Discovery News: Born Animal

Stonehenge Pig

2008-10-13T15:28:38-04:00

Over two thousand years ago, the body of a human infant was placed in an Iron Age pot and buried within sight of Stonehenge, the well-known prehistoric monument located in the verdant English county of Wiltshire. The latest issue of British Archaeology—one of my favorite reads—describes the burial, which included a unique carved chalk pig.

Look closely to see the piggy profile.
(Credit: Mike Pitts)

Bristol University archaeologist Josh Pollard and historian Paul Garwood of Birmingham University worked on the excavation. They are not sure of the pig's meaning. It may have had ritual significance or it could have been a toy.

The ritual idea brings to mind rather creepy thoughts (kid in a pot, pig dinner...) Hey, the ancients did practice ritual sacrifices from time to time, and Stonehenge may have been no different.

But I much prefer the toy theory, perhaps because of a squishy toy pig I owned as a child, to be followed by a more fancy Steiff one that still has pride of place on one of my bureaus.

Many of my relatives grew up on farms and had real live pigs, instead of just toys, to play with. My uncle Harold, when he moved to Maine, had a pet pig. He lived near a town in a more rural area. The pig was so loyal to him that it used to tag behind whenever he went on errands. Yes, both he and the pig received odd stares.

Zoos are starting to house more and more pigs because these animals are so much fun to watch and are always full of character. A brother and sister guinea hog team, for example, just moved from the Virginia Zoo to the Oakland Zoo, which provided the below pic.

In a twist on the Stonehenge news, the guinea hogs love to play with toys too. Maybe they have a carved human? They enjoy eating so much that they seemingly snort with glee after every bite.

Animal Virgin Births

2008-10-10T10:22:45-04:00

Females of many species can become pregnant without ever mating, as was recently demonstrated by a blacktip shark named "Tidbit." You can read her story here. Although many legends from antiquity describe human virgin births, the phenomenon—known more technically as parthenogenesis—has never been scientifically documented in a woman. (A good thing too, if you ask me, since parthenogenesis isn't consciously triggered. The female can go about her usual business for years on end and one morning she just wakes up and finds herself pregnant.)

A Blacktip Shark
(Credit: Matthew D. Potenski)

The process, at least for sharks, is described in detail in the Tidbit story. It basically involves a cell that acts like sperm by fusing with an egg and injecting its chromosomes into it. The result is not a clone, but the individual will have reduced genetic variability.

Such births often happen in zoos that have one or more females on exhibit sans males. Conservationists are now calling for zoos and other facilities to house both males and females, whenever possible, to promote mating and to help to ensure DNA diversity within populations.

Parthenogenesis, however, can be a rather neat phenomenon that may boost population numbers in a pinch and maybe give lonely females some kid company.

Here are some animals with females that can reproduce without having sex:

Hammerhead sharks
Blacktip sharks (researchers suspect all female sharks may possess this ability)
Komodo lizards
Rock lizards
Geckos
Whiptails
Thiarid snails
Aphids
Daphnia, a water flea

And also certain types of:
Fish
Bees
Scorpions
Birds
and
Crayfish

Have you ever seen sharks mating? It gives new meaning to the phrase "love bite," as you'll soon see.

A Famous Composer and the Music of Flies

2008-10-09T11:29:18-04:00

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting pianist and composer Liz Story, who is a three-time Grammy nominee. She and her husband, bassist Joel DiBartolo, have together and separately been involved in creating some of the world's most memorable music. (The famous du da du da in the "Jaws" soundtrack, "Saturday Night Fever," "Star Wars," Story's famous Windham Hill recordings...)

Liz Story

Story mentioned how she used to live on the top of a mountain in near solitude. She didn't even have a refrigerator or the usual mess of noisy electrical appliances that most of us have. So her environment was quiet, save for the sounds provided by nature and her music.

