Creature Feature: Egyptian Fruit Bat.

 At Brookfield Zoo, there used to be a cage of free-flight fruit bats. Ah, memories, sure, people got urinated on, but it was an amazing experience. Still, we never got good shots like in this video. My admiration of that camera work and that bat knows no bounds.

Bart up there is an Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus). It has a very wide range, spanning from Africa to Pakistan and India. As the name would imply, it eats fruit - insect-damaged fruit at that. This is pretty average as far as fruit bats go. In fact, it's small by fruit bat standards. That just makes it, well...adorable.

Egyptian fruit bats are among the very few megabats to use echolocation. Bats 101: echolocation is a means of using sound like sight. The best way I have seen it described would be like a blindfolded human bouncing a tennis ball against a wall to "see" exactly how far away said wall is; it is a difficult thing for humans to imagine. We utilize a similar method in the form of sonar. It looks like these bats can probably see and smell fairly well, too. They also communicate vocally amongst themselves, meaning that a roosting colony can get very chatty indeed.

Anyone who loves bats can tell you how ecologically-important they are. For fruit bats, that significance is on par with hummingbirds and bees: they're pollinators and seed dispersers. In the case of Egyptian fruit bats, they help keep the baobab population up. The trees are more endangered than the actual bats. They still do not deserve to be poisoned on sight; we just happen to have coinciding tastes in food. 

Egyptian fruit bats can be found in the exotic pet trade and are considered one of the easier bats to keep. They breed readily in captivity, but you need at least ten to constitute a colony, as well as space enough for a walk-in cage. They are not recommended for your average person. There is absolutely no need to buy an import if you really want one; in fact, wild fruit bats may carry a disease similar to Ebola, so best avoid imports entirely.  Better still, however, buy a bat house for your backyard. Enjoy some wild bats before attempting to keep them.

Bio-Art: Snakeskin Nails.

***NOTE: Apologies for not doing an entry yesterday. There were two successive power outages that more or less prevented it from getting posted. Tuesday will have a double-header to make up for it. ***

As a person, nail art is one of the few forms of "makeup" I get remotely excited about. Time not withstanding, it's one of the easier types of body decoration out there. I also happen to be a reptile keeper who enjoys the aesthetic qualities and personalities of her serpents. So, naturally, snakeskin as a nail design tool caught my attention.

To clarify, this is not done with the skin of the snake as seen on handbags or shoes. Snakes occasionally shed their entire skins, leaving behind ghostly husks of their former selves that quickly dissolve into nothingness. This habit of appearing dead for a few days and emerging from the shed with a shiny new coat of scales has led the snake to be seen as a symbol of immortality.

The first technique I heard of involved, somehow, heat-cracking the snakeskin. My immediate thought was that this would make fragile, lacy skins shrivel up and burn after just a few minutes. Maybe this was just in order to sanitize the sheds, but it did not make initial sense. It makes more sense after seeing how it was done in this video:



The technique is actually simple, albeit time-consuming: cut some shed skins to the parameters of your nails and stick 'em on, sealing them with either a fancy sealant like Terri has or, for us cheapasses, with clear nail polish. Try it with a colorful undercoat if you're feeling creative; the hint of brown or gold natural in pigmented sheds looks quite cool. (Yes, I just tried some of my own sheds on my nails.)

The bitch of the treatment is the price: 300 USD and over two hours' worth of time. Also, you'd think that this woman could market it better; just call it "dragon nails" instead of snakeskin and a whole new pile of money would appear. Plus, it's Year of the Snake; this woman should be rolling, just for finding a use for a skin that most people would toss into the trash.

P.S.- Yes, there are easier, cheaper ways to get the snakeskin look. I found a few red herrings while looking for that link.

Newsflash 2: Many Finding Nemo Species Endangered.

