Endangered Ugly Things

Waltzing Matilda

2012-01-29T01:05:00.000-05:00

Recently, a new species of snake was discovered in the Tanzanian rainforest. It belongs to a genus of viper whose hemotoxic¹ venom has no known antidote. It is named after a young woman who has the honor of being one of the first people to take care of it. She happens to be seven.

Image by Tim Davenport

This is Matilda's Horned Viper (Atheris matildae). The Matilda in question is Matilda Davenport, daughter of Tim Davenport, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Tanzania program. She took an early interest in the specimens the research team brought in. They began to unofficially refer to the snake as "Matilda's Viper," and, before long, it was no longer unofficial. Though it seems that Matilda's younger sister now wants a species named after her too.

The location of Matilda's Horned Viper are being kept under wraps, as the researchers fear poachers may come after this exotic and brightly colored snake for the pet trade. They've started a breeding program to provide individuals to zoos to allow the public to get their first glimpse of this gorgeous snake.

On a more personal note, I now have an Etsy shop where you can order needle-felted versions of Endangered Ugly Things. I can even make things just for you; to order, click the "Request custom item" button on the side of the shop.

¹Short definition of hemotoxin: it kills your blood.

They Call Him Flipper

2011-12-10T01:23:00.000-05:00

Dolphins are charismatic, no question about that. They play, they learn, they do amazing acrobatics. Their smiling faces draw people to aquatic parks worldwide. The freshwater dolphins have gotten some press lately, but they aren’t the prettiest dolphins around.

I suppose the Gharial-like snout on the Ganges River Dolphin (Platanista gangetica) is what bothers me about it. Its stubby dorsal fin gives it a humpbacked appearance that is far less pleasing than the torpedo-shaped marine dolphins we’re used to. However, both of these serve an important purpose: maneuverability. The shorter dorsal fin allows for faster turns, and the thin, tooth-filled rostrum is perfect for slashing sideways into an unsuspecting fish.

The Ganges River Dolphin is also effectively blind. The lack of a lens means that any light entering the eye is only seen as unfocused blurs of shadow. However, for a creature with echolocation living in the silt-filled rivers of India, this is less of a problem than one would expect.

As those silt-filled rivers are in some of the most densely human populated areas of the world, you can expect there to be some environmental issues. Damming, pollution, boat traffic, and by-catch are all problems that this blind dolphin faces. The Yangtze River Dolphin faced similar problems, and is now listed as “functionally extinct”.

The Ganges River Dolphin may have some support to save it from that fate. Dolphin reserves are being established, and the WWF is trying its darndest to educate the public. India even named this dolphin the National Aquatic Animal. However, there is still a lot of work to be done to make sure it doesn’t go the way of the Yangtze River Dolphin.

No One Like You

2011-10-20T20:31:00.000-05:00

For October, Jonathan Wojcik of Bogleech agreed to do a guest post for Endangered Ugly Things. Check out his site for all the information you could ever want about monsters, real or imagined. Enjoy!
-Garfman

There are over a hundred thousand named Arachnids crawling around on our planet's surface, and America is more aware of them this time of year than any other season. Famous though they are, these ubiquitous terrestrial predators are seldom evaluated for their conservation status, and the exceptions have consisted almost entirely of spiders - really only one of several strange and incredibly ancient Arachnid groups.


Image by Gilles San Martin

Currently, there are at least two non-spider Arachnida recognized as threatened, and both of them belong to the family Lycosidae, or "pseudoscorpions." Though found virtually everywhere, these mostly blind predators go largely unnoticed due to their subterranean habits and incredibly small size - so small you can find them preying upon mites, lice and springtails between grains of soil, under the wing cases of beetles, in the fur of mice or between the pages of dusty, moldy old books. Many species will even use far larger, flying insects as transportation, grabbing into their leg hairs with a single claw and letting go at the next landing.

As their names imply, pseudoscorpions are entirely separate from the true scorpions, lacking the venomous tails but bearing very similar pincers which, in many species, can inject venom through the lower thumb-like claw. As an added bonus, they can also regurgitate a corrosive enzyme over stunned prey and secrete silk from their jaws, usually used to build igloo-shaped cocoons in which they molt and overwinter. Mating typically involves a "dancing" ritual where the male, locking pincers with the female, guides her over a sperm packet he lays on the ground. Like many other arachnids, females will carry their babies on their backs until tough enough to fend for themselves.

These minute animals have existed in more or less the same form for over 380 million years, but at least two species could disappear on us at any moment. Known endangered Lycosids include Fissilicreagris imperialis and Tartarocreagris texana, the Empire cave and Tooth Cave pseudoscorpions. Like many other creatures you can read about on EUT, these troglobytes are completely unique to their respective cave systems and have adapted to survive in no other environment. Any unusual activity can be disastrous for cave dwelling organisms; even a few careless spelunkers or a trickle of urban runoff can disrupt conditions that have remained unchanged for eons.

A staggering portion of the human race suffers from unreasonable levels of terror associated with eight-legged arthropods, but it's not fair to let a widespread phobia cloud our concern for the plight of any species, large or small. If more of us could get past our fears and appreciate just how weird, cool and useful the Arachnids are, we might be seeing quite a few more of them not only listed, but actively protected. Right now, eyeless micromonsters are dancing in each other's arms in pitch darkness, and surely deserve as much as any other animal to continue doing so for ages to come.

Beware! The Blob

2011-07-23T21:49:00.005-05:00

I’ve tried to write about the Blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) before, but gave up due to lack of information. It was first suggested to me about a year and a half ago, and has been suggested a few times since then. I think I’ve found enough information about it and its close relatives to do it justice. First things first, though: the Blobfish does not look like a deflated Ziggy.

Yes, that is a picture of the Blobfish, and yes, that picture makes it look like someone let the air out of Ziggy’s oversized head. However, that picture was taken of a dead specimen on a research boat, right before it was pickled in formaldehyde. Blobfish don’t rely on swim bladders to remain buoyant like other fish, because the pressure of half a mile of water would squish the air right out of them. Instead, their flesh contains a gelatin-like substance that is nearly equal to the density of water. This means they can float effortlessly in the water, but makes it look like they melted above the surface. As to what they really look like, this is a much better picture:

These fish, who now resemble their Sculpin brethren much closer, bob along the ocean floor around the coast of Australia and New Zealand. There, they eat whatever floats or crawls by—mostly crabs, snails, and octopuses¹.

Everyone seems to think Blobfish are lazy. Yes, they are adapted to using as little energy as possible to eat and move, but they are not deadbeats. While other fish spawn and leave, the Blobfish is an attentive parent. They will clean and sit on the eggs, protecting them from parasites and predators.

More efficient fishing methods have caused no end of trouble to all kinds of sea creatures. Trawling the ocean floor for crustaceans also picks up bycatch like the Blobfish. Callum Roberts and other scientists are worried about the future of this majestic fish. While it’s not officially listed as endangered, the government is certainly worried about it.

Public knowledge about bycatch in general, and the Blobfish in specific, is growing. Professor Roberts has certainly been trying to get the word out. There is also this British kids’ show that depicts the Blobfish fairly accurately, as well as adorably. They also sound like British Zoidbergs, which seems appropriate.

¹You can argue all you want about the proper plural of “octopus.” There isn’t one.

Trapped Under Ice - Metallica

2011-06-19T20:48:00.005-05:00

For this month’s EUT, I was looking for an invertebrate in a new taxon. While I technically found one, “invertebrate” usually implies an animal. As to what it looks like… well… it looks like someone shoved a bottle of glitter up their nose, and then sneezed on a branch¹.

This is a slime mold known only as Diacheopsis metallica. Despite appearances, it is a single-celled amoeba. Slime molds spend a large amount of the time as you would expect an amoeba to: gooping around as an individual cell, eating things smaller than itself. When things get rough the individuals band together, Voltron-syle, to search for food or water. This isn’t to say the cells form together into a multi-cellular creature. Instead, they form a gigantic, multi-nucleated cell that is able to pick up and move, slug-like, to a more favorable location. They also use this time to produce spores, which will spread if things don’t get any better.

Scientists have found this aspect of slime molds absolutely fascinating. In this form, slime molds can solve mazes. It will even re-create the Tokyo Rail map when food is placed at junction points. Computer scientists are researching how slime molds solve problems to help programs search, move, and problem solve more organically.

D. metallica is a cold-adapted slime mold that lives on the tops of mountains in scattered ranges throughout the world. While they hibernate as spores during the winter, they become active in spring. They use the melting snow to create the correct temperature and the right amount of water to create favorable conditions to eat and multiply.

While the IUCN doesn’t have this slime mold officially listed, they are beginning to worry about it. On their Species of the Day fact sheet, they say it “has a provisional listing of ‘Near Threatened’.” This is because global climate change is shrinking the snow-covered habitat that these glittery globules rely on. Individual conservation actions for a slime mold are near impossible to carry out, but trying to fix climate change is a good start.

¹My wife says this is something Ke$ha would do.

He Put the Taz in Taz-Mania

2011-05-23T09:31:00.005-05:00

Much like the Hyena and the Wolverine, the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) has a reputation. Once again, that reputation as a fierce predator and unscrupulous scavenger is not entirely unfounded. As the largest marsupial predator alive, the Tasmanian Devil will kill and eat most anything smaller than itself, and happily scavenge the remains of anything larger. The name “Devil" seems harsh for an animal the size of a lapdog, but when early settlers heard them fighting through the night, “Devil” came readily to mind.

Tasmanian Devils don’t typically hang out together except when a particularly large carcass has been found. Disagreements soon break out¹ about who gets to eat first. However, like its Warner Brothers counterpart, the Tasmanian Devil is more loudmouth than fighter, especially to its own species². There is a lot of growling, and baring teeth, and even some nipping, but physical fights are rare.

The home life of the Tasmanian Devil is nearly as dysfunctional (by human standards) as its table manners. When a female is ready to mate, she will visit a number of males to make sure she’s pregnant. She will give birth to about 30 raisin-sized babies, which is an issue, because she only has four teats. The newborns race to the pouch, and only the winners survive to weaning. In eight months, the young are ready to head out on their own.

Since European settlers arrived in Tasmania, the Devils have had a roller-coaster ride in terms of population. Initially they were killed for raiding chicken coops and the like. In the 1940s, they became protected by law. This increased their numbers enough that they were once again considered a pest species by the 1980s. Then, in the 1990s, a new threat emerged: Devil Facial Tumor Disease. This is a contagious cancer that has once again reduced Tasmanian Devil population to a fraction of what it once was.

The Tasmanian government has lost no time in trying to protect these animals, including quickly having the Tasmanian Devil listed as endangered. Breeding programs, disease research, and awareness campaigns have popped up all over the island in an attempt to save this little loudmouth.

¹ While the Tasmanian Devil in that video is eating, he sounds exactly like my cat.
²For your listening pleasure, please compare Mel Blanc’s interpretation with the real thing. I’m sure your co-workers won’t mind if you’re listening at work.

Mr. Bighead

2011-04-23T21:34:00.004-05:00

Years ago, I read about this month’s EUT in the Animal Wonders edition of Zoobooks, the same place I first learned about the Axolotl. The illustration was strange enough to catch my eye and imagination for a good few months—a long time for my flighty young mind¹. I recently rediscovered this animal whose complete disproportion struck me at such a young age.

The scientific name of the Big-Headed Turtle (Platysternon megacephalum) means “flat-chest big-head,” which is obviously quite apt. Every article that mentions the Big-Headed Turtle states that its gigantic noggin is too large to fit in its narrow shell. So, to protect its head, the turtle uses a two pronged approach. One: the solid bone skull is covered with thick scales. Two: massive, very sharp jaws are coupled with a tendency to bite.

This turtle inhabits shallow, fast moving streams in Southeast Asia, where it enjoys a diet of fish and mussels. Swimming around in the heavy flow of these streams would take too much effort, so the Big-Headed turtle is an excellent climber instead, and ARKive has video to prove it. Its long flexible tail helps to prop it up as it uses its strong claws and beak to climb waterfalls. There are even stories of finding these turtles climbing trees and bushes. What they did when they got up there is anyone’s guess.

The Big-Headed Turtle’s big head seems to evoke one of two responses: it is either grotesquely disproportionate, or adorably baby-like. The second of these responses has led to a large number of them being caught for the pet-trade. While some captive breeding exists, there are not nearly enough Big-Head farms to supply demand for the pet trade. For this reason, it was placed on the IUCN Redlist in 2000, and is now CITES protected as well.

¹An incomplete list of animals that have, at one point, been “my favorite animal”: giraffes, raccoons, pangolins, mosquitoes, jellyfish, frilled lizards, chameleons, fireflies, sloths, and many more I can’t think of right now.

Nevermore

2011-03-31T23:59:00.001-05:00

Crows have been long associated with death in Western culture. In Medieval times, they were known to follow armored soldiers into battle for the prospect of feasting on the casualties. In modern times, people see them eating roadkill, as Halloween decorations, or as the monsters from The Birds. While Crows certainly enjoy carrion there is another side to them less frequently seen in modern interpretations. For one thing, they are omnivorous so dead things are only part of their diet. For another thing, they might be just as smart as the prettier parrots.

Our main method of determining animal intelligence is looking at how well they solve problems. Crows are masters. They bend wires into fishhooks to pull food from thin tubes. They have learned to use cars to crack hard nuts—while waiting for the light to turn red to retrieve them. One person is trying to teach them to use a vending machine. They can mimic human speech, with more clarity than most parrots. So, when you see a Crow walking down the sidewalk, don’t think, “portent of death,” think “Whosa prettybird?”

The Hawaiian Crow (Corvus hawaiiansis), is locally known as the ‘Alala. It has a lot in common with your more familiar American Crow: they eat whatever they want (mostly fruit and eggs), they hang out in groups, are strong fliers, and like to play wrestle. They use tools to get to their food. However, the ‘Alala is larger, and has a larger, rounder beak.

Why the Hawaiian Crow is in trouble is up for debate: it could be disease, habitat loss, or introduced predators, such as rats or mongooses. Chances are good that it’s all of the above. There is no question that it is in big trouble. The last wild ‘Alala pair were seen in 2003. All the rest of them alive today—about 70 individuals—are in two captive breeding facilities. Release programs have been unsuccessful. Part of that is due to the aforementioned predators, but there’s a problem that the conservationists didn’t foresee. Crows are smart, but because of that, they need to be taught. Without a whole society to teach them, the new crows haven’t learned how to properly forage or escape predators.

Jabberjaw

2010-11-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

I was looking through IUCN’s Species of the Day list and found something adorable. It fits the two facial features that define “cute”—big eyes and a short snout. Unlike most members of its group, it has been known to play by grabbing vegetation and trailing it behind itself as others give chase. It exhibits curiosity with man-made objects. It has a cutesy name that sounds like an embarrassing nickname.

It’s a six-foot long shark.

Where the Porbeagle (Lamna nasus) gets its name no one is quite sure. The commonly cited combination of “porpoise” and “beagle” seems awkward to me, but there are a number of other etymological theories to pick from. They are built for speed, with crescent tails for powerful strokes, keels on the base of the tail for balance, and large gills for better efficiency. These adaptations help them chase after mackerel and other schooling fish to eat.

Their playful antics have been widely documented. They play tag using kelp, as mentioned above, as well as playing catch with driftwood. They will also poke at fishers’ balloon floats, and appear to be confused when they pop. The phrase “mindless killing machines” is so frequently thrown around with sharks, but the Porbeagle’s actions are causing a number of shark experts to question that concept. Other sharks (including the infamous Great White) have been described as “curious,” but they only have one tool with which to explore the world, and it’s filled with enough teeth to turn the object of their curiosity into mincemeat.

Despite their potential danger (see previous statement regarding teeth and mincemeat), the Porbeagle hardly attacks anyone - ever. The International Shark Attack File lists 5 total attacks, fatal and non-fatal, from the Porbeagle in 2003. Compare that to the Great White Shark with 244 fatal, unprovoked attacks. In fact, looking at the rest of the list, anything with fewer attacks than the Porbeagle either have no teeth, are impossible to find, or are too small to be a threat to humans. The infrequency of attacks may be due to the fact that “if the water is warm enough for you to be swimming, it is too warm for the porbeagle,” but it seems that this is a very docile shark.

One place the Porbeagle will fight ferociously is on a fishing line, and for good reason. Overfishing in the north Atlantic caused population crashes that devastated not only the shark, but the fishing industry that created the problem. These incidents have led to regulations to limit Porbeagle catch. Earlier this year, CITES set trade regulations in place to help save this playful, docile “mindless killing machine.”

Dirty Little Sea Kraits

2010-10-18T19:46:00.003-05:00

(Alternative title: Krait Expectations)

It seems that media attention of non-charismatic species is growing. I recently had an interview with a French news site, which can be found here. Also, my wife (I’m still getting used to saying that) has taught me how to needle felt. Remember how I complained that there’s no such thing as a plush Lamprey? There is now. I would like to make more plush EUTs, but I need suggestions about which ones to create. Please leave suggestions, and I promise you’ll see them by the next post.

The Rennell Island Sea Krait (Laticauda crockeri) is like most other Sea Kraits in many ways: it uses its wide paddle tail and venomous bite to hunt fish. On the other hand, it is smaller, not striped, and, oh yeah, doesn’t live in the sea. Instead, they’re found in the brackish Lake Tegano in the Solomon Islands.

I suppose I should back up somewhat. Sea Snakes are exactly what they sound like—snakes that are well-adapted to marine life. They have large, oar-like tails for propulsion, smooth scales for less drag, big long lungs for hours of underwater hunting, and potent venom for easy hunting. Because of these traits, most of them hardly ever make it on to dry ground. Sea Kraits, however, are the least aquatically adapted of the Sea Snakes, with rougher scales and smaller tail fins that allow them to manage better on land.

Due to the small size of the range of the Rennell Island Sea Krait—that is, half of a small island in the South Pacific—it is automatically considered Vulnerable by the IUCN. However, the minimalistic human use of the island has helped keep the area pristine. While there is tourism, it seems to stay within the realm of nature observation with little impact on the ecosystem.

Plague of Locusts

2010-09-13T22:34:00.002-05:00

I’m sorry I missed the end of August, but I was kind of getting married, so I hope you’ll excuse the late post. Since I just moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan¹, I decided I needed to write about a local Endangered Ugly Thing. Meet the Lake Huron Locust (Trimerotropis huroniana)

This locust is a drab-looking grasshopper, and not one to stand out in a crowd. It’s about an inch long, slate grey, and looks like a large number of related insects. The biggest characteristic that sets them apart from other grasshoppers is their habitat. Instead of living in thick grasses or dense woodlands, they live on meagerly vegetated beaches. There, they blend in with the sand and eat the sparse grasses that grow there.

Like most grasshoppers, male Lake Huron Locusts use the familiar melodic (or grating, depending on your preference) chirping to attract a mate. They also add an aerial element to their ritual, flying up in the air, snapping their wings to make a crackling noise². Eggs laid in the summer hatch the next spring, and mature in time to start the cycle again.

One of the largest threats to the Lake Huron Locust is the creation of summer homes on the dune habitats where these insects reside. This irks me, as the “summer” here lasts approximately from mid-July to mid-August. Protecting the dunes and the vegetation found there is the most effective method to keep these little locusts alive.

¹This is properly pronounced “da U.P., eh?”
²Does it surprise you to know that entomologists have a name for this? It’s called “crepitating”.

Black and White and Red All Over

2010-07-27T22:28:00.000-05:00

This marks the 100th post on this blog. To celebrate, I intend to do something a little different from what I’ve done in the past. For this month’s species, I’ll be writing about an animal widely considered to be one of the cutest around. It has become China’s golden child and the face of the World Wildlife fund. I am, of course, talking about the Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). While previously thought to be halfway between bears and raccoons, recent evidence puts them squarely in the bear family. Keep that in mind as you read this, as there is a depth to these animals that isn’t widely publicized.

The idea that Pandas eat only bamboo isn’t too far from the truth, as it makes up the large majority of their diet¹. However, they are not above enjoying carrion if they happen to come across it. This is beautifully illustrated in this ARKive video, where a Panda saunters up to a rotting deer carcass, rips off a leg, and sits back to enjoy his meal. There are even reports of a wild Panda killing sheep, though it didn’t eat any of them.

Carnivory is one thing, but surely aggression isn’t a trait of these cute fuzzy-wuzzys, right? I’m sure that’s what went through mind of the drunk man who jumped into a zoo enclosure to give Gu Gu the Panda a hug, right before Gu Gu bit his legs. Or the teenager that scared Gu Gu into biting his legs. Or the man who jumped into Gu Gu’s enclosure to retrieve his 5-year old’s toy. Guess what happened to him. “Not so Cute” or “Not too Cuddly” seems to be the response of reporters on incidents like these. How surprised would we be if these had occurred with a Grizzly Bear? This is just an increasingly frustrated animal trying to defend its territory. The story is likely the same for the Panda in this video, attacking a man sitting outside its enclosure.

While it may seem like I’m trying to vilify the Panda, it's only to prove a point. I’ve got nothing against scavengers, or even dangerous animals. But the Giant Panda just dropped a few levels in the cuteness scale in the last two paragraphs, didn’t it? I’ve got all sorts of tidbits that could make any Charismatic Megafauna seem less charismatic². Putting an animal on a pedestal just makes it that much easier to knock off, and turning an animal into a symbol makes you forget that it’s an animal. All creatures have behaviors that humans aren’t fond of, but we can’t expect them to act like giant teddy bears. While conservation efforts have helped the Giant Panda in the wild, over-exposure of the “cute” version of their life has left more and more people bored by its plight. The solution, as I see it, is to spread the exposure around to any other species that could use the help. Which is where I come in, I suppose. I hope I’ve managed to achieve that since I started this blog.

I really want to thank all of my readers who have stuck with me through these one hundred posts. I also have to thank my fiancée and my parents, who have helped with editing and ideas, but far more importantly have completely and utterly supported this fool idea of mine for four years. Thank you.

¹ All bears are omnivorous, but the meat to veggie ratio depends mostly on the availability of the food.
²For example, Gorillas and Lions will commonly kill the young of competing males. Chimpanzees and Dolphins commit murder of their own species. Black Rhinoceroses have the highest rates of death from fighting each other than any other animal. I could go on.