One day a fly came into the domed area where her piano was. The fly sounded incredibly loud, with no humming refrigerator, loud airplane or buzzing computer to diminish its sound-producing power. Distracted, Story tried to match the fly's noise to a musical note. She finally figured it out. Flies buzz in the key of "F." (The same thing happened when a big bumblebee made its way into her studio. The bee buzzed in the key of "E" flat.)

So much of her work arises from a genuine interest in nature. Her latest CD, "Night Sky Essays," is a beautiful compilation inspired by the 12 constellations of the zodiac. You can read and hear about it by clicking on this link. I was next to a scientist from NASA who said he and his colleagues often play this CD as they study the planets and stars.

So many great artists, like Story, tell me of their interest in animals, birds and insects, even something as seemingly lowly as a fly. (I semi-dissed cockroaches yesterday, but they are fascinating creatures too. They live in a true democracy, but I'll save that discussion for another time.) The next time a fly buzzes past you, listen carefully to it and consider the complexity of this tiny creature.

Middle East Cockroaches Invade U.S. During the Iraq War

2008-10-08T12:32:54-04:00

As the War in Iraq continues, a much quieter invasion has been taking place on U.S. soil.

American military personnel have unknowingly been bringing back Middle Eastern cockroaches in their belongings and equipment. One such globe-trotting insect, the Turkestan cockroach, is now settled in the southwestern part of the U.S., according to Phil Koehler and Roberto Pereira, both researchers with the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

This hearty roach isn't picky about its digs. Your sewer, water meter box, potted plants and compost piles will do nicely. Under the kitchen sink may feel like paradise to this war survivor.

But, as infomercial salesmen like to say, that's not all.

You also may get to enjoy the company of the Madagascar hissing roach, the lobster roach and the orange spotted roach, especially if you live in Florida.

Here, Koehler and Pereira watch as a bearded drgaon lizard peers into a jar filled with Madagascar hissing cockroaches at UF's main campus in Gainesville. The entomologists recently warned Floridians and pest control experts about the possibility of exotic roach infestations.
(AP photo/University of Florida/IFAS/Thomas Wright)

“We have 69 species of cockroaches in the United States and 29 of them were brought in from other countries,” said Koehler, an entomology professor. “And now we have these new species being shipped into the state.”

Pointing at a hefty, 3-inch-long Madagascar hissing roach, he noted wryly: “People just won’t like having that around their house.”

The military isn't solely to blame. Exotic pet traders import such bug novelties. If a cockroach or two escape, they quickly multiply and make themselves at home.

We can also blame the falling U.S. dollar.

James Tuttle, a longtime reptile enthusiast who now runs a roach-supply company called blaberus.com that ships insects all across the country, said roaches as reptile food “is probably the most popular thing going these days.”

Crickets, which used to be a more popular reptile food source, are noisy with all their chirping, smell bad when they die and don’t reproduce quickly the way roaches do once a farm is up and running. And they cost more.

“It’s the economy,” he said. “You can spend $50 a month buying crickets, so that’s $600 a year, or you could spend $50 (on roaches) and in six months, never have to buy food again.”

The roaches that don't wind up as reptile chow must be celebrating their unexpected good fortune. Irritated homeowners may not be so eager to sing along with the below.

How Healthier Human Foods Are Killing Mammals

2008-10-07T12:49:33-04:00

It feels to me like much of the western world lives in an odd protected bubble these days. Like the climate-controlled skyscrapers we often inhabit, we are disconnected from how our actions can impact other people, and even other species. These often don't hit us until the bubble bursts.

This week, for example, you might have read about the latest Global Mammal Assessment, the most comprehensive look at the state of the world's mammals. As you'd expect, the findings are bleak. One in four mammal species is now being pushed to the brink of extinction.

Shrews, lynx, other wild cats, Tasmanian devils and even rabbits are all facing threats, along with countless other land and marine mammals.

(Credit: Alicia Wirz)

How we conduct our lives, even in ways that we think may be beneficial to us and harmless to others in the short run, are contributing to such problems. An example could be on your pantry shelf at this very moment.