Now for something completely different but nonetheless heartbreaking: A lot of the species in  Finding Nemo are in danger of going extinct. Scientific American put out this little tidbit in 2011:

"One in every six species related to characters in the movie Finding Nemo is threatened by extinction, according to a new study out today. The authors examined the extinction risk of 1,568 species within 16 families of well-known marine animals represented in the 2003 Academy Award-winning animated film.

All species of marine turtles (“Squirt” and “Crush”) and more than half of all hammerhead sharks (“Anchor”), mackerel sharks (“Bruce” and “Chum”), and eagle rays (“Mr. Ray”) are threatened. Seahorses (“Sheldon”) are the most threatened group of bony fish in Finding Nemo, with two in five species at risk of extinction. Clownfish aren’t safe now, either, and they certainly weren’t in 2003 after the film’s release when local RotoRooter dispatch centers received calls from families whose kids flushed the fish after watching the movie. Charisma, in other words, is not enough. Despite a demonstrated need for conservation action, regulation of trade in endangered marine species is severely deficient for those with high economic value, like sharks."

- Source. 


So even though the film reeeeeaaaalllly pushed "kids, don't snag fish straight from the reef," a bunch of kids went and did it because NEMO! Yes, clownfish are adorable. No, one should not go all the way out to the reef to get one of a kid who has not kept anything beyond a goldfish. Aquariums are complex, difficult to maintain systems, with saltwater (as Nemo's would be) being even harder than fresh. Not cool.

It also really doesn't help that Australia has been hit hardest by global climate change. Much of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering from bleaching - not tossing bleach in there, but a strange whitening of the coral. It's pretty much the equivalent of chopping down an underwater rainforest.Yeah, that pretty reef in the movie won't be around much longer.

Remember, do your homework when buying exotic fish. Buy captive-bred only. The reef's suffering enough; harvesting is the last thing it needs.

Newsflash 1: Kraft Mac n' Cheese Contains Toxic Dyes.

So, for today, I found two entries that really struck me as news. They're both eye-openers, both relate closely to modern culture, and both deserve to be shamelessly whored on as many blogs as humanly possible. This entry is almost like an extra dose of "They Actually Eat That," and the candidate will surprise you: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Here's the skinny, as per Change.org:

 
"We recently discovered that several American products are using harmful additives that are not used – and in some cases banned – in other countries. One of those products is an iconic staple that almost every American, us included, has had at one time or another: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in the US contains the artificial food dyes Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. These unnecessary – yet potentially harmful - dyes are not in Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in other countries, including the UK, because they were removed due to consumer outcry. Kraft reformulated their product for the UK, but not for their fellow American citizens.

It’s time we demand the same here in the US!

Note: Yellow 5 (labeled as tartrazine) is also used in these products in Canada, and we're sure they don't want to have it in their food either!

Artificial food dyes...

- Are man-made in a lab with chemicals derived from petroleum (a crude oil product, which also happens to be used in gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt, and tar).

- Require a warning label in other countries outside the US.

- Have been banned in countries like Norway and Austria (and are being phased out in the UK).

- Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are contaminated with known carcinogens (a.k.a. an agent directly involved in causing cancer).

- Cause an increase in hyperactivity in children.

- Have a negative impact on children’s ability to learn.

- Have been linked to long-term health problems such as asthma, skin rashes, and migraines.

- Add absolutely no nutritional value to the foods we are eating and are solely used for aesthetic purposes only.

To prove this last point we personally tested both the US and UK versions of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and found virtually no difference in color or taste."

Hyperactivity and a negative impact on learning? No wonder we're a nation of idiots. People also say that ADD is fake. Now we see why.

The petition can be signed here. A video dwells therein as well. Sign it; American food is more poison than food.

Creature Feature: Leaproach.

Sure, they'll never get an awesome story glamourizing how awesome they are at surviving, but you still have to admire that cockroaches are so good at surviving that they've been around, and will be around, longer than we have or ever will.

Oh, and they have evolved to leap. Wait, what?