Night on Bald Mountain

2010-06-30T22:39:00.002-05:00

My fiancée has had a deep-seated dislike of non-human primates for a long time. So when she told me to look at this ugly monkey she saw on the ARKive front page, I was doubtful of its ugliness. I was wrong. It looks like the gremlins from, well, Gremlins (Use this picture for comparison).

The Brazilian Bare-Faced Tamarin, or Pied Tamarin (Saguinus bicolor), is unsurprisingly found in the Amazon basin in Brazil. Like most tamarins, it spends its time avoiding predators and eating fruits, tree sap, and small animals. They live in small groups, with between four and fifteen individuals.

Their group structure is a reverse harem—the alpha female gets to mate with whatever male she likes. Most tamarins give birth to twins, and the Pied Tamarin is no different. Dad takes care of most of the child rearing (other than nursing, of course), with the other subordinates helping out. The whole group sleeps in one big pile, which I’m sure would be adorable if their faces didn’t look like gargoyles’.

There is one main unanswered question I have about the Bare-Faced Tamarin—why is it bare-faced? What purpose does a hairless face serve? It’s not like these guys bury their head in carcasses, like storks and vultures. My guess, which is only a guess, is that it may have something to do with keeping their head free of parasites. The problem with this theory is that they groom each other, meaning that other members of their group should be able to help with the nit picking.

As far as their status is concerned, the Pied Tamarin isn’t doing so well. They are considered one of the most endangered Amazonian primates due to their small, fragmented range coupled with the constant rainforest destruction we’ve all been hearing about for the last decade. Primate conservation programs, as well as captive breeding programs are working on keeping this goblin-faced monkey around.

My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

2010-05-26T21:39:00.004-05:00

A spokesperson for EDGE e-mailed me, hoping to get me to plug their fundraiser. I think they do a great job of informing the public about strange animals, and could definitely use your £2 (about $2.88 if the online conversion calculator is correct).

This month’s animal I found after I discovered that the IUCN Redlist highlighted a new species every day. Looking through past Species of the Day, I saw some familiar faces¹, and a few new ones. One that caught my eye, featured in January, was the European Eel (Anguilla anguilla).

The lifecycle of the European Eel is confusing, surpassing many arthropods in complexity². Spawning and hatching take place in the Sargasso Sea, the same area that makes up the Bermuda Triangle. As transparent, ribbon-shaped larvae called leptocephali, they eat whatever plankton is available to them. As they grow, the Gulf Stream carries them to the coast of Europe, where they metamorphose into round, but still transparent larvae called glass eels or elvers. Once at the coast, they migrate en masse up rivers and streams. Videos of this seem reminiscent of something you might have seen in a health class.

After finding their way upstream, the eels gain pigment and size in a third metamorphosis, after which they are called yellow eels. Here they spend their time eating small arthropods and growing. Then after a number of years (between five and twenty) they undergo a fourth metamorphosis to adulthood (finally!), gaining larger eyes and a silvery coloration, all the better to survive the open ocean³. However, they have to get to the ocean first, and they will even cross land to get there. Eventually, they find their way back to the Sargasso Sea, mate, die, and the process starts all over again.

There is one main cause for them to go from not listed in 2006 to critically endangered in 2008. They’re delicious. They work as sushi, as soup, smoked, and even as pie. There are eel farms, but those only collect the glass eels and raise them from there. Breeding is still done the old fashioned way, and if that doesn’t increase along with the increased global demand, they will be literally eaten up.

Research into captive breeding (read: more effective farming) is ongoing by fisheries who don’t want to see that size of a drop in a main export. Please don't read that as bitter, as industry support is one of the better methods of conservation. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has set up a program known as Seafood Watch, which educates the public on which seafood is sustainably harvested, and which is being overfished to death. So, watch what you eat.

¹ These are some featured animals from the last year that have been posted here: the Goliath Frog, the Vancouver Island Marmot, the Indiana Bat, the Sailfin Lizard, the Brown Hyena, the Boreal Felt Lichen, and the Chinese Giant Salamander.
²Though, their lifecycle isn’t quite as confusing as Malaria. To be fair, I’m not sure I’ve seen any lifecycle as confusing as Malaria.
³Wikipedia says that they lose their stomachs at this stage. I couldn’t verify that anywhere else, but it wouldn’t surprise me. A number of insects do something similar: the larva’s job is to eat; the adult’s job is to breed.

Groundhog Day

2010-04-25T16:31:00.007-05:00

Greg, also from Not Extinct Yet, suggested that I write about the Blobfish. I really wanted to write about the Blobfish. If there’s any animal that could use a space on this blog, it’s the Blobfish. There’s really not enough information out there about it to get a full post out, though. My fiancée has been (strongly) suggesting a different animal since the Olympics in February. It’s somewhat cute, but in the end, it’s just a big Groundhog.

The Vancouver Island Marmot (Marmota vancouverensis —that’s a Road Runner & Coyote scientific name if I ever heard one) has been cut off from the rest of the mainland Marmots since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Like many rodents, these Marmots hibernate during the winter. Unlike most rodents, that hibernation lasts eight months. Even during those brief summer months, they spend most of their time in the burrows, coming out only to feed, lounge on rocks, and goof off.

Being a rodent of smallish stature (the standardized size comparison seems to be "a large house cat") predation is a fact of life for the Vancouver Island Marmot. Cougars, Wolves, and Golden Eagles all find the Marmot to be a tasty treat—no wonder it spends most of its life underground. Also being rodents, they have a high reproduction rate, where babies made in May are out of the burrow by July. A single female can produce about 15 young in her life.

This high reproduction rate may save the species. Man-made habitat changes decreased their naturally low population numbers almost to the point of genetic collapse. It was estimated that there were 21 wild Marmots in 2003, the rest (75 or so) in breeding programs in zoos and conservation centres. That breeding program has been remarkably successful, as they have released a total of 223 Marmots since then. Yes, some of them have fallen victim to predation and other natural deaths, but the wild population is up to about 120 now, and the captive population is steadily growing.

Look Out For Mr. Stork

2010-03-29T09:02:00.009-05:00

I’ve wanted to write about the Marabou Stork for a long time. It is amazingly ugly. It has a bald head, except for minimal scraggly hair. The giant, pointed beak, perfect for ripping into large African carrion, is the color of decaying bone. There is only one reason that it hasn’t appeared on this blog yet: it’s not endangered. Amrita from Not Extinct Yet has saved me though. No, she didn’t go and shoot enough Marabou Storks to put them on the list¹. She found the Greater Adjutant (Leptoptilos dubius) which is closely related enough the Marabou Stork to fill its place on Endangered Ugly Things.

The Greater Adjutant hails from Southeast Asia, roosting near wetlands that teem with its prey. What kind of prey? Whatever it can catch. Insects, crustaceans, frogs, fish, carrion, rodents, even slow ducks. Much like the Marabou Stork (and the vultures they compete with), the ugly bald head is a great adaptation for shoving one's face deep inside a rotting carcass².

Their large nesting colonies form in leafless trees around these wetlands during the dry season. As the water recedes, the aquatic animals this stork preys on are that much easier to grab. The Greater Adjutant uses this abundant resource to produce their eggs, and feed their hatchlings. I can't find any pictures of young Adjutants, but they can't be any uglier than the adults. Come the rainy season, they migrate to other wetlands in Northern India until the next breeding season.

The draining, clearing, and general messing-around-with of wetlands in the area has left only two breeding populations of these giant birds. One is in Cambodia, the other in Assam, India. Between these two areas, there are less than one thousand individuals. Along with the destruction of their habitat, the eggs and adults are also hunted, presumably because there's a lot of meat on a four-foot tall bird.

The Greater Adjutant is protected in the areas in which it's found, but enforcement is not always up to snuff. It seems that there was a big push to stop egg collection, which helped increase Adjutant numbers the next year. Hopefully these conservation efforts will continue to keep these magnificent, if horribly ugly, birds around.

¹ I’m imagining the IUCN listing—Threats: Conservationists.
²Think about eating a bowl of jello without your hands. Wouldn't that be so much more pleasant if you were bald?

Hail to the Victors Valiant

2009-12-28T14:20:00.010-05:00

I apologize for the unintentional two-month hiatus. Thanksgiving, leading right up to finals left me little time to search for Endangered Ugly Things. Next semester, I am only doing thesis work and teaching the Invertebrate Zoology lab, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my regular update schedule. This specific animal had to wait until after the regular college football season, to not upset my relatives who are Ohio State University alumni.

The Wolverine (Gulo gulo) is, for all intents and purposes, a very big weasel. Forty-five pounds big. They are found around the world, under the Arctic Circle. Due to the large amount of food each individual requires, they have massive home ranges, with males wandering around an area of nearly 250 square miles. They can take down large prey (up to Caribou), but tend to scavenge when they have the opportunity.

The Wolverine has gained the same sort of reputation in North America as the Hyena does in Africa—a mangy, dangerous, scavenger (my dad has other names for the University of Michigan Wolverines). They aren’t mangy, but they are mainly scavengers—why fight a moose when it’ll die of starvation soon enough? They can also be quite dangerous, but name a fifty-pound animal that isn’t¹.

I suppose what really irks me is the instant inclusion of scavengers into the “evil” category. Wolverines, hyenas, ravens and vultures all tend to get thrown into this role. I suppose this trend comes from the association with death, but I tend to see them more as janitors. They serve a vital role in cleaning up the ecosystem (would you like to be neck deep in deer carcasses?), and they get absolutely no respect for it. As the mutant Logan states "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice."

Despite their ferocious image, the mothers take good care of their young, keeping them close and safe for more than a year after they are born. It’s at this stage of life that Wolverines are the most vulnerable to other predators in the area, but when there’s a protective mother Wolverine in the area, that’s not all that vulnerable. Videos of the baby Wolverines are just as cute as you’d expect baby mammals playing to be.

Despite declining numbers due to the expanding range of humans, predator poisoning regimes, and trapping, Wolverines are not listed by the IUCN. They’re not even federally listed in the US (despite multiple petitions for such), due to lack of data on their numbers, though there may be some pressure from groups who still want to trap these animals. They are, however, listed as endangered in Canada. As information grows about these animals, hopefully we can begin to better protect this ferocious (sometimes) scavenger.

¹Dad mentioned the Capybara. Wikipedia says they “…are gentle and will usually allow humans to pet and hand-feed them.” Dang. Alright, smart guy, name a second one.

Alabama on My Mind

2009-09-30T11:30:00.002-05:00

(Alternate title: Plays by Sense of Smell)

I got an urge this month to write about a blind cave animal, knowing that there are some exciting organisms that I've missed so far. I even went so far as to search "endangered blind cave," knowing that something interesting could fit after that description. Well, a number of animals can, such as the endangered Texas Blind Salamander, which lives within the same cave system as the Arachnids I've written about previously. However, on the second page, I saw a mention of the Alabama Cavefish (Speoplatyrhinus poulsoni) and decided to ~~see~~ find what I could find.

The "proper" term for a completely cave-dwelling animal is "troglobite," and this term comes with a set of characteristics that the Alabama Cavefish does a wonderful job of illustrating. Troglobites¹ are small (not a lot of nutrients make their way into the caves), eyeless (when it's this dark, eyes aren't sensory organs, they're disease ports), and a range of colors from white to transparent (color just wastes precious nutrients when a] it's pitch black and b] no one around has eyes anyway). Other sensory organs go into overdrive to make up for the lack of eyes. Take, for example, the lateral line. In most fish, it is a row of cells that allow fish to sense vibrations in the water--effectively acting as fish ears. Well, in the Alabama Cavefish, that line becomes a network covering the entirety of the fish, shown beautifully in these pictures. If we stick with the "fish ear" analogy, I suppose it's not that different than most bats developing big honkin' ears. They also have large sensory papillae (read: fish noses) that help them sniff out prey in the dark.

The discovery of the Alabama Cavefish sounds like quite an interesting story. In 1966, John Cooper was a Ph.D. student studying the ecology and taxonomy of cave crayfish, and was thus well versed in the common troglobitic fish found in the area. Seeing what he thought was a Southern Cavefish, he caught it, looked at it, and yelled to his wife (who was apparently fine with following her husband down dark, cold, wet cracks in the earth), "This ain't Typhlichthys, it's something nobody ever seen before."² After a few more sampling trips to Key Cave, and years in front of a dissecting scope, the species was officially named.

Three years later, it was listed as threatened. Despite frequent (and difficult) excursions into Key Cave, no more than ten Alabama Cavefish have been seen at the same time, causing guesses about the population size to be nothing more than guesses. One of the biggest worries that researchers have is that something will happen to the Gray Bats (also endangered) that roost in the cave and bring nutrients into the cave in the form of poop. The bats eat outside insects (mosquitoes and the like), poop in the cave, which is eaten by bacteria, which is eaten by amphipods and isopods, which are eaten by the Cavefish. If the bats get messed with, then the whole system falls apart.

To protect these now critically endangered fish and their habitat, the entire site is now a National Wildlife Refuge. The cave is not open to the public, which protects the bats and fish, and the refuge itself provides a buffer between the caves and nearby development, which would mess with the groundwater flowing into these isolated sanctuaries.

¹ Alabama Cavefish are more properly called "stygiobites," which are aquatic cave-dwellers. While "troglo-" refers to caves, "stygio-" refers to the River Sty x. If you're wondering, the "-bite" is just "bio-" as a suffix.
²Don't even bother trying that five times fast. Try saying it twice, at any speed.

How I Felt

2009-08-31T19:19:00.010-05:00

Much like last month, August's EUT is a suggestion that came in a while ago, and I'm only just getting around to it. This is the first time that a researcher has suggested their own species of interest as an Endangered Ugly Thing, and I'm quite excited about it. He's even set up a support group for Ugly Thing researchers on the forum. Randy, the researcher, even had a professor tell him--in the middle of a presentation, no less--that his research topic was, "the ugliest thing I have ever seen - it looks like black vomit!" Now, isn't that just mean? Doesn't his research demand respect, regardless of how the species looks? On the other hand, it does look like black vomit.

The Boreal Felt Lichen (Erioderma pedicellatum) is, according to ARKive, "known as the Panda Bear of lichens," due to its rarity. I personally think, given the professor's description, the lichen needs quite a bit more charisma before it can be described as the Panda Bear of anything¹. Much like the Rock Gnome Lichen, the Boreal Felt Lichen is actually two species living together in symbiosis. The majority of the Lichen is a fungus, which serves as structure and protection for the cyanobacteria that allows the organism to photosynthesize.

This lichen is quite picky about where it plants itself. It requires very large amounts of moisture, so it only lives in coastal areas. In Scandinavia it grows mostly on Norway Spruce, and in Newfoundland it keeps mainly to Balsam Firs. The only problem with the previous statement is that it might not exist in Scandinavia anymore. The Canadian population is under massive amounts of protection to save the 10,000 or so individuals that remain.

What has been hitting the Boreal Felt Lichen so hard, as to cause it to go extinct in much of its range? Scientists aren't sure, but they've got a lot of good ideas, such as deforestation, climate change, acid rain, and air pollution. It's very likely that it's a combination of these factors, as the cyanobacteria that provides the lichen with food is very susceptible to changes in humidity and pH.

The areas in Newfoundland that contain the majority of the remaining population are being protected by the government as soon as they find them. This is where our poor lichen researcher, Randy, comes in. He is using state-of-the-art landscape ecology to create models that would be able to predict where a previously unknown group of Boreal Felt Lichens might be found.

¹Maybe we should reverse it. How do you think Panda researchers would respond to their species being called "the Boreal Felt Lichen of Carnivora"?

Song of the Shrimp

2009-07-30T22:13:00.005-05:00

New visitors from the Scientific American article: Welcome! I hope you find some things that interest you here. My forum is starting to pick up, and I would love to see some new blood there. Bryan, who I met at the Green Futures expo, I hope you can forgive me for not writing about the animal you suggested, but I completely forgot. For two months. Sorry.

This is the California Freshwater Shrimp (Syncaris pacifica). It doesn't look like much, which is actually a anti-predatory device, as its translucency helps hide it from predators. If hiding doesn't work, it has a protective spine useful for jabbing into a predatory fish's mouth.

These shrimp are only found in a few counties in the Bay Area in California, and seem to be fairly picky about their habitat. They live in the runs¹ of streams that have undercut banks, exposed roots, and overhanging vegetation. All of these features provide the Freshwater Shrimp with numerous hiding places.

The problem comes when those hiding places are disturbed. There are quite a few ways this can happen, all of which have the final result of removing the vegetation that these shrimp call home. The trees that provide the overhanging roots are removed when a stream is channelized, and agriculture and livestock fill the stream with runoff that buries those roots in silt.

There is quite a bit of good news going for the California Freshwater Shrimp. For one thing, its numbers appear to have almost quadrupled between 1991 and 2000. Another thing is that a number of teachers and students are using this as their rallying species to help teach people about freshwater habitat, and saving some endangered species in the process. If anyone in those programs reads this: I salute you. You will be able to tell future generations that you helped save a living thing from extinction.

¹Runs are the areas in streams halfway between the shallow, fast moving riffles, and the slow, deep pools. This site explains these quite well.

Perfect Past Tense - Earwig

2009-06-30T23:31:00.001-05:00

If you are visiting through the Washington Post article: Welcome! I hope you stick around, look through my old posts, and leave some comments. If you’ve got any suggestions for animals to write about, I’d be glad to hear them. I’ve even got a forum here. As for my old readers (all six of you), I’ve got a nice, juicy insect for this month.

Meet the Saint Helena Earwig (Labidura herculeana), the largest earwig in the world. It lives (lived?) on Saint Helena¹, a small volcanic island in the South Atlantic. Much like Attenborough’s Echidna, this specimen in the picture is not cavorting around its tropical island home, and for much the same reason: this species might have gone extinct in the ‘60s.

While most earwigs will eat about anything they can get their mandibles on, the Saint Helena Earwig is probably mostly herbivorous. They seem to spend most of their time in burrows, coming out only during nights after it has rained. This withdrawn behavior probably has not helped the people who are trying to determine if, in fact, it has gone extinct.

Though, it is not as if people have stopped looking. There have been a number of expeditions over the years, mostly led and funded by the London Zoo. From what I’ve seen, The Independent has been incredulous, if supportive, of spending thousands of pounds for people to wander around a tropical island looking for earwigs.

Most of the island of Saint Helena seems to be in ecological peril, and long time readers of this blog will understand when I say: “It’s because it’s an island.” Remote islands have a very specific ecology that is easily thrown off balance. Then, humans show up bringing rats, pigs, cats, dogs, and deforestation, wrecking the whole place. In the case of the Earwig, people seem to be blaming an introduced centipede, as well as the clearing of an area of forest.

Conservationists are worried about the Saint Helena Earwig, as well as other endemic arthropods. An airport, proposed in 2005, has not been built for fear of destroying the only habitat in which these gentle, albeit freaky-looking, giants may still survive.

¹Apparently named for the same saint as the volcano in Washington, though she doesn’t seem to have any direct connection to volcanoes.

Unsung- Helmet

2009-05-31T22:00:00.001-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a bird. The problem with them is that they tend to be cute, pretty, or majestic. Except, of course, for the carrion-eaters, but I can’t just write about vultures and pretend I’ve covered the entire class. So, like I always do, I went trolling through ARKive’s bird section and found this beauty.

The Helmeted Hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil), hails from Southeast Asia, where it spends its time eating fruit, like the majority of Hornbills. They also hunt bugs, using their pointy beak in much the same way that a woodpecker would. This is not a small bird, growing up to around a five feet from beak to tail. Wikipedia describes their call as “hoots followed by maniacal laughter.” Listen to any of the recordings on this site all the way to the end, and you’ll understand what they mean.

The casque—the helmet that gives them their name—is solid, as opposed to most hornbills, which means the skull is about ten percent of the total body weight of the bird¹. This comes in handy, as the males participate in the aerial equivalent of Bighorn Sheep clashes, fighting over females and territory by running head-on into each other while flying. I can’t find any videos of this, but I’m sure it would be amazing.

Their headgear has also gotten them into some trouble. As it is solid keratin, it can be used as a reddish ivory-like substance for carving (called, surprisingly enough, hornbill ivory). As one can expect, this does not bode well for the bird. Well, it was all right when only the natives were doing it², but once the civilized world got wind of this material, things were not looking good. CITES has now clamped down on this, making any trade of hornbill ivory completely illegal. The constant rainforest destruction that everyone has worried about for as long as I can remember isn’t helping the Helmeted Hornbills’ population either.

¹Compare our atypically large head, with about 0.7 percent of our body weight.
²This tidbit isn’t entirely related, but I can’t think of anywhere else to put it: apparently the natives believe that a giant Helmeted Hornbill guarded the river between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

Velvet Revolver

2009-04-30T00:41:00.007-05:00

I have been somewhat disappointed with the limited ability for back-and-forth communication on Blogger, so, at the suggestion of some of my colleagues at the Writing Center¹, I’ve started a forum on another site, which can be found here. Please visit it, and let’s start some fun discussions. This month’s EUT comes once again from ARKive, though I’m sure I had seen it in the past, and skipped over it due to lack of information. I think I’ve got enough to talk about this time around, so here is the Pink Velvet Worm

At a little more than an inch long, the Pink Velvet Worm (Opisthopatus roseus) looks something like a squishy centipede. However, it belongs to the phylum Onychophora, though most of the members look quite similar to the human eye. Velvet worms, as they are commonly called, are quite closely related to the Arthropods, though they lack the jointed legs that give the latter group its name. Instead, they have dumpy-looking caterpillar-esque legs with a pair of claws on the bottom of each.

All velvet worms are carnivorous, feeding on any invertebrate smaller than them. Much smaller prey are simply hunted down and eaten, but for larger prey, they have the coolest prey capture method: twin projectile glue guns concealed in their face, which they can fire up to ten times their body length. This glue is also useful for deterring predators, because no one wants that in their eyes.

Back to the Pink Velvet Worm itself. It has been found in a single forest in South Africa, and this forest has been logged heavily since the 1900s, both for the wood, as well as for plantations of non-native vegetation. These three factors—the small range, the logging, and the invasive species—have conspired to place the Pink Velvet Worm on the Critically Endangered list.

Conservation efforts are still in the works, of which listing is just one. They are putting together education efforts, which have worked in the past for other animals. Also, there are five Pink Velvet Worms in captivity, and hopefully we can learn more about what they do from these squishy little ambassadors to our race.

