"They Actually Eat That:" Rhinoceros.

Remember when I said that humans will eat megafauna like no tomorrow? I wasn't kidding. Humans have been eating giant animals since Homo sapiens were a thing, still eat giant animals today, and will continue to eat giant animals in the future.Nothing is safe unless it is explicitly poisonous. Even then, fast food is worse for you than rhino meat:

Image by National Geographic. Look at how red it is compared to domestic meat...

Today is no exception. Everything is fair game, including the powerful rhinoceros. As long as rhinos exist, people will hunt them, just like we did to most other megafauna. We will also be eating them to the end of time. Habitat destruction is almost a new one, but this is about the edible side of things, so let's stick to that.

China, of course, is in on rhino meat. Rhinoceros horn has been touted for various medicinal properties, just like almost any other part of almost any other animal. Its main use is as a painkiller, with rhino horns fetching up to $30,000 per kilogram. There is also a concoction involving a rhino skull and coconut oil. All of this has no potency whatsoever.

A lot of people already know about the rhino horn trade. A lot fewer people realize that there is a lot of meat there. The meat itself supposedly has properties as well. It has been touted as a cure for leprosy, diarrhea, and tuberculosis. There is absolutely no basis for this.

Eating rhino is not at all common. Rhinoceroses are big, fierce animals. They're hard to kill, even with rifles and other modern weaponry. Rhino meat is still quite valuable as exotic meat. There are roughly 275 Sumatran rhinos left; we'd like to keep some around, so please don't eat rhino meat or buy...anything rhino-based, really. It may be delaying the inevitable, but let's try to keep megafauna around for as long as we can.

Creature Feature: Quagga.

Last night, we discussed the ever-intrusive zebra mussel. It is slowly being replaced by something called a quagga mussel. Well, OK. We know what a zebra is. What's a quagga, again?

 

Extinct mammals are the "uncanny valley" of dead beasts. The quagga (Equus quagga quagga) looked like something between a zebra and a horse while being its own creature at a glance. The term has been used to describe a 'not quite zebra' look with faded stripes, as on the quagga mussel. Quaggas used to live in the drier parts of southern Africa. The last specimen died in Amsterdam in 1883.

Quaggas get their name, supposedly, from their call. They were first discovered in 1778 in Africa. Many other zebras soon followed. The quagga was studied extensively over the next 50 years, but as one can probably tell from the dates, it barely lasted a century from a Western perspective. This means the native peoples of Africa had already done a fine job denting the population before we came along.



The quagga is like the aurochs in many ways: both are related to domestic animals, and both went extinct in the modern era. Science has tried to resurrect both species via gene sequencing and back-breeding. The real subtle difference between the two was the difficulty There was so much confusion over exactly what the quagga was that it was hunted to extinction for its meat, hides, and to feed other domesticated animals. Nice work, science.

Quaggas, however, lack the mystique of the aurochs. The quagga has been confirmed as the first described species of plains zebra (Equus burchelli). By the laws of scientific nomenclature, which are starting to look like a YGO ruling webpage, the plains zebra should be called a quagga. HOWEVER, the name has stuck so well that zebra shall stay, giving kids an animal by which to remember the letter 'z' for years to come. 

Q is for quagga. Almost!

The good news is that the quagga got around. Zebras and horses interbreed already; the result is called a zorse. There are tons of reports of horse-quagga hybrids, really just glorified zorses with a slightly different subspecies, but who knows? Maybe that horse on Michigan Avenue contains the last blood of an extinct race in his veins.

Prehistoric Mammal Week: Brontotherium.

Rhinos already look like something out of the past. They have tough skin. They're massive. They look just plain intimidating with those horns. They are built like tanks. Go figure there were a lot of rhinos and rhino-like creatures before mankind took over the world.

IT LIVES.

Brontotheres were not rhinos (Yes, the ancient rhinoceroses are pretty cool, too, but this isn't about them.) They were rhinoceros-like relatives of the horse that have a very well-preserved fossil record in North America. Like guinea pigs (O.o;?!) they had four toes on the front legs and three on the back.

The title beast, Brontotherium, was one such genus of rhino-ish creatures. They stood 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) tall at the shoulder and lived until the end of the Eocene. They preferred soft leaves and stems to tough vegetation. This restrictive diet and general inability to adapt to a changing climate ultimately led to their extinction.




Rhinos and not-rhinos had cooler headgear back in the Eocene. Many of the brontotheres and extinct rhinoceroses had horns that would look great on boss monsters. Brontotherium itself had a horny growth resembling a slingshot. The horns of brontotheres also had bone in there, whereas modern rhinoceroses only have keratin (fingernail material) in their horns. Since the horns of males are much larger than those of females, it is likely that they were used to attract mates or butt heads a la rams. 


