discovered dead vaquita represents more than 3% of the population.

The reason for the vaquita's precipitous and perilous decline is illegal fishing with gill nets for another endangered species, the totoaba—a fish of which the swim bladder is highly valued in Chinese cuisine. Although outlawed, fishing for totoaba with gill nets regularly ensnares vaquita, drowning them. The activity is so hard to police that conservationists now plan to capture several vaquita, and move them to a smaller bay that would be more easily protected and policed—such an endeavour has never been attempted for a cetacean. There once were talks of doing the same for the baiji, the Chinese river dolphin, but sadly efforts to save that came too late.

Let's hope they haven't come too late for the vaquita too. No-one really knows whether the vaquita will even survive being caught—some cetaceans get so stressed by human contact, even the best planned capture can be fatal—but without these efforts, the only thing that is certain is the extinction of the vaquita.

Animal of the week, February 1, 2017—Is it a mouth, is it an anus?

It's so hard to tell these days with all the crap some people speak. But is seems that the problem of telling mouthpiece from arsehole stems back over half a billion years in our evolutionary history.

This week's Animal of the Week Saccorhytus hit the headlines for being perhaps the earliest known example of the major group of animals that includes humans—the deuterostomes.

S Conway Morris / Jian Han

These tiny blighters lived among grains of sand 540 million years ago in what is now China, but was then under the sea. Despite their tiny size, they had muscles, skin, and features that place them firmly in the deuterostomes, which include all animals with backbones, alongside echinoderms (starfish and that lot), and a few other things I won't go into now. What it didn't have, which is somewhat unusual among complex animals, is an anus.

Saccorhytus likely swallowed mouthfuls of sand and algae, squashed out the water through cone like structures that scientists believe might have been precursors of gills, and then spat out waste and unwanted particles.

I won't go into the developmental biology and phylogenetics now, because I'll probably get it wrong and trying to do so will only bring back distant unhappy memories of undergraduate hangovers. But I will mention that the name deuterostome has something to do with developing the anus first and the mouth second. Saccorhytus seems to have made do with just one. When you're a millimetre long, why bother with both?


Researchers' analyses suggest that Saccorhytus was actually most closely related to a long extinct major lineage of deuterostomes and was not a direct ancestor of either humans and other vertebrates or sea cucumbers and other echinoderms, but it does give us the best indication of what the earliest members of this major grouping might have looked like—but then, perhaps it was actually very specialised and unlike other early deuterostomes in its adaptations to living a tiny life.

The mind does boggle at the number of other microscopic fossils that might have been overlooked previously and could offer clues about the evolution of major animal lineages, and anuses. It seems like 2017 might be the year to take a long hard look and really reflect on how we've ended up with the aresholes we've got.

Animal of the Week January 11, 2017 — Oh deer! Such monkey business!

If anything is likely to stir Animal of the Week out of hibernation it's unusual animal behaviour* of the kind shown by this week's animal, a particularly randy and misguided Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata).

Credit: Alexandre Bonnefoy

Reported in the journal Primates, a low-ranking monkey, frustrated by exclusion from females of his own species during the breeding season sought release by trying it on with two separate sika deer (Cervus nippon). The first deer accepted the primate's advances: the monkey mounted the deer without penetr
ation and displayed about 15 sexual movements over 10 seconds before dismounting. [Same.] A second deer did not allow the macaque to mount.

Such interspecific sexual behaviour is rare [outside Wales] and serves no known evolutionary purpose. However, in Japan, macaques and sika deer frequently associate with each other: deer often pick up food discarded by macaques and even eat their faeces. Macaques have previously been observed grooming the deer and occasionally riding them (in an innocent sense). It's possible, that this young male, flush with a hormone surge and excluded from access to female macaques by their preference for higher ranking males confused appropriate behaviour with the other species.

