Leafy Seadragon

The Leafy Sea Dragon (Phycodurus eques) is saltwater fish found off the coast of southern and western Australia. They are slightly smaller than the other species of sea dragon, the Weedy Sea Dragon, but are more  ornately decorated. Both species are able to camouflage themselves and hide among their surroundings, giving them few, if any, natural predators.They live off of a diet of small crustaceans, who they consume by sucking through their straw-like mouth. Unlike most crustacean predators, they have no teeth.

image from Dive Gallery

Leafy Sea Dragons swim very slow speeds because none of those leafy appendages are used for movement. Tiny little pectoral fins on the sides of their neck allow them to steer, while all propulsion comes from small dorsal fins that run down the spine. They also do not possess the ability to grasp with their tails, as sea horses can. This can result in them being washed adrift during rough waters. But like sea horses, Leafy Sea Dragon fathers play a huge role in the tending of their young. Females lay eggs on the males tail, where they remain until hatching about two months later.

Leafy Sea Dragons are the marine emblem of South Australia, and are protected there by law. Sea Dragons can be obtained as pets, but to do so legally can be a slow and expensive process, as the specimens must be captive bred. Collection of wild Leafy Sea Dragons for resale and for alternative medicines has been damaging to their wild numbers.

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Monarch Butterfly

Images from Wikimedia Commons

If you live in the continental United States, you've probably encountered a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). Their range literally covers the country and a large chunk of the rest of the continent as well. They've also made their way over to Europe, Australia, and New Zealand due to lucky wind systems and cross oceanic shipping.

The Monarch was one of the species initially classified by Linneaus in 1758's Systema Naturae, and its scientific name comes strait out of mythology. In short, Danaus was a king and had 50 daughters, while his brother, Aegyptus, had 50 sons. Aegyptus wanted the 50 sons to marry the 50 daughters but Danaus refuses until he gets forced into organizing a mass wedding. He then has his daughters kill their husbands, and all but one does. The remaining son gets revenge on Danaus, and he and the daughter become king and queen to a dynasty. See where all this royalty stuff comes from? (Oh, and the species name, plexippus, comes from a name of one of the sons) It has also been speculated that the "Monarch" name is to honor King William III of England (William the Orange in his Dutch Homeland). This is interesting because the butterfly was not called "Monarch" until 1874, while William III ruled 1689-1702, nearly two hundred years earlier.

Wintering Monarchs

Anyway, mythology/history lesson aside, the Monarch butterfly is of particular interest to many due to their migration. Butterflies west of the Rockies travel to the California coast in order to survive the winter. But Monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains can travel upwards of 3,000 miles in order to arrive at congregation spots in Mexico. The generation that roosts all winter then lays its eggs on the return journey. It can take multiple generations to make the trip back to the original northern homeland, while it takes only one generation to make it to Mexico. Scientists and amateurs alike track and study these migrations each year.

And last but not least, Monarch Butterflys are poisonous. And where do they get that toxicity from? Their diets of course! They consume milkweed which gives them high concentrations of cardenolide, which is harmful to most predators.

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Green Anaconda

Its head is somewhere in those plants...

The Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is the largest snake in the world by weight. It can top the scales at over 500lbs and reach lengths of nearly 30 feet. It is not however, the worlds longest snake. That award goes to the reticulated python, which had one specimen top out at 33 feet. They live in slow moving river and swamp areas in South America.

Green Anacondas feed on all sorts of animals, ranging from small fish, reptiles and birds up to large mammals such as capybaras and even jaguars. Anacondas have even been known to consume one another. While young and smaller they do have several predators, though as adults they are rarely threatened. Green Anacondas are able to locate their prey by sight and smell, and with help from heat sensing pits near their mouths. They are not at all poisonous, they use their large size and constricting muscles to grab and suffocate their kills. Like all snakes, they have very flexible lower jaws that allow them to consume prey whole that is much larger than their normal head size. There have been a few documented attacks on humans, but overall they do not specifically hunt out people, they simply eat what they can get.