¹Yeah, I’ve been working at a Writing Center for about a year now. It’s made me a heck of a lot more confident with my writing. There’s no better way to learn something than by teaching someone else.

Velvety Underground

2009-03-30T22:47:00.010-05:00

I’m sorry I missed February, but I started the in-depth work on my thesis, which makes it difficult to get into the blogging mindset. However, I have found another parasite that has managed to get listed¹. They live on the bodily fluids of a single species, rarely even seeing the light of day. After that description, I want you to imagine an orchid.
Now, look at this picture.

This is the Underground Orchid (Rhizanthella gardneri). While many orchids are parasitic—living as the botanical equivalent of a louse—they produce pretty flowers, so no one thinks twice about trying to save them. The Underground Orchid’s lifestyle is not much different, except for the fact that it looks like a root with a tumor. It lives in the root system of the Broom Honey Myrtle, a pine-like tree from Australia. This orchid produces no chlorophyll, because that would be pointless if the flower might break the surface. Instead, it gets its energy and nutrients from the Myrtle, but it’s not as simple as that. It never is.

I had originally thought that parasitic plants work by putting its roots into the roots of the host and effectively sucking the tree’s blood. Some do. The Underground Orchid, however, is myco-heterotrophic. This means that there is a fungus living in the Myrtle’s roots, sucking out its juices. The orchid then subsists on the juices of the fungus, making this some sort of strange nesting-doll version of parasitism². The end result is still the orchid parasitizing the tree, but with some (unwilling) help from a root fungus.

The Underground Orchid relies on the existence of the Broom Honey Myrtle, and tracts of these trees are being cleared to make way for agriculture. People are also attributing a decrease in health of the myrtle to a decrease in the numbers of the orchid. Preservation sites are being set up throughout the Underground Orchids’ range to help save them. Also, botanists are also working on finding a way to breed these root-flowers in captivity.

¹Just so you know, the Pygmy Hog-Sucking Louse managed to get a mention on QI.
²I’m sure there is some Australian burrowing insect that would suck the juices out of the orchid, making this even more recursive.

Come Sail Away

2009-01-30T09:40:00.010-05:00

I'll be the first to admit that this month's EUT isn't all that ugly, but they can't all be eldritch abominations from the dawn of time. It does, however, look very dragon-like, though the color makes it look like it's straight out of a cartoon.

This is the Philippine Sailfin Lizard (Hydrosaurus pustulatus). It lives up to its name well, with a tail that would not look out of place on a Dimetrodon¹. As one can guess from the scientific name, the Sailfin is not out of place in the water, using the sail to power its swimming through the rivers of the Philippine Islands. In this case, swimming is mostly a defense mechanism to avoid terrestrial predators, though they have been known to eat crustaceans. This supplements their mostly herbivorous diet of fruits and leaves.

The fact that the males have a larger tail fin, along with their crayon-blue color, suggests another reason for the fin; the same reason Blue Iguanas are blue--it looks sexy. If a male has enough energy to produce a fin that large, and can still escape predators despite being the color of an interstate sign, that means he's got some good genes to pass down to the kids.

The Sailfin Lizard is no longer listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN list. This is not necessarily a good thing. It has been moved to Data Deficient, which means we don't really know how bad it is. Life on a tropical island means habitat loss is almost a given threat, but overshadowing that is the pet trade.

Ah, the pet trade, such a mixed curse. It destroys the wild population, without killing that many of them. If they can be bred in captivity, it means they might be able to be bred to be released. It also means that there can be a higher demand for them, leading to more being taken from the wild. It about killed the Red-Kneed Tarantula and Macaws², but it might save the Axolotl. It looks like it could go either way for the Sailfin Lizard. This guy (where I got the picture) is selling captive-bred Sailfins as pets, and these guys are breeding them the same way to be released into the wild.

¹Dimetrodon are actually more closely related to us than they are to this lizard.
²You do not want a Macaw as a pet. They might be pretty, but imagine having a five-year old child for seventy years. Whose screams can be easily heard for miles. Who can bite through an eighth of an inch of steel.

I'm Not Dead

2008-12-23T03:08:00.003-05:00

Last month, Phantom Midge made a wonderful suggestion for an EUT that I hadn’t thought about. I had known about it for ages, and, like her, had been pronouncing it wrong for years¹. Somehow, without any foreknowledge, I’m managing to post this on an exceedingly appropriate day, as today is the 70th anniversary of its discovery as a living animal.

Order Coelacanth (pronounced See-la-canth) had been well documented since 1836, and fossils show that it lived for 345 million years between the Devonian period and the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs died out. This must have come as a big surprise for the West Indian Ocean Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) caught by fishermen off the coast of South Africa in 1938. These fishermen were friends with the curator of a small, local museum, and she would frequently check through their catch for anything interesting. Needless to say, something interesting was, in fact, found. Dinofish, who seem to be experts on this matter, have the whole long story on their site in far more detail than I can manage.

Coelacanths spend most of their time in deep (90-200m) caves, where they suction feed on any fish smaller than their head. Exceedingly sensitive eyes, along with an electro-sensory organ help them hunt. These are not small fish, getting up to about 6 feet in length and weighing about 175 pounds, thus surpassing the other “Living Fossil” fish I wrote about². Coelacanth tail fins are split into three fleshy sections, and all eight of their fins move in a mesmerizing, visualized wonderfully—as always—in an ARKive video.

I was surprised the Coelacanth is listed at all, much less as Critically Endangered. I thought there would be far too little information on its numbers and habits to be called anything other than Data Deficient. Analyses of populations in 1989 suggested that there might only be 500 individuals left. The low population, ironically enough, might be attributed to by-catch. This could explain why all the natives were so perplexed when the Europeans got excited by the catch of a fish they knew to be inedible³. Since then, conservation and outreach programs have given fishermen the tools to release the fish directly back to the murky depths from which they came.

¹In Freshman Zoology, I made a list of letter combinations that made an “s” sound. “Coe” always annoyed me, because I’ve never seen it outside of biology.
²Wikipedia has some nice articles about the term “Living Fossil.” Coelacanths are a “Lazarus taxon,” while the Australian Lungfish falls into the wider “Living Fossil” expression. I don’t think I’ll ever get a chance to write about an “Elvis taxon.”
³Never underestimate the local population when it comes to ecology.

Put the Lime in the Coconut

2008-11-22T14:06:00.007-05:00

Oversized arthropods will always be welcome on this blog. Alright, most arthropods are condidered icky enough, but there is a special type of revulsion saved for really big creepy-crawlies. Well, I've already written about the largest freshwater invertebrate, so the largest terrestrial invertebrate can't be far behind¹. Also hailing from order Decapoda, this is the Coconut Crab (Birgus latro).

³

When I say "big," I'm sure that you're looking for some measurements to back that up. The Coconut Crab, also known as the Robber Crab or Palm Thief, has a body length of 1½ feet, with a legspan of 3 feet. It weighs up to 9 pounds but its strong claws can apparently lift up to about 60 pounds. Yes, this crab can lift a medium-sized dog.

Why is it so beefy? Well, anyone who has tried to open a coconut with simple tools can answer that. This is not an easy fruit to get into. The Crab will strip the outer husk near the germination pores (those things that make a coconut look like a bowling ball). It will then use one of its legs to punch a hole through the inner husk, and break the coconut apart. Once again, ARKive provides us with wonderful footage of this in action.

Mating occurs quickly and on land, and the female carries the eggs under her abdomen. She then drops those into the ocean, where they hatch into marine larvae that look something like shrimp. Coconut Crabs are closely related to the Terrestrial Hermit Crabs you'd see in pet stores, and the young will find snail shells to protect their soft rear-end. As they grow larger, their abdomen grows a thick carapace, so they lose the need to find snails. Good thing, too, considering their size. They also become fully terrestrial, though they can still drink seawater.

Coconut Crabs are found dispersed throughout islands in the South Pacific. Being a huge crab, no one would be surprised that they're hunted for food. Being an island species also means invasive species like rats, pigs, and ants are a problem for the juveniles. As the islands get more populated, habitat destruction is a problem as people encroach on the beaches. As population estimates vary from island to island depending on the number of people there, the IUCN lists the Coconut Crab as Data Deficient.

Conservation varies from island to island as well. Some places set hunting limits, while others have set up breeding programs. More research needs to be done to really find out how to help these huge creepy-crawlies out.

¹The fact that weight is pretty much meaningless in the ocean leads to some pretty big invertebrates down there. The Japanese Spider Crab²(Macrocheira kaempferi) with a 13 foot legspan wins as the largest arthropod, while the Colossal Squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) puts all other invertebrates to shame with a body length of 33 feet.
²You can't tell me that picture doesn't look like a video game boss.
³The image that many of you were expecting to see was probably this one, which I would have used if I could have found an original source.

Be Prepared

2008-10-30T11:52:00.008-05:00

Many of my readers may know that the Spotted (or Laughing) Hyenas’ (Crocuta crocuta) reputation for being scavengers is undeserved; they hunt at least as frequently as Lions. A smaller subset probably knows about the… um… interesting morphology found in female Spotted Hyenas. I hate to disappoint, but the Hyena I’m writing about today has neither of those characteristics. Meet the Brown Hyena (Hyaena brunnea).

It is much scragglier than its spotted relative, as well as being smaller. Their main food source is dead things, which they find using their acute sense of smell. While most of their diet is made up of carrion, this doesn’t mean they don’t hunt. Do you want to see a moderately ugly animal become instantly vilified? Watch this video of a Hyena on the coast hunting a baby Fur Seal. Of course, there’s no reason for the vilification—the Hyena’s gotta eat.

While they hunt and eat on their own, they come home to clans made of three to five other family members. Females will mate with unrelated nomadic males—just passing through—to prevent inbreeding. Cubs are raised by the whole family, and females will (begrudgingly) suckle others’ young. When the babies are on solids, the clan will bring back food for them.

They live in southern Africa, south of the Spotted Hyenas’ range. They prefer semi-arid environments, though some live on the Namibian Coast¹. They can survive close to urban areas, which is what gets them in trouble. People will find them feeding on dead livestock, and assume the Hyena was the killer. ARKive states: "The brown hyena is a poor hunter, but will often make feeble, frequently unsuccessful, attempts to catch any small animal it encounters." Does that really sound like something that would take down a thousand-pound cow? This kind of persecution lead to the Brown Hyena being listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN.

It's not listed as Vulnerable anymore. Education programs have lead to farmers reconsidering their views on Hyenas. That, coupled with the maintanance of large conservation areas have helped the Brown Hyena back from Vulnerable; it is now listed as Near Threatened. If this continues, it might end up as another "Conservation Success Story," like the Bald Eagle and Lake Sturgeon.

¹One would assume that those are the ones catching the Fur Seals, unless the baby was really lost, and meandered 500 miles inland.

When I Get Home

2008-09-28T14:19:00.007-05:00

I know, I know. The monthly idea didn't work out so well and I ended up missing August (and almost September). Expect a post in October, or, better yet, suggest an EUT for me to write about. Phantom Midge suggested the Oregon Forestsnail (Allogona townsendiana), but the blog that she linked to was well written enough that I don't think I would have much to add. So, a random ARKive search turned up a big beetle that is one heck of a homebody.

This is the Frigate (or Frégate, depending on your language) Island Tenebrionid Beetle (Polposipus herculeanus), and it is the largest known tenebrionid in the world. For all of you non-coleopterists out there, tenebironids are better known as Darkling Beetles¹, and their larvae are far better known as mealworms. In day to day life, mealworms are seen in two situations: you either have a pet insectivore², or you have flour that has been in your pantry far too long.

Now that we know a little about the family, on to the Frigate Island Beetle itself. Sources give it's length as 20 to 30 mm. That might not seem like much, but look at that picture again. That's not a small beetle. They are completely flightless--probably due to their size--and don't get around much. They spend the entirety of their lives on a few dead trees in a small area. The absolute farthest that they've recorded this beetle traveling is a whopping 19 meters³. The beetle is apparently able to find all its life needs on the few dead trees within those 19 meters. I haven't found what it eats, exactly; I wouldn't be surprised if scientists weren't sure. Looking at its kin, I would guess that the rotting trees are their main food source.

The Frigate Island Beetle has a fun defensive mechanism that I wish I had a visual for. It will, when threatened, exude a purple, stinking, staining chemical. I'm sure the t-shirts of the visiting entomologists look lovely after a day of research.

Frigate Island itself is a tiny island within a larger archipelago called Seychelles, just north of Madagascar. Of course, being from a small, pretty tropical island means that two things are threatening the beetle population: habitat loss and invasive species. A recent program to eradicate the rats (it's always rats) was succesful. Cooler still, the London Zoo has a breeding program, and you can even (figuratively) adopt a Frigate Island Beetle.

By the way, the Coconut Crab is also from Seychelles, and is listed as Data Deficient. It will likely get a post in the near future.

¹Not Darkwing, Darkling!
²I, for example, have a tub of 50 in my refrigerator for my Leopard Gecko.
³Even for a beetle, this is small. The American Burying Beetle is not considered a distant traveling beetle, and is about the same size as this one, but can travel two miles on the scent of carrion.

I Want my Baby Back

2008-07-23T10:51:00.001-05:00

I apologize for the unintentional hiatus last month, but I start as a Master’s student next month, and preparations for such have gotten in the way of blogging. As it sounds like my workload will increase massively once school actually starts, don’t be surprised if Endangered Ugly Things continues on a monthly schedule for a while. I hate to say it, but in a fight between my blog and my education, my education wins out (barely).

Two weeks ago, both my girlfriend and my aunt sent me a link to MSNBC’s article on the “Top 10 Oddballs of the Animal World,” highlighting what they consider the weirdest looking animals out there. I hate to say, I could probably give some of those a run for their money¹. It did point me back to EDGE’s amphibian list with a burrowing frog similar to the one I wrote about in May. I was worried about featuring another amphibian so soon (Ha!), but the Conservation Issue of The Year is the amphibian decline, so maybe two frog posts are justified. That, and this one deserves it.

The Myer’s Surinam Toad (Pipa myersi) belongs to a genus of frogs whose looks never fail to gather attention. As (according to EDGE) one naturalist put it:

"…looking – as all pipa toads look in repose – as though she had been dead for some weeks and was already partially decomposed."

A lovely image, though probably quite helpful in camouflaging themselves among the leaves within the Panamanian swamps they call home.

As swamps are not exactly known for their clarity, Surinam Toads have reduced eyes. They instead rely on fancy lobed fingers to feel out their prey, which they then grab or simply vacuum up—long sticky tongues simply won’t work underwater. Their prey preference appears to be what I like to call “any animal smaller than its head.”

What I find truly ugly about Surinam Toads is not the fact that they look like an unfortunate road-kill accident. It’s their baby rearing techniques. During mating, the couple maneuvers themselves such that about 100 eggs are spread along the sticky back of the female. These are gradually absorbed into the skin, where the young develop. Most Surinam Toad young go through their entire metamorphosis in their mother’s backs, emerging as tiny froglets (seen here²). The Myer’s Toad lets the kids out a little early, with the young emerging into the world as tadpoles.

If you’ll find the range map on the EDGE website, you’ll get an idea why Myer’s Surinam Toad is listed. If anything has a total range of less than 5000 sq. km, then it automatically gets on the endangered list. Habitat loss and fragmentation is probably aiding in their decline, though too few have been found to conduct a thorough population estimate. They are found in a reserve, so there may be hope to see baby tadpoles pushing their way out of their mother’s skin for years to come.

¹Both my girlfriend and Phantom Midge have suggested I write about the Yeti Crab. However, so little is known about it that it isn’t listed anywhere, as well as the fact that there is only one photograph of it. I do think it should be adapted into plush form, though.
²It should be said that I find this creepy enough that I can’t watch the entire video. It looks like something from a horror film.

Dr. Worm

2008-06-07T10:16:00.006-05:00

A friend of mine found an exciting Endangered Ugly Thing that I knew I had to write about. Nothing fits so far outside the "charismatic megafauna" category as a giant earthworm.

While the Giant Palouse Earthworm (Driloleirus americanus) is not the largest earthworm¹, a three foot long earthworm is nothing to sneeze at. Especially when it smells like flowers. Yes, while other animals thrash or bite or musk when handled, the Giant Earthworm emits a flowery scent. Smelling like lilies, in fact. No one knows why. It is also said to spit and run (slither?) away to avoid predators. One local conservationist has been oft quoted as saying, "This worm is the stuff that legends and fairy tales are made of." I want to know what fairy tales he's been reading.

The Palouse region from which the Earthworm derives its name is an area of eastern Washington and northern Idaho that was dominated by thick prairies. However, as of today, most of the area has been converted to agricultural use. While the Giant Earthworm never tends to directly contact surface vegetation--what with living in burrows 15 feet underground--it can still be affected by the change. This habitat loss, as well as competition with invasive worms² has led to the Palouse Giant Earthworm's decline.

Like a few other animals I've written about, the Giant Palouse Earthworm went a long time without any sightings. Unlike, for example, the Long-beaked Echidna, they've recently found another specimen. In 2005, a grad student from the University of Idaho found one, and it is now preserved in formaldehyde for posterity. While the IUCN has listed it as vulnerable, the US Fish and Wildlife Service seems reluctant to federally list it. This, of course, has put conservationists in an uproar. But hey, if this kind of controversy can produce stories in multiple newspapers, teaching more people about new vulnerable animals, it can't be all bad.

¹ That honor belongs to the Giant Gippsland Earthworm (Megascolides australis) from Australia, which can grow up to 9 feet.
²Most earthworms you come in contact with in North America are invasive. Now you know.

Purple Haze

2008-05-22T15:07:00.004-05:00

As a comment on my Copperbelly Watersnake post, Gargoyle Grins asked—very nicely—for a post on the Purple Burrowing Frog. I’m not sure when the comment was made, but I only saw it recently. I am more than happy to oblige a reader.

Having only been formally described in 2003, there is a surprising amount of information known about the Purple Burrowing Frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis). So far, it has only been found in two small areas in Western India, where it spends most of its time buried underground.

There are two major reasons for its subterranean lifestyle: it’s moist underground, and that’s where the termites live. With minimal eyes¹, the Purple Burrowing Frog relies on smell and touch to hunt. The pointy nose is useful for shoving through termite’s walls, and it has a tongue specially shaped for sucking up the little morsels. The Purple Burrowing Frog depends on termites for more than just a food source. The structures and tunnels built by the termites help aerate and moisten the soil. It is the only burrowing frog that feeds underground; all others simply hide in the dirt to avoid predators.

During the monsoon season, however, the frogs come out to breed. They make their way to nearby water sources, and begin the mating process. Due to similarities to other species, it’s probable that the male temporarily glues himself to the back of the female during amplexus. Since it was only discovered in 2003, there are still quite a few uncertainties about its lifecycle.

Our lavender friends are listed as endangered by the IUCN because the range it has been found in is so small, and the forests under which they dig are threatened by expanding cultivation. Much more needs to be learnt about this animal before conservation efforts can be put into place.

¹Eye reduction happens a lot in underground animals.

Horseshoes

2008-05-10T00:23:00.005-05:00

I have been slacking and I know it. I graduate from the warm, quiet womb of my liberal arts college at 1:00 this afternoon, so I’ve been trying to set up a summer job and a grad school, and the blog has fallen by the wayside. I should be on schedule during the summer.

Greg e-mailed me an article about an endangered rat from Australia that people are desperately trying to protect. Unfortunately, there seems to be little information on the little rodent, but I thought you readers might be interested. This week’s animal is one I’ve looked at for a while, and I’ve just now gotten around to writing about it.

Three years ago, I worked in the Shores department at the Columbus Zoo. One of the scariest looking denizens of the touch pool was the Horseshoe Crab (Limulus polyphemus). With its fierce-looking eyes and pointy tail, it intimidated some of the visitors. It didn’t help that many people thought it was a baby stingray¹.

That scary-looking tail (formally called a telson) is about as sharp as a dulled pencil, and just about as dangerous. When adults migrate en masse onto the dry high-tide zone to lay eggs, flipping is a definite possibility. Right side-up, they present an armored shell to any seabirds. Upside-down, they are a bowl of seafood². The long telson allows them to right themselves, hopefully before any hungry seagulls show up.

The eggs they lay hatch into “trilobite larvae,” who look enough like their namesake. These stay buried for a few weeks, until the right high tide rolls in. They then swim like mad until they are below the intertidal zone. A few days later, they molt into juveniles, and start living on the bottom, living in deeper waters as they age. As adults, they aren’t exactly picky about what they eat; they live off of whatever animals have burrowed into the sand.

I know, they’re not actually listed as endangered, but there are a number of people worried about their conservation. There are two main uses for them, both of which costal states are setting limits on. The first is use as bait for eel and conch fishing, and this seems to be the largest source human-induced mortality in the Horseshoe Crabs. The other use is in medical research, as they are harvested for their literal blue blood (it’s copper-based). This can be used to test pharmaceuticals, but don’t ask me how. Research and education programs are popping into existence to try to help save the Horseshoe Crab before it gets listed.

¹Alas, the Touch-A-Shark pool had shut down years before.
²Upside-down, they also look like face-huggers from Alien.

Buzzsaw

2008-04-16T01:55:00.001-05:00

This will not be the first time I’ve written about things with exciting nasal protuberances. I don’t find these noses ugly—they all do nifty things, and I can’t help but write about them.

The rostrum of Green Sawfish (Pristis zijsron) is no exception. It uses its saw mainly for feeding—swiping at unsuspecting fish, stunning and injuring the intended prey, or raking up tasty crustaceans from the seafloor. The Sawfish is closely related to sharks and rays, and, like them, has sharp scales called denticles; these have been modified to form the “teeth” of the saw. Catching food is not the only thing the rostrum is good for, as it is lined with motion- and electric- sensing pores to find buried prey. That, and if anything happens to appear threatening, it couldn’t hurt to have a spiky protrusion on… um… hand.

I thought Wikipedia had a typo when it stated that the Green Sawfish grew as large as 7 meters—surely, they must mean feet. Nope. This is a big fish. They reach maturity at 14 feet. Think of the length of a typical bedroom. A little more than half of that is filled with a fish that looks halfway between a shark and a ray. The other five and a half feet is a nose with spikes. Don’t worry; humans are much too large to be considered prey, though you might not want to provoke them.