Yes, in 2011, a leaping cockroach (Saltoblattella montistabularis) - "leaproach," if you will- was discovered in Africa. If it's any comfort, it feeds on grasshopper droppings. Come off it- anyone who has done research beyond the school books knows that plenty of animals literally eat crap. It is not even an inch long, so should you be in South Africa and come across one, there's a good chance you will not even notice its existence.

This creature is not a grasshopper. It is, however, an astounding example of convergent evolution - looks like a grasshopper, hops like a grasshopper, but isn't a grasshopper. Instead, it is a cockroach with grasshopper traits and the astounding superpowers of cockroaches. It can jump up to 50 times its body length, and living entirely on excrement is also quite the feat.

Believe it or not, leaping cockroaches used to be a common thing. Until this discovery, they had not been seen since the Jurassic Period. Part of me also wonders if some of them might have survived long enough to make it into the Bible and appear as one of the plagues in Exodus - even though locusts are totally another creature. This is still a horror-roach that deserves some terrifying mention.

But wait, is it? This cockroach is hardly a pest. It feeds off of the crap of pests, but is not a pest in itself. It's tiny. I daresay it's almost cute. And hey, roaches aren't all that bad; they're just better survivalists than we are. Maybe we should embrace the cute roach and treat it as a peace offering - riiight before the insects conquer us for real. Yeah, still waiting on that.

They Actually Eat That: How Hot Dogs and Orange Juice Are Made.

This week is another "different" entry. I am not covering yet another random, gross food from China. Rather, this "They Actually Eat That" will make you look at regular food differently. Let's start with a popular gross-out favorite: hot dogs.



For those of you who cannot see the above video, here's a little summary: a hot dog is comprised of miscellaneous meat trimmings, corn syrup, salt, and water. They are then mixed into a sort of slime, wrapped, heated, and shipped. Hot dogs are junk food precisely because they utilize the inedible trimmings; yeah, it's still meat, but it's specifically the meat we cut off. That's how nasty hot dogs really are.

Now to tackle something that has never been touched by this blog: orange juice!



OK, so it's not as terrifying as hot dogs. The orange juice still comes from oranges, after all. Orange juice sommeliers are still a funny concept, and probably one of the more pleasant jobs out there. At least we aren't discussing the other miscellaneous "orange drinks" out there that have nothing close to a real orange in them. Go look up artificial flavors and high fructose corn syrup if you want to know more about that; that's pretty disturbing, too.



Of course, frozen pizzas are a favorite of mine. I had to see how they were made. :)

Creature Feature: Streamertail Hummingbirds.

What lovely weather we are having in Chicago. Over 6 inches of snow, and having to shovel it, gives me perfectly logical ground to question one's reasons for wanting to see IL in the winter. Without getting too grudgy, let's switch to something happier and summer-y, shall we?

This is a male streamer-tail hummingbird, or doctorbird in Jamaica. It is part of the rare genus Trochilus, which is exclusive to Jamaica. Depending on who you ask, there may be just one species (Trochilus polytmus) or two. One of the few differences is bill color: they come in red and black for your convenience. Regardless, this little birdie is the national bird of Jamaica.

If you want to see some really unique avian physiology, look into hummingbirds. Not only are tiny birds like that absurdly cute by themselves, but some, like the streamer-tails, have almost unbelievable proportions. As in many birds with fancy tails, the streamers are exclusive to males. They are almost twice as long as the actual bird! Again, only the males have this plumage.

This is the only bird that, to my knowledge, has mating plumage that sings. The tailfeathers of this hummingbird hum. As with the regular "hum" in hummingbirds, this is just done by the vibrations of the oddly-edged feathers. It's not like these things are trying to woo a woman with autotune. That'd just be silly.

A rather interesting note: the streamer-tail hummingbird is the only hummingbird to ever do anything in a Bond story. In For Your Eyes Only, the first line mentions the "streamer-tail or doctor hummingbird" as the most beautiful bird in Jamaica, if not the world. Comment below whether you think it is or not; I'm genuinely curious who would win an avian beauty contest.