Creature Feature: MONGOOSE!

So I'm in Hawaii, right now. There is flora and fauna that I've never seen anywhere else everywhere. Oh, and I've also caught a few glimpses of a species that one does not expect to see in Hawaii: the mongoose.

Source.

How did I not do the mongoose before? Mongooses are weird little carnivores that  are related to civets and hyenas- yeah, picture that family reunion for a sec. Like hyenas, they are more closely related to cats than dogs. Even the names "mongoose" and "ichneumon" are weird.  Although the Indian grey mongoose is the most well-known, there are some 33-odd species of mongooses, including the meerkat- which I did cover a very long time ago. Mongoose species are native to Africa and southern Eurasia, including India.

Like the honey badger, the mongoose is a badass. Its greatest achievement is taking down cobras. Mongooses are so well-known for this that Rudyard Kipling, the author of the Jungle Book (and the white man's burden) wrote "Rikki -Tikki-Tavi," an adorable little story about a mongoose saving a family of humans from a family of cobras. Seeing as mongooses are cute, fuzzy little things and cobras are cobras, it's obvious whom the audience will root for.

Nom nom nom nom nom....bring the kiddies. 

There's a bit of conflicting evidence about whether mongooses are technically immune to cobra venom or not. Almost everybody will cite that the mongoose has a thicker hide than most fuzzy animals. Most people will also cite a chemical immunity to at least part of a cobra's venom. Regardless, there's not much a snake can do against a mongoose. It's really not a fair match.

This snake-killing reputation has gone so far that researchers will consciously ignore everything else in order to sic a mongoose on snakes. There were efforts to curb the Okinawan habu, another venomous snake, by introducing the mongoose. Instead, it turned out that the two species were not even active at the same time, so the mongooses helped themselves to the native bird life. This incident was so famous that it remains a roadshow staple, and even got woven into Pokemon's Zangoose and Seviper. Y'know, even though it was an epic failure.

Image cropped from a Bulbapedia scan. N.B.- Zangoose has Immunity, and an overall better stat spread than Seviper. Once again, this is not a fair match.

Speaking of epic fail, introducing a mongoose to an island for any reason is a bad idea 99% of the time. Even if your excuse is rodent or snake control, mongooses are versatile little buggers. They don't really look to kill snakes as much as honey badgers do; if there's easier prey, they'll take it. Although they can kill venomous snakes pretty easily, the same really goes for almost anything smaller than the mongoose. The Hawaiian o'-o', among other birds, fell prey to the mongoose because they had no defenses against any predators. They had originally been brought over to kill rats and other vermin, but screw that- those birds had nothing to protect them. It's like choosing from a pre-packaged steak or getting out there and shooting the cow yourself. Maybe people trying to control pests should think of things that way!

Thing is, Hawaii also has Stitch. Mongooses are pretty awesome, but Stitch is immune to everything but water. Game, set, match, mongoose.

[Unfortunately, I could not find an image of Stitch VS a mongoose. You'll have to use your imagination. ]

Creature Feature: Zebra Mussels.

All too often, this blog will feature something awesome and cool that is going extinct. The rarest, most beautiful things in nature tend to be the things that humans wipe out.

This post will be different. You are invited to kill today's creature in any way you like.



Ladies and gentlemen, meet the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha). Zebra mussels are small bivalves no larger than two inches in length, native to the Caspian and Black Seas in Eurasia. Although unremarkable to look at, here in Chicago, they are quite common...and shouldn't be. Go back to Russia!

Much like the Japanese beetles, zebra mussels are a problematic invasive species. They arrive on boat hulls and spawn quickly, easily encrusting pipes and anything else their microscopic larvae happen to land on. They have not only taken over the Great Lakes, but have also been sighted in Britain, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Sweden. Soon they will take over the world and there will not be much that we can do about it.

In Soviet Russia, mussel eats you.

Zebras mussels hurt ecosystems primarily by replacing existing mussel species. They spawn easily and quickly with fresh additions to the gene pool from passing ships. This strips native species of resources and leaves too much food for predators of said native species to handle. They're like new neighbors who play loud music at night, no matter how many people yell at them.

Putting the fishes aside for now, the zebra mussels get into human equipment. They encrust boats, docks, power plants, and anything else that touches their lake. Water purification plants are hit particularly hard, with the estimated damages in Britain being over 500,000 pounds. You don't need a currency converter to know that's a lot of damage.

No, they don't EAT metal, just make it unusable.

Crush them. Eat them. Set them on fire. We don't hate them, but they really shouldn't be in these ecosystems! The good news is that they are slowly being overridden by the quagga mussel...

...wait, that isn't good news!