The Green Sawfish is the most common sawfish. It’s also critically endangered. That doesn’t bode too well for the other species. In fact, the Common Sawfish (Pristis pristis) is pretty close to becoming extinct. The biggest threat to all sawfish is accidental by-catch by the fishing industry. Let’s face it, with a proboscis like that, getting tangled in nets would not be pleasant. Less frequently, they are caught on purpose—for meat, for oil, or for an interesting six-foot long spiky thing. As of yet, they are only beginning to set conservation measures into place.

Black Bead Game

2008-04-08T13:24:00.006-05:00

I really wanted to write about the whipscorpion that Phantom Midge found, but I hate to say, there is little to no information about Trithyreus shoshonensis. So, my fall back this week is an animal that I got a picture of during my spring break trip to the Columbus Zoo. Growing up, I remember learning that the Gila Monster was one of two venomous lizards. This is the other one.

Yes, the Mexican Beaded Lizard (Heloderma horridum) looks a whole lot like the Gila Monster. This so happens because they are within the same genus, and the major differences are that the Gila Monster is smaller and more colorful. Not having the hinged fangs of vipers, the Beaded Lizard delivers venom that flows along grooves in the teeth, and delivers by chewing. Digimorph gives a wonderful visual of that—check out the horizontal dynamic cutaway¹ and watch for the hollow bottom teeth. The venom is used mainly as a defense mechanism, and is typically non-fatal to humans—if you get medical treatment quickly enough. The small animals they prey on…well, that’s a different story.

The “beads” from which this lizard gets its name are osteoderms²: tiny bits of bone growing within the skin that lead to its studded appearance. This adds another layer of protection on top of the fact that they can maim with a single bite. They inhabit the scrublands and other semi-arid habitats of Western and Southern Mexico, explaining the other part of their name. Like some other arid-adapted lizards, the Mexican Beaded Lizard can store fat in its tail to provide food and water during times of scarcity.

Habitat loss, due to clearing for agriculture, is one large factor in this species’ decline. The one that really surprises me, however, is the pet trade. I’ve always been an avid fan of reptiles, and have no problems with keeping some as pets. But I draw the line at an animal that can kill me if improperly handled. To help stop this problem, they are listed by CITES, and there are breeding and head start programs to replenish their numbers in the wild.

¹Yes, it’s actually a Gila Monster. The principle is the same.
²Meaning “bone skin.”

You Dirty Rat

2008-03-25T22:19:00.003-05:00

Today, I had an urge to write about a non-descript rat thing. At one point, I mentioned that the EDGE website was full of them. So, I went trolling, but to no avail. Many of them are quite cute. The ones that aren’t, well, it’s possible that some of them have been extinct since the ‘60s and no one’s noticed¹. Then, like a bolt from the blue, I remembered a non-descript rat thing that was much closer to home. I mentioned it by name in the original essay, and promptly forgot about its existence.

The Allegheny Woodrat (Neotoma magister) is literally a big packrat. Much like the Fen Raft Spider researchers who called it a “beautiful spider,” the Woodrat is described by Wikipedia as, “…particularly handsome in appearance resembling more of an over sized White-footed Mouse than the Norway Rat.” That’s not exactly a stunning endorsement.

As its name suggests, the Allegheny Woodrat is found along the Allegheny Mountains, typically in the woods. More specifically, these large rodents are found among rocky outcroppings, where they build their nests. They are nocturnal and understandably shy, as their main predators are owls, bobcats, weasels, foxes, and probably any other large predator that happens to be outside at that time of night. Their food consists of typical small herbivore fare: berries, seeds, nuts, and grasses.

Like other packrats, they make a bark-and-grass nest, tucked away in their little hidey-hole, and decorate it with exciting shiny things they find around the place. It has been suggested that they will place dried leaves near their football-sized nest to act as early warning systems to detect incoming predators. They raise three litters of three babies per year, which is apparently very few compared to their more promiscuous cousins.

Scientists have noticed the population decline of the Woodrats all over their range, except, apparently, in Kentucky, where they seem to be doing all right for some reason. Defoliation vectors, such as Gypsy Moth or Chestnut Blight have caused habitat problems throughout the Woodrat’s range. However, the best suspect for their decline is a little nematode known as Baylisascaris procyonis. As areas become more urbanized, generalists, such as Raccoons, become more populous. B. procyonis is a Raccoon parasite, and it is fatal to Woodrats. Most of the conservation efforts surrounding the Woodrat have been studies trying to control this parasite.

¹I really don’t like the fact that I can’t write about some organisms because there’s not enough data out there. I may have to make a post of animals with cool names and insufficient data, just to keep track of them.

Blood Meridian

2008-03-18T18:43:00.004-05:00

It’s been a while since my last insect post, and I’m trying to decide if that’s a good way to go about picking the animals I write about. I fully intend to research the whipscorpion that Phantom Midge picked out for me, but I recently wrote about an arachnid—that’s why it took so long to write about the Copperbelly Watersnake. While looking through ARKive’s insects, I couldn’t help but note how interesting names play a part in which organisms I choose.
I just found the Dracula Ant. (Cue thunder.)

It doesn’t particularly look like much. However, note the stinger on the Dracula Ant (Adetomyrma venatrix): much like their wasp cousins, worker Dracula Ants will seek out prey and paralyze it with its stinger, and then… fail to drink its blood. No, it’s far worse then that. The helpless prey are then dragged back to the colony, and fed to the larvae. Once the larvae are satiated, the adults proceed to chew holes in them, sucking out some of their blood¹. This is termed “non-destructive cannibalism” by scientists, because the larvae aren’t killed. ARKive goes on to state (a little creepily): “Nevertheless, when hungry workers enter the chamber, the larvae have been observed attempting to flee and escape their fate.”

As weird as this sounds, other ants will feed outside food to their larvae for digestion, some of which the larvae will regurgitate as food for the adults. This allows each individual ant to have specialized mouthparts for their tasks. Since larvae are always specialized for eating, this allows them to act as a stomach for the colony.

While these miniscule bloodsuckers were first described in 1993, and the first colony discovered in 2001, they are listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Like many animals from Madagascar, the island’s growing human population is encroaching on their habitat. Unlike most other ants, the queens are flightless, so they are that much more susceptible to habitat fragmentation. Their major protection lies in the hands of one guy—Dr. Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. He was the one to discover the first colony, and he moved a few into his lab. If there is ever a need to start a captive breeding program, he seems to be the go to guy.

Edit: I just got new information (and a video!) on the Dromedary Jumping-Slug. I knew I created that e-mail address for a reason.

¹Technically, insects don’t have blood. They have hemolymph, which translates to “blood-water,” which is a pretty good definition of what it is.

Blue Suede Shoes

2008-03-07T16:33:00.004-05:00

I know I wrote about a bird recently, but as I said before, finding (non-vulture) ugly birds is difficult, so when ARKive has an ugly bird on their front page, I jump at the chance. It’s a bird I’ve known about for a while, but I didn’t realize it was endangered. Wikipedia states that Animal Planet’s “Beastly Countdown” lists this animal as “the #1 ugliest creature on Earth.” I don’t think so; I could probably come up with another ten uglier from earlier posts. But, I suppose, that’s for you to decide.¹

The Shoebill (Balaeniceps rex) is a large stork (maybe), whose beak quite closely resembles footwear associated with 19th century Dutch (compare). They inhabit central African wetlands, where they feed on lungfish, catfish, frogs, lizards, and the like. ARKive puts their hunting strategy quite succinctly: “Prey is grasped from the water in the bird's sharp, hooked beak, which grips, crushes and pierces in one instant.”

When I said they were maybe a large stork, that was because scientists are still working on where to taxonomically put these huge wading birds. They could be with the storks, or the herons, or the pelicans, or the hammerkops². The latest studies put it closest to either the herons or the pelicans.

Shoebills are solitary birds, aggressively defending their territory, and the only come together to mate. They build a nest of papyrus and brutally attack any potential predators. Baby shoebills (exceedingly cute) hatch after a month, can walk after two, and can hunt after three. It takes three years for the young to reach sexual maturity, and they can live up to 36 years.

As the population of Africa increases, more land is required for agriculture, which takes away the swamps necessary for this bird’s livelihood. Like any decent sized bird, it has a good amount of meat on it, and is subsequently hunted for food. CITES is attempting to limit trade, and may make it illegal for any trade of Shoebill parts. Conservation efforts are iffy, as they are found in some reserves, but Africa is notorious for its political instability. Consistent wildlife management is a lot to ask for. There are suggestions that toting these as a great African animal, like the Lion or the Wildebeest, will be the biggest aid to its conservation. The easiest way to do that is to tell people about it.
I feel my work here is done.

¹Every once in a while, people take offence to me calling these animals ugly. I know that this is subjective, but there are animals that people will simply not find cute. The point is to show that those animals are just as important as the cute ones.
²I had never heard of these before. They look halfway between a roadrunner and a ball-peen.

Throwing Copper

2008-03-02T18:56:00.006-05:00

Recently, I was featured in an article in a magazine distributed around Ohio¹. If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve linked to it here.

Two months ago, Pcrucifer asked if I take requests—indeed I do. While I’ve written about a number of snakes, I still get the feeling that the general public still thinks: “EEK! A snake!” Until that changes, I will continue writing about them. Water snakes are big and angry enough that they will always find a place here.

The Copperbelly Water Snake (Nerodia erythrogaster neglecta), like the rest of the genus, is fond of water, though it is not as aquatic as some of its relatives. Typically found near wetlands and swampy forests in the Midwest, it hunts down any animal it can fit in its mouth², usually frogs, tadpoles, and small fish. Unlike many Water Snakes, the Copperbelly has is uniform color on its back. Its belly, surprise-surprise, is bright orange. I was asked why they have a bright red belly. I can’t seem to find the answer.

While they are normally found near wetlands, they have a large enough range that they frequently move between wet spots, and even hibernate in the higher, drier areas. This movement causes some issues when there’s a human-made impediment in the way. Pcrucifer even called them “a snake for whom roads are a real problem.” I am familiar with this problem.

However, being squashed by cars is not their biggest threat. Some of these threats are becoming very predictable. I asked my English major girlfriend³: “They’re a wetland species, why are they endangered?” Without hesitation, she answered, “Because wetlands are disappearing.” Yes, I would be hard-pressed to find a wetland animal I’ve written about that doesn’t have “Habitat loss” as one of the threats.

There are people who worry about this snake, and lots of people who worry about wetlands. As the Copperbelly is only recently federally listed, recovery plans are still in the works, but I’m sure current wetland efforts can’t be hurting.

¹To people with a certain electric company. So, if you live in Ohio and can’t find it, that’s why.
²Remember, this is a snake we’re talking about here. “Can fit in its mouth” is bigger than “the size of its head."
³Who wrote about the Andean Condor.

The White Tent The Raft

2008-02-20T20:31:00.004-05:00

It’s been a while since an arachnid has graced this blog, and since I only have three arachnid posts total, it’s high time I add to it¹. Everyone keeps calling it “one of Europe's largest, most beautiful but least common species of spider.” Hate to break it to you guys, but it’s still a spider, and most people don’t like spiders.

Yeah, I think it’s pretty too. But look how surprised that fish is!

The Fen Raft Spider (Dolomedes plantarius) is not an aquatic spider--there’s no such creature². However, they aren’t aquatic in the same way a Water Strider isn’t aquatic. Just because you can’t swim doesn’t mean you have to get out of the pool—or rather, off the pool. They skate on top, using surface tension to float across the bogs and swamps; hence the name “Fen Raft”.

These spiders are found throughout in wetlands throughout Europe, with a fairly spotty distribution. They do not build webs to hunt, preferring to wait on a stem with their front legs touching the water’s surface. When they feel a vibration, BAM! Dinner is served. Main courses typically include aquatic insects, water striders, and less frequently, fish, like our surprised friend shown above.

The water also comes in handy when a male Fen Raft Spider wants to woo the ladies. Courtship involves drumming the water until the couple meets, when they both begin to bob slowly to each other. Mating is quick, likely because it is not unheard of for the male to become a protein source. After laying the eggs, the female carries the egg sac under her fangs for about three weeks. After hatching, the young spend a week growing up in a web-nest that’s constructed and guarded by mom.

It seems that wetlands are disappearing everywhere, and therefore, so are the Fen Raft Spiders. The remaining wetlands are getting more and more pollution problems, and all evidence suggests that these spiders require clean water. There’s certainly hope though. Britain has pulled out all the stops trying to protect their two populations from dying out, and frankly, it seems to be working.

¹Here’s a challenge for you readers: can somebody find me an endangered whipscorpion? That would be cool.
²These are not spiders.

Let a Frown be Your Umbrella

2008-02-12T01:41:00.001-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written about birds. The major problem with them is that they tend to be, well, cute. With vultures, much like snakes, it is easy to throw them all in due to deep-seated associations people have with the whole taxa. So, I set out to find an ugly, non-carrion eating bird. What I found was a Muppet.

This is the Sri Lankan Frogmouth¹(Batrachostomus moniliger), and I believe that if Jim Henson set out to create an animal, this would be the result. A comically wide, flat mouth. Bulbous, ping-pong eyes. A single, large eyebrow. Remind you of anyone²? There are good reasons for each of those traits, and in fact, the Sri Lankan Frogmouth is not the only one with those traits. There are a number of other Frogmouths—a relative of the Nightjar—though none look quite as cartoony as the Sri Lankan.

As a nocturnal insectivore, the Frogmouth needs to be able to pick moths out of thin air, while flying through dense jungle. This explains both the gigantic eyes, and the gaping mouth acts as a funnel to increase the chance of an unsuspecting insect getting drawn into their maw. I’m not sure of the exact purpose of the monobrow, but it certainly aids in the magnificent camouflage. These birds are able to sit perfectly still atop a mossy branch and look like nothing more exciting than a stump. While I can’t seem to find a major predator, there seem to be plenty of choices.

Alas, it was only after I had decided that I needed to write about this animal that I found out… it’s not really endangered³. For a time, it was considered Near Threatened (possibly due to its amazing camouflage), and ARKive suggests that if habitat loss by non-sustainable agriculture were to get out of hand, it could go right back there, or worse. And, frankly, such a thing is not hard to imagine.

¹Please watch the videos. It's even stranger looking when it moves.
²If you really want to freak yourself out, compare the pictures side-by-side.
³I would like to know what you think about this week’s other option, the Bare-Headed Rockfowl. Is it ugly enough for a future post? I value your opinions.

Or Would You Rather Be a Pig?

2008-02-04T12:17:00.006-05:00

Well, I saw it was just about time for another mammal post, so I searched through ARKive’s list on the subject. I found something that I really thought was ugly. This may seem like a non-issue (it is Endangered Ugly Things), but I realized that I haven’t written about much recently that I consider ugly. I mean, I try to write about species that don’t tend to make the spotlight, but I like bats and snakes and salamanders. I guess I’m really just hyping this animal up, so here you go; judge for yourself.

This is the Babirusa (Babyrousa sp.), a pig from Indonesia, whose name translates into “pig-deer.” Apparently, the… impressive dentition of the males look like antlers to some natives, but I don’t see it. While the picture may look like the top tusks grow through the snout, don’t let that fool you. They actually grow straight through the snout. While the males do fight fiercely for the females, the top tusks seem to serve only as ornamentation. While the natives claim that males can hang these tusks on branches to support their heads, other sources dispute this¹.

Despite the formidable canines, these swine are herbivorous, even more so than many other Suidae. Since the tusks prevent searching for food by rooting, they rely on fruits, leaves, nuts, and the occasional insect larva. With this plant-heavy diet, they have developed a complex stomach, to the point that some people argued whether they were ruminants, and thus Kosher, or not².

Unlike most other pigs, the Babirusa only give birth to about three babies a year, and are slow to reach sexual maturity. Add this to the facts that a) habitat loss, as forests are being cleared, and b) they’re a pig, and thus tasty, and you have the recipe for an animal listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN.

Conservation efforts are picking up, though. They’ve recently protected a large area of forest that the Babirusas inhabit, as well as increasing penalties for selling their meat. I even found an economic journal that states that, by their measurements, the penalties are enough to decrease poaching of these animals. Alas, captive breeding efforts aren’t going as well, as many of the Babirusas in American zoos are related, leading to definite genetic problems.

¹I’m always cautious refuting native claims. They’ve lived with the animals for generations, so they’ve probably seen some strange things that the visiting scientists only dream of.
²To anyone reading my blog who keeps Kosher: They’ve decided that the Babirusa is treyf, so if you felt like traveling to Indonesia to eat an internationally protected pig, sorry.

Meet Ya Down at the Crawdad Hole

2008-01-27T20:00:00.001-05:00

I’ve got some exciting news that isn’t immediately related to the EUT of the week, but is still pretty cool. I got cited by Wikipedia! And, even more exciting, EDGE just put up a new Amphibians chapter… and I got cited by them! For the same post! Looking at my Sagalla Caecilian post, it’s not even particularly in-depth, but it’s somehow linkable by pretty big names. Excuse me while I go deflate my ego….

I found this week’s EUT a while ago, but somehow never got around to writing about it. Like a few other of my past posts, if you take a perfectly innocuous animal and make it huge, it slips right into the ugly category. On a side note, I’m surprised how few crustaceans I’ve written about so far.

The Tasmanian Giant Freshwater Crayfish (Astacopsis gouldi) has enough modifiers in its common name that I don’t particularly need to explain its range, its habitat, or its superfamily. Its size could use some description, as it isn’t Giant Salamander or Giant Catfish giant, with a record of six and a half pounds and two and a half feet, it’s still a freakin’ big crayfish, not to mention the largest freshwater invertebrate.

I suppose I could also define its habitat more precisely, as they prefer clean, wooded rivers, and the juveniles are mostly found in headwater streams. Like most crayfish¹, the Giant Crayfish is omnivorous, or, as this site states: “Their diet consists mainly of decaying wood, but they will also consume leaves, small fish, and rotting flesh.”

As a general rule, as a species gets larger, it takes longer to reach sexual maturity, and this is no exception. It takes males nine years and females fourteen years before they’re able to make little Giant Crayfish, and they can live up to 40 years. This, coupled with the completely unsurprising problem of overharvesting, has lead to their decline in numbers, and subsequent listing. The problem of habitat loss exists for the Giant Crayfish, just like it shows up for most headwater species.

Tasmania is doing commendably well in terms of conservation efforts. It has been illegal to collect a Giant Crayfish since 1995, and there have been habitat conservation programs and education programs running around the island in an attempt to save these cute little massive crayfish.

¹I know, I know, not a fish. A lot of the Australian sources are calling it a lobster, and I suppose I could always resort to “crawdad,” but I’ve always called them crayfish, and never thought of them as fish.

Old Dead Tree

2008-01-21T23:38:00.001-05:00

The last time I wrote about something that wasn’t an animal was just about six months ago, and the last time I wrote about a fungus was last March. As much as I hate to admit it, I can see how easy it is to fall into the “cute things” trap. I’m still trying to be even-handed, so I’m going to see if I can push my way out of the snare of zoocentrism¹. In that vein, here’s a rotting log.

Many people fail to think about the fact that rotting logs don’t just fall apart on their own; they need help². Thus is the job of Phellinus nigrolimitatus, which has no common name, other than a wood-decay fungus. It lives in the deep temporal forests across the Northern Hemisphere, and essentially having the same interactions with a tree there as vultures in Africa have with the zebras. The fungus kills nothing, just feasts on the remains, allowing nutrients to be passed back into the soil.

While I have had problems finding information about species in the past, this fungus yields a different issue, similar to the problem I had with the Sagalla Caecilian. There is information out there about P. nigrolimitatus, but it’s all in scientific journals. It’s amazing how convenient ARKive’s format is: listing what it is, where it’s found, why it’s endangered, with a big picture on top. But, since the information is out there, I don’t want to shy away from writing about it just because I’m lazy (or don't speak Swedish or Norwegian).

Its diet consists mainly of old (well, dead) Spruces, as well as a few Pine species. I’m not exactly sure how it spreads from tree to tree, but it likely has airborne spores that are scattered throughout the forest in hopes of landing on a beautiful, rotting tree carcass.

While P. nigrolimitatus may be found around the world, it is only listed in Norway and Sweden. This means one of two things: either Norway and Sweden have specific problems with the fungus, or the entire Northern Hemisphere does, and only those two countries recognize it. The problem, according to many articles, is the fact that these fungi are really only found in very dense, unmanaged forests, where tree corpses are littered throughout. In managed forests, with a low number of huge, dead trees, it is that much more difficult for the spores to find their way to a suitable habitat.

The biggest conservation effort in place for the fungus seems to be the fact that they are listed as endangered, which may lead to more old growth, non-managed forests where they are found. As I stated when I first wrote about a fungus, I’m waiting for the day when there is a United States Endangered fungus. A few states have them already.

¹I know it’s not a word, but it should be.
²We've got a Petrified Forest for that exact reason.

Babyface

2008-01-10T20:23:00.004-05:00

When I started blogging, I told myself that I would have to keep a set deadline to make sure I kept it up. I would write one each weekend, and if I didn’t keep it up, I would almost certainly fall into the trap of procrastination. And here I am. I’m going to see if I can manage back into weekend-ly posts. Since this post is for last weekend, I’ll see if I can crank out another post by Sunday night. It’s getting harder than I expected to keep finding Endangered Ugly Things.

However, looking through IUCN’s list of amphibians, I never expected to see this guy. It’s the Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), whose face appears on many “Strange Animals!”-type publications and programs¹. They fall into that category due to the fact that they exhibit neoteny; that is, they never undergo metamorphoses like other amphibians, but retain their gills and dorsal fin for life. They are classified as mole salamanders (genus Ambystoma), which includes more everyday salamanders, such as the Eastern Tiger².

If you think the name “Axolotl” is hard on the mouth, just wait, I’ve got a few doozies in the next paragraph.
The Axolotl likely gets its name from the Aztec words meaning “water-dog,” though some sources link it to the other Aztec god of the underworld, Xolotl, twin of Quetzalcoatl. With these clues (as well as the fact that its species name is mexicanum), it’s not hard to guess where these are generally found in the wild. Yes, it lives in central Mexico, and its historic range includes Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco, which hasn’t existed since before the Europeans showed up. Xochimilco (National Geographic pronunciation: SO-chee-MILL-koh) is now only a series of canals within the bounds of Mexico City. Understandably, Axolotl populations aren’t quite what they were when the Aztecs were using them as a daily meat source.