Japanese macaques (also known as snow monkeys) are famed for their love of sitting in pools fed by hot springs during blizzards, they are the most northerly living non-human primates, and they exhibit interesting cultural behaviour such as the washing of food and seasoning potatoes by dipping them in saltwater. Let's not let this aberrant behaviour by one monkey bring down the rep of the whole species.


*Remember this weasel riding a woodpecker from 2015? The glory days of interspecific animal of the week.

Animal of the Week Jan 4, 2017—Deeply, Dippy

Many young children (and older children well into their "adulthood") over the past four decades have been stopped in their tracks when the first enter the Natural History Museum in London. Arrested by the hollow, timeless gaze and colossal magnificence of one of the world's most famous skeletons: Dippy the diplodocus. But as of today, no more.

After 111 years in the NHM, and 37 in the Hintze Hall (that wonderful cavernous atrium through which most visitors enter the museum), the 292 bones will be dismantled and packed up. The skeleton will be replaced, by something even more enormous: the skeleton of a blue whale. But for so many people, the departure of Dippy is a poignant change.

As a boy, I was struck by the wonder of intricate articulation, taking what seemed like hours to inspect every joint, picking out bumps, lumps, processess, textures, and, indeed, the wires that held the thing together. And later, after leaving the museum, in all my dinosaur books, the pages with the diplodocuses were always the best thumbed. I would gaze for hours at the pictures: great grey colossal hunks, but imagining, at the core of them all, the bones I had seen in the NHM. My long-lasting interest in dinosaurs, animals, zoology, and evolution, cannot solely be attributed to that skeleton, but by god it played its part. And later, when studying at the NHM, it was still a thrill for me to walk the length of the skeleton, from nose to the whipping pencil thin bones at the tip of Dippy's tail.

Of course, I've learned that the "bones" are actually casts of fossils. London's Dippy is one of ten replicas of fossils excavated in Wyoming in 1898. For all its size, Diplodocus carnegii (the species represented by the cast), which weighed around 16 tons and grew up to 25 m in length, was dwarfed by more recently described sauropod relatives: Argentinosaurus grew up to 40 m long and weighted perhaps 100 tons. But these facts do not lessen the wonder and awe inspired by that most loved fossil.

But, the departure is not the end: Dippy is going on a tour of UK museums form 2018–20, meaning more people in new settings will get to stare in wonder at the skeleton in new settings. And, well, having stood next to the skull of a blue whale, that is no less awe inspiring and much as I will remember that childhood thrill of seeing Dippy with nostalgic fondness, I can't wait to see the new Hintze Hall display.

Animal of the Week, January 26, 2016 — sperm whales

A sperm whale washed up at Beverwijk in the Netherlands in the 1600s

Bloody typical, you wait for a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) to come along and five come along at once. The east coast of England has seen five of the magnificent beasts stranded this week, all dead on discovery but likely beached alive. And these five come just a week after another 12 washed up on the shores of Germany and the Netherlands.

As an adolescent I was drawn to them by their delightfully suggestive name—not actually named for some prodigious testicular function, their names comes from spermaceti, an oily substance that fills their bulbous heads and was once highly prized for use in cosmetics manufacturing, leather production, and for making candles. The demand for spermaceti was so great that sperm whales were one of the most highly prized species in the whaling industry of the 1800s, as immortalised in the Melville classic Moby Dick, which I love.

But there are many other fairly stupendous things about these animals—the largest animals with teeth alive today, the whales bigger than them (blue, fin, and bowhead all lack teeth and use baleen plates to obtain food). They are also some of the deepest diving whales, regularly diving over 2000 metres in search of giant squid and colossal squid (its preferred prey). You may wonder how an animal with such a bulbous head would dive so deep, but during dives the spermaceti becomes solid, reducing in volume and streamlining the whale.