Many Brontotherium fossils have been found in South Dakota and Nebraska - where, again, there is very little else. When storms washed up these fossils, the Sioux Indians thought that they belonged to massive horses that produced thunder by running over the clouds. The brontotheres found thus had actually been killed by the eruptions of the (volcanically active) Rocky Mountains. Damn humans, only coming around when all the cool stuff was done!

Speaking of...

Prehistoric Mammal Week: Hyracotherium.

 

The creature above is likely the ultimate Uncanny Valley beast. Its name is Hyracotherium, it lived in Asia, Europe, and North America, and it was about the size of a fox. It lived during the early Eocene (52 mya) - a time when, for reference, we had a relative named "Necrolemur." Hyracotherium looks like a creature that we all should know, but do not. We've seen this animal before, but where? Goddammit, it's on the tip of my tongue...



You have got to be kidding me.That little guy? A horse? He's got to be smaller than the smallest horse in Guinness.



Actually, Einstein is only slightly bigger. Nice going, evolution.

Technically, Hyracotherium is no longer a horse. It's a palaeothere- a type of ancient mammal that shows the starting traits of being a perissodactyl (odd-toed ungulate). There is still some debate over exactly where it belongs, but it did give rise to horses, regardless of whether it can legally be considered an equine or not. The old name for it was Eohippus - "dawn horse."

Hyracotherium is the oldest known ancestor of the modern equines, including horses, asses, and zebras. It started as a small creature with the five digits common to tetrapods. As time went on,  these little fellows became faster and faster, as well as bigger and bigger from eating new plants.The horse family lost toes until only the center digit remained and became encased in a sturdy hoof. They also evolved to love sugar cubes (irony!).



Some scientists also propose that Hyracotherium founded other perissodactyl lines, such as rhinoceroses and tapirs. Those are pretty neat, too; tomorrow will feature a look at brontotheres, creatures that look like rhinos but may have been more closely related to horses. If only Nintendo had some creativity left; Hyracotherium would be a great fossil Pokemon to make a three-way evo out of.

"They Actually Eat That:" Horse.

 
They get stranger every rerelease...

Apparently there's a new My Little Pony movie (series?) out that has driven some people up the walls. What they fail to understand is that every little girl goes through a 'pony' or 'horsey' phase, so Hasbro marketing the girly counterpart to Transformers to the latest generation was inevitable. The horse has also been very useful to mankind throughout history, so there is certainly nothing wrong with having an interest in horses.

Oh, and horses are also food.

They Actually Eat That?!

In every country in the world except the United States, horses can be consumed as food. Many cultures have it as a meat in the 'gray area,' meaning that it's not illegal, but not necessarily good, either. China, Mexico, Russia, Italy, and Kazakhstan are the five biggest consumers of horse meat in the world and have absolutely no qualms about eating Seabiscuit. That horse head in Godfather would not have been hard to come by at all.



And why not eat horse? The meat is far leaner than beef and much better for oneself. Horses do not produce as much meat as cattle, but what they do make is high in protein and lean in fat. Horse parts can also be used in gelatin, so if you like Jell-O, sorry. One has to do something with a dead horse besides beat it.

Although beating it WOULD tenderize the meat...

Many cultures either place horse meat on its own altar for ritual slaughter or as low as dog food. Deities such as the Roman goddess Epona received sacrifices of horse meat, and the Nordic peoples sacrificed horses regularly. These both went out of fashion after Christianity took hold, leaving "well, what else would you do with a dead horse?" as the main excuse to eat horse meat.



Until recently, it was legal to at least sell horse meat in the United States. The last horse meat plant in the U.S. closed in 2007, resulting in several wild horses being set free in Illinois (thanks). The banning of horse meat after '07 has created a squeezed sausage effect in North America; Quebec farmers eat horse meat, and Mexico is the second largest producer of horse meat in the world. Give us yet another reason to go south of the border, why don'cha?

So, if you are one of the many that hate My Little Pony now, head down to Mexico and grab yourself some horse meat. It's legal there.

Freak Week II: Racehorses.

Oh, scratch that bit about horses having absolutely nothing weird. One of the types of horses that everybody knows about certainly merits a place in Freak Week II.

 

Yes, those are racehorses. Yes, they are stranger than they look.

Horse racing itself has similar origins as car racing: day-to-day encounters with fellow charioteers naturally resulted in competition between riders, and somebody, somewhere decided to capitalize on the riders' competitive spirits. Nothing wrong with that, although we are sure many would admit that seeing horses run is far more fun than watching cars drive.

No, the horses running is not weird. The horses themselves are.

Most of the horses in racing today are part of a breed called Thoroughbreds. They are a cross between two different types of Arabian (Darley and Gondolphin), Byeley Turk, and English racing horses.  They can come in many coat colors and are bred for a competitive temperament, speed, and agility. Again, no surprises there.



All Thoroughbred horses derive from one of three sires: Herod, Matchem, or Eclipse. Eclipse, a Darley Arabian, was never defeated, and hooo boy did he get immortalized in racing history. 95% of the male horses in racing today are directly related to Eclipse. Think about that for a bit: 9.5 out of ten horses at the track share the same dad, granddad, or great granddad. Creeeeepy.