In 2003, the U.S. FDA issued a regulation requiring manufacturers to list trans fatty acids, or trans fat, on the Nutrition Facts panel of foods and some dietary supplements. Trans fats have been linked to possible coronary heart disease and other health problems. Consumers have rightly demanded alternatives to this dangerous type of fat, and companies have responded with one of the cheapest available alternatives, palm oil.

Here's how the domino effect then often goes:

Companies seek out inexpensive sources of palm oil.

Growers frequently target rain forest lands for their crops, since plantations take around 5 years to yield oil.

Growers strip forest lands and sell the resulting timber during the 5-year interim.

Rain forest animals, such as sun bears, Asian elephants, and Sumatran tigers, lose their habitat and begin to die off.

You feel better about buying healthier food products for your family. You may even nosh on a trans fat-free baked good while reading the news that mammals the world over are in danger.

The growers of the palm oil, in turn, may just barely make a living, and might not even be able to afford the healthier products containing their oil.

Too many people. Too much mismanagement. Too little respect for nature and our connection to it.

And the above doesn't even touch upon problems related to coffee, cars and more. Think carefully about your lifestyle and the purchases you make. This is not information that others necessarily want you to know, as it doesn't add to their immediate profits. Force yourself to think outside of the protective bubble that is imagined for us, since it isn't reality and it won't help any of us—humans and non-human animals alike— in the long run.

Earliest Animal Footprints Found

2008-10-06T12:00:00-04:00

If the ZZ Top guys had been around 570 million years ago, they could have sung, "She's got legs, she knows how to use them." That's because the world's oldest known animal footprints date to that time, according to scientists who found the ancient tracks in Nevada.

Now the question is: Who did the walking?

Loren Babcock, a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University who worked on the study, says that he is "reasonably certain -- not 100 percent" that the fossil was made by a centipede-like arthropod or a leg-bearing worm.

Here he is holding the fossilized tracks, which were made in what is now a chunk of rock that was spotted near the city of Goldfield.
(Credit for images: Kevin Fitzsimons, Ohio State University)

The significance of this find is that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than was previously thought, according to Babcock and his colleague Soo-Yeun Ahn.

The first legs may not have given Tyra Banks or Jessica Simpson much competition, but there were a lot of them on this creature. The tracks show two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter. They were made during the Ediacaran period, which preceded the better known Cambrian age.

"We keep talking about the possibility of more complex animals in the Ediacaran -- soft corals, some arthropods, and flatworms -- but the evidence has not been totally convincing," he said. "But if you find evidence, like we did, of an animal with legs -- an animal walking around -- then that makes the possibility much more likely."

A close-up view of the tracks

If you happen to have Ediacaran-era rock laying around your home, Babcock suggests it could contain such tracks too.

"I expect that there will be a lot of skepticism," he said about the discovery. "There should be. But I think it will cause some excitement. And it will probably cause some people to look harder at the rocks they already have. Sometimes it's just a matter of thinking differently about the same specimen."

Chihuahuas: The New Pit Bulls?

2008-10-03T20:19:29-04:00

Animal shelters the world over are girding themselves for an invasion. The reason? Disney's new movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua. In fact, my friend Allison Lindquist, executive director of the East Bay SPCA in California, says that chihuahuas could very well be the new pit bulls. She should know. She has three pits and one chihuahua, Lily.

But the pit bull comparison has to do with animals that owners tend to reject and send off to their local animal shelter. In recent months, shelters have experienced an increase in the number of small dog breeds brought in.

(Credit for all images: Allison Lindquist)
Itty Bitty

Maya & Daisy

“Unfortunately, breed specific surges have occurred after popular movies come out," says Lindquist. “Sadly, many people do little research into breed characteristics and don’t understand and commit to the responsibilities of life-time ownership of a puppy or dog. When they realize the dog doesn’t fit their lifestyle or family, or when they tire of the expense and work – the shelters get the dogs.”