Green Anacondas demonstrate sexual dimorphism with the females being larger than the males. Their breeding practices involve multiple males coiling up around a single female and attempting to copulate with her. This entanglement is known as a "breeding ball," and can last for several weeks before one male is deemed the victor. Anacondas have a gestation period of 6 months, and give birth to live young.

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Caribbean Flamingo

Flamingo Hop!

The Caribbean Flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber) is the most vibrantly colored of all flamingos, and the only species truly native to North America. Like all flamingos, this species gains it coloration from the existence of carotenoid pigments within the algae and tiny crustaceans that they ate. In captivity, flamingos exist on a special pellet diet that not only provides them with their required nutrients, but also gives them the pigmentation needed to maintain their snazzy colors.

In order to get at their food, flamingos feed with their heads upside down. They use their tongues to suck in water and everything that comes with it, and then using filters built in to the ridges of their beaks they are able to dispel the excess water.

Like many animals that I have discussed here, there is some argument surrounding the classification of the Caribbean Flamingo. Some consider it to be its own species, (though it is sometimes called the American Flamingo, due to the fact that it lives in the Galapagos Islands - well away from the Caribbean) while others consider it to be a subspecies of the Greater Flamingo. Those in the subspecies camp have given it the full name of Phoenicopterus ruber ruber.

Flamingos at the Milwaukee County Zoo

Caribbean Flamingos can live to be 40-50 years old and exist in large colonies with mating pairs that often change from year to year. The couples build cone-shaped nests out of mud that keep their single egg off of the ground. Chicks are born white, and then eventually turn grey, and then finally pink during their second year. They do not have the special filters in their beaks that the parents have, and must subsist off of "crop milk," a secretion produced by glands in the upper digestive tracts of both parents. Pigeons and some penguins also produce similar milks. After about two weeks, the young flamingos join a creche, a large gathering of juvenile birds.

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Alligator Gar

Image from Diobas LTD.

The Alligator Gar (Atractosteus spatula) is North America's largest purely freshwater fish, and is identified by its long, slender body, alligator like snout, and interlocking scales. It's species name, spatula, is Latin for "a broad piece," which pretty much describes its snout, as well as our cooking utensils. They are a member of the class Actinopterygii, fish whose fins are held in place by bony spines, and whose earliest appearance in the fossil record dates back over 400 million years.

They weigh over 200lbs at adulthood and can reach sizes of 10ft. Alligator Gar can be fished for in certain states, and the largest specimens ever angled topped 300lbs. 
Interestingly, the Gar can live outside of water for up to two hours. They are also served up in restaurants and have a good number of recipes devoted to their preparation. Gar themselves feed on other fish, though they may also make meals out of birds and small reptiles. Full grown, they have very few predators besides man.
Alligator Gars have a pretty bad, but probably undeserved, reputation. There have been reports for decades that these fish are dangerous man-eaters, though there is very little evidence of attacks even happening. Jeremy Wade, from the Animal Planet show, River Monsters, hypothesizes that the reputation comes from being mistaken for actual alligators. It is unlikely that they devour people since they like to hold their food in their mouths and carry it with them, something difficult to do with humans.




Edit: I took a visit to the Milwaukee Public Museum today and what did I find right after I bought my ticket...

I apologize for the glass glare! But look at those teeth!

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Quagga

My mom really likes Quaggas for some reason. I'm not sure why, but bring up extinct animals and she pipes up with the illustrious Quagga. Most people have never heard of this beast, and if it weren't for my mom, I probably never would've heard of it either. So happy Mother's Day! Have a Quagga.