Sperm whales have the largest brains of any animal and are the loudest animals on the planet. When hunting, sperm whales use a pair of lips inside their head (known as monkey lips) to generate clicks that are focussed through the spermaceti organ to enable precise echolocation of their prey with sounds reaching up to 230 decibels—a jet engine at take off comes in at a mere 150 decibels (loud enough to cause ear rupture). It's possible that these incredibly loud clicks are used to stun the squid, octopus, and rays the whales hunt.

No one really knows wherefore these strandings occurred—people have speculated links with shipping, sonar, even wind farms, but potentially its nothing half so sinister and just an unfortunate accident. The pod of young male whales made a wrong turn into the north sea and as they headed into the shallower waters they became confused, disorientated, hungry, and eventually dehydrated. Perhaps a little panicked and confused they strayed far too close to shore and once trapped on sandbanks little could be done, as with such large whales, once out of water their great mass (males up to 45 tons) crushes their internal organs.

Sad that at least 17 young males have died in the North Sea, yes. But I always say, you don't see dead animals if there aren't live ones around: so strangely a good sign that there are healthy populations around the British Isles and further out in the deep oceans, making one hell of a racket and dining on the largest calamari there are.

Animal of the Week March 3, 2015 — weasel on a woodpecker

The most amazing picture I've ever seen.

This week's animal is a double-header (quite literally for a few moments): Mustela nivalis (weasel) and Picus viridis (green woodpecker). Martin Le-May was out with his camera in Hornchurch County Park in east London when he witnessed this amazing sight—and more importantly captured it on camera.

Although it looks like the weasel and the woodpecker are joined in their purpose, zooming off on some vital mission of life and death. What's probably happening is that the weasel pounced on the woodpecker hoping to have it for its lunch, but unaccustomed to how hard green woodpeckers are (they usually eat small rodents and rabbits) the weasel was lifted in the air as the bird took flight. The woopecker eventually landed and managed to shake off its hungry passenger.

Weasels, or if you're outside the UK 'least weasels', are the smallest members of the mustelid family (the largest in the family being sea otters and wolverines) and in fact the smallest carnivore—weighing between 30 g for the smallest females and 250 g for a really fat constipated male after lunch (that's 1 ounce to 8 ounces in old money). But they are also double-hard bastards, frequently taking out animals much bigger than they are including rats and rabbits.

Green woodpeckers are the largest woodpeckers found in the UK. Contrary to what you might think they don't peck at trees to find food, rather green woodpeckers feed mostly on ants on the ground. Green woodpeckers do hollow out next holes in dead wood, but they also drum on trees to advertise their presence to rivals for territory and to attract mates. They are a common sight in the parks of London, but don't look up in the trees to see them, look to the ground. They might be confused with the similarly sized parakeets, although have shorter tails, are less noisy, and have a bright red cap to set them apart. An old folk name for the green woodpecker was the 'yaffle'—and Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss was a carved green woodpecker.

I've only seen three weasels in my life.

Not been a great many AOTWs of late, but I can't not have this mentioned on the blog in some way. Perhaps it's the jetlag, but I can't recall ever having felt so happy as when I first saw the image posted here (even though I had been forced to hold my nose and click on a Daily Mail link to see it). I do think it might be the most amazing picture I have ever seen.

Animal of the Decade -- marking 10 years of erratic animals of the week with one of the most terrifying animals ever

Hard to imagine that it's 10 years since I first emailed my friend Lucy on what must have been a busy day at work about an unusual animal I had been reading about on the internet, the solenodon. A few weeks later and a new species of macaque hit the news...and for the next 3 years animal of the week was a pretty regular feature, first Lucy forwarded it to a couple of friends, and then I started sending it to more and more people, who signed up their friends. It was a mailout then. At its peak over 250 people were on the mailing list—and only a few people got pissed off.

As time went on, the world changed. A blog seemed more sensible than a mailout. My MSc in evolutionary biology at the Natural History Museum seemed, ironically, to rob me of my fervour for disseminating animal info. And the pressures of freelance work, love, life, and generally being a louche gad-about got in the way. But I keep it up occasionally for some amusement—and I also do AOTW every once in a while.

