Amazing animals

We could certainly benefit from a separate bee/pollination thread. Have touched on Colony Collapse Disorder before, but there are new developments there as well.

Personal experiences are more fun (at least a different kind of fun) for readers than are summaries of recent research.

 

Whales are an ‘Infraorder’ not species, so here stretching definition of amazing species. But in tribute to their amazingness, I ask you to let that go.

About 50 million years ago, after a blessed asteroid to Chicxulub allowed a band of unimpressive mammals to claim Earth from reptiles, some mammals went to sea. Their close surviving relatives on land are hippos. Large, sturdy and ill tempered, hippos might merit their own ‘amazing’ story here. But not today.

So, to sea, where there be cetaceans. Whales, dolphins and porpoises. May latter two have their time in light later as smartly eating fish; today I’m all about whales. Whales divided themselves into toothy-jawed predators and filter feeders. Both of those clans still do well, so let’s give each a moment.

Predatory whale species eating fish grow to 6 tons, while sperm whales reach 40 tons by eating octopi and squids. Earth’s Reptilian time had only smaller marine predators.

Filter-feeding whales are capped by blue whales of 180 tons. Evidence is lacking that any other earth animal ever got so big. Terrestrial herbivorous reptiles may have hit 100 tons back in their day, which more than anything suggests that their max-10-ton predators may have been under performing . Land critters top out at 1/10 of those sizes now.

But this is about whales. Bigger now than any previous critters at sea. Smart as well, if we are to believe reports. But their thick layers of fat (for oceans are cold) led 18 and 19 century sailors to be whalers because humans needed things to burn. Yet I did not know that 1960 was biggest whale-harvest year ever, and you might not have either. Since then, whaling is much reduced. Shame having caught up with other sources of things to burn. Now whale populations are recovering.

If whales do complex communication, and if they have a sense of history, they must be saying “Humans in boats came for us, but then stopped. What are they planning?”

I wonder about that very same question.

 

Humans of this species date from about 200 thousand years. Other related species have not persisted but their tooled rocks do. Earliest of those has now been found to exceed 2 million years:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05696-8

One might reflect upon Earth times during that 1.8 million-year interval. For when Homo sapiens came out of Africa, it was not into open country.

 

Sometimes the whales won:

This Real-Life Whaling Disaster Inspired ‘Moby-Dick’

 

Staying at sea for Mosasaurs, they were large predatory marine reptiles back when earth was 'that way'. You may have seen one (special FX) in a Jurassic Park movie. This study is about their fossil bones:

Missing bones and our understanding of ancient biodiversity -- ScienceDaily

Actually I mention them because one (otherwise well-informed) grad student told me there were no marine reptiles back then. "OMG who told you that?"

Ah, students...whaddayagonnado.

Whole point of this Amazing Animals thread is to promote a general understanding of the parade of animal life on earth. As a trick I emphasize extreme examples, hoping y'all will 'get' the boring ones as well as collateral benefits.

 

Biggest sharks ever were Megalodon; just a bit bigger than Mososaur 'max'. That fish went extinct about 2.6 million years ago by uncertain cause(s).

We still have great white sharks which are about half size of Megalodon. Still big enough to make a meal of you. But Meg's teeth were, well just look:

Megalodon - Wikipedia

(scale is centimeters)

 

Goats are amazing in a pleasant way, until they hit adolescence. Downhill from there.

If you are in or near North Carolina, your assistance is requested:

North Carolina Farm Needing People to Cuddle With Baby Goats - Charlotte Stories

 

Reading this book excerpt:

Underbug | Lisa Margonelli | Macmillan

You will see that I am not alone in termite love.

 

Dinosaurs and birds are both amazing, mostly in separate ways. Their connected ways are explored here:

The feathered revolution: How dinosaurs became birds | Cosmos

and your cost for learning is time spent reading about 1900 words.

 

My second least favorite animals (after mosquitoes) are Trypanosome-carying 'kissing bugs'. Infections may be increasing:

Chagas Disease: American Heart Association Warns Doctors to Be Vigilant | Inverse

Our problem is that initial symptoms can be mild and vague. Thus, course of drugs may not be prescibed and one feels recovered.

Twenty years later, an unrecoverable collapse can follow. So, readers are asked to consider being hypercautious if such vague symptoms arise.

 

Silkworm moths. Domesticated about 5000 years ago; they convert Earth's most abundant protein (photosynthetic RUBISCO) into a fine fabric material, with not much help required from human 'farmers'. If that protein comes from mulberry leaves, as Bombyx are picky eaters.

Hence there has been a 'Silk Road' with geopolitical history attached. Hence we have what is regarded as the finest natural cloth - light, strong and shiny. Amenable to any sort of coloring because as protein, it offers chemical nooks and crannies.

Lepidoptera includes about 180,000 species which all make cocoons to transition between their two distinct life stages. But this one uniquely presents 500 meters of (10 micron) fine thread. Almost as if to say 'domesticate me, humans'. That worked, and ~10 billion Bombyx now miss adulthood each year. Obviously some others are allowed to go to stud because, hey, eggs are needed for next year. As often the case, it is not quite clear who domesticated whom.

 

A non-obvious fraction becomes people food.

 

Not our first look at octupi:

How the octopus got its smarts | Cosmos

First strong intelligence on earth was body-distributed and adequate, arguing from their long persistence. But they appear to have no higher aspirations than being themselves. Second was humans like you, brain localized and tool making, which seems to have rung all the bells here.

Science fiction has taken each of those styles interstellar but glossed over many details. Can earth intelligences inform us about such things elsewhere?