Category Archives: Zoology

The amazing Australian Peacock spider

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Isn’t he gorgeous? He’s an Australian peacock spider (Maratus volans) and the photo is by Jürgen Otto. He has a whole gallery of even better photos of this spectacular little arachnid that you’ll want to check out.  However what you really have to see is his video of the dance the males perform to attract the females (you might want to watch it on YouTube for the slightly larger format):

Absolutely wonderful images that demonstrate how apt the common name for these little spiders is. Thank you Jürgen for sharing them.

[Hat tip to Jerry Coyne.]

Dinny the dinosaur (still) held hostage

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A couple of years ago, after hearing that creationists had purchased Dinny the dinosaur and converted perverted him—and his sidekick Rex—into tools for peddling their rank ignorance, I went out to Cabazon to see for myself how badly they had been abused. What I found was not happy-making, nor would it be for anyone who cares about knowledge, science and truth, or who finds the thought of children being mislead distressing.

What I found was that Dinny had not only been taken hostage by creationists but judging by their posted material, creationists who seem to be enamored with the “teachings” of some of creationism’s lowest common denominators; professional hucksters such as (the felonious) “Dr.” Kent Hovind and “Dr.,” Carl Baugh, two people that even other young earth creationists (YEC) tend to distance themselves from.

Even worse they seemed to be doing fairly good business as they were in the process of expanding the attraction by adding a number of decently executed life size dinosaur models.

Dinny the dinosaur (foreground) and Rex (background).

As I said that was two years ago. Last summer my wife Kathy and I happened to find ourselves not far from Cabazon and I figured we should swing by and see what new devilry might have befallen Dinny.

Read on»

Irreducible complexity reduced

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YouTuber QualiaSoup has produced a very nice, concise, refutation of the “irreducible complexity” argument used by intelligent design creationists against evolution; check it out:

More from Inside Nature’s Giants

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Two more episodes from the excellent television series Inside Natures Giants are now available for viewing on YouTube. As I wrote in a previous post, this is a fascinating zoology program wherein the bodies of various large animals are dissected to demonstrate the details of their anatomy. This is combined with discussions of the living animals and their natural history with occasional incites from Richard Dawkins about evolutionary biology.

First of the newly available episodes is a two for one in which both a lion and tiger are examined, contrasted and compared. Here is part one of four:

A play list for the rest of the parts can be found here.

In my previous posting on this series I wished for them to focus an episode on something like a giant squid so as to show something on invertebrate anatomy and my wish has come true. Here is part one of five:

I couldn’t find a play list for this episode so here are individual links to the different segments: part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

As before I really cannot speak more highly of this program. It is fascinating television for anyone with even the slightest curiosity about the natural world and a absolute must see for anyone interested in biology, zoology and evolution.

Gush, gush, gush!

[Thanks to P.Z. (squee) Myers over at Pharyngula for the heads up on the squid episode and to the WhyEvolutionisTrue YouTube channel for hosting the videos!]

The Rush to ignorance tour continues

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Oh boy, Limbaugh was talking about biology again on his show yesterday (Oct. 6th 2010,  audio available here):

RUSH: You know, ladies and gentlemen, just as the elitists, the wannabe ruling class people on our side are a little full of it, so are scientists.  Many scientists don’t know diddly-squat.  In fact, these next two stories are from the “scientists don’t know excrement and God is amazing file.”  Two stories, one from Bangkok: “Dracula fish, a bald songbird and a seven-meter (23 feet) tall carnivorous plant are among several unusual new species found in the Greater Mekong region last year, researchers said Wednesday.  Other new finds among the 145 new species include a frog that sounds like a cricket and a ‘sucker fish’, which uses its body to stick to rocks in fast flowing waters to move upstream, according to conservation group WWF.  With fangs at the front of each jaw, the ‘dracula minnow’ is one of the more bizarre new species found in 2009 in the Mekong River region, which comprises Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China’s Yunnan Province.”

Second story: “Scientists Find 200 New Species in Papua New Guinea — Scientists on Wednesday unveiled a spectacular array of more than 200 new species discovered in the Pacific islands of Papua New Guinea, including a white-tailed mouse and a tiny, long-snouted frog.”  How many of you remember, along with me, the horror stories of how many species we are wiping out every year because of global warming.  I always said, “How do we know we’re wiping them out?  Do we really know there aren’t any more X’s left?  Have we scoured every acre of the earth, there really aren’t any more of those?”  And how do we know that these are actually new?  Were they just created yesterday, the day we found them? How long have these new species been around?  And how can they be new if we’re destroying them? And yet, ladies and gentlemen, we will tell a farmer he can’t use his land because a snail darter is threatened. We’re being governed by a bunch of stupid idiot jackasses. [Emphasis mine]

Wait, what..? Did he actually just say…?  Arrrrgh!

These newly discovered species are new to science Rush, not the planet. Anyone with an IQ higher than that of a stock of broccoli should have understood this.