Of the 230 odd posts, the most viewed AOTW is the starling from February 2013, which is pleasing as it was based on personal experience. The next most viewed was in defense of the shoebill. My personal favourite is probably the mountain beaver because it contains a pun referencing an art critic.



This week, as it's Hallowe'en, I thought I'd post this video of an animal featured on Wonders of the Monsoon, and excellent BBC series about the wildlife of countries affected by the monsoon. Mimobdella buettikofer (giant red leech), lives on Mount Kinabalu, the highest mountain in Borneo, it's not a blood sucking leech, rather it feeds on the giant blue earthworms (Pheretima darnleiensis) that also live on Borneo's highest peak. There's not really a great deal to add to the video... so yeah, have a look, and sweet dreams.

Animal of the Week September 22, 2014 -- World Rhino Day: a primer

White winos

After almost 10 years of Animal of the Week (admittedly often not weekly), it's a bit of a surprise to me that I have never featured a rhino. So in one fell swoop, I'll do the whole lot, in honour of world rhino day!

What is a rhino?
Rhinoceroses are represented by five species alive today. They are odd-toed ungulates (hoofed mammals). Their closest living relatives are the other odd-toed ungulates—horses and tapirs. More distantly they are related to the even-toed ungulates including cows, camels, hippos, and whales (yes whales, but that's another story).

African rhinos

Black rhinos

Two species, the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) and black rhino (Diceros bicornis) are found in Africa. The largest of all rhinos, white rhinos are animals of grassland, with broad mouths designed for cropping grass at ground level (the 'white' in their names is a misinterpretation of the Afrikaans word for 'wide', in reference to their lips). The wide, square lip of white rhinos contrasts with the hooked lips of black rhinos designed for browsing shrubs, taller grasses, and low trees.

Indian rhino

Asian rhinos
Three species are found in Asia. The largest and most numerous Asian species is the Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis), the smallest and hairiest of all the rhinos is the Sumatran rhino (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), and the one in the middle, but the most endangered mammal species in the world is the Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus).






I thought rhinos were all extinct now

A Javan rhino (seen better days)

The northern subspecies of the white rhino, the west African species of the black rhino, continental representatives of the Javan rhino...all gone. There are about 15 000 white rhinos left in southern and eastern Africa. They outnumber representatives of all other species put together: about 5000 each of the black and Indian rhinos, and just a couple of hundred Sumatran rhinos. As few as 40 Javan rhinos remain on the western tip of Java...the last remnant of a species that once had a range extending from Pakistan, to China, to Java. All species experienced massive declines in recent centuries as firearms and transport meant that poachers could capitalise on the east Asian penchant for rhino-horn in traditional 'medicine'.

Horn, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing. Rhino horn is made of the same stuff as fingernails and hair...so any claims of medical benefit are utter bunk. If rhino horn was good for you in anyway, you could achieve an equal benefit from chewing on your fingernails...so it's certainly not good for your nerves.

A matter of style
In The Lancet style guide, there is a picture of a Sumatran rhino with the instruction that it should always be referred to as the hairiest of all the rhinos on first mention...it's been there for a decade now...perhaps it's older than animal of the week.

 

Animal of the Week September 17, 2014 -- Scotland decides

NB: some of the tenses and phrasing in the following need thoughtful amendment.

Amid the ongoing debates about Scottish independence, one thing not many people seem to care much about is that come Friday morning, if a Yes vote for a new country is returned, the UK will lose its only endemic vertebrate species: Loxia scotica (Scottish crossbill). No other mammal, bird, reptile, or amphibian is found solely in the UK, and the Scottish crossbill is found only in the Caledonian forest, well north of the border.

Picture: RSPB.

As their name suggests, Scottish crossbills are Scottish and have crossed bills, in which the tips of the top and bottom curve to opposite sides. Crossbills use their peculiar beaks to extract seed from the cones conifers such as pines and larches. The red and the parrot crossbills can also be found in the UK (including England), but they are also found sur le continent.

