Tetrapod Zoology

Stinky seal-ducks. Amazing waterfowl facts part IV

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:58:00 -0500

More waterfowl weirdness...

Most waterfowl can walk fine on land, and the majority of species are pretty agile in terms of their terrestrial abilities. But some species are so specialised for life on water, and have their legs placed so far back on their bodies, that any terrestrial abilities are poor, if not hilarious. One often reads of how divers (or loons) are only able to move on land with an awkward shuffle; less well known is that some waterfowl are pretty much the same.

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Detachable wing-daggers. Amazing waterfowl facts part III

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:00:10 -0500

Another waterfowl fact. This one is gonna be brief. In the previous article we looked at the wing spurs of Plectropterus. They're pretty cool, but they're far from unique, and even more incredible are the much larger, dagger-like spikes seen in screamers...

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Death by toxic goose. Amazing waterfowl facts part II

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 05:09:00 -0500

Yesterday we looked briefly at goose digestion. Pretty incredible stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. Hey: wouldn't it be weird if some waterfowl were poisonous? Yeah, wouldn't it. Well... guess what?

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Can you raise reindeer on goose shit? Amazing waterfowl facts part I

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:05:42 -0500

I've just been writing about waterfowl for the day job. Which is fine, because waterfowl are among my favourite animals (as if that isn't obvious from Tet Zoo... what, you mean it isn't obvious?). Entirely because they're on my mind at the moment, here is the first of several, entirely random waterfowl facts...

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A 'demonic Quetzalcoatlus' skeleton!

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:13:00 -0500

I said in the freaky giraffoid Barosaurus article that I had one last thing to say on the 'demonic Quetzalcoatlus' meme. It's pretty incredible. Yes, world, I give you: an actual skeleton of a real 'demonic Quetzalcoatlus'. Well, a published drawing of one, anyway...

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The most inconvenient seal

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:26:05 -0500

How the hell did seals get into Lake Baikal? Actually, if you're a long-time reader you'll know the answers that have been put forward (note there that I didn't say "you'll know the answer"), as I covered this issue back in 2006 on Tet Zoo ver 1. In the interests of recycling old stuff and saving myself valuable time and effort, here's that article again...

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The 'freaky giraffoid Barosaurus' meme

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 06:46:00 -0500

Lately I've become quite fond of those really weird depictions of fossil animals that were utterly, utterly wrong, yet somehow managed to persist in the literature for decades. Last time round, we saw how the meme of the 'demonic Quetzalcoatlus' passed from artist to artist, and had its genesis in a single, speculative illustration. Here's another example of the same sort of thing: during the 1970s, 80s and 90s the diplodocid sauropod Barosaurus was repeatedly depicted as a very, very strange beast...

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A 'consensus cladogram' for artiodactyls

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:49:00 -0500

Here's a very simplified 'consensus cladogram' for Artiodactyla: hey, just like it says in the title. Obviously, it only features living taxa. The reference cited on the side (it's a slide from a talk about hoofed mammal evolution) is...

Price, S. A., Bininda-Emonds, O. R. P. & Gittleman, J. L. 2005. A complete phylogeny of the whales, dolphins and even-toed hoofed mammals (Cetartiodactyla). Biological Reviews 80, 445-473.

Discuss!

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A new angle for hippos

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:17:00 -0500

Here's a pretty weird looking photo; it comes courtesy of Markus Bühler (of Bestiarium) and was taken at Berlin Zoo. I don't think I'm spoiling the surprise by saying that it shows a Hippopotamus amphibius....

... albeit a peculiar individual who seems to suffer from prolapsed tissue around the corners of her mouth. Initially I was going to use this view of a hippo to say something smart about the whippomorph hypothesis, but.. naaah. With a bit of photoshopping, I'm sure someone could make the picture look like it portrays some kind of horrendously ugly water monster. Maybe cropping the limbs off would do the job. Anyway, weird no?

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Ptychozoon: the geckos that glide with flaps and fringes (gekkotans part VIII)

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:04:00 -0500

In the previous few gekkotan articles we looked at the seriously weird and highly distinctive leaf-tailed geckos of Madagascar. There's another group of especially unusual, highly notable gekkonid gekkotans I want to write about: the flying, gliding or parachute geckos (Ptychozoon) of south-east Asia and India. These geckos are weird: the adjacent pic (widely available online, but only at frustratingly small size; it's credited to Tim Macmillan/John Downer) makes them look like tiny screaming dragons...

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Inside Nature's Giants, series 2

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 05:27:00 -0500

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Testing the flotation dynamics and swimming abilities of giraffes by way of computational analysis

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:57:00 -0500

One of the most significant papers ever published in the annals of science appeared recently; it deals, for the first time ever, with one of the biggest scientific questions ever faced by the scientific community, and uses cutting-edge technology and awesome powers of deductive reasoning and logic to reach shocking, paradigm-shifting conclusions. I refer, of course, to Don Henderson and Darren Naish's Journal of Theoretical Biology article 'Predicting the buoyancy, equilibrium and potential swimming ability of giraffes by computational analysis'. I'm sure you've already read it and have joined the Facebook group, but for the few of you that aren't familiar with this sure-to-win-awards marvel of the peer-review system, here's the low-down...

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Origin of the evil, demonic Quetzalcoatlus revealed

Mon, 31 May 2010 06:15:21 -0500

If you're a regular reader you'll have seen the recent article on those freaky, terrifying versions of the azhdarchid pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus from the 1970s and 80s. We looked at Guy Michel's version from 1979 and Richard Orr's spectacularly colourful rendition from 1984. My friend Paul Glynn reminded me recently that there's another version out there: Bob Hersey's purple Quetzalcoatlus from David Norman's 1980 Spotter's Guide to Dinosaurs & Other Prehistoric Animals (Norman 1980). I show it here. Again, freakin' terrifying.

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In which the Conakry Monster carcass leads to a digression on 'tubercle technology'

Sun, 30 May 2010 08:42:00 -0500

Yet another 'sea monster carcass' was brought to my attention recently (thanks Paul), and in the interests of tradition and of bringing it to a wider audience I thought I should include it here (I'm very late to the party: Cryptomundo discussed the case when it broke three years ago). Dubbed the 'Conakry Monster', it washed up on the coast of Guinea in May 2007. It was described as being a gigantic crocodile/lizard monster with an armoured back, fur, a long tail and 'four paws'! The blackened surface to the skin led some people to think that it might have been burnt... somehow.

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The internet sensation that is the Big Trout Lake Monster

Thu, 27 May 2010 21:14:00 -0500

Yet again, a waterlogged, partially decomposed mammal carcass has become "an internet sensation" (to quote the popular media), and yet again people are saying it might be a new 'Montauk monster', or a Chupacabras, or a relative of Nessie, or Ogopogo, or a baby sasquatch, or some other sort of ungodly monster. The back-story is that the carcass was pulled from the water of Big Trout Lake near the community of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Ontario, earlier in May this year. It's a rather small (30 cm total length), dark-brown mammal carcass that's lacking hair on its face and at least one of its hands.

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