A Chihuahua, like many small dogs, can live up to 20 years. This is two full decades of care that this companion animal will require – including vet bills. According to PetPlace.com, the cost of owning a small to medium sized dog over an average lifespan of 14 years is $7,240 to $12,400.

“A puppy that looks cute in a movie may not seem as cute when it chews a favorite shoe or cries to go out at 3 a.m. in the morning,” adds John Dauzat, Director of Fremont Animal Services. “Rather than work through the issues it is often easier to dump the animal.”

“Sadder yet is when a family realizes a poor fit and relegates the innocent animal to the back yard,” says Adam Parascandola, director of Oakland Animal Services. “That is when we get calls for barking or neglected dogs. Many times help reaches these animals too late- some are too anti-social and fearful to ever enjoy life with a family again.”

Bennedict

Lindquist has a heart of gold and a true love of animals. (I met up with her last week when she was toting around Lily, whom she just adopted.) All of her home pets were one step away from euthanization, so she is a real animal life saver, and savior. Dog Lily is kind of a physical wreck, but she took her into her home anyway. I held Lily for quite a while last weekend, and it was like caressing a stuffed, brittle-boned bird.

Lily (Not sure why this image keeps loading in sideways, but somehow that adds to Lily's natural eccentricities.)

Lindquist concluded:

"I cannot urge strongly enough that people resist the impulse buy of a dog. These animals are solely dependent upon us, and their lives are completely in our hands. That is a huge responsibility for a long, long time."

If Beverly Hills Chihuahua, or anything else, inspires you to consider adopting a new pet, she advises the following:

Do your homework. Research the breed to determine which best suits your lifestyle. You can do this by checking out sites like our own Animal Planet pet breed selector or dog breed info.
Volunteer at a shelter for a while to see what is involved in pet care, and also to witness firsthand how many wonderful, deserving animals end up there due to no fault of their own. Work with those dogs who are depressed because they don’t understand why they are in a strange, scary place and why their people haven’t come back yet.
Consider your living situation. If you plan on moving at any point in the next 15-20 years, are you committed to take your pets at any cost? Even if you are a renter and it is a huge headache to find another landlord that will accept a pet? Are you willing to pay a significantly higher deposit to allow your pet to stay with you?
Be honest about financial ability – can you really afford a pet? 2K per year for food and vet bills? Really?
Research breeders before shelling out $$. If you think it is expensive to buy a fad dog, wait until you learn about all of its health problems due to irresponsible breeding.
Consider saving a shelter dog!

Urban Black Bears Live Fast, Die Young

2008-10-02T16:11:37-04:00

Black bears that live around urban areas weigh more, get pregnant at a younger age and are more likely to die violent deaths, according to a Wildlife Conservation Society study.

Sound familiar? I'm forever drawing parallels between human and non-human animal behaviors and outcomes, but they're so compelling and direct in this report that even I was taken aback.

(Credit:Jon Beckmann/Wildlife Conservation Society)

I have to admit that when I first saw the above photo and heard about the news, a comparable urban clan from one of my favorite British comedies, "Keeping Up Appearances," came to mind. (Usually the family is shown sitting around a half-broken TV set eating junk food.)

For a decade, WCS scientist Jon Beckmann and his team tracked 12 bears that lived in urban areas around Lake Tahoe, Nevada. They then compared these urbanites to 10 "wildland" bears that lived in outlying wild areas.

Here's what they discovered:

Wildland bears
eat natural grub
healthy weights
females give birth between 7-8 years of age
sometimes live past the age of 10

Urban bears
eat leftover food from human garbage
fat (30% heavier than wildland bears)
females give birth between 4-5 years of age
rarely live to advanced years

None of the black urban bears lived beyond the study period. All 12 died before the age of 10, victims of vehicle collisions.

“Urban areas are becoming the ultimate bear traps,” Beckmann said. “Because of an abundant food source – namely garbage – bears are being drawn in from backcountry areas into urbanized landscapes where they meet their demise.”