Hard to distinguish from related species, the best way to tell the crossbills apart is by their call—it was the recognition of the distinct vocalisations of Scottish crossbills (a metallic jip) that confirmed them as a distinct species as recently as 2006.

So, it's not just the currency, taxation, health systems, national identity, etc affected by the #indyref #scotlanddecides referendum, it's also whether the UK loses its only endemic species. Not that I really care either way: as long as an independent Scotland looks after its crossbills, as it has done so far, I'm good.

Happy voting everyone. I hope it all works out well whatever you decide. x

Animal of the Week September 9, 2014 -- a whole new...

Well, maybe it's a phylum, but the people who have described this week's animal of the week, two species in the new genus Dendrogramma (in the new family Dendrogrammatidae), aren't so bold as to create such a high level taxon. But if the suspicion that these organisms are most closely related to species thought to have gone extinct 540 million years ago is borne out, we'll have to change how we think about the history of life on earth...a bit.

They do look like mushrooms. © 2014 Just et al

The two species were found during examination of specimens connected from the deep sea continental slope of Australia in 1986, but have only now just been described fully in a paper published in PLoS One. Superficially they look like mushrooms, but the specimens available show they have a skin and a gut separated by jelly like material.

Unfortunately the preparation of the specimens in pure strong alcohol means that genetic material no longer exists for phylogenetic analysis. Later drying out and preparation with pure alcohol led to shrinkage and more changes in the physical structure, hampering further investigations. More specimens will be needed to see where these organisms hang on the tree of life. (Fortunately, I've got a birth certificate so while I have been prepared in copious amounts of alcohol [and possibly formalin in my most desperate moments] my position on the tree of life is well established.)

The researchers note similarities with the Ediacaran (or Vendian) fauna, ancient extinct organisms known from some of the oldest fossils that were thought to represent failed early experiments in the animal kingdom. If these new species are related to those animals, our understanding that they all died out will have to be rethought.

On divisions of life
A phylum is a group of organisms with a basic body plan that are distinct from other phylums. For example, humans are joined in the phylum Chordata with fish, frogs, birds, dinosaurs and sea squirts, all because at some point in their lifecycle they possess a tail with notochord backbone. Discovery of new species is remarkable enough, genera pretty special, families thoroughly exciting and any higher level distinction incredibly rare in this day and age...but who knows what else is out there.

Mnemonic for recalling the divisions of life
King Philip can only find green socks
Kingdom (eg, animal), phylum (eg, chordates), class (eg, mammals), order (eg, carnivores), family (eg, cats), genus (eg, big cats), species (eg, tiger)

Animal of the week Sept 2, 2014 -- Geeeecccckkkkkoooooosssss iiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnn ssssssspppppppppaaaaaaaacccccccceeeeee

Luke J. Harmon - Harmon LJ—wikicommons

When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and he pondered his place in the universe, one question dominated his thoughts: I wonder if geckos could breed in zero gravity. This week's animal has been all over the news this past couple of days, because finally it looked like we might have the answer to Neil's question. It's Phelsuma ornata (Mauritius ornate day gecko).

These small brightly coloured geckos originate on the tropical Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, they scurry around the treetops by daytime hunting insects and avoiding predators in the tropical sunshine.

Five geckos were blasted into space on my birthday, July 15, aboard the Russian Foton-M Satellite as part of an experiment to investigate the great mystery of whether geckos are able to reproduce under zero-gravity conditions.

The satellite returned to earth in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Unfathomable excitement turned to crushing disappointment when the satellite was recovered and the geckos hadn't reproduced at all. In fact, all five had died. Died some time ago, as they had started to desiccate and mummify. It's possible that the lizard died of cold...average daily celcius temperatures in Mauritius are in the mid 20s...in space, it's colder.

What a loss to science.