Hey, bro. Or are you my second cousin?

I'll let Wikipedia tell you exactly why this is terrifying if the idea of you and your running partner sharing the same dad did not cement it in for you:

"According to one study, 78% of alleles in the current population can be traced to 30 foundation animals, 27 of which are male. Ten foundation mares account for 72% of maternal (tail-female) lineages, and, as noted above, one stallion appears in 95% of tail male lineages.<sup>[28]" 


In other words, these horses are inbred to the degree that it makes purebred dogs look like they're not even cousins. Thoroughbreds are at risk of dying out due to lack of genetic diversity. It is not legit to register Thoroughbreds that have not been seen gettin' it on. No artificial insemination. No embryo transplants. All inbreeding for damn fast horses.</sup>

Freak Week II: Mongolian Horse.

Of all the mammals in the world, the horse gets the least amount of love on this blog. It's not that I don't like horses; like all females, I went through a horse/pony phase, got a lot of horse books, and even took riding lessons.

This blog has nothing against horses. They just aren't very weird.

Sure, they're beautiful, graceful, powerful, and whatever else have you, but horses are only really weird if you have never seen a domesticated horse before in your life. A real horse person may talk on and on about the differences between an Arabian and a Palomino, but that's still not particularly weird. Cool, but not strange unless you want to get into subtleties.


Racehorses have a lot of inbreeding going on, though.

To make horses weird, one has to go way back. The horse was probably first domesticated in Mongolia. Let's try there.

 

The Mongolians love their horses. The horse population in Mongolia is around three million - more than the entire human population. The national drink, airag, is made of mare's milk. Each family member has his or her own horse. Young men are traditionally given a horse upon their third birthday. Even the nomadic tribes have horses. An old Mongolian proverb says that "a Mongol without a horse is like a bird without wings." Horse lovers, start packing; Mongolia is horse country.



The Mongolian breed of horse is a right bitch to find pictures of, if only because Mongolia also has wild horses. The two are hard to tell apart; not very much has changed in Mongolia since the horse became domesticated. This similarity plus genetic diversity makes them a strong candidate for the first horse breed ever.

Mongolian horses are sturdy. Very few of them need to wear shoes. Even so, they tread cautiously. Once they get used to having a rider, they are calm horses and can run up to 35km/h. Racing horses is the second most popular sport in Mongolia; given the creature's popularity, it is very easy to see why.

 

The horse was the primary weapon of the Mongolian Empire. Fighters with horses had a substantial advantage over people without: horsemen were faster, could trample opposition, and could shoot arrows on horseback. It was thanks to the horse that Genghis Khan was able to take over much of the known world. As the great Khan himself said, "It is easy to conquer the world from the back of a horse."



KHAAAN!

Tomorrow: These are some VERY horny cattle.

Who's That Pokemon?: Munna and Drowzee Lines.

Ever notice that Pokemon has a thing for tapirs that put people to sleep? There was Drowzee -> Hypno in Gen I, now the Munna line in Gen V. What gives, Nintendo?

More importantly, what the hell's a tapir?


Tapirs (genus Tapirus) are piggish mammals related to rhinoceroses and horses - odd-toed ungulates, AKA 'perissodactyls.' They are small for relatives of giant perissodactyl mammals; 6-8 feet long is tiny compared to elephants and rhinoceroses. They are found in Central and South America, as well as Southeast Asia. All tapirs are in danger of extinction.



The shnoz common to all tapirs gets one's attention right away. It makes the tapir's skull unlike that of any other mammal; every skull abnormality exists to make that proboscis work. This appendage, like a miniature elephant trunk, allows the tapir to grab vegetation that it could not reach otherwise. A tapir's sense of smell is terrific because of its extended nose, but its sight (like that of the rhino) is sub-par.



Drowzee (most closely) resembles the Malayan/Asian tapir (Tapirus indicus), the largest tapir species and the variety with the longest nose. On the other hand, Munna and its evolution look like tapir-shaped piggy banks. There are reasons why some people object to the Gen V Pokemon; given that they made a particularly mundane tapir that would probably make a GREAT cell phone dangle, I'd say that Nintendo has pretty much run dry on ideas.

Still, what's up with the similar sleep theme?


Sleeeep. I'll see you in your nightmares...which I will then devour.

What does this weird rhino relative have to do with sleep? Japanese mythology tells of a creature called a baku, pictured above. It looks very similar to the tapir and eats bad dreams. Although some of Drowzee's PokeDex info makes it sound malignant, the baku is rarely a bad creature; images of a baku can be used to devour nightmares or ward off bad dreams altogether. This creature and the zoological tapir share the same name in Japan, which naturally leads to many more baku monsters than just those two Pokemon.


Digimon's Bakumon/Tapirmon, for instance.