Newsflash: Polar Bears Not As Threatened As We Thought?

Since global warming was made a thing by Al Gore, the polar bear has been its spokesperson. We were, well, not thrilled to see the polar bear put on the endangered species list, but kind of glad it got there so as to raise awareness of global climate change.

But are they really that threatened?

It sounds like a silly question. After all, the polar bear is an environmentalism mascot, just like pandas, tigers, and whales. They're one of those animals every zoo either has or tries to get because the species is going out of fashion in the natural world.

Then this tidbit came up on NPR. Recently, a writer went to the Arctic to write about polar bears. While there, he found an honest scientist who kindly showed him some polar bear droppings.The droppings revealed that the polar bear, which according to the interwebs has a diet consisting largely of seals, was also fond of goose meat and reindeer- Christmas dinner, if you will. (If we had more citations, we would give them.)

And yet, we cannot find this blurb on the internet. It made it to National Public Radio, but the surprisingly diverse diet of the polar bear has not yet crept onto the interwebs. Consider it crawling around, now. Treat it as a rumor if you like; it will get confirmed/debunked eventually.
The absence of this information on the internet baffles us, even when it shouldn't. Considering how many places say that the polar bear mainly eats seals, surely this would revolutionize something.

There are a few reasons why this hasn't gotten out, assuming its truth to begin with.  Facilities who have polar bears want to make them as big a draw as possible, which means making the bears sound rarer and more fragile than they actually are. Hell, zoos have a special "polar bear diet" that I'm pretty sure does not consist entirely of seal meat (Google it). There's something shady going on.

Don't get us wrong. The polar bear is still under legitimate threat from global warming. It's just not quite as bad as we thought.

Creature Feature: Golden Lion Tamarin.

A rather interesting question came to me in the form of a fortune cookie: Which would you rather have as a pet: a pig or a monkey? Both are notably intelligent, messy, and carry diseases that can cross over into humans. It's a fair question; answer it below if you like.

Now, as anyone who follows this blog is aware, I am not the biggest fan of monkeys. My answer to that question would probably be the pig, hands-down, if one particular type of monkey did not exist:

It's called a golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia) (or "golden marmoset" for those of you without any imagination). It can be found in the Brazilian forests along the east coast. This monkey has a diverse diet of fruit, leaves, insects and eggs. Basics done - you may d'aww now.

The golden lion tamarin really looks like a little lion. Although not predatory like a lion, this monkey does have a "mane" of elongated hair along the sides of its face. This color supposedly comes from the carotenoids in their diet, much like flamingo coloration being the result of eating crustaceans. The tamarin also has claws - a rarity in primates, with the notable exception of all other New World monkeys.

Golden lion tamarins are also monogamous. Like wolves, they have a social structure in which the top male and top female mate. They mate for life while everybody else doesn't get any. Aww, just in time for- wait, it's not Valentine's Day, yet. Never mind. 

Alas, the golden lion tamarin is highly endangered, and not because it's darn adorable. A good chunk of its habitat has been chipped away by deforestation. The lion tamarin is considered one of the more popular endangered species - enough so that one of the characters in Tokyo Mew Mew has a tamarin as her animal splice. That said, any attempts to get one as a pet would probably be illegal. Guess I'd pick the pig after all.

Creature Feature: Indus River Dolphin.

Is there anything happier than a dolphin? Really, name one creature that lights up a room more than a giggling, clicking, smiling dolphin. As Cracked put it, "no animal is more closely associated with Day-Glo rainbows."

Then we get into river dolphins. River dolphins are Flipper turned nightmarish. I won't go into a more thorough description than that. Just...

...that. Just that. You would not want that to save you while drowning. (Well, maybe Bogleech would.) This dolphin warps our perception of dolphin so well it's awesome.

"That," in this case, is an Indus River dolphin (Platanista minor). The Indus and Ganges River dolphins are technically the same species, although how scientists decided this is anybody's guess (how would you breed these two?). It eats shrimp, carp, and catfish, among any other small seafood unfortunate enough to get caught in those teeth. It is native to the Indus River in Pakistan, joining leopard geckos and sand cats on the "cool animals that can be found in war-torn areas" list.

When it comes to river dolphins, all things that make dolphins cute go downstream. That goofy smile is replaced with an elongated grin full of teeth that show even when the jaw is closed. There are no sympathetic eyes to look into.  Instead of being sleek and grey, this dolphin looks like a mottled pink dolphin corpse sent to float down the Ganges.

All dolphins echolocate, but the Indus River dolphin is entirely dependent on sonar. Its eyes are almost nonexistent; the most they can do is detect light and shadow, if that. It doesn't even have a lens in those rudimentary eyes. It is one of the rare mammals that is completely blind. Yeah, we're pretty sure this has to have some mythological relative - maybe the makara. A legless, scaleless makara.

An animal THIS weird MUST be a messenger of the gods! 

Like all river dolphins, the Indus River dolphin is highly endangered. Dams, industrial runoff, and irrigation have all hurt these creatures. Aside from habitat fragmentation, they are also hunted, and not because they look like creatures out of H.P. Lovecraft. Apparently some people are well-aware that dolphins are really horny bastards; the meat and oil can be used as an aphrodisiac. They can also be used as catfish bait - take your pick. Even if they freak us out, that doesn't mean we should kill them. They have enough problems.