Creature Feature: Dwarf Fox.

As the previous entry hinted, low temperatures means relatively poor biodiversity. This makes a good portion of North America a wasteland compared to say, a rainforest. Does this mean we're completely bereft of unique, amazing creatures? Of course not. Here is just the thing to make you all feel good before Monday:

That is a dwarf fox, AKA island fox. It is native to exactly 6 of the 8 Channel Islands in California, with a unique subspecies for every island. Small predators eat small prey, like rodents, crabs, and fish. Interestingly, they can be found active during both day and night, depending on season.

Yes, these foxes are small. They weigh 6.2 pounds, tops. They are frequently smaller than a house cat. Invasive species not withstanding, they are the largest land animals in the Channel Islands. It's the biggest fish in a small pond with very small fish. That's insular dwarfism for you.

Science has proven that wolves have the closest thing in nature to a human family, but dwarf foxes give wolves a run for their money. They stay with one partner all their lives, and their young stay 1-2 years with mommy and daddy. Next Valentine's Day, make your lover a card with dwarf foxes on it. It'll be even cuter if you explain that these foxes are monogamous and keep their kits for a relatively long time. 

You know what makes these guys even more awesome? They're living proof that humans can restore endangered species if they really try hard enough. I detailed the decimation of the bald eagle roughly a year or two ago; the baldies around the Channel Islands were keeping the foxes from being eaten by golden eagles, who are larger. Like on many islands, feral domesticated animals were also at fault; these were eventually removed via hunting programs. Canine distemper cut one population by 90%. The fox was driven to numbers as low as 15 in the 1990's.

Today? 2,500 dwarf foxes. Conservation efforts did these little furballs wonders. The species is still listed as critical, but that recovery is amazing. That should brighten your day....now get back to work. ;)

Newsflash: North America, Why No Monkeys?

I've said it countless times: I am not a monkey person. That does not mean the monkeys will not be covered on this blog. They just are not my cup of tea. Every so often, however, I feel obligated to do something related to monkeys because a lot of people think monkeys make everything better- even blogs.

So, for all you monkey people out there, have you ever wondered why North America has no monkeys? Well, Popular Science did an awesome article explaining exactly why: 

"I spoke to Dr. John Flynn, a paleontologist and expert on mammalian evolution at the American Museum of Natural History, to find out why the US is stuck with lame squirrels and pigeons and stuff rather than cool monkeys. "In terms of modern primates, that's a true observation," he said. "But 50 million years ago, there were primates here." It turns out there are lots of reasons why the ancient primates that inhabited what is now the United States--and even Canada!--no longer call those areas home.

Primates came to the New World (meaning North and South America) from, we think, Africa. As improbable as it sounds, scientists think early primates crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the shores of both continents tens of millions of years ago, probably on some kind of vegetation raft. That's how most plants and animals get to isolated islands--which the Americas were, at the time. Fossils have been recovered of early primates in Texas a whopping 43 million years ago, the oldest primate fossil ever found in North America. But the continents looked very different then, compared to now; most importantly, North and South America were completely different islands. The Isthmus of Panama, which we now refer to as Central America, didn't appear until much later, by which time the climate on both Americas was very different from when the primates first landed there.
When they did first land here, the climate was much warmer than it is now, and the primates evolved and diversified to take advantage of that.

When they did first land here, the climate was much warmer than it is now, and the primates evolved and diversified to take advantage of that. During the Eocene, lasting from 56 to 33.9 million years ago, the planet warmed to an incredible degree. We've found evidence of palm trees in Alaska from that era. The entire planet, besides the very tips of the Arctic and Antarctic, was probably covered in rainforests, much of it tropical. For a monkey coming over from Africa, North America would have looked just great.

 Early primates thrived on both continents, with no contact between them. In North America, there were two main families of these primates: the omomyids and the adapids. There's some variation in size, behavior and diet, but in general, these were small, tarsier-like creatures with grasping hands and claws, large eyes, and bodies adapted to eat fruits, leaves, and insects. There's a lot of debate about the modern-day relatives to these primates; some think they're strepsirrhines, the family including lemurs, lorises, and bushbabies, but others think they're basal relatives of the tarsiers (which are primates, but not closely related to other monkeys).