Of course the real hilarity here is that he is making such mind bogglingly stupid statements in in the context of claiming that it is really scientists who “don’t know excrement”.

Ah, the arrogance of ignorance.

What’s in our kitchen now?

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We had a visit this evening from a rather healthy looking Solifugid (aka camel spider, wind scorpion, sun spider, though I always knew them as a “sun scorpions”) which I caught after seeing it scurrying across our kitchen floor.

Solifugids are arachnids related to spiders and true scorpions and like scorpions seem to be largely nocturnal. We get them in the house not too infrequently (much to my wife’s dismay) but this was a larger specimen than usual. In fact it is probably one of the larger I’ve seen in this area of So. Cal..

Penny for scale

Close up

Despite their fearsome appearance they’re relatively harmless as they lack venom of any kind. However I imagine that they could inflict a rather nasty bite in self defense with those chelicerae (mouth parts).

Look into my eyes!

However impressive this individual might be for around here it is still relatively small compared to some pictures I’ve seen of some old world species encountered by U.S. troops stationed in the middle east.

Just another night in the Britain household…

Some web sites on Solifugids:

Inside Natures Giants

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I recently stumbled upon (on YouTube) a BAFTA award winning British TV series titled Inside Natures Giants and I’ve fallen in love. What we have here is a television show in which various large animals, all vertebrates so far, are dissected on camera (and often in front of a live audience of students)  by a team of biologists in order to show the details of their anatomy while presenting elements of their physiology, natural history and evolution (including commentary by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins).

So far the show has dissected an Asian elephant, a fin whale, a Nile crocodile, a Rothschild giraffe, a great white shark, a Burmese python, and most recently (unfortunately not yet available on YouTube) a two for one, lion and tiger combination.

I’m hoping they work in a ostrich or emu in there sometime soon and maybe a giant squid or octopus to show some invertebrate anatomy as well.

These programs deal with the dissection of actual animals in graphic detail so if you’re squeamish at all you might find them difficult to watch, however this show is an absolute must see for anyone interested in zoology and evolution.

Of particular interest was the dissection of the giraffe. Among the various interesting adaptations towards tree top browsing is a classic example of one of the cloven hoofprints of evolutionary history, the recurrent laryngeal nerve; the dissection of which has apparently not been done (according to one of the scientists in the show) in a giraffe since the 1830’s.

Here is the first episode of the first series on the Asian elephant:

A play list of all the videos available on YouTube can be found here, and I really cannot recommend them more highly.

Go watch them… NOW!

but there is a whole series of videos showing several different large animals being dissected while their anatomy, physiology, and how these evolved are discussed. A must see for those interested in zoology and evolution.

An example of “intelligent design”?

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Ah yes, surely if there ever was a perfect example of the handy work of a benevolent intelligent designer it must be parasitic wasps.

Warning: You may not want to watch this prior to eating if you are squeamish at all.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lintelligent designerd made them all.

[Via Pharyngula]

An exciting day

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I had something of an exciting day today. First, after some running back and forth (which hurt, a lot, due to the gout attack I am currently suffering from) I managed to capture two of three feral kittens that have been living behind  my workplace. The third, a dark haired and slightly older kitten belonging to a different mother cat managed to elude capture, for now.

Unlike the raccoon and electrical sparks pictured below, these are the actual kittens in question, who are, as of this writing, residing in our bathtub.

Kathy (the wife) doesn’t seem inclined to keep them (despite her love of kitties), so they’re probably destined for the animal shelter. This gives them a better chance at a decent life than living on the streets eating out of dumpsters.

Second while trying to locate one of the kittens I looked between the building I work in and the bank next door (which is a space about a foot and a half wide) only to find myself being looked back at by a large mother raccoon with her kits (cubs?). This had the whole office and a few customers out peering between the buildings, which no doubt had the momma raccoon wondering why all the big hairless monkeys were staring at her.

This was the first wild raccoon I have seen in this part of Southern California (after 30 some odd years of living here). I’ve seen possums, skunks, and coyotes before but despite having heard they were around I had never run across a raccoon before until today.

Finally in the afternoon while I was working on my press, I noticed that the lights flickered and went out. This was followed very shortly by a loud buzzing coming from the circuit breaker panels in the back of the shop and then a series of extremely loud bangs from outside the back of the building (right above where I had caught the kittens in the morning).

I ran outside to see one of the electrical wires that feed our shop sparking, exploding, and burning a few feet past a transformer on a telephone pole in our back parking lot. This was followed shortly by a visit from the fire dept. and the electric company guys who informed us that the power would be out for the rest of the day.

What’s next?

Night of the Tenebrionids!

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My back yard is overrun with tenebrionid beetles (genus Eleodes), aka stink beetles. This is in Southern California, early May 2010. My wife Kathy is behind the camera making comments from the peanut gallery.

Here is a picture of a larger version I took a couple years ago:

This was a good sized female who was a little worse for wear (note the dent in her elytron/back). She was ovipositing in a dirt road.