While pollution and habitat loss have thrown the wild Axolotls onto the Critically Endangered list, that isn’t to say that there aren’t many left. They breed in captivity wonderfully, and are used in many medical research labs to study their ability to regenerate limbs (wouldn’t that be convenient?).

The restoration of an ecological park has stabilized populations in the wild, and the introduction of the abundant captive bred individuals could bring these salamanders back from the brink. Also, a local university is working hard to save the local wildlife by increasing public awareness, and are using the Axolotl as their flagship species.

¹I, personally, first came to know of their existence from a series called Zoobooks, where an Axolotl appeared on the cover of “Animal Wonders,” I believe.
²Neat fact: other Mole Salamander species have developed neoteny, which apparently frequently shows up where the water is low on predators and the surrounding land is dry.

Swamp Rattler

2007-12-28T15:36:00.003-05:00

There’s an EUT that I’ve known about for a long time that even I’m surprised I missed. In the second post, more than a year ago, I wrote about one of the endangered snakes I found in the road mortality survey in high school. Well, there was another endangered snake, and somehow, it has slipped through a year of blogging.

This rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus) goes by a number of names, such as Swamp Rattler, Black Rattler, but I’ve always called it a Massasauga, which apparently means “Great River Mouth” in Chippewa. By those names, it should come as no surprise that these snakes are typically found in wetland areas, as well as near rivers and streams. They are typically ambush hunters, lying in wait for small rodents to wander within range. Since rattlesnakes are a group within pit vipers, they have heat-sensing organs to find their prey.

Unlike most rattlesnakes, Massasaugas hibernate alone, finding crayfish burrows in which to spend the winter, below the frost line. I don’t know how many of those crayfish are… uh… forcefully evicted from their burrows, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was how most Massasaugas found their over-wintering hole. Females mate in the spring, yearly or every other year, depending how healthy she is. Birthing (remember, rattlesnakes have live young) happens in the late summer, with a litter of five to nineteen bouncing… uh, slithering babies.

While their range stretches from New York to Minnesota and from Missouri to Ontario, they are endangered within each state or province in their range. So, despite the fact that the Massasauga’s range takes up most of the Northeastern United States, it really only exists in small isolated populations. One of those happens to be the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area, where I spent each fall in high school peeling dead snakes off the road. I suppose I can’t really let this post go by without a personal anecdote, so here goes. Freshman year, when we were still trying to figure out what we were doing, and I couldn’t yet drive, Dad and I came across a live Massasauga near the edge of the road. It wasn’t atypically big, probably two feet long. I had been given a two-foot long snake hook, but I hadn’t brought it with me, because I would pick up any non-venomous snake with my hands, and two feet wouldn’t be near long enough for any venomous snake. After collecting the data, we realized that we were supposed to take the snake off the road, so it wouldn’t get run over, which was achieved by stomping, yelling, and throwing roadside litter near it¹.

So that was a little off topic. They are not particularly endangered due to road mortality (I only found four of them in four years of study), but for two other major reasons. The first reason is that people don’t like snakes, especially venomous ones. There are kind, little old ladies with wonderful stories about how they chopped a Swamp Rattler’s head off with a shovel. Reported cases of deaths due to Massasauga bites are few and far between, mostly due to the fact that the people did not get proper treatment in time. The second reason is simply habitat loss, just like for the Alligator Snapping Turtle, as wetlands continue to be developed.

Despite the fact that the Massasauga is state listed throughout its range, it is only listed federally as a species of concern. Most conservation programs focus on the education of the public in an attempt to let them see this snake as a part of the ecosystem, instead of a potential threat. Habitat conservation is also a big part of saving this snake, and there are a few captive breeding programs in Canada working to release more of these beauties into the wild.

¹This was before we started taking photographs of each one. Otherwise, the picture would be much better than the above, or even my other option, this one.

The Delhi Sands of Time

2007-12-23T16:40:00.000-05:00

I think I may have found the most controversial EUT to date. Many websites still call this animal “the only fly presently on the Endangered Species List,” which was correct, until last year. I seem to have a thing for writing a fly post in December, but you’ll have to check back next year to see if the trend still holds.

The Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly (Rhaphiomidas terminatus abdominalis) is endemic to the fine sand (also known as Delhi sand) dunes of southern California. The second part of its name comes from the fact that the adults feed on nectar from flowers in a manner reminiscent of hummingbirds, or, probably more accurately, hawk moths.

Parts of the lifestyle of this insect are still unknown. They are typically only seen as adults. There is a single mating season each year, from August to September, where the female will lay about 50 eggs into the sand. At that point, who knows? The larvae stay underground for probably two years, and may be predatory. I would be willing to guess that those suppositions come from studies of other Flower-Loving Flies (family Apioceridae).

The Delhi Sands area covers about 40 square miles, and it is thought that the Flower-Loving Fly occupied most of it. Now, with habitat degradation and loss, it now lives in 2.5 percent of that entire area. The conservation efforts for this animal, begun in 1993, has stirred tempers, and even gotten a (very brief) mention on NPR. To protect the habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service set aside areas for the fly to thrive. The problem: some of that land is private property. Needless to say, landowners and developers got angry, which, of course, got conservationists angry. To this day, no one has stopped shouting.

Catfish are Jumpin'

2007-12-20T21:37:00.001-05:00

I know I’ve been way behind on my posts. My college has a schedule where the semesters are split into a twelve-week section, typically with three classes, and a three-week section, where one takes a single class and stuffs twelve weeks’ worth of information into it. So, the number of posts has suffered—in November due to finals, and in December due to heavy work load¹. So, to make up for it, I’m going to see if I can put out two posts a week during Winter Break. First up, I present more evidence as to why Ugly Overload has an “Oversized Uglies” category.

This is the Mekong Giant Catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), whose upper size limit is nine feet and 660 pounds, making it the world’s largest freshwater fish. They inhabit the Mekong River, the eleventh longest river in the world, which stretches through China, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, and Vietnam. While the young have the whiskers that give catfish their name, those are lost as they age. I can’t seem to find a maximum age for these, but they can get quite old, considering the generation time is listed as 14 years.

The Giant Catfish is a grazer, eating the aquatic vegetation growing on the bottom of the river, though this source states that they’ll take “other food [read: meat] in captivity.” During the course of their lives, these massive fish will migrate up and down the river, from upstream breeding sites to downstream feeding sites.

As there is a lot of meat on a 600-pound catfish, it came to no surprise to me that one of the major causes of their decline is overfishing; even though that has mostly stopped, they’re still getting over it. Despite this, the Mekong Giant Catfish was moved from Endangered to Critically Endangered in 2003. The IUCN cites habitat loss and degradation—that is, damming and pollution—as the major causes.

Not all hope is lost. In an interview with National Geographic, one of the researchers says that there’s still a chance that these giants can make a comeback. They’ve been working on artificial spawning since 1985, and captive breeding since 2001. These, along with better pollution regulations, could bring the Mekong Giant Catfish back from the brink.

¹I just wrote a ten-page paper on genitalia evolution. Look up the Argentine Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata), if you dare. Or, for that matter, Echidna reproduction.

Up to My Neck in Trouble

2007-12-03T01:35:00.001-05:00

I have found that I can no longer visit zoos without specifically looking for EUTs. I suppose this isn’t a bad thing, as it’s always useful to expand my repertoire. On the other hand, it makes the experience slightly insufferable for people who come with me. Sorry. This time, it was again my home zoo, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. There were a few good turtles, but I had to choose one over the other. One had to fall by the wayside, because a) it is slightly cute (as evidenced by my girlfriend going “aww” upon seeing it), and b) the picture didn’t turn out nearly as well¹.

The Roti Island Snake-Necked Turtle (Chelodina mccordi) is fairly aptly named. It is found on Roti Island, which is a 460 square mile Indonesian island, and it does, in fact, have a snake-like neck. There is even a video of this turtle on YouTube, taken at the Columbus Zoo. Like a number of EUTs before it, it’s creepier when it’s moving.

For some reason, I am having problems finding specific answers to why it has such an elongate neck. It is an opportunistic carnivore, and having a neck it can whip around is probably helpful in catching the quicker things, like small fish and tadpoles. Much like the Map Turtles and Red-Eared Sliders I’m used to, the Snake-Necked Turtle is semi-aquatic, so it typically spends most of its time in lakes, swamps, and rice paddies.

There are two major threats to the Snake-Neck’s survival. The first one is simply the fact that it has a small natural range, so there were fewer of them to begin with. The big issue, however, is the pet trade. Its sister species, the Eastern Snake-Necked Turtle (Chelodina longicollis) is one of the most frequently-kept turtle species in Australia, and the Roti Island Snake-Neck is paying for it. As demand increases, the most economic thing to do is to increase supply, and up the price. Roti Island Snake-Necked Turtles can fetch anywhere from $300 to $500 on the black market.

This is exactly the sort of thing that CITES was created for. Now, any international trade of this turtle requires the right permits. It’s also been upgraded (downgraded?) to Critically Endangered on the IUCN red list. Other conservation programs have taken an interest, and there are breeding programs set up, though some confusions with similar species² has slowed down the process some.

¹For those who are curious, it was the Fly River Turtle (Carettochelys insculpta), which is neat because it’s a freshwater turtle that looks like a sea turtle.
²As infallible as we’d like to think we are, biologists don’t always get it right.

Here We Come a-Wattling

2007-11-22T22:59:00.003-05:00

Well, I had hoped to get this (or something) up earlier, but finals and the end of the semester got in my way. Today, in honor of Thanksgiving¹, I’m writing about an Endangered Ugly Galliform. For those who don’t know the orders within Class Aves off the top of their heads, Galliformes is the order that includes the chicken-esque birds, such as pheasants, grouse, quails, and, of course, turkey². Granted, this week’s EUT is none of those, but it’s the taxon that counts.

The Wattled Curassow (Crax globulosa) is a seven-pound bird that inhabits the rain forests of western South America. They are fairly omnivorous, finding what fruits they can, but mostly eating invertebrates they find in the flooded forest and riverbanks. Despite spending all day foraging on the forest floor, they roost in trees, though specific information on their nesting habits seems a little thin.

Surprisingly enough, the Wattled Curassow has, in fact, a wattle. Around their beak is a set of conspicuous, fleshy protrusions. These turn bright red on the males during the mating season in June. Another visual oddity in these birds is their crest, which, to my eyes, looks exactly like meticulously gelled curly hair. Their white rumps are prominently displayed in the mating ritual, in which the males make high-pitched whistling noises, as opposed to most other curassows, which “boom.”

As I did introduce these as chicken-like, it should be little surprise that the largest threat to these birds is hunting. The addition of shotguns to the arsenal of people in those areas is cited as the cause of the huge population drop of the Wattled Curassow. Human population expansion is the easiest along rivers, and since this is the Curassow’s habitat, they are frequently picked off.

There are a number of people working on the conservation of this bird. A Bolivian Bird Conservation group has a Wattled Curassow Project in place, and they are trying to find suitable habitats. Ecotourism may be used to better protect their habitats, and many groups are trying to determine how these methods might be used for conservation.

Edit: I just found out that WWF has an Eastern Hellbender plushie. This makes me exceedingly happy, and leads me to believe that maybe I should let up on the WWF just a little.

¹The American one. The Canadians actually hold Thanksgiving about the same time of year the Puritans had theirs.
²I just found out that the North American Wild Turkey is the largest galliform in the world. Neat.

Indiana Jones

2007-11-05T21:05:00.001-05:00

There’s a species that I mentioned in the original essay that I haven’t written about yet. Its ugliness is questionable, but there are a lot of people who don’t like bats. I had hoped to get this up by Halloween, but various factors conspired against it.

This is the Indiana Bat (Myotis sodalis), which, as its name suggests, is found in Indiana. About half of the entire world population roost there, with the rest of them spread out among the nineteen surrounding states. Their genus, Myotis, means “mouse-eared”, and includes more common species such as the Little Brown Bat, and three others that are found in Ohio¹. The species name, sodalis, is Latin for “companion,” which is an appropriate name for them, as they roost in groups of at least one hundred individuals.

As far as shape and nightly habits go, the Indiana Bat is like most other small (they weigh up to 7.5 grams), insectivorous bat—hunting by echolocation, swooping after moths and mosquitoes all night, and coming back to roost at dawn. They make their roosts under sloughing bark of dead trees, typically near streams. In the winter, they find caves in which to hibernate. Their exacting standards for these hibernacula (the technical term) are one of the reasons that they are endangered. The caves must be between freezing and 50°F, and maintain about 95% humidity.

The National Fish and Wildlife Service states that one of the major threats to the Indiana Bat is human disturbances of their hibernating caves, much like the Virginia Long Eared Bat. However, even gating erected to keep people out can disturb the environment of the cave, if done improperly. Many people are also worried about their summer roosts being disturbed, or cut down.

There certainly are conservation programs in place to try to help them out. They are listed as endangered, federally and internationally. The major goal of the conservation programs is to prevent the disturbance of the nesting sites. In the Wayne National Forest, there is a single hibernaculum, but hardly a tree can be cut down without at least a few nights of monitoring for these furry fliers.

¹And likely in nearby states as well. What can I say; I’ve lived in this state too long to not be a little biased.

Blacksnake

2007-10-22T20:19:00.001-05:00

In April, I mentioned an Ohio endangered species that got some cable airtime, and rightfully so. Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs¹ traveled to Ohio’s north coast (that is, Lake Erie) to spend some quality time with someone I am proud to say that I (very briefly) worked with.

The Lake Erie Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon insularum) is, like most water snakes, very angry. They’re not venomous or dangerous in any way, just large and inclined to bite and musk. How large, you ask? They can get up to 3.5 feet. This “musking” is a defensive mechanism in which they spray the smelly contents of their cloaca³ all over whomever has grabbed them. It’s not pleasant.

They make their home on Kelley’s Island, a small (8 square miles) island just 3 miles off the coast of “Mainland” Ohio. I suppose that’s inaccurate, as that may be their geographic location, but they really make their homes squeezed among boulders of the rocky coast. From there, it is a short slither into the lake for some fishing. Water Snakes live up to their name well, as they are agile hunters in the water, and eat their share of small fish, frogs, and other similarly sized aquatic wildlife. They may be the same species as the common Northern Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon), but as a separate population, they are entitled to their own protection.

As Kelly’s Island is a popular resort town, the snakes were not exactly the most welcomed of natives. For years, they were tormented by locals and visitors until, in 1999, there were less than 2,000 left. In May 2000, they were added to the Ohio and Federal Endangered Species Lists, and signs declaring “Save Our Snakes” were distributed through the island. Kristen Stanford, in an effort to change public thought surrounding these snakes, has become the Island Snake Lady, and the Lake Erie Water Snake population is now up to a minimum estimate of 6,500 individuals—not bad for seven years. The way she reaches the public is by reaching the children. At one herpetological meeting, she talked about a grandmother who wouldn’t harm the snakes any more because little Jimmy (name changed to protect the innocent) had talked with the Snake Lady, and the Snake Lady said the snakes were good.

Anybody who lives around the Great Lakes knows that the invasive Zebra Mussels have become an ecological nightmare. Well, not long after they were introduced, a natural predator of theirs, the Round Goby, was also (accidentally) brought into the lakes. This didn’t particularly lower Zebra Mussel populations, and Round Gobies boomed. However, the Lake Erie Water Snake seems to feed increasingly on these alien invaders. If the Gobies eat the Mussels, and the Water Snakes eat the Gobies, we might be one step closer to solving that problem.

¹One of my dreams is to have a research job so disgusting that it can be featured on a show like that².
²Another is to host a show like that.
³Latin for “sewer”. You can probably guess what it is.

Dragonfly1

2007-10-15T22:20:00.002-05:00

As an adult, this week’s EUT is a dazzling green aerobat, a thing to behold as it zips through the air, decreasing the mosquito population. As a youngster, it is a brown, hairy spider-like thing that lurks at the bottom of wetlands. It uses a projectile jaw to snatch at unsuspecting prey that swims by, as if something from Alien. It is still ultimately helping with the mosquito population.

The Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana), like all dragonflies (and damselflies, for that matter), are always found near water habitats. Not only are these prime habitats for the flying insects that make up their prey, they provide a good place to raise the kids, who are entirely aquatic. The Hine’s Dragonfly website² mentions that mosquitoes and deerflies³ make up a large amount of the adult’s diet. Since the larvae of both of those are aquatic, you can believe that the Dragonfly larvae eat them. Once they get big enough, the Dragonfly larvae might even go for some small fish. The projectile jaw can be seen in action in this short video, though I can tell you it’s not a Hine’s Emerald. The jaw works the same, though.

The reason that I have no issue posting about these flitting jewels is that, for all intents and purposes, the adults aren’t in danger. The larvae, however, have problems as the wetlands are continually polluted by runoff and pesticides, filled in, and drained. They used to be found in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin and Missouri. They haven’t been seen in Ohio and Indiana since 1961.

The recovery plan for the Hine’s Emerald Dragonfly mostly involves protecting the wetlands in which they’re already found. Many places are more and more worried about the states of their wetlands, since they’re discovering the ecological role that these habitats play. I know Ohio has its Rapid Assessment Methods for wetlands to designate and classify the state of wetlands. In the “Why Wetlands Are Important” Section of this site, it says that: “They are often referred to as ‘nature’s kidneys’…” This is an accurate, if slightly disgusting metaphor, since they filter out all the disgusting chemicals that flow through “nature’s veins.” Just remember, if you throw too much crap into the kidneys, they die, taking the rest of the body with them. “Nature’s dialysis machine” would not look pretty.

Edit: This is completely off topic, but I just found the blog of the people searching for the Attenborough's Echidna, which I wrote about a few months ago. It looks like they're getting close to finding it, too!

¹There are about 12 songs called "Dragonfly." Pick one to use for this title.
²To quote directly: “The ugly larvae have been called little "dirt balls" since dirt clings to the hairs that cover their bodies.”
³Let me tell you, when, while doing stream studies, the desire to do terrible things to deerfly larvae is overwhelming.

Snap Yo' Fingers

2007-10-10T13:23:00.002-05:00

This month, I intend to keep with a theme: Local Water Habitats in Danger¹. I could, if I felt so inclined, spend a good long time on aquatic larval insects. However, I would rather keep from stagnating on a specific taxon, so here’s an angry turtle.

The Alligator Snapping Turtle (Macroclemys temmincki) is the largest turtle in North America, and the largest freshwater turtle in the world; it can reach weights of more than 100 pounds. They inhabit any freshwater area large enough to house them: rivers, ponds, swamps, and similar. Their range covers much of the Southeastern United States, and up the Mississippi River to northern Illinois. Alas, this majestic animal does not make it into Ohio.

They’re called Snapping Turtles for a reason. They will sit at the bottom of the pool blending completely with the rocks. Their tongue has a wiggling wormlike projection that acts as a lure for any unsuspecting fish or frogs. Any animal that looks too closely… WAPOW! The sharp beak instantly grabs on. I wish I could find better videos of this, but a search on YouTube brings forth a good number low quality videos of Alligator Snappers doing just that².

The biggest threat to this animal is hunting, primarily for food. There’s a lot of meat on a 100-pound turtle, if you can keep all your fingers³. Since it takes about 12 years to reach sexual maturity, these slow-growing animals need some time to recover. This, along with the issues of pollution and runoff, are why it is listed in three states, and on the IUCN list. Many states now prohibit Snapping Turtle collection, though it is allowed in others with a permit. The EPA has wetland assessment methods in place to limit the impacts pollution will have on those fragile habitats, keeping the Alligator Snapper and its cohorts safer.

¹There is a reason for this. My senior biology project concerns information that never gets from the scientists to the public, such as, say endangered species that people don’t hear about. I want to involve my summer experience of working with the Ohio EPA’s water control methods. Hence, Endangered Ugly Things: Midwest Water Edition!
²Many of them are pets. I don’t like that. A) They’re CITES protected, which, alas, doesn’t stop domestic trade. B) I’m against keeping any animal with the ability to bite your hand off in less than a second.
³Arguably, there’s more meat if you can’t keep all your fingers, but I’m not going to think about that.

She's a Rock.....House!

2007-10-01T18:29:00.001-05:00

This is going to be another post where I’m going to try to whip up enough paragraphs with minimal information. I know enough about their order, but little about the species themselves. As adults, they look like small, oddly shaped moths.

On the other hand, as larvae, they are strangely shaped, grub-like, and quite ugly. On the Ohio Endangered Species list, there are three Caddisflies (Order Trichoptera, the species are Chimarra socia, Oecetis eddlestoni, and Brachycentrus numerosus). “Trichoptera” means “Hairy Wing,” not to be confused with their sister order, the Lepidoptera (“scaly wing”).

As larvae, Caddisflies inhabit streams and rivers all over the world, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the listed species had a much-reduced habitat range. Most of the life cycle is spent as a larva, usually at least a year. Many species attach bits of detritus to their bodies, such as in the picture, to act as a protective shell. The shape and material of the shell can even be used to classify the animals. To grow into big, strong adults, young Caddisflies will eat most anything they can catch. In fact, some even secrete a silky thread, like their caterpillar cousins. However, the Caddisflies use it to form a net and catch yummy detritus flowing by their home.

Most of that was off the top of my head, after spending the summer studying the small streams (technically known as Primary Headwaters) in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. I know much less about them as adults. In fact, before doing some late night collecting for my Invertebrate Zoology course this fall, I couldn’t have told you what the adults even looked like. Of course, now I know they look like small, unexciting moths that hold their wings so they form a peak over their body¹. Their mouthparts aren’t as exciting as butterflies’ or moths’, and about all they can do is suck up liquids. This doesn’t matter terribly much, because they have at most a month to have sex, lay eggs, and die.

Now, why are these three endangered, as opposed to the approximately 250 other species of Caddisflies found in Ohio? I’m not terribly sure. I’ve got guesses though. These might only be found in a few counties in Ohio². They may also be endangered because the small stream habitats in which they are found are at risk from development, pollution, or the like.

That’s where Ohio is ahead of the game… to an extent. Because the Cuyahoga River burned in 1969, just in the midst of an environmental awakening³, state and federal Environmental Protection Agencies came into existence. Ohio developed some pretty good river assessment protocols. However, in 1999, they realized that small streams leading into the larger streams need to get cleaned as well. Therefore, they set up Primary Headwater Habitat conservation efforts that look at the quality of small streams, which are similar to the ones that our squirmy friends spend their childhood.

