New Pokemon Starter Fun Facts! + Hello again!

It's been a while.

At first, I wanted to do more Jurassic World: the Game. I had a nice list of my favorites...but they added more, and the list changed.

So, what brought me back? Sun and Moon starters. Yes, Pokemon is my drug, at least in part due to its creature designs. Although the creativity off Gen VI was severely lacking (the Starters were way too repetitive for my tastes), the news of Gen VII's starters and Legends merits an entry of its own.

I don't have much to say on the Grass-Type owl, except "it's about darn time." Hoothoot and Noctowl have been the only owls in the Pokemon world for a long time. Owls spend a decent amount of time in trees, so Grass/Flying? Why not? Kinda wish more Pokemon used logic like that.

Source: Serebii.net. Official art. 

Now, things get interesting with Litten. For the unaware, there's been a theory that all the Fire-Type Starter Pokemon follow the theme of Chinese zodiac animals. So far, in order, we have a dragon (Charmander), monotreme "mouse" (Cyndaquil), chicken/rooster (Torchic), monkey (Chimchar), pig (Tepig), and...canine (Fennekin). While the Chinese zodiac does have a cat in its lore (as anyone into Fruits Basket knows), Litten is almost certainly our tiger as well.

I sense nitpicking. After all, not all striped cats are tigers, regardless of what the cats themselves have to say on the matter. Who's to say that this isn't a normal tabby cat, right?

The designers. No, really, there's a sneaky design hint that we're looking at a tiger in the making rather than your average tabby cat. You probably didn't even notice it unless you're from Asia already, or really into cats. You ready? Look at the mark on Litten's forehead.

Just look at it.

You done? Okay.

While we may think of both tigers and tabbies as striped cats, one of the least noticeable ways in which they are different involves the marking on their foreheads. A tabby cat has a distinct "M," which monotheistic religions usually cite as some type of divine blessing. A tiger has the symbol for "king." Have I mentioned before that the tiger is the king of beasts in China? While we could argue that the marking is still incomplete, the horizontal stripes versus the zig-zagging M is uncanny.

Source: NPS.gov 

This isn't the only thing that fans missed. A lot of people glossed over that Popplio is not a seal - it is a sea lion. Despite having a Pokemon named "Sealeo" and Seel having flippers similar to those of a sea lion, we never had a sea lion Pokemon until this point. In a nutshell, seals are more marine (barely able to move on land, no ear flaps) while sea lions are more amphibious. The pinnipeds you see balancing balls are usually sea lions, not seals! What a clever idea for an amphibious Water-Type!

The lunar bat for Moon is awesome. Looks like the world's largest microbat - the kind of bat that has huge ears and uses echolocation. At the same time, I'd love a flying fox. I'd like every species on the planet to get its own Pokemon. Still a gorgeous, if impractical, design.

Source: KPBS.org 

Finally, yes, white lions exist. Though rare, they can be found in the Kruger and Timbavati reserves in South Africa. You can go squee about Kimba being real, now.

Creature Feature: Spotted Seal.

This blog has a lack of pinnipeds for no apparent reason.  Plus, I felt bad about delaying yesterday's entry, soooo....

Source.

...have a spotted seal. :)

The spotted seal (Phoca largha) is the quintessential 'seal.' It eats fish as an adult and smaller crustacean sas a pup. It is native to the north Pacific Ocean, including Japan, Russia, China, and Alaska.Althogh very similar to the harbor seal in appearance, the main distinguishing factor of the spotted seal is its irregular spots.

The spotted seal is one of those "puppy dog cute" animals. Excepting the carnivore teeth, this seal has no sharp parts. Sure, it weighs anywhere from 180-240 pounds and gets over two meters long, but that doesn't stop it from being adorable. It's even got a pointed face like a dog. What's not to like?

Source.

When they aren't swimming, spotted seals spend almost all their time on ice floes. They are usually solitary, but gather in huge crowds during mating season. They are among the few animals to temporarily exhibit a nuclear family (mom, dad, and baby) while rearing a pup. Otherwise, they are off on their own, diving up to 1,000 feet (300 meters) for their fishy prey.

Normally, the spotted seal is not endangered. It's so common that its There is an exception in China, where the seals from South Korea gather to breed. Not only are they China's only pinniped, but spotted seal meat and, umm, genitalia supposedly have medicinal properties. What? Were you expecting the Chinese not to eat seals?

Yes, that is a seal in a race car. OH JAPAN- copyright the folks at Digimon.

Of course,  since these seals are native to Japan, they have been Japanified. Japan takes anything remotely cute (or not) and turns it into colorful toys for all. The spotted seal, or gomafu azarashi,  is no exception; there are plushie spotted seals that one can hang from one's cell phone, a pet mamegoma video game, and other doses of KAWAII that overload most circuits. Most of us probably know Gomamon, the Digimon character, a lot better than anything else spotted seal-related from Japan. If it's weird and wonderful enough to wind up as part of the main cast in Digimon, it's weird enough to be on this blog, right?

"They Actually Eat That:" Kiviak.

A lot of people seem to think that humans have weak stomachs.We hear that wolves can eat things that have been dead for weeks and go "ooooh." This gasp of awedoes not take into account the sheer variety of things that humans can eat. Chocolate is poisonous to most other animals, for example.

Well, guess what? We can eat things that are rotten. We just call it "fermented." We don't just eat rotten things - we eat rotten art! Cheese and wine are fine examples. There are some that sound far less savory, however...