Then the planet began to cool, and cool quickly. Forests died out. The poles covered with ice. Many of the flora and fauna that had populated the planet during the Eocene just couldn't survive in the new, colder world. This event is called the Grande Coupure--occurring about 33.9 million years ago, it was a mass extinction of animals, in which most of the world's creatures (aside from a precious few, like the Virginia opossum and the dormouse) were unable to adapt to the new climate and perished. It hit the primate family especially hard. In the New World, the primate population shrunk significantly. Any primate living in, say, the Great Lakes region simply went extinct, unable to cope with the new Wisconsin winters. " - Source with more. 


In other words, North America has no native monkeys for the same reason Paris and London are not crawling with monkeys. On some level, we have to sympathize; being relatively hairless primates, we wouldn't like living in Wisconsin winters, either.

A Note and A Thank You!

First off, an apology. My schedule was thrown out of whack with Bike MS. I tried to get stuff done, but failed overall. Consider it the blog's week off.

Plus, this blog has over 1000 posts! Thank you all for reading! Perhaps it needed a little break. Don't worry; things will be back to normal tomorrow. I found a lot of entry fodder this week, so next week's will be just fine. One a day, 6 days a week!

So I'm going to encourage you all to do something during the weekend: Next time you're hanging out with your friends, family, whatever, instead of talking about the news, weather, sports, or whatever, ask the folks at the table what the most interesting animal is. The answers will probably surprise you and generate a lot of interesting conversation.

Little Shop of Horrors: Burro Tail.

Remember how I said that there would be more weird plants now that summer has hit? I was right. Lo and behold, there was something very weird at a farmer's market in Frankfort. The lady at the stand called it "burro tail."

Burro tail is an odd one indeed. It's also called "donkey tail," but so are a few other things, so we'll still with "burro tail" or Sedum morganianum, thanks.  Like the chimeric "coral cactus" from earlier, it's a succulent, meaning that the plant's very wet on the inside as a means of surviving in dry climates. In this case, that means Ecuador and Mexico.

Burro tails are one type of trailing sedum - that is, they can get long. One of the most popular ways to present this houseplant is via hanging basket. As the plant grows, the "tails" drip down over the sides of the basket. These tails can get up to 24 inches - that's 2 feet- long. That's pretty impressive, especially after looking at its fleshy leaves.

This plant is weird in part because nobody is quite sure where it came from. Specifically, we aren't sure whether burro's tail is a domesticated subspecies of S. morganianum or a true cultivar. This is not weird compared to, say, Saliva divinorum, and there is no loss in fertility as would be expected of a hybrid, so at least it's stable regardless. It's a breedable plant, all right, but also sort of alien.

Y'know that advice I keep giving about how desert animals are easy to keep? That applies to plants, too. You can forget to water burro tails once or twice and they will do just fine. They also love sunlight, so keep succulents like this in a sunny spot with high temperatures. They're very hard to kill and look out of this world.

Creature Feature: Amargasaurus

Despite the strange subconscious connection between dragons and snakes, there is a very strong idea that dragons were either the last few remaining dinosaurs or based off of dinosaur bones. It's a valid theory to explain where the idea of dragons (and gryphons!) came from, even if snakes share a loooot of symbolism in the collective subconscious as guardian serpents. After all, who's to say that some dinosaurs didn't survive into medieval times? Then, well, humans were dicks and killed off the dinosaurs that weren't from the Congo. We're probably the meanest species ever, and wasps that lay eggs in caterpillars are a thing.

Anyways, dragons.

This is an Amargasaurus. It was found in La Amarga Arroyo, Argentina. The name simply refers to the area in which it was found. Like all sauropods, it was an herbivore, and lived in the Cretaceous Period with 95% of the other popular dinosaurs. It was relatively small, being only 30 feet (~10 meters) long. Yes, "as long as a school bus" is indeed small by sauropod standards.

Amargasaurus is probably the dinosaur that looks the most like a dragon. The long neck. The spikes. Since this is a sauropod we're talking about, it might even have given rise to lake/river monsters with only the head and tail visible beneath the water. It would indeed have looked like a bizarre giant snake. If there is any dinosaur that screams "dragon," it's Amargasaurus.

Disclaimer: May not be correct.