Oh, by the way, I noticed that I haven’t gotten a single comment in five weeks. If you feel like you have anything to say at all, good, bad or indifferent, please comment. Especially if I’ve gotten something wrong. I’d really like this blog to be as accurate as possible.

¹I’m sure I’ve seen tons of them before that, I just couldn’t have told you it was a caddisfly.
²Phantom Midge, I don’t know how you found that out for Rheopelopia acra, but that was impressive.
³That wasn’t the first time it caught fire. It was just the one that got noticed.

Hunchback of Colorado

2007-09-23T21:24:00.001-05:00

It’s been a while since wrote about a fish, and I figured out I could search IUCN for all the Actinopterygii, that is, the ray-finned fish. Then found I could order the search by their category. While I found the pretty cool Shovelnose Sturgeon, there wasn’t enough information for me to write about¹. The IUCN has recently highlighted the Humphead Parrotfish, which is ugly enough, but since they just highlighted it, I’ll let them talk about it.

The Razorback Sucker (Xyrauchen texanus) is not too distantly related to the Blue Sucker that I wrote about a while ago. While it has a similar habit of eating organic detritus from the bottom of rivers, this one is lives in the Colorado River basin. It’s also larger, reaching lengths up to three feet, making it one of the biggest Suckers in North America. It has a big, sharp hump that gives it its name, which helps it navigate the fast moving rivers it calls home.

These Suckers are comparatively long lived, beginning to spawn at about 4 years old, and can live up to 40. However, despite their longevity, most of the young are dying early. This is mainly attributed to the large number of invasive predator fish that have been introduced into the Colorado River. Fragmented habitat and dams have also negatively affected their numbers. After all this, scientists estimate there are only about 500 adults left in the wild.

There are conservation efforts in place, many of which revolve around hatcheries in Utah and Colorado. The numbers are beginning to increase, and they’re certainly working on removing the invasive fish from the river.

¹I’m getting pretty good at determining if I’ve got enough information fairly quickly anymore. A lot of that has to do with the number of photos Google has.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Gliding Mammal!

2007-09-16T20:00:00.001-05:00

I don’t have any good quips for an introduction this week, but I’d like to let you know that this genus is much creepier in motion. Start this video at 5:31 to see it¹.

The Philippine Colugo (Cynocephalus volans) is also known as the Philippine Flying Lemur. I won’t use that term again in this post for two major reasons: a) it doesn’t fly², and b) it’s not a lemur. It is from the Philippines, so I can keep with that. They fit into the many, many gliding animals that are given the name “flying ___”³. There are only two species of Colugo, both in the genus Cynocephalus, which means “dog-headed,” which seems to be an accurate description. The Order, which is not too distantly related to the primates, is Dermoptera, which means “Skin Wing.” They’re not actually wings, but membranes that extend from the tips of their fingers to the ends of their toes.

Colugos spend their days in tree hollows. In the evenings, they dine on young leaves, which aren’t terribly nutritious (but more so than the older leaves), and run out on an individual tree fairly quickly. This is all right because, since they live in the Philippine jungles, fresh, new leaves are just a short glide (or not, they can glide for about 100 meters) away. Their hands and feet end in sharp claws for grasping onto trees, which is helpful if you never touch the ground in your life.

Young Colugos are born early and undeveloped, much like a marsupial. However, the mother lacks a pouch, so, instead, she folds up her tail and carries the young there until it can fend for itself. This means a mother can only have one, or at most, two, every few years.

Of course, a low birth rate means slow recovery from any threats that these animals face. The biggest threat, no surprise, is habitat loss. They don’t have a very large range, and the area is being developed fairly rapidly. Since they are wild herbivores, and like a good rubber tree leaf as much as anyone (probably more), plantation owners frequently regard them as pests, and deal with them accordingly. Habitat fragmentation is also causing a problem, as individual populations get cut off from one another, leading to less genetic diversity.

¹If you’re interested in African Hunting Dogs, Indian Tigers, or the Amur Leopard, feel free to watch the rest of it.
²The difference between flying and gliding is simply the fact that fliers are able to increase velocity in midair, while gliders just fall really slowly.
³ Squirrels, snakes, “dragons”, squids, frogs, fish, and geckos, to name a few.

Calling On - Weta

2007-09-11T22:42:00.001-05:00

I was going to write about the Hairy Marron, the fuzzy crayfish from Australia, but I couldn’t find enough information about it, least of all why it’s hairy. So, this week’s post is about the other arthropod I mentioned in the footnote of the Hunter Slug post.

Wetas are cricket-like insects native to New Zealand and frequent (possibly even preferred) prey of Tuataras. The Poor Knights Weta (Deinacrida fallai) belonging to the genus of Giant Wetas¹, is amongst the largest insects in the world. They approach 8 inches in size when mature. As they are flightless, being light is not a concern, and thus, when laden with eggs, they can be heavier than sparrows.

The Poor Knights Islands are two small, uninhabited islands off the coast of New Zealand, apparently named for their resemblance to French Toast. Personally, I don’t see it. The islands are a nature reserve, and the 800 meters around the islands are protected as a marine reserve, and apparently a great diving spot². The trees on these islands are where these Weta live, moving to the ground to lay eggs. They may also live on another nearby island, as a Giant Weta fecal pellet was found there. Please, don’t ask me how they determined that it was from Giant Weta.

Poor Knights Wetas are nocturnal and herbivorous, and their main defenses lie in being gigantic and spiky. An adult female can lay 200 to 300 eggs per clutch, which appears to be a one-time deal in a two-year lifespan. They’re listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, even though they don’t seem to be declining. What they’re really worried about is the small size of their distribution, contained to small islands. They're also worried about the risk of a simple introduction of a non-native predator and its effects. The Wellington Zoo in New Zealand has a breeding program, both as a safeguard against extinction, and for public education.

¹The genus name, according to Wikipedia, means “Terrible Grasshopper”.
²At least, according to the Tourism Department

And the Vultures Circle

2007-09-02T19:38:00.001-05:00

Well, it’s high time for another bird post, and I have just the animal for it. It was mentioned in the Waldrapp Ibis post as another bird seen at the Cleveland Zoo, and I even linked to a picture of it. This picture, in fact:

The Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus) is also known as the Monk Vulture or Eurasian Black Vulture. They’re found in mountainous areas all the way from Spain to the Himalayas. Due to their high lifestyle, they’ve developed a special hemoglobin molecule to help take in oxygen at altitudes where we would be sucking on air tanks. This vulture has even been spotted 23,000 feet up Mount Everest; that’s about 80 percent up to the summit. The tree line would have been about 8,600 feet down.

With an 8-foot wingspan, the Cinereous Vulture is the world’s largest “falconiforme,” the group that contains the true birds of prey. Finding this led to an interesting discovery: Old World vultures are unrelated to the New World vultures; all similarities between the two are a result of convergent evolution. While the Old World vultures evolved from hawk- and eagle-like birds, New World vultures—such as our beloved turkey vulture, or the largest flying bird, the Andean Condor—evolved into a similar niche from storks. This confusion on relationships even led to the common name I’ve been calling Aegypius monachus. It needed to be distinguishable from the American Black Vulture, now considered unrelated, so it was given a name meaning “ashy colored,” thus, “Cinereous.”

While the Cinereous Vulture is only listed as Near Threatened according to the IUCN, Europe¹ classifies it as Vulnerable. The population decline is frequently attributed to poisoned meat set out to kill potential livestock predators, and a general lack of carcasses lying around due to quicker removal of dead cows, which were a historical food source.

Thankfully, European conservationalists have kicked into gear, so the Cinereous Vulture may never have to see the Threatened category on the IUCN list. Breeding programs have been set up in France, Spain, and heck, there’s even a breeding program at the Cleveland Zoo. Due to good management practices, their numbers are increasing rapidly in Greece. Actual direct hunting of the Cinereous Vulture has pretty much stopped because of outreach programs to the public.

¹I didn’t even realize there was a list for all of Europe! Though, I can’t seem to find the list itself.

Crocodile Rock

2007-08-27T23:21:00.004-05:00

Well, I was searching around IUCN’s redlist for a reptile to write about when I came across the legless skink (Barkudia insularis) which lives on an Indian island. Then, I find out that it had been recently rediscovered after not being seen for 86 years. It’s category on the redlist, however, is “Data Deficient.” While I know that these things need to be seen¹, they don’t make for very long posts, and I’m getting tired of writing about things with limited information. Therefore, I hit the redlist again, searching for this beauty.

The Gharial, or Gavial² (Gavialis gangeticus) is amongst the largest crocodilians in the world, rivaled only by the Saltwater Crocodiles of Northern Australia. Gharials can reach up to about 21 feet and weigh approximately one ton. They inhabit fast moving rivers in the Indian subcontinent, where the purpose of the long, thin snout becomes apparent. While many crocodilians are ambush predators (think of the Animal Planet footage of one leaping out of the water for a wildebeest), Gharials rely mainly on fish for their diet. A thick snout like an alligators would produce large amounts of drag, but a long, thin snout can snap sideways, grabbing unsuspecting catfish.

Not that they eat only catfish, but birds, crabs, and small mammals are eaten if they can be caught. This website mentions that the people buried by Hindu funeral tradition in the Ganges river frequently end up in Gharial’s stomachs. By my thinking, this is a good thing, reminding us that, as much as we try to deny it, we’re still part of the food chain.

Gharials have a bit of their own success story, but not quite to the point of the Lake Sturgeon or the Bald Eagle. At one point, in the 1970s, there were about 70 of them left, due to poaching³, and habitat destruction as the population of India increases. Now, after lots of captive breeding and introduction, there are about 2,500 of them in the wild. This still isn’t a big population, but it’s certainly a start.

¹Which is why I mentioned it here, even though it’s not what the post is about.
²I’ve always called them Gharials, so I have no clue why I searched for “Gavial”.
³Their snout is long, with a bulb on the end. Of course people thought it was an aphrodisiac.

The Long and Winding Road

2007-08-17T22:28:00.001-05:00

As of today, I have been writing this blog for an entire year. In the first post, I alluded heavily to the essay I wrote four years ago to apply to college. I decided to post the entire thing here, without changes, as much as that pains me.

Save the midges! Collect the whole set! Yes, there is an endangered species of midge, at least in Ohio. There are also five endangered snakes, four endangered amphibians, three endangered lampreys, forty-three other endangered insects, and twenty-four endangered mollusks in this state alone, all of which get slim to nil media attention. The black bear, newly reintroduced, has made local TV often, but what about the Indiana bat? Or the Allegheny woodrat?

Therein lies my goal: inform the public of species on the brink of extinction that people either do not know about or do not care about. People care about animals to which they can attach certain traits. The bald eagle is majestic, the panda is cute, the black bear is powerful. However, these traits have nothing to do with the species’ importance in nature. The midge, which is most easily equated with annoyance, is a vital food source to many larger animals.

The only way to accurately determine the necessity of a certain species is through ecological surveys, which, as a wildlife ecologist, I hope to conduct. We can only mess up nature so much and get away with it. Maybe we have already crossed that line. The only way we can know is by these environmental studies. The disappearance of a species of freshwater clam could affect nature just as much as the disappearance of a species of falcon.

To achieve this lofty goal, I plan on attending college and majoring in biology, to get a well rounded view of the field. After obtaining my bachelor’s, it is off to graduate school, where I can focus in on my desired field of study.

I have, in fact, already begun the journey toward research ecology. Throughout my high school career, I have been advocating for animals that people have problems finding cute even when they are alive. For the past four years, I have been conducting a road mortality survey of snakes in the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area. This study involves driving all the roads in the wildlife area, which is about thirty-three miles, and recording each snake found, of which, about eighty percent are dead.

Along with the cute and cuddly species, the ugly ones, the annoying ones, and the gross ones have to be saved just as well. We cannot ignore killing things, saying, “It’s just one species of insect,” when it causes a species of fish to die, which is, “just one species of fish.” We must remember we are just one species of ape.

Looking back at it, it seems a little cheesy, especially the ending. Well, let’s look at my track record. I’ve written about two of the snakes, one of those amphibians, one of the lampreys¹, and one of the insects. Remember, that’s just on the Ohio Endangered Species List². In the first post, I talked about American Burying Beetle news posts, Ohio Lamprey plush toys, and Save the Wartyback Mussel t-shirts. Well, I only managed one of those, but if I knew how to do the other two, I would be on them before you could say Nicrophorus americanus.

One common thread you will see between the essay and the first post is the midge on the Ohio list. Its name is Rheopelopia acra, and now you know as much about it as I do. At one point, I asked Beetle Lady if she could find anything about it. She couldn’t. I asked Bug Girl if she could find anything about it. She couldn’t. There has to be something that differentiates this midge from all the rest of Diptera, since none of them are listed. On a high note, when I searched Google for the scientific name, I came up as the fifth hit, simply from a footnote on my post on the Puritan Tiger Beetle.

I’ve become more attached to this project than even I expected, and I will keep at it as long as I can keep finding ugly things that need my help³.

¹The other two were non-parasitic. That’s no fun.
²From which I’ve also taken two other fish.
³“Whenever a beetle cries out from habitat loss… I will be there.
“Wherever a salamander finds a dam… you will find me.
“When a fungus finds it can go no further… there I shall be.
“For I… am a blogger!”

Pretty Fly for a Cayman Guy

2007-08-14T20:35:00.001-05:00

A while ago, a friend of mine suggested that I get in contact with the Blue Iguana Recovery Program to study those intriguing animals. A few days ago, he sent a request for me to write about another animal from his home island¹. And since I’m always ready to take suggestions, here’s a disgusting, semi-parasitic fruit fly from the Cayman Islands.

Please note the little white, seed-looking things around the crab's eye. Those are the eggs.

Drosophila endobranchia has no common name, though if it did, it would probably be something such as the “Cayman Islands Land Crab Fly.” It is, from birth, completely attached to the land crabs found there. The eggs are laid around the eye of the crab. Once hatched, the larvae make their way to the gills, where they have a veritable feast on the microorganisms living there. Afterwards, they wander to the mouth, where they will grab whatever bits of food they can from the crab. When they’ve had their fill, they fall to the ground and pupate. Don’t think they’ve left the crabs alone, though, because, after pupating, they hitch rides on the crab’s backs until they lay the eggs.

What makes them interesting (or, at least, what this article found interesting, I think it’s pretty neat too), is that there are three separate species of Drosophila in three different locations that have given up the usual fruit fly method of eating bacteria off rotten fruit, and have taken to stealing from land crabs. The strangest part about this is they evolved these methods completely separately from each other. One is from an island in the Indian Ocean, while the others (including D. endobranchia) live in the Caribbean, and each of their life histories are different enough to show that they evolved independently.

I can’t find them on any endangered species list, but with the small size of their habitat, which is frequently being taken over by resorts, I wouldn’t be surprised if their numbers were dwindling. Also, my friend is working with a man who likely knows more about Cayman Island ecology than anyone. If he thinks they’re endangered, I’d take his word for it.

¹The entire message was:
Re: Your endangered species blog.
Drosophila endobranchia
Whaddya say?

Gut Feeling

2007-08-07T22:14:00.001-05:00

Well, this week I had intended to write about the African Wart Frog, which is both incredibly cute and unbelievably ugly at the same time. Alas, I couldn’t find enough information about it, so I had to find another amphibian to take its place¹. This one seemed to fit due to the fact that the WWF catalog that I mentioned in the last post was about “Wildlife Families.”

This is an image of the Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus). In 2002, they were moved from their status as endangered to extinct². They looked like the typical grey and semi-aquatic frog, but their name gives away everything they were as parents. After mating, the female eats the eggs. Literally—there is no special mouth-pouch or anything like that; the eggs go straight into the stomach. This isn’t too much of a problem, since the female shuts down her digestive tract and does not eat anything from six to seven weeks. By this time, the frogs turn into froglets, and are ready to hop out of her mouth.

Living in Southern Australia, they were never found more than 12 feet from water. When they weren’t raising the kids, they’d eat all the insects they could catch. Their extinction is a mystery. The feral pigs that reside in the same habitat and the disruption of the water flow obviously couldn’t help, not to mention the problems that global climate change is causing all amphibians, what with more drought and higher UV levels. I suppose this makes the real mystery which one caused the most damage. If anyone was wondering why we care about the extinction of the Gastric-Brooding Frog, medical science will never know how the females turned off their stomach acid. Looks like I’ll have to stick with Nexium. Scientists have been on the lookout for them, but alas, none have been seen since 1981.

¹All right, it didn’t have to be an amphibian, but I really do try to be all-inclusive when it comes to the major taxa. Since it’s been about two months since the last amphibian, I thought it was time for another one.
²I was really trying to avoid using the past tense to make this a blow at the end, but the thought of writing three paragraphs without any forms of “be” seemed too difficult.

Some Crazy Bastard

2007-07-29T19:34:00.004-05:00

I’m sorry that I’ve been slacking; I’ve got no real excuse, but I am having problems finding EUTs with enough information for a blog post. It’s exactly the problem I mentioned in the Hunter Slug post: the species that really need our help are the ones that we don’t know anything about. On a different note, the WWF has once again given reason to explain the existence of this blog. My grandparents just got their 2008 calendar last week. Out of 13 pictures, one is an amphibian¹, two are birds, and the rest, of course, are fuzzy, fuzzy mammals (well, I suppose the hippo and the whale aren’t really fuzzy, but you get the idea).

On yet another note, I believe this plant’s name ranks among the worst possible for a plant. It is the Bastard Quiver Tree (Aloe pillansii). Again, no explanation is given for the name, but it may be a, ahem, bastardization of the local term “Basterkokerboom²”. If you know your houseplants (or skin products) well enough, you probably recognize the genus Aloe. Yes, this thirty-foot tall tree from the deserts of Africa is a close relative to Aloe vera (which is found growing, among other places, rampantly in pots at my parents’ house).

I suppose saying it lives in the African desert is being unspecific. It inhabits the semiarid Karoo³ region of southern Africa, specifically on the north end of South Africa and south end of Namibia. Being one of the very few plants over about a foot tall gives it some important roles in the ecosystem, such as bird roost and food, and moisture provider through its thick leaves. It more than likely is pollinated by birds.

With fewer than 200 plants, it easily qualifies for IUCN’s critically endangered category. Why it’s endangered is a harder question, with answers ranging from grazing baboons to overgrazing to mining--or, of course, all of the above. At least some people are worried about it: International trade of the plant has been banned by CITES, so it struck me as odd that many of the informative sites about the plant were by horticulturalists. Local South African schools received puzzles, information packs, and worksheets about saving the Basterkokerboom.

¹The Red-eyed Tree Frog, only the most photographed frog in the world.
²This is complete speculation through minimal evidence. Don’t cite me as a source for this.
³Off topic: Microsoft Word’s spellchecker doesn’t know the words “monotreme,” “echolocating,” or even “blog,” but it takes “Karoo” without a second thought.

Echidna's Arf

2007-07-17T22:02:00.002-05:00

Six months ago, Greg suggested a few animals which I could write about, all listed at the EDGE website. I’ve already written about two of them and I recently saw some news about the third one that suggests I should write about it. I wouldn’t call it ugly, but obviously someone would, since it’s named after the Mother of All Monsters in Greek mythology.

This is the Attenborough Long-beaked Echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi). I suppose I should clarify that Sir David Attenborough is a famous TV naturalist and a co-founder of ARKive, not the Mother of All Monsters. That distinction belongs to Echidna. Actually, this is the only Attenborough Long-Beaked Echidna photograph. More on that later.

Long-Beaked Echidnas are insectivorous monotremes found on the island of Papua New Guinea. I’m not sure how much my readership knows about echidnas¹, so I’ll give a basic description. Imagine a hedgehog with a long beak to help search for invertebrates, with a tongue like an anteater. Also, they lay eggs, which may seem strange. The term “monotreme” means “one hole,” which refers to their cloaca, as opposed to our… uh… two holes. There are three Long-Beaked species and one Short-Beaked Echidna.

While their smaller short-beaked cousins hunt for ants and termites, the Zaglossus² forage for earthworms in the leaf litter. Echidnas are creatures of the night, and use their strong front claws to dig the burrows in which they sleep. Like the marsupials, they have a pouch, into which echidnas lay one egg. After hatching, the puggle³ laps milk which flows from patches, as monotremes have no teats. The young echidna is kicked out of the pouch, understandably, soon after the spines begin to develop.

The Long-Beaked Echidnas are endangered due to habitat loss and hunting for food. The reason the Attenborough Long-Beaked Echidna doesn’t look healthy in the photo is that it is the only specimen of the species, which was collected by a Dutch Botanist in 1961, and currently spends its time in a drawer in a museum in the Netherlands. Understandably, people thought it might be extinct. The good news is, new evidence suggests it might not be. In the area where they are found, the Cyclops⁴ Mountains, scientists have found “nose pokes,” which are holes made by the echidnas as they forage in the mud. Also, the locals say that they’ve been seeing them for about two years. The plan is to mount a full-scale expedition next year to find and photograph a live Attenborough Long-Beaked Echidna. If I’m still blogging by then, I’ll be sure to give you an update.

¹I’m guessing quite a lot, but that doesn’t seem to stop me from explaining.
²Something to do with their tongues, right, Mike?
³Yes, this is the proper term for an infant monotreme.
⁴Alas, the Cyclopes are not among the monsters birthed by Echidna.

Hunter S. Slug

2007-07-10T20:24:00.001-05:00

Much the same way I found the Astingy Leaf Chameleon, I was searching ARKive for some good invertebrates. I could probably spend a good month on animals picked solely from that section, but the two that stuck out the most were the Pondoland Cannibal Snail and the Snake Skin Hunter Slug¹. Since I was having problems deciding which one to write about, I asked a friend who randomly picked the slug. Don’t worry, I’m sure the Cannibal Snail will show up soon.

The Snake Skin Hunter Slug (Chlamydephorus dimidius) is everything its name suggests²: dark grooves on the skin give it a scaly appearance; it is a vicious predator, eating snails and millipedes, and possibly earthworms. How it hunts, I can’t find, but I’m sure any videos of the kill would be ripe material for Animal Planet. This hints at a serious problem with the Hunter Slug. There’s a lot unknown about it. So, we know it lives in the forests of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, and it’s carnivorous. Other than that… there’s not a whole lot. How and when they reproduce, who knows? What are its major predators? No idea. The Hunter Slug’s only protection come from the fact that they live in a few protected areas.