Quaggas were once native to what is now South Africa, and are called by their name after the sound that they, and other zebra species, are said to make. Only one Quagga was ever photographed alive, and that was this lady here. Due to over-hunting and planned extermination, (don't want them competing with the livestock!) Quaggas went extinct near the end of the 19th century. Only one hundred years earlier they filled the South African plains. An account from Thomas Pennant's History of Quadrupeds reads as follows:

"They keep in vast herds like the zebra, but usually in different tracts of the country, and never mix together... It is said to be fearless of the Hyena, and even to attack and pursue the fierce animal... They are used to the food which harsh dry pastures of Africa produce and are in no terror of wild beats, nor are subject to the epidemic distemper which destroys so many horses of the European offspring." That was published in 1793. By 1900, those vast herds were no more.

Interestingly, of all extinct animals, the DNA of the Quagga was the first to ever be analyzed. And it brought up some rather interesting results. In the past, scientists had believed them to be a separate species of zebra, due to their coat coloring and their skull size. The skull argument can be blown apart when one takes into consideration that many times taxidermists used skulls from horses and donkeys for the mounting, as it was cheaper to ship a hide than an entire Quagga skeleton. Anyway, genetic testing of samples from the world's mounted Quaggas broke the separate species theory all together, as the results proved that they are simply a subspecies of the plains zebra which posesses a different type of coloration. One argument about why Quaggas had less stripes in the first place relates to the tsetse fly. Some suggest that zebra stripes help to protect against attack by tsetse flies, which can not visualize stripes easily. Quaggas lived outside of the range of these flies and did not need such protections... or so one theory goes. 

 A project has been underway since 1987 to selectively breed Quaggas back into existence. It was begun before the subspecies revelation came out, and was certainly bolstered by such news. To begin the experiment, plains zebras were selected that exhibited lower stripe counts on their rumps and hind legs. In the past twenty years they have shown remarkable results, with each generation displaying fewer and fewer stripes, and even beginning to pick up brownish coloring. The picture here is of Henry, the most quagga-like foal born to date. Anyway, the project is going well, with hopes that soon herds of these proto-Quaggas can be released in preserves, (separate from zebras of course) so that visitors to South Africa can see them in a more natural habitat.

References! Whoa!

• Parsons, Rochelle, Colleen Aldous-Mycock, Michael R. Perrin. "A Genetic Index for the Stripe-Pattern Reduction in the Zebra: the Quagga Project." South African Journal of Wildlife 37, no. 2 (October 2007).
• Harley, Eric H., Michael H. Knight, Craig Lardner, Bernard Wooding, Michael Gregor. "The Quagga Project: Progress Over 20 Years of Selective Breeding." South African Journal of Wildlife 39, no. 2 (October 2009).
• Pennant, Thomas. History of Quadrupeds. London: B&J White, 1793.
• Drawing of "The Typical Quagga." Ridgeway, William. The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse. Cambridge: University Press, 1905. (available at Google Books)
• Image from "The Quagga Project." The Quagga Project South Africa. http://www.quaggaproject.org/.

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Texas Blind Salamander

The Texas Blind Salamander lives in only one location in the entire world. Guess where. Texas! Specifically the Edwards Plateau region, (#30 on the map) and more specifically then that, in an aquifer under San Marcos. They require a very clean supply of water, which is being threatened by city growth and pollution. As such, they are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list, and the number of specimens in the wild is unknown.

The Texas Blind Salamander lives underground in its aquifer, and as such has evolved to the point of not really needing eyes or skin pigmentation. Those evolved traits are found in many other cave dwelling creatures as well. They obviously live in water, and have large sets of red gills on the sides of their head in order to draw oxygen from it. They grow up to 5 inches in length. Overall they are considered to be the most advanced troglobitic (cave dwelling) species of salamander known. They do not have a set breeding season, as evidenced by observations of young year round, and they feed on tiny blind crustaceans, snails and insects that themselves live off the nutrients in bat droppings. Not much else is known about them because of their underwater, underground habitat, and they are only ever found on the surface when the water pushes them up there.


image from the us fish and wildlife service

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