Creature Feature: Arctic Fox.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Ho ho ho and all that! Celebrate the season with Coca-Cola, even though it's available all year round and the company thinks that all cold-friendly animals live on the North Pole!


(They live, literally, on  opposite sides  of the world...but it's STILL SO CUTE!)

Ever notice how much hubbub there is around the polar bear? Sure, it is tragic to lose an apex predator to global warming, and global warming is more likely than not (only) our problem, but what about those other cool animals that live up North? They have all had to adapt to a cold, unforgiving environment. If you thought that humans having to deal with malaria in Africa sucked, try living in a place where the sun doesn't shine for a month.


Also, look at the marketing potential for this pretty critter! BEAUTIFUL!

Amidst snow leopards, polar bears, and wolves, the Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopus) is often forgotten as a cold-weather predator. Given the rising population of foxes (which are almost all Reds - don't be fooled just because they're from Japan!), they should be getting more attention.

I know what you're thinking: "It's a fox and it's white. So what?"


It's not even white all the time.

"So what?" That's like saying "polar bears are just white bears." Arctic foxes have a number of other differences from normal foxes, such as body proportions (they're chubby) and large feet similar to those of snowshoe hares that keep them from sinking into the snow. They have extremely acute hearing that allows them to hear prey beneath the snow. These are foxes so well-adapted to the Arctic climate that they are the only land mammals native to Iceland.

Foxes are predators. Arctic Foxes will eat almost any mammals they can find, including snowshoe hares, as well as carrion and polar bear feces, but are especially fond of lemmings. They can eat dozens of lemmings every day. Disney did not need to kill off all the lemmings that they did; the foxes do a pretty good job. No fancy filmwork required.


NOM.

Like the polar bear, the Arctic Fox is slowly disappearing. Besides global warming affecting its habitat, the larger Red Fox has taken over some of its territory (thanks largely to the decreased wolf population). They are also all but gone from areas in which humans have settled. One subpopulation was nearly eradicated by a dog tick. Blah, blah, blah, humans suck and wiped out a perfectly good recessive trait. At least the endangered-ness is restricted to only a few select populations.

Creature Feature: Aurochs.

Sorry to disappoint any of you, but there will be no particularly awesome videos this entry. No Youtuber has ever captured this animal alive on film.

That's because it's extinct.

If you do not already know what an aurochs is, you will probably be surprised to learn that it is, of all things, a cow. THE first cow.


It kicked ASS.

Aurochs first appeared in the Pleistocene era, covering much of the Eurasian continent. Like much of the Pleistocene megafauna, humans contributed to their extinction. That's right: cows used to be big enough to be considered dangerous megafauna. It makes one wonder who, exactly, had the bright idea to take their milk.


Don't. Even. THINK about it.

The aurochs was domesticated around 6000 B.C. and still widespread enough in Europe to be used in the Roman battle arena. After that, they were over-hunted to extinction - even when hunting later became restricted, it was too little, too late. The last aurochs, a female, died in the forests of Poland of natural causes in 1627.

The aurochs is the origin of all European (taurine) cattle breeds. It is well-recorded in art going all the way back to cave paintings. Possibly because of this close relationship and early domestication, the first character of the Phoenician alphabet was an image of a bull's head.



Why the hell am I talking about a dead animal, then? It's pushing up daisies. It has ceased to be. IT is an EX-bovine!


(Oh, it's just pinin' for the fjords!)

There are a number of parties trying to, in some way, shape or form, resurrect the aurochs. The German Heck brothers attempted to make a breed of cattle phenotypically similar to the aurochs of old, but many say that truly breeding back is an exercise in futility. Poland also has an institute devoted to resurrecting the aurochs, making it the only cool thing they've ever donr.


Heck cattle.

An aurochs-based "Jurassic Park" scenario is another possibility. As of this year (no, seriously, THIS YEAR), scientists have mapped a full mitochondrial sequence from a single aurochs bone.

However, this begs the question: As with Jurassic Park, do we really want to have cattle a little smaller than elephants? Sure, in this case it was our bad, but cattle are already big animals. There would be little point in recreating a nigh-mythical animal except for, well, profit. That is a cash cow.

When I say "nigh-mythical," I mean it. The aurochs, now extinct, has been a religious figure ever since humans started drawing things on cave walls. Its curved horns were seen as a representation of the lunar crescent and a bull's skull resembles the female reproductive tract. (Seriously, check that one out - it's freaky.) The constellation Taurus has always been seen as a bull's head. The Golden Calf mentioned in the Bible probably refers to the many pagan bull idols.


Humans have also been using it in Magic:the Gathering since the dawn of time.

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." - This may be from a novel about pedophilia, but when a cow is put up there alongside angels and art, you know it's special.