I know this is a short post, but this lack of information is a big issue for literally thousands of species like the Snake Skin Hunter Slug. Scientists simply don’t know enough about the organism to properly protect it. The only way to help these species is to learn more about them. This is my form of activism. If I can teach people about things that need their help that would otherwise go unnoticed, I feel that I have done my job.

¹Others include the Hairy Marron, which is a fuzzy crayfish, and the Poor Knight’s Weta, which is a giant cricket-like thing.
²Unlike some, such as the Puritan Tiger Beetle, the Hermit Ibis, or the Three-toothed Snail.

Paddlin' Madeline Home

2007-07-01T14:58:00.002-05:00

Phantom Midge¹ gave me a few good suggestions recently, but alas, neither the Yeti Crab nor the Zombie Worm are listed, whether or not they are actually in danger of becoming extinct. There are gobs of disgusting-looking deep-sea critters, but since so little is known about their populations and habits, there is not enough information for them to be placed on an endangered species list. There is, however, an aquatic animal that I had known about for a while, but about which I have neglected to write.

This is the American Paddlefish (Polyodon spathula), which I have seen for years at the Columbus Zoo, and was sure it was on the Ohio Endangered Species List. It wasn’t which slightly upset me, since I was planning on writing about it for most of the week. Turns out it’s listed as vulnerable on the IUCN redlist, so I get to write about it anyway. It lives in large rivers of the Mississippi River basin, growing up to a size of seven feet, and living up to about twenty or thirty years.

The protruding…thingy (actually called a rostrum) from which the Paddlefish gets its name is covered with electroreceptors to help it find groups of zooplankton on which it feeds. The minute prey are swept unceremoniously from the water by the gaping maw of the Paddlefish, and then filtered from the water by raking protrusions on the gills. The fish’s mouth is specifically designed to open to an immense size to filter the largest amount of water possible. Wikipedia suggests that the rostrum also acts as a hydrofoil to help keep the head level in the water as filter feeding occurs, but I don’t really like to cite them as a source.

The American Paddlefish live in rivers, so of course dams affect their populations by impeding their moving patterns. Much like the sturgeon, they have been harvested for meat, and their eggs have been harvested for caviar. Agricultural runoff causes the streams to silt up, making filter feeding a difficult prospect. To help relieve some of these threats, farm-raised Paddlefish are released into the wild. Stricter regulations on Paddlefish harvesting have also been put into effect.

¹Still no blog, so here’s her sister’s link again.

Karma Chameleon

2007-06-26T23:00:00.001-05:00

All right, so this’ll be the second EUT in a row from Madagascar (and third total), but I saw this animal on ARKive¹, and it was so cutely hideous (or hideously cute, I’m not sure), that it needed to be written about.

This is the Astingy Leaf Chameleon (Brookesia perarmata²). The Brookesia genus contains the smallest chameleons, and in fact, some of the worlds smallest reptiles. One picture on this website shows one sitting comfortably on a gum wrapper with lots of room to spare. The Astingy Chameleon, also known as the Armored Chameleon, isn’t quite that small, growing to a whopping five inches.

Astingy Chameleons aren’t quite your typical chameleon. Sure, they’ve got the zygodactyly, the projectile tongue, and independent eye movement, but no color change, and no prehensile tail. Actually, most of the Brookesia genus is collectively known as the stump-tailed chameleons. As a forest floor-dwelling species, prehensile tails are pointless, and, when the idea is to look like a dead leaf, and one is this good at it, why bother to change colors? They enhance the leaf-mimicry by rocking in the wind, and, when frightened, falling to the ground, motionless.

Astingy Leaf Chameleons are named after their home, the Astingy region of Madagascar. Since Madagascar is hot and muggy all year round, there is no real mating season, though it is thought that it tends to occur in the rainier times of the year. Eggs are laid under the leaf litter, where the constant background level of decomposition nicely regulates the heat and moisture content of the nest.

When you first saw the picture, I’m sure you either thought it was hideous or you wanted to take it home. I’ll admit, I was one of the latter--that’s the problem. The pet trade³ has affected chameleon populations worldwide. Granted, the Armored Chameleon has this problem less than the more colorful ones, but it’s still enough that CITES has put it on their list. Deforestation, as the human impact on Madagascar rises, causes habitat to be lost for our spiky friend here.

¹I’ve got to get around to e-mailing them to see if they’ll let me use their pictures here instead of just linking to them. They’ve got the strangest species, all on the IUCN redlist, which is exactly what I need.
²Mike, I’m liking the scientific name translations. Keep it up.
³Hm… this is the first EUT to have a problem with the pet trade. Does that make it cute? Nah.

Secret Agent Bat

2007-06-20T22:28:00.001-05:00

It’s been a bit since I’ve written about a mammal (actually, a month to the day) so I decided to raid the EDGE¹ website, which deals with exceedingly endangered mammals, many of which are, unsurprisingly, small-rodent looking things, simply due to the large percentage of small-rodent looking mammals² (those may come later). In this post, however, I’ll to tell you about a bat with the coolest adaptation ever: suction cups.

Yes, the Old World Sucker-Footed Bat (Myzopoda aurita) has, as its name suggests, suction cups on its wrists and ankles. Because of this adaptation, it can attach itself in cheesy-‘60s-spy-film style to the sides of broad leaves and smooth stems, hence the title of the post. Otherwise, it looks much like any other microchiropteran (echolocating bat, as opposed to the fruit bats), with ears bigger than its head and small, beady eyes. As my grandmother put it, it looks like a bulldog with fins.

There is little known about this bat’s specific habits. It is a moth-eater (mostly) and may require specific broad-leaved palms to roost upon. Researchers believe the glands in the suction cups might produce a glue-like substance (since we all know how long those plastic suction cups stick normally). While most bats are observed by mist netting, the Sucker-Footed Bat (such a cool name!) maneuvers well enough to avoid them, leading to even less certainty about this animal’s lifestyle.

They’re found only on the eastern edge of Madagascar, though evidence suggests it once (in the Pleistocene) inhabited most of eastern Africa. Loss of habitat has certainly negatively affected the bat’s populations, and sadly, there aren't many conservation efforts in place (although just telling you about it has helped the situation just a little bit). Scientists have recently found another species in the same genus, making it possibly a little less Evolutionarily Distinct.

Oh, by the way, the last suggestion I got was that post last month that I talked about. I’m kind of hard up for new ideas. Pleeeeaaase?

¹That stands for Evolutionarily Distinct Globally Endangered, meaning that once these animals are extinct, nothing like them will exist in the world. Kinda chilling, isn’t it?
²Just because I’m describing them all as “small-rodent looking mammals” does not mean they’re all the same. Small-rodent looking mammals are exceedingly diverse.

Birdhouse in your Waldrapp

2007-06-12T19:35:00.001-05:00

I had hoped that a trip to the Cleveland Zoo this last weekend with Miladyofthelake¹ would prove fruitful, and, in fact, it did. Along with the Cinereous Vulture (near threatened—does that count?) and the Lappet-Faced Vulture (vulnerable), I found the Waldrapp Ibis (Geronticus eremita), which I think looks far more sinister than either of those adorably fuzzy carrion-eaters².

Yes, I said ibis, which most of you will associate with the American White Ibis or the Scarlet Ibis, which are much too bright and pretty. The Waldrapp Ibis (or Northern Bald Ibis, or Hermit Ibis) is oil-sheen black with a featherless head and a scraggly mane of black feathers that give it a buzzard look that no respectable shorebird should ever hope for. Not that the Waldrapp Ibis is really a shorebird, aside from being so phylogenetically. It lives in the grassy steppes of Morocco, Syria, and Turkey, as opposed to the marshes that its cousins inhabit. It still exhibits the same eating habits of other ibises by probing the mud (or dirt) for insects and lizards, and when the opportunity arises, small mammals. Completely shunning the aquatic lifestyle, they nest on cliff faces.

So why is it that these poor birds are critically endangered, and confined to three small areas, when it once roamed through all of Northern Africa, Central Europe, and the Middle East? It could be hunting, or nest site disturbances, or habitat loss. The insecticide DDT used in Turkey in the 1950s certainly didn’t help³, but they might be dying out due to natural causes. And these are suggestions from just one source. In other words, people do not know the exact reason why the Waldrapp Ibis is endangered.

Not that that’s stopping them from trying to help them out. Most zoos that house these ibises (and there are more of them in zoos than in the wild) are part of a Species Survival Plan, whose goal it is to breed animals in captivity to be released into the wild. Once there, the Waldrapp Ibis is protected by programs that are growing around them to see that they are undisturbed and happy.

¹I have to thank her for editing most of the posts so graciously since, oh, about the lamprey post in late September. If you can read this without asking yourself, “What is he talking about?” thank her.
²I also found the Sturgeon Catfish, which is ugly enough to cause me to chastise myself for being disappointed that it’s not endangered. I have to keep reminding myself that I should not wish those sorts of things on an animal just so I can write about it.
³It has a tendency to wander up the food chain and kill whatever’s at top, cf. bald eagles in the United States.

Eye of the Tiger

2007-06-05T21:04:00.001-05:00

I’ve been searching for more EUTs; rather, I’ve been searching for a new place to search for them. The Ohio list is all well and good, although a little small. I always worry that I won’t get enough information about the organism¹. The IUCN Redlist has the opposite problem: it’s huge and I don’t know where to start looking. I’m starting to exhaust the U.S. list, as I cleared out the entire arachnid section in just three posts. This is why I keep begging my readers for suggestions. I don’t know how you guys find them, but when you do, it helps me out a ton.

The Puritan Tiger Beetle (Cicindela puritana) was found on the United States endangered species list, and I couldn’t find why it was so puritanical, though it may simply refer to its New England upbringing (just a guess). The “tiger beetle” part of the name is much easier to place, as it (and others of its family) is a ferocious predator, hunting smaller insects. By virtue of their good eyesight and bursts of speed, the beetles are frequently successful. They inhabit the beaches along the Connecticut River in Connecticut and Massachusetts².

They, or at least the males, have an interesting mating strategy. While the actual copulation only lasts a few minutes, the males will mount the females for up to six hours at a time. This is to ensure that their sperm is the one that fertilizes the eggs³. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of this strategy with other animals, but it’s certainly an interesting one. The only problem with that strategy is that it means that the beetle is occupied for about six hours. Beachgoers to the Connecticut River thus have a high likelihood of disrupting their… "relationships." The little larvae live for two years in holes in the sand, grabbing prey that wanders too close to the air hole. Other threats to this little predator include dams (of course), habitat loss, and people walking over the grubs’ burrows.

The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection is working hard to make sure people know about the Puritan Tiger Beetle’s plight, putting up signs, sending out flyers, and generally trying to keep people from coleopteran coitus interruptus.

¹I’m looking at you, Rheopelopia acra.
²Of course! The two states that I simply can’t spell!
³This voids some ideas as to why they’re called Puritan Tiger Beetles.

Reel Big Salamander

2007-05-26T18:20:00.004-05:00

In the footnote for the Sagala Caecilian¹, I mentioned some big, ugly salamanders. Both are endangered, and closely related to the Hellbender², in the family Cryptobranchidae, and the three species are together known as the Giant Salamanders. I’ll skip over the second largest salamander (the Japanese Giant Salamander, Andrias japonicus, you can look up information on your own), and start talking about the largest salamander in the world.

The Chinese Giant Salamander (Andrias davidianus) is visually quite a lot like the Hellbender: flattened body and head with tiny, beady eyes, and folds of skin hanging from its body through which it breathes. The major visual difference, which will cause no one to mistake the two, is that the Hellbender is about a foot long, while the Chinese Salamander gets up to about, oh, six feet or so. This picture is the only one I could find that uses a person for scale. I don’t think anyone will disagree with me writing about this animal here.

They live in the cold mountain streams of China. Since they’ve got no gills or lungs, these streams must be well oxygenated. They are nocturnal, and hunt with a quick sideways snap of their mouth. What they hunt seems only to be limited by what they can catch. The Giant Salamanders mate in late August, where, according to ARKive, “hundreds of individuals congregate at nest sites.” Take a look at the videos they’ve got³. Now imagine hundreds of those things in a single place, mating.

IUCN has a nice long list of why these stream-leviathans are endangered, such as wood plantations, mining, clear-cutting, hunting, and pollution. There’s a BBC article about the poaching problems. Conservation methods are coming into place, as they are a protected species. There’s even a Giant Salamander Protection International website, and protected areas in these mountains are starting to appear. While other people want to make sure there are tigers for their grandchildren to see, I want to make sure my grandchildren get the chance to see a six-foot long salamander. Heck, I want to see it.

¹That was eight months ago! I’m impressed by how long I’ve kept this up, even if no one else is.
²I just got a job studying headwater streams in a nearby national park. My boss had a poster about Hellbender conservation in her office, and I asked if that meant they were local to the area. Alas, they are not. I was really hoping, too.
³I’m sure this is required viewing for CGI animators of Discovery Channel shows that involve prehistoric amphibians.

Golden Nosering

2007-05-19T09:45:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago, Phantom Midge¹ threw a suggestion into the ring. I like the fact that when I complain about having been given no suggestions, there are always a few people who feel bad enough for me and find some. I’ll admit that this one isn’t horribly ugly, but once again, it’s the creepy, creepy nose.

This is the Golden-Rumped Sengi (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus). “Sengi” is the new, fashionable term for elephant shrews, because elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than shrews. All of the following (and proceeding) information I just found while looking up stuff on the Sengi². Currently, taxonomists are having a field day with a wide variety of African mammals. It turns out that elephants, manatees, hyraxes, sengis, golden moles, tenrecs and the aardvark all are related to an ancient African mammal. Everything within is now grouped into the superorder Afrotheria, which, if I’m not too wrong with my Latin, means African Beast.

The Golden-Rumped Sengi is about nine inches long (bigger than I thought an elephant shrew was; that’s about the size of a full-grown Norway rat), with surprise, surprise, a yellowish orange patch on its rear. Under this patch is a thick dermal shield, which is used to protect against the biting attacks of other Sengis. They mate for life, living in monogamous pairs, and they jointly protect their territory. Males will chase off intruding males, and females will chase off intruding females.

The sengis use their long, flexible snout³ too seek and destroy insects and other yummy invertebrates that inhabit the leaf litter in the Kenyan forests in which they live. Being a small, and apparently tasty, mammal they’ve got to watch out for hawks and snakes. They escape by running up to 15 miles per hour, which is dang fast for something that small. After spotting such danger and sprinting away, they slap their tail on the ground as a warning. The predator then knows that it’s been spotted, so an ambush is out of the question.

Living, as they do in Kenya, habitat loss and fragmentation is the major issue facing the Golden-Rumped Sengi. In fact, their range is limited to two patches on the Kenyan coast; luckily (or more likely, because) those places are protected. Illegal hunting for food does happen, but ARKive says, “current levels are thought to be sustainable.” The California Academy of Sciences even says that it is possible to breed them in captivity.

¹She really should get a blog, so I can link to her instead of her sister, who I’ve linked to enough that it’s easier just to put her on the sidebar.
²This blog is as much for my edification as anyone else’s. Heck, in just the last three weeks, I’ve learned to correctly pronounce “uakari,” what the thing on the top of a cassowary’s head is called, and of the existence of a blind wolf spider.
³You should really check out the ARKive videos on this. So creepy.

The Monkey with the Red Face

2007-05-13T18:15:00.001-05:00

Natalie¹ suggested² that I write about the White Uakari. The only problem was the species, the Bald Uakari, was listed as “near threatened” on the IUCN redlist. I’d like it to be at least “vulnerable” before I write about it. But then I looked at the page for the White Uakari subspecies, and, lo and behold, it’s vulnerable.

Bald Uakari³ are a bunch of red-faced, cat-sized monkeys. I’ll get to the face later. The White Uakari (Cacajao calvus calvus) is the subspecies of which has a white coat. Other notable Uakaris are the red one, the Ucayli one, and Novae’s one, all of which are listed as vulnerable. I’m not quite sure how each subspecies can be vulnerable while the species is not, but IUCN said something about changing definitions of “vulnerable.”

Alright, back to the face. The deep Amazon of western Brazil, where the White Uakaris live, is a malaria hot-zone. Pale faces are a symptom of malaria. So, having a red face is the Uakari’s equivalent to a six-pack: I’m so exceedingly healthy, you just gotta mate with me. Redder faces get more mates, and the paler faces, well, get malaria.

The rest of the White Uakari is, well, white. It has a shortish (for a monkey), non-prehensile tail. They live in large troops, up to 100, though there are smaller subgroups within each troop. They are foragers, living mostly on fruits, with snacks of buds, leaves, and bugs. With the thickness of the Amazonian rainforest, they have little need to land on the ground, and spend most of their lives in the treetops.

Being a rainforest species, no one will be surprised when I tell you that their major concern is habitat loss. Human hunting also occurs, which certainly can’t help. Conservation, therefore, is still an issue. Though, as much as I harp on them, the WWF is doing their part to help. They alone are a major driving source behind rainforest protection.

¹Who has linked to me for quite some time now, it’s only fair that she gets a link back.
²Phantom Midge, look out for a Sengi post soon.
³Which I just now learned is pronounced wuh-KAR-ee. I had been horribly mispronouncing it my entire life.

Mama Cass

2007-05-06T15:01:00.004-05:00

Despite my pleas for ideas, no one sent in any suggestions. My girlfriend, who wrote the Andean Condor post, wanted another one on birds, and mentioned an animal that is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous animals to keep in captivity. I like to refer to them as the “Angry Technicolor Ostrich.”

The Sothern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)¹ is listed as vulnerable on the Australian endangered species list. They belong to the group of birds called Ratites, which also include ostriches, emus, rheas, and kiwis. None of them have the keel present in flighted birds, but have developed into strong runners.

They are strong kickers too. All of the ratites defend themselves with their sharp claws on their strong legs. Cassowaries are especially infamous for this. I had heard that they are able to disembowel a person, but I’m having problems finding any reliable source that confirms this. Not that they would eat anyone; they’re technically frugivores, and are a useful species for spreading the seeds of rainforest plants.

The name “Cassowary” comes from the Papuan word for the bird, which means “Horned Head.” The horn to which this name refers is also known as a casque. The purpose of the casque is only guessed at, with hypotheses ranging from pushing through rainforest foliage to establishing dominance. I haven’t seen anybody talking about why they’re bright blue with huge wattles, though.

Cassowaries are solitary animals, though, when they do get together, the males are subordinate to the females, since they’re smaller. The females lay several clutches of eggs, and then they leave. The males incubate the eggs and take care of the young, which look like zebra/leopard/goslings, and are fairly annoyingly cute.

As rainforest animals, the major threat comes in the form of habitat destruction for agricultural and developmental purposes. This also leads to fragmented populations, which has genetic diversity implications. Traffic accidents are becoming more frequent, and nobody wants to run into a four-foot tall, 130-pound bird with a helmeted head. The Australian government has conservation efforts in place, including education efforts

¹The Northern Cassowary (C. unappendiculatus) is also listed as vulnerable, but there isn’t much difference between the species, so I just picked one.

"Will You Walk Into My Parlor?"

2007-04-30T21:40:00.001-05:00

Sorry for such a late post. I don’t have any good excuses; I’ve just been slacking. A few weeks ago, Greg (who also suggested the Siaga Antelope) suggested an EUT for me¹. I found out that its story is unavoidably attached to another Endangered Ugly Thing.

This is the suggested animal, the Kauai Cave Amphipod (Spelaeorchestia koloana). It’s a blind, terrestrial, shrimp-like crustacean that inhabits the small caves formed by gas escaping through the Hawaiian lava². It lives happily on the detritus to be found in those caves. The Kauai Cave Wolf Spider (Adelocosa anops) inhabits the same habitat, except it lives happily on the Cave Amphipods to be found there. They’re only found in about five different locations on the island of Kauai, most of which are on private property.

Everyone seems to find it strange that the government would protect both a predator and its main prey item. Someone even did a cartoon on it, and, quite frankly, I don’t often see people trying to anthropomorphize blind amphipods. Or amphipods of any kind.

Look, it’s not that strange. The Kauai Cave Amphipod is not endangered because the Kauai Cave Wolf Spider eats it. The amphipod has had millions of years to evolve defenses against the spider. They’re both endangered because of Hawaii’s³ rapid development. Y’know, paving over the lava, agriculture, and heavy use of insecticides for invasive species control (and other less noble goals). Protection is just starting, as they only got added to the list in 2003, though they’ve been working on restoring the caves since 1995.

¹Please, please, please keep sending in those suggestions. It makes life so much easier for me.
²Yes, I know I just wrote about a Hawaiian EUT. See above footnote.
³I’m trying to decide if “Hawai’i’s” would look weird. Yeah it does.

I'm So Blue

2007-04-23T07:32:00.001-05:00

I decided to look through the Ohio list to see if I could find anything of specific interest¹. I realized that I hadn’t written about any fish for a while (though it seems I was on a bit of a fish-kick at the beginning). While in the fish section, I came across this blue sucker.

This is the Blue Sucker (Cycleptus elongatus), who populates fast moving streams in fast-moving Midwestern streams and rivers, mostly in the Mississippi river basin. Their mouth is the really disturbing bit: a pink, wart-covered maw used to suck up benthic aquatic invertebrates and some vegetative material. Their streamlined bodies (the elongatus part) and sickle-shaped dorsal fin help them manage their high-speed habitat. Spawning is fairly straightforward, occurring in spring and summer in deep rapids. The eggs are sticky, so they won’t immediately wash downstream.

It’s a freshwater species, so, like the Wartyback, the Lake Sturgeon, the Ohio Lamprey, the Eastern Hellbender, and the Queensland Lungfish, the Blue Sucker has a problem with dams². In the sucker’s case, they’re built for fast-paced life, which is taken away by those concrete constructions³. Silt build-up is a by-product of dams that also isn’t too helpful, along with pollution draining into the rivers. Oh, and, they’re tasty, which is not a good thing for a fish trying to survive, as overfishing probably started the decline in the first place.

There’s good news for our azure friends: their numbers are increasing. Not, apparently, up to what they were pre-European, but they’re certainly on the rise. People who have never seen them before are reporting more and more. The reason given for this? The pollution levels are decreasing, and the Blue Suckers are finding alternative places to spawn. The fact that fishing them has been illegal since the ‘70s probably isn’t hurting.