Kiviak is a Christmas, wedding, and birthday dish from Greenland. From this alone, one can tell that 1. this will not be "normal" meat and 2. it is definitely cuisine. It is eaten by Inuit peoples around the Greenland area in the wintertime. Hoo boy is it special, too.

Kiviak has a simple, yet somehow utterly disturbing recipe: 1. Skin a seal;  2. catch 400-500 auks and sew them into the skin of said seal;  3. wait several months, then remove the seal from the rock you hid it under. Yes, that's what kiviak is: auks stuffed in a seal skin, hidden under a rock for a looong time. I've gotta wonder who first went "hey, let's put birds in a seal carcass for seven months and see what happens!", but that's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to kiviak.

The other nasty part is how you eat the auks: bite off the heads and suck out the guts. The innards have, by this point, been liquefied into a tart pulp that can easily be slurped. It supposedly reeks just as much as some types of cheese, but luckily, tastes pretty good, too. After taking birds out of a dead seal, it's hard to get any nastier, so we're glad there's a silver lining to the seal skin.

People have been doing fermented cuisine like this for a looong time. There are whole catalogues of fermented foods, many of which smell awful. It's a method of preserving food, which is always nice to develop. Given the choice between this and lutefisk for preservation, well...kiviak is all-natural.

P.S.- This entry has been brought to you by Moyashimon, the unholy master of all things fermented.

Creature Feature: Elephant Seal.

If you haven't noticed, there are some groups of animals I just tend to...avoid. As stated in my ribbon seal entry, pinnipeds are one of those groups. That's kind of a shame; plenty of them are strange enough to warrant entries. Some people would consider the simple fact that seals and whales are not related at all mind-blowing. (For those curious: Whales are related to ungulates such as pigs, sheep, and cattle, whereas seals are closer to other carnivorids.) That said, I'm not kidding: some seals really are that weird.



Elephant seals (Mirounga) come to mind as the weird seal. Most seals are at least slightly cute, especially as pups; they have that adorable baby mammal face that yields a collective "awwwww." There are two species of elephant seal, both of which sport the signature nose.  They eat fish and cephalopods - no surprises there. One (the Southern elephant seal, M. leonina) lives in the Antarctic Circle; the other (Northern, M. angustirostris) can be found around the lower part of California. How this happened, I have NO idea.

Nature does not give seals weird noses just to make humans freak out. The elephant seal's funny nose has two distinct, equally-awesome functions. One use is to amplify the male seals' roar; this theoretically keeps weaker males away from the big guy's harem of 40-50 females, but many encounters get bloody regardless.The other use is to help them conserve water; male elephant seals do not leave the beach during the entirety of mating season, so they conserve some moisture from every breath in that nose. If you had a harem of 40 women, you wouldn't leave the beach, either. Admit it.

"Hey, baby...room for one more..."

Not only do the males of the species have those weird noses, but Southern elephant seals are the largest seals in the world. Females get around 10 feet; males get around 20 feet from head to tail. They can weigh up to 4,000 kg or 6.600 pounds- take your pick, both of those numbers are in the thousands. They really do earn that "elephant" title.

These seals have one more stunning thing about them: They are the best divers of any mammal, discounting dolphins and whales. Thanks to a special stash of myoglobin, the elephant seal can stay underwater for two hours. They dive up to 1550 meters below the surface to search for food. Although they aren't related to dolphins and whales,  the elephant seal may be an evolutionary step in that direction.

(For the record, by the way: National Geographic has politely informed me (i.e. asked for a donation by telling me) that there are now officially more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild. Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing - wild tigers are still awesome - but given that the areas with said tigers probably have some corrupt politics going on preventing the wild tiger population from flourishing, isn't it good that we have a plan B?)

Creature Feature: Ribbon Seal.

This blog does not get many pinnipeds. It's not that we don't like them, it's more like they simply are not the author's specialty. When something pinniped-related does get our attention, it usually requires a bit of research on our part.

Hi ma!

One woman in Seattle recently saw this seal resting on her dock. She snapped a photo of the strange-looking seal and sent it to her local wildlife commission. The district supervisor of the USDA in Washington, Matthew Cleland, correctly identified the animal as a ribbon seal - a seal found waaayyy farther north on a more regular basis.

Ribbon seals (Histriophoca fasciata) are usually seen in the Arctic regions of Alaska and Russia. Like most seals, they eat fish. They spend almost all of their time in open water, making them hard for naturalists to track. They only stop on ice for a few months to mate and give birth, so seeing one as far south as Washington is mind-blowing. Starbucks isn't that great.



These seals do not start life with their striking black and white patterning. Younger ribbon seals look a lot like harp seals, a species commonly hunted for their fur. This led to many seal pups being killed as if they were harp seals - that is, until people thought it fishy that a harp seal would be swimming solo. The hunting of ribbon seals was banned in Russia in 1969. Only adult seals are confused for mammalian penguins.

This appearance in Washington is not the first time ribbon seals have decided to take vacations. One male wandered all the way down to California. The seal was found at Morrow Bay, a small town north of Los Angeles. Although it was taken to a local aquarium, it died a month later. Sightings as far south as the continental U.S. are not unheard of, but still very rare.

Ribbon seals are currently in the purgatory called "Vulnerable." Something can only be considered endangered once we know how many individuals are out there.We know that the Alaskan population numbers around 250,000 individuals, but, even with hunting restricted, global climate change may present another threat. Even if these seals aren't quite endangered,they my fall there very, very soon.