As of this entry, Amargasaurus is the only sauropod to ever flaunt spikes. Nobody knows what these neck and back spikes were for. A while back, it was popular to depict Amargasaurus with a sail spanning those spikes; this has since gone out of fashion, making it the most boss-looking longneck ever instead. Other theories include a mating display and, well, defense. Spikes are quite the fitting way to protect the most vulnerable part on a sauropod's body, no?

Despite looking a loooot like a Western dragon without the wings, Amargasaurus hasn't had very much screentime. Sure, it pops up in Fossil Fighters and Jurassic Park games, but that's about it. It suffers from the same syndrome all duckbills that aren't Parasaurolophus and all pterosaurs that aren't Pteranodon do: it doesn't fit the "modern analogy" mold and doesn't look a damn thing like the Apatosaurus or Brachiosaurus, AKA the "default" sauropods. It's also not as big as either of those two sauropods, making it possibly the most underrated sauropod ever. Try calling it a dragon; people will totally buy it.

"They Actually Eat That:" Hibiscus.

 Every so often, a new 'superfood' suddenly floods the market. Usually, it's something only a small amount of people have heard of, comes with a fancy Greco-Roman science word attached, and has a long history of being medicinal from the ancient past. Recently, the buzzword has become "antioxidants," and acai and pomegranates are leading the way in that regard. Here's what is slowly becoming the next "superfood:"

This flower should look familiar to a lot of you. It's a type of flower called hibiscus, and is probably the most marketable superfood yet. Yeah, that flower on tacky Hawaiian shirts? That's hibiscus. Hibiscus iced tea is becoming more and more popular, popping up in Starbucks, Argo Tea, and Panera. It has "from Asia" and "might have antioxidants" going for it already.

But is it actually edible?

First off, the nectar and tea are usually pretty safe. Hibiscus has been used as a tea for centuries in Asia and Nile Valley Africa. The tea has been believed to cure everything from high blood pressure to cancer.  I've had hibiscus tea and nectar plenty of times with no adverse reactions. The only confirmed medicinal effect of hibiscus is as a diuretic, but people are looking into antioxidants.

The diuretic effect is particularly noticeable if animals eat it. I've heard varying reports, but the general consensus is that hibiscus plants are toxic to cats, dogs, and horses. It probably isn't the end of the world after one little bite, but just to be safe, hibiscus is on the list of "plants that are not pet-friendly." If your pet starts acting odd after eating hibiscus, call poison control.

As for actually eating hibiscus, there are dos and don'ts. Some hibiscus varieties are not edible, period. Others, like Hibiscus sabdariffa, can be eaten in salads and stir-fries like red spinach (which is its own thing). Most restaurant chains and such will not be using the poisonous varieties of hibiscus, so please enjoy the summer's latest iced tea craze. Just don't use it to cure cancer or give it to your dog, OK?

Little Shop of Horrors: Coral Cactus.

Now that summer has hit, various home improvement stores and sections are stocking all sorts of weird plants. Be on the lookout for celosia ("brain flowers"), geops, and a number of other weird plants that one can probably find at one's local nursery. It was almost inevitable that at least one odd, potted plant would wind up on this blog, but I had no idea it would be this odd:

This is a coral cactus. No, there's no scientific name for this oddball. It's 100% created by people. If I had not done glowing marmosets yesterday, I totally would have done this thing; it's a really impressive graft of two completely different plants. Oh, and neither of those plants are cacti, even if they're both still succulents. Both are also almost worth their own entries.

The coral-like crest comes from a plant called Euphorbia lactea, AKA mottled spurge or elkhorn.  Specifically, the coral part comes from a frilly mutation of elkhorn, which is propagated for this exact purpose. Otherwise, elkhorn is another houseplant with some medicinal potential in India. The milky latex on elkhorn is poisonous, as is the entirety of the plant. Keep coral cacti away from children and pets with this in mind.

The stem is from another species of Euphorbia, usually E. neriifolia. It's also called the "Indian spurge tree." Both of these plants have similar climate requirements, so it's no surprise that a graft of the two should be sustainable. It's still impossible to breed them, mind, but you can keep a coral cactus alive like most cacti. Weird? Yes. Difficult? Not really.



Where can you get this bizarre thing? Wal-Mart. These chimera plants are sold for relatively cheap at the world's most infamous big box store. We would not be surprised if the shop Audrey II came from suddenly started carrying these. If weird plants in one of the largest chains in the world is not a plot for botanical world domination, please tell me what is.