¹The Lake Erie Water Snake is on there, and I was considering writing about it, since it recently appeared on an episode of Dirty Jobs, along with someone I have worked with.
²Hydroelectric isn’t looking as good as it used to, is it?
³You’ve heard this one, but:
What did the fish say when it ran into the brick wall?
Dam.

Maxwell's Silver Sword

2007-04-14T17:56:00.001-05:00

My parents just came back from a cruise in Hawai’i¹, and I felt compelled to ask if they found any exciting wildlife. They had, in fact, found a plant with this blog in mind. Instead of saddling Florabot with this one, I figured I’d write my first plant post.

The Hawaiian Silversword (Argyroxiphium sandwicense) is a spiky, once-flowering relative of asters and sunflowers. There are two subspecies, the Halekala Silversword (ssp. macrocephalum), shown above, and found on Maui, and the Mauna Kea Silversword (ssp. sandwicense), which is found on that mountain on the Big Island. There are some differences between the subspecies. This means, that to tell which one you’re looking at, it helps to have a botanist and a dichotomous key.

The Silversword gets its name from the sharp, sword-like leaves that are covered with silvery hairs. These hairs reflect the hot Hawaiian sun, cooling down the plant, and the bristly leaves protect the center from predation. They grow on the sides of volcanoes with very shallow roots. They spend fifteen to fifty years growing as a short, sharp rosette, and then send a single stalk up to nine feet high with fifty to six hundred flowers², set seed, and die.

Since the roots are so shallow, goats, sheep, and cattle easily uproot this plant when trying to eat it. Other invasive species, like Argentine ants, are also causing problems. Hikers can accidentally do same, or intentionally. Apparently, hikers used to pick them as proof they climbed the mountains where they grow. There’s no information on when “used to” was.

Lots of people are working on saving this prickle-ball. For example, people at the University of Arizona are currently working on making sure the Mauna Kea Silverswords don’t become terribly inbred after only a few were saved in the late ‘70s. Also, better signage and visitor education has helped remove some threats.

¹I suppose I really can’t complain.
²They’re fairly small flowers.

The Lazy Boy

2007-04-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the lack of post this weekend. Easter at Grandmom's and massive finals next week have conspired against the blog.

On the brighter side, Florabot sent me a link to this article about blind Endagered Ugly cave Things halting production of some iron mines. Read, enjoy, and I'll give you an actual post next weekend. I promise.

Might As Well Jump

2007-04-01T14:45:00.003-05:00

Phantom Midge¹ has given me a suggestion for this week’s post. The name was way out there—far enough that I knew it had to be written about. Meet the Dromedary Jumping-Slug (Hemphillia dromedarius).

Yes, you read right. Dromedary. Jumping. Slug². It gets its name from the fact that a) it has a single hump, like camel, b) to avoid predators, it wriggles and leaps, and c) it’s a slug. It hails from British Columbia, Canada (and a small bit of Washington), and is the first EUT from the Canadian list, on which it is listed as threatened. The Dromedary Jumping-Slug is not the only jumping-slug in existence, in fact, the Warty one (Hemphillia glandulosa) is listed as “of special concern” on the Canadian list.

There is not a lot of information about this slug. It only got added to the list in ’03. In fact, none of the sites I’ve found even mention what it eats, though I’m guessing leaves and the like. The Jumping-Slug’s predators (that which it jumps away from) include: carnivorous beetles, other gastropods, rodents, and birds. The Dromedary Jumping-Slug, like most slugs, is hermaphroditic, which leads to some pretty interesting mating rituals³.

Habitat fragmentation and loss is the major threat to our leaping friends. They can’t move very far, so any fragmentation is a problem. Fragmentation also makes it easier for predators to reach them. Conservation is just starting out, but they’re certainly working on it.

Edit: Yes, it's almost a year after I published this, but I was just given a link to video that shows exactly how these slugs "jump".

¹Since she doesn’t have a blog, I’ll link to her sister, which seems only fair, since she linked to me.
²Yes, I know it’s silly, but I couldn’t help but think of a Dromedary-Jumping slug—that is, a slug that specifically leaps over one-humped camels.
³Here’s a video of (leopard) slug sex. I promise, it’s cool. And not nasty.

Modest Mole

2007-03-25T19:07:00.001-05:00

So the purpose of me writing is to talk about the endangered species that people normally wouldn’t want to save, right? Right; the issue is, I’ve noticed that there seem to be more comments on the fuzzier animals, or, failing that, the vertebrates. I suppose this is why the WWF generally focuses on marketing the saving of the pandas and tigers. Aren’t you here for the fruit flies and mosses? Apparently not. So here’s a fuzzy Endangered Ugly Thing, because I give the fans what they want. That, and I noticed I hadn’t talked about any marsupials yet.

Marsupial Moles (genus Notoryctes, both species are endangered) are, in fact, very fuzzy, at least based on the pictures I’ve seen. The thing that disturbs me the most is that it looks like marsupial moles have no face. Their eyes have more or less atrophied¹, the ears are small, hair covered slits, and their nose has grown a large horny shield. All of these adaptations help the Marsupial Mole burrow in the Australian desert where it lives.

Yes, it looks quite a bit like a “normal” mole (except that it has a flat nose). This is due to convergent evolution, since there were a good 130 million years since the last common ancestor. Since there were no burrowing insectivores on the continent, the Marsupial Mole took over the niche. It actively hunts beetles and ants, though ARKive has pictures of it devouring geckos,².

The Marsupial Mole doesn’t live underground quite as exclusively as the placental mole, as their shallow tunnels collapse behind them and they surface frequently. Females will construct deeper permanent burrows to give birth. Their pouch (called, surprisingly enough, a marsupium) is situated so the opening is backwards, so sand doesn’t get in.

People aren’t quite sure why the Marsupial Mole is endangered. In the early 1900’s, aboriginals traded lots of Marsupial Mole pelts to the Europeans, but it’s been a while since then. The best guess now is predation by feral cats and other introduced placentals. Conservation efforts are just beginning, with the main goal to understand more about their ecology.

Edit: The "Save the Wartyback Mussel" T-shirt is now avaliable for Phantom Midge (and anyone else who wants one) to purchace here.

¹Not really, that’s a very Lamarkian way of thinking of it. Eyes, which would just get sand in them and not be very helpful, were bred out of the population.
²Do these pictures not make it look like something out of Dune? It looks like the sort of thing to burst from the sand and just start eating people.

Mussel of Love

2007-03-18T19:11:00.001-05:00

In the very first post, I mentioned a particular animal and I haven’t gotten around to talking about them yet. It doesn’t have the distinction of being endangered anywhere save for Ohio and Minnesota (though it is threatened in Wisconsin). I wish I could find more detailed information about them, but I’ll share with you what I’ve found out about the Wartyback Mussel¹.

The Wartyback Mussel (Quadrula nodulata) inhabits deeper rivers in the Upper Mississippi system, such as the Ohio River. There’s no real mystery to the origin of its name; it has bumps all over its shell. It hangs out in sand or fine gravel, where it filter- feeds by sucking in water and digesting anything somewhat nutritious. The gills do double duty as both strainers and breathing apparatuses.

Mussel reproduction is weird. The female will hold eggs in her gills³, which are fertilized when the male’s sperm are drawn in as the females are siphoning water. The female then creates a prey mimic, which looks like some sort of minnow, and as a fish comes by to eat it, larvae are released. Parasitic larvae⁴. I can’t find if the Wartyback uses the lure, but seeing as the main hosts are catfish, it seems likely. The larvae aren’t harmful to the fish, but, like burrs from a plant, hitch on (in this case, to the gills) to get away from mom and dad, where there’ll be less competition and more genetic dispersal.

Because they filter so much water, pollution is the major problem facing freshwater mussels. Yes, we’re talking about the whole group. I started talking in generalities about a paragraph and a half ago. Dam construction and pretty much anything that messes with river flow also add to the problem of endangerment.

The Columbus Zoo, in conjunction with people like ODNR and OSU recently built an entire center on freshwater mussel conservation. Granted, the Wartyback doesn’t seem to be listed on the site, but anything that’s good for freshwater mussels is good for the Wartyback. Breeding programs have extra steps when dealing with mussels, since they need to catch and parasitize fish and then release them. The fish likely swim away wondering what on earth just happened to them.

¹Does anyone want a “Save the Wartyback Mussel” t-shirt²? Just comment and I’ll make one.
²I’d make an Ohio Lamprey plush toy if I had any idea how to do so.
³At a science convention I went to, someone’s project was counting the eggs of local mussels. I think the numbers were in the hundreds for each individual. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, and I was counting roadkill snakes.
⁴Not co-endangered, because there are plenty of catfish to go around.

Lichen Rock

2007-03-10T23:07:00.001-05:00

Well, I wanted to spread the love to all the taxa, and since no one suggested anything last week, you get to read about lichens. Lucky you. Well, to what group do the lichens belong, you may ask. The answer: most of ‘em. The major part of the lichen is a fungus, but it has a symbiotic relationship with either an alga or a cyanobacterium (or both) that allows them to be photosynthetic.

I’ll admit the Rock Gnome Lichen¹ (Gymnoderma lineare) isn’t really ugly, it falls more into the category of endangered things you’d never hear or care about. Think about what I tend to write in other posts. What does it eat? Rocks. What behaviors does it have? It grows, very, very slowly, and eats rocks. Breeding habits? A piece of the lichen breaks off².

I suppose some of those are some points of interest, since lichens have the distinction of being able to metabolize minerals straight from rock faces, setting the stage for “higher” plant forms to colonize. A blank rock face with a few greenish growths today could be a forest in 100 years. Or, just as likely, the same lichens that are there today. Not the same population, the same individuals; which brings us to our second point. Lichens are incredibly slow growing. Something like a millimeter a year. They can be used to estimate dates like glacial retreat or ancient landslides. Redwoods and giant tortoises can’t hold a candle to that³. Heck, continents move faster than that.

This particular lichen lives in southern Appalachia, where it likes its rock served moist and vertical. It's the only member of its genus in North America, the other Gymnoderma live in the Himalayas or other East Asian mountains. The rock gnome lichen is extremely sensitive to trampling (despite the fact it lives vertically), and to changes in moisture levels. Many lichens have issues with air pollution, and it’s likely that the rock gnome has the same problems. Scientific collection is an endangerment cause I haven’t talked about yet⁴. What do you do to study something that won’t grow in the lab and dies if you poke at it too much? I’m not sure.

¹Good band name for, what, maybe a bluegrass band?
²Sex, when you’re two or three individual organisms per cell, is kinda difficult. Possible, just complicated.
³And not just because they don’t have opposable digits.
⁴Though a much smaller problem than in, say, the 1800s, when killing was the easiest way to document an animal and get it to as many museums as possible.

Stuck on You

2007-03-03T15:52:00.001-05:00

(Alternate title: Lice Lice Baby)

Well, Stephanie (who I can’t find a link for) suggested whale lice, but alas, they are not listed. I will get to them, because it’s very possible that they’re endangered. While looking for information on them, I came across an interesting term: coendangered. While this may refer to close-knit predator/prey or flower/pollinator relationships, that’s not the relationship I’m focusing on. The species that I will claim this post is about is the Pygmy Hog-Sucking Louse (Haematopinus oliveri). It is a louse that sucks Pygmy Hogs, not a pygmy louse that sucks hogs¹.

This is not a Pygmy Hog-Sucking Louse; I couldn’t find any pictures. It’s just a common hog louse. If I hadn’t said anything, would you have known the difference?

These lice, which live normal, lousy lives (hanging on to hair and sucking the blood that springs eternal from the ground) suffer from habitat destruction. What else would you call it when a parasite’s only host is disappearing? The pygmy hog lives in India savannahs, and according to Ultimate Ungulate² they build/dig a type of nest that “facilitates the transfer of ticks and lice - including one, the pygmy hog louse Haematopinus oliveri, which is found only on this species.” Since the pygmy hogs are dying out due to, well, habitat destruction, so are the lice.

Other animals have this problem as well. All whale species have a specific whale louse³, which must be as endangered as the whales they inhabit, since those whales are their only habitat. None of them are on the IUCN Redlist. The Galapagos hawk has a skin mite that is almost certainly endangered and not listed. Scientists have now used both of these species to get a better idea of their hosts’ evolutionary history. NPR even did a segment (in 2005) about the parasitologists who were discovering the Galapagos hawks’ past.

There are some parasites that we’re too late to save. When California condors were brought into captivity to save them from extinction in the ‘80s, they were, understandably, deloused. Thus passed Colpocephalum californici, the California condor-chewing louse. The article that described this extinction stated that “…charismatic animals hog conservation dollars; the only ethic that makes the condor more important than its louse is its aesthetic value.” This is a good statement of what led me to start this blog, though when a condor beats out something in “aesthetic value”, you know that thing is ugly.

The simple fact that people are now (within the last few years) worrying about parasite conservation is about all I can ask for. Science magazine reported in 2004 that, based on average parasite levels, there are approximately 6,300 coendangered species that don’t appear on any list. I suppose the easiest conservation method is to save their hosts. And watch out for the little guys.

¹Because, quite frankly, who’s going to call an almost microscopic animal “pygmy”?
²Should I be surprised this exists?
³Actually crustaceans that cling onto the whale’s face, creating crusty white patches.

Rudolph the Long-Nosed Antelope

2007-02-25T19:12:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, Greg¹ suggested some animals about which I could possibly write. I thank you profusely for your suggestions, and urge other people to send their ideas. I would never have thought to look at some endangered antelope to see if it was ugly.

Yes, this is the Saiga Antelope² (Saiga tatarica), which I mentioned in the footnote of the last post; it’s the one that looks like that informant from Star Wars³. They are more than just their big nose, but it’s big and ugly enough to make one ask: Why the nose?

It took a bit of searching to find an answer. ARKive states that the gigantic schnoz is used for warming the cold air of the winter, and for keeping the dust out in the dry summers. I don’t just have to take their word for it, since this article (which also has some rockin’-cool skull images) also mentions it (I think):

The enlarged nasal vestibule, lateral vestibular recess, repositioned basal fold, and septal cavernous mass are regarded as a coordinated adaptation to dusty habitats, such that nasal air flow can be dynamically regulated allowing for collection of inspired particulates in the vestibule and thus cleansing of air destined for the lungs.

Moving away from the nose (seriously, stop staring), the Saiga lives in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, wintering in the deserts and summering in the dry steppes, moving up to 70 miles per day during their migration north in April and south in November. Rutting happens at their wintering sites, where males gather up harems of females and fight fiercely for them. I’m sure many of you have heard that most animal fights are ritualistic and don’t end in death—most. The male mortality rate of the Saiga can reach 90%, much of that due to exhaustion. Those who survive start the trek back north to the steppes.

CITES has banned trade of Saiga parts, and hunting is banned in their range, but overgrazing, as domestic ungulates are introduced, is thought to be a major threat to the Saiga. The horns are considered aphrodisiacs, so poaching is rife. Under the Soviet Union, major controls were put in place that boosted its numbers, but since the collapse, poaching has come back into play. Sine only the males have horns, and have their own problems, this leads to a very female-heavy population, who don’t have enough males to inseminate them. The males are already dying from exhaustion; we shouldn’t add sexual exhaustion to the mix.

¹See, if you suggest an animal, I'll link to you.
²The name is almost a misnomer. Taxonomists have argued whether these are antelopes or sheep. Current thought says that they’re an intermediate, halfway between the two.
³The first one, IV (not to be confused with the fourth one, I)

Does Whatever A Spider Can

2007-02-18T00:38:00.001-05:00

After the post on most of the arachnids on the US List, I couldn’t help but look at the non-cave spider. I will get to your suggestions¹, but I’m still trying to spread the love to all the taxa².

The Spruce-fir Moss Spider (Microhexura montivaga) is a small (3-5 mm) member of the tarantula group. They live above 5,400 feet in the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, where it can get colder and snowier than many spiders mind to handle. The prominent vegetation of these areas (surprise, surprise) is Frasier fir and red spruce, and the spiders inhabit the mosses found in association with those trees.

Like most tarantulas, the moss spider is an ambush predator, feeding on arthropods smaller than itself. This does not mean they don’t make webs; they weave tunnel-shaped nests between the rock and the moss. After mating, the males make a run for it, since many female spiders find the male to be a readily available protein. Females stay with the egg sac until it hatches, and will carry it around if she’s disturbed. When the spiderlings³ hatch, they disperse to other areas by a process called ballooning⁴, where the babies extend a strand of silk to be caught by the wind.

They’re not terribly sure why the spruce-fir moss spider is endangered, though there are some good ideas. The primary suspect: the balsam wooly adelgid, an invasive insect that attacks fir trees, which mess up the spider’s habitat. There’s a possibility of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as it’s possible that the insecticide used to kill these tree-borers could also be killing the spiders.

The Louisville Zoo is working on a breeding program, though there are no cute little spiderlings yet. I’m finding enough information that I know someone is worried about the species. Heck, someone even named a debugging program after it.

¹I’m really looking forward to learning more about the antelope that looks like something out of Star Wars.
²There are two lichens that I might have to write something about to spread the love even further.
³This is the actual term for a baby spider. Another Cute Endangered Ugly Thing design?
⁴Popularized by the animated version of Charlotte’s Web.

Heroes in a Soft Shell

2007-02-11T23:24:00.000-05:00

I want to thank people for beginning to send in suggestions. I will get to them soon enough, but I want to step away from mammals for a bit. I had thought of the Ohio soft-shelled turtles, and encountered the matamata online, but neither was endangered. Every time I see a perfectly ugly animal that is not endangered, I get a little disappointed, and then feel bad for wishing this animal was endangered just so I could write about it.

The Nile Soft-shelled turtle (Trionyx triunguis), also known as the African Softshell turtle, lives up to its name well. It lives in slow-moving freshwater rivers in northern Africa and along the Mediterranean, one such being the Nile, though the populations in Turkey are the largest. The shell on these turtles, and others like it, is in fact, soft. They rely more on stealth for protection and hunting than their hard-shelled brethren. They will lie, covered in sand with just their snout sticking out of the substrate, as both a protective and ambush method.

Not that the Nile softshell is picky about what it eats. They hunt fish and snails, mostly, and some aquatic arthropods, amphibians and reptiles. That’s only what they’ll hunt. They’ll eat palm nuts and dates, and there’s apparently a report of four of them feeding on a goat carcass. Unlike many of the soft-shelled turtles, the Nile softshell will live in the brackish water found at mouths of the rivers it inhabits. Nests are dug in banks along the river, or, for the ones closer to sea, on the sandy beaches.

Much like the solenodon, these took quite some time after being described in the 1800s to be rediscovered in the 1970’s. Their population is terribly fragmented, so there is little genetic interchange between sub-populations. Major threats to the Nile soft-shelled turtle include habitat destruction, as tourists develop where the turtles nest; issues with fisheries, since they are both caught in the nets, and will actively attack the nets to get at the fish; and human disturbance, such as boat traffic, affects their breeding habits.

There are certainly people worried about the Nile soft-shelled turtle, as I found conservation reports, and many scientific papers on their habits and phylogenies. The issue is finding them on broad enough topics for me to give you a picture of their lifestyle.

Solenodon is Gonna Get You

2007-02-04T21:15:00.001-05:00

An anonymous contributor from a previous blog suggested I take a look at the Cuban Solenodon. I did, and what I found was not pretty. Perfect. While I did just write about a mammal, I have to keep the viewers happy. That, and I don’t know where to look for my next post. Dear readers, please follow the example held by this nameless person, and give me suggestions for ugly things for me to relate to the world.

The Cuban Solenodon (Solenodon cubanus) is a shrew-like insectivore whose look reminds me most of a scaled down (to 6 or 7 inches) Rodent Of Unusual Size from The Princess Bride. They hail from the southeastern end of Cuba¹, where they inhabit the dense, moist forests. They are nocturnal, relying on their sense of touch and their long snout to hunt.

They use toxic saliva to kill. Yes, the solenodon is a venomous mammal², and its bite is used to subdue their prey—various arthropods. It is also used as defense against potential predators like snakes and birds of prey. Their name means “channel tooth,” which is likely the way to channel the venom, though I can’t find a source for that. Solenodons have an obviously positive impact on people, since their insectivorous habits help remove pests, and they are unlikely to hurt anyone unless you try to get bitten.

The solenodon is another island species that has been destroyed by the introduction of various carnivorous mammals. While rats, cats, and dogs have shown up in past posts, mongooses (mongeese?) have been introduced to Cuba, and destroyed the population. Enough that they were thought to be extinct, since none were found between 1890 and 1975.

Conservation is minimal, mostly relying on the fact that much of their habitat is within two Cuban National Parks.

¹There also exists the Hispanolan solenodon, which is very similar to the Cuban variety, only on a different Caribbean Island. And cuter.
²I swore I had heard that the platypus, with a small spur, was the only venomous mammal. I was wrong.

Davey and Goliath

2007-01-28T19:10:00.001-05:00

A while ago, I mentioned that frogs tend to be too cute to be mentioned here. I was mostly driven to this comment by the existence of the Golden Mantella, a tiny, big-eyed yellow frog, which happens to be critically endangered. My parents suggested that there might be, in fact, an ugly frog out there. I looked on the U.S. Endangered List and found something called a Goliath frog.

At 13 inches and 7 pounds, Conraua goliath lives up to its name. It is found in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. They tend to eat arthropods and fish, though they will eat anything smaller than their head that can be easily caught. ARKive has a picture of a Goliath frog eating... a Goliath frog. I didn’t find any indication of the frequency of cannibalism, though this article mentions it. It also talks about a 10-foot leap, but “it can only make three or four such bounds before giving in to exhaustion.” That is to say, they’ll be 30 feet away from you before they get tired.

The Goliath frogs, despite their large size, are difficult to find. The Cameroon Government allows the export of 300 individuals, though good hunters can find only a few dozen a year¹. This does hint at the first cause of their endangerment: there’s a lot of meat on a 7 pound frog; they have been hunted for bush meat. They are exported for pet trade as well, but since they breed poorly in captivity, this collection does not help their numbers.

Scientists are trying to find more about their habits, and there was an extensive PIT-tagging project in 2004. However, legal aspects will have to come into play, since the Goliath frog is still unprotected.

¹Though, for proper multiplication, it would be nice to have the number of good hunters around Cameroon.