As a result, the bears fail to recolonize the populations in the outyling wild areas, so bear numbers there plummet.

Bear-proof garbage containers and other such bear proofing in cities help, but I wonder how plentiful bear food sources are otherwise, given climate change effects and with us encroaching so much on their natural habitat. If you were a hungry bear, wouldn't you take your chances by moving to the big city?

A Fowl Breath Dinosaur

2008-09-30T20:38:46-04:00

Over the past few days here you've heard about a giant, prehistoric bony-toothed bird and an ultra tiny American dinosaur. Now there's sort of a cross between the two, a huge new dino that had fowl breath. Its breath probably did stink, but fowl in this case refers to breathing like a bird.

The new dinosaur, named Aerosteon riocoloradensis, or “air bones from the Rio Colorado," was a nearly 33-foot-long predator that lived 85 million years ago in Argentina.

(Todd Marshall c 2008, courtesy of Project Exploration)

(Below, the team's field vehicle stands guard on the cliff edge over the site of the new dinosaur, named for the Rio Colorado seen in the background marking the southern edge of Mendoza Province, Argentina. Image credit: David Varricchio c 2008, courtesy of Project Exploration.)

The discovery nearly slams the case shut that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

“Among land animals, birds have a unique way of breathing. The lungs actually don’t expand,” said the University of Chicago's Paul Sereno, who led the research, which is outlined in a paper in the latest Public Library of Science ONE.

Birds instead possess a system of bellow-like air sacs that pump air through their lungs without all of the human type heaving and huffing. And here's a trivia question to stump your friends: Why do birds fly faster and higher than bats? The answer is that bats are mammals. They therefore possess a much less efficient way of breathing.

Scrupulous cleaning and CT-scanning of the South American dinosaur's bones, which were embedded in hard rock, revealed the evidence of air sacs within Aerosteon’s body cavity.

“This dinosaur, unlike any other, provides more direct evidence of the bellows involved in bird breathing,” said Ricardo Martinez of the Universidad Nacional de San Juan. He explained that its bones have telltale pockets and a sponge-like texture called “pneumatization,” in which air sacs from the lung invade bone. Such air-filled bones are linked to bird breathing.

(Todd Marshall c 2008, courtesy of Project Exploration)

Co-author Jeffrey Wilson of the University of Michigan concluded, “The ancient history of features like air sacs is full of surprising turns, the explanations for which must account for their presence in a huge predator like Aerosteon as well as in a chicken.”

Mother Goose, What Big "Teeth" You Have

2008-09-29T13:22:35-04:00

Mother Goose is often depicted as a kindly old grandmother type, with glasses and a children's storybook by her side. The real mother of all geese, or at least a very early prehistoric goose relative, would have been more appropriate for a Halloween horror film that would've scared kids and adults alike, suggests new fossil finds unearthed under the UK's Isle of Sheppey, not far from London.

“Imagine a bird like an ocean-going goose, almost the size of a small plane! By today’s standards these were pretty bizarre animals, but perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak,” explained Gerald Mayr, an expert palaeornithologist at the German Senckenberg Research Institute. He made the discovery.

(Images: Gerald Mayr, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum)
Please click on the below to see its "teeth."

A skull for the 50-million-year-old bird, named Dasornis, indicates it had a nearly 16.5-foot wingspan, so it could have easily enveloped 3 human basketball players. The findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Paleontology.

“No living birds have true teeth - which are made of enamel and dentine - because their distant ancestors did away with them more than 100 million years ago, probably to save weight and make flying easier," Mayr said. "But the bony-toothed birds, like Dasornis, are unique among birds in that they reinvented tooth-like structures by evolving these bony spikes.”

The reason for the pseudo-teeth?

“Its linked to diet,” Mayr explained. “These birds probably skimmed across the surface of the sea, snapping up fish and squid on the wing. With only an ordinary beak these would have been difficult to keep hold of, and the pseudo-teeth evolved to prevent meals slipping away.”