Share Animal Pictures: For Animal Lovers

[BillTre]

Today I learned that a new mode of snake locomotion has been described.
Previously, four modes were known.
This method allows snakes to climb large diameter smooth surfaced cylinders (like certain trees).

The snake involved is the successful and invasive tree snake in Guam which has been killing off all the islands endemic tree nesting birds.
Not all of these snakes have been observed to do this.
This demonstrates an unexpected adaptability of the snakes nervous system (where the animal's movements are generated).

From a Science mag news article.

The movements of snakes have long been classified into four types: concertina locomotion, lateral undulation, rectilinear locomotion, and sidewinding. Tree-dwelling snakes use the concertina mode to climb: They wrap around a vertical surface with two separate parts of their body while sliding between them. To succeed, snakes must be nearly as long as the circumference of the cylinder they’re ascending, Jayne says, because they must wrap their bodies into two gripping regions and extend or pull as they crawl.

But in the new mode, the nocturnal brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) hugs its body around the cylinder in one big grip and crosses over itself to make the namesake lasso, Jayne and colleagues report today in Current Biology. It then uses its many vertebrae to make exquisitely fine-tuned propulsions upward, wriggling its way up the pole (see video, above).

Current Biology research article here.
Open access, really good video here showing other ways a snake can climb trees.

NY Times article here.
Functional video in this article. The one in the science article is broken.

 

[fresh_42]

 

[fresh_42]

I have a certain suspicion of what they grow in their backyard ...

 

[fresh_42]

Watch and learn human

 

[DennisN]

I got this link from a friend today. A magical timelapse movie of a salamander growing from a single cell:

See a Salamander Grow From a Single Cell in this Incredible Time-lapse
Witness the ‘making of’ a salamander from fertilization to hatching in this six minute time-lapse.


An article about it here (National Geographic).

 

[DennisN]

A marvellous clip:

Amazing flights with birds on board of a microlight

 

[strangerep]

Amazing flights with birds on board of a microlight
[...]

Oh, this just begs for some creative video editing to show the 3rd person perched on top of the wings playing that elegant music on an 88-key synthesizer with huge speakers.

 

[BillTre]

 

[berkeman]

Wow, Bill. Just wow.

 

[BillTre]

Yeah, well I didn't take it.
Bet the guy used a $10,000 lens.

 

[berkeman]

Amazing shot. At first I was puzzled by so little disturbance on the water surface by the ground effect of flying low, but given the long wingspan and wing curvature, the bird is just above the ground effect except for the wingtips. That's an eagle?

 

[BillTre]

Its a bald eagle.

Its a great shot for a lot of reasons:
Great angle and framing. The bearly touching the water and reflection really help.
Very sharp, detailed, and clear of a fast moving subject.
Requires a lot of light and/or big diameter lens. I've done this with shots of fast moving fish, but under controlled studio conditions with a very bright flash and the fish were very close. So I could get away with a smaller diameter (much cheaper lens).
I doubt he was very close to his subject, so telephoto (looks like a really nice one).
He probably took a lot of shots to get this one.

I would think that any water surface disturbance would be behind him.
However, it looks like he is just gliding, not flapping. So, less air disturbance? Like a paper airplane.

 

[BillTre]

I just noticed that there are two areas of water disturbance (whitish) about 6-10 feet behind him, even with the outer halves of his wings.
Maybe he swooped down to the water, and changed to flight parallel to the water with a single wing beat, about 10 feet behind his current location. Votrices off the wings's ends hit the water and disturb surface.

 

[Keith_McClary]

bald eagle

https://www.techeblog.com/bald-eagle-symmetrical-reflection/

 

[BillTre]

He was really close to the bird (see your link)!
He also used the same lens that I have! Its a long distance macro (for my fish in tanks), but is said to be good for portraits and out to infinity.

 

[Keith_McClary]

We were watching a bald eagle across a small lake. It dove into the water and came to the surface flapping desperately. We were thinking "poor birdie's going to drown". It finally cleared the water with a big fish in its talons.

 

[BillTre]

I was on a boat with a friend who was trolling.
It was crappy weather and he didn't get any bites.
We were going in and he finally hooked a fish.
As he was pulling it (about 20-30 feet from the boat), in a bald eagle swooped down and took off with the fish.
It was pretty cool!

 

[berkeman]

https://www.techeblog.com/bald-eagle-symmetrical-reflection/

Awesome link, thanks!

(But who names a bald eagle "Bruce"?)

 

[fresh_42]

(But who names a bald eagle "Bruce"?)

This is Bruce:

 

[BigDon]

Mr. Tre,

I'm given to understand from other posts that you have a "nodding acquaintance" with aquaria? I was labeled a Master Fish Breeder by the good folks at Steinhardt* Aquarium back in the early '90's and then in the '00's I spent about five years at a place maintaining more than 250 aquariums, only 18 of which were 20 gallons or less.

Other than the financial issues, it was the best time of my life.

I was on the phone with wholesalers and actual collectors on three different continents. And I got to speak with Dr. Sanchez, then Head of Fish Pathology at Steinhardt, weekly and got marvelous insights not possible otherwise.

Do you know what the limiting factor for the colonization of crustaceans to a particular area is?

The bioavailability of molybdenum!

Without it they can't produce the hormone that allows them to molt properly. Hence the reason for "bad molts" in pet crustacea. (Most modern prepared fish foods contain it now. If uncertain they usually list it on the ingredients list) Bad molts can be ghastly by the way. Especially in a creature you've come to like.

I also learned a very neat trick.

That is, how to gently detach even very large anemones from about any surface, even glass. I learned it from watching our resident North Atlantic hermit crab and its pet anemone transfer shells. After the third upgrade in shell size is when I started wondering how he transferred the anemone without injuring it.

Prior to this, if we wanted to move a large carpet anemone we had several removable objects in their tank and would wait for then to crawl over it. My boss wanted to give me a medal when I demonstrated the ease and consistency of the operation.

What the hermit crab did was use two legs and he gently tickled the anemone's foot on two opposing sides at the same time. The foot starts to pucker a bit and then he'd change positions and tickle a different area and the anemone would pop right off.

I used a slightly different method.

Instead of my legs I used two pieces of palm frond more than long enough to stay out of tentacle range and tickled the foot at the 2 and 8 o'clock positions until you see a reaction, then switch to the 10 and 4. REally large carpets might take a little more coaxing, but seldom take longer than 20 seconds more than smaller anemones.

Ah, the power of observational learning.

(Even bovines have it.)

*I can never spell that the same way twice without autocorrect.

 

[BigDon]

And That's Why You Shouldn't Give Them Names...​

Was what my brother told me after I spent three years watching and feeding two sub-groups from a larger flock of crows.

I had learned so much from those birds! And I thought observing fish was informative!

We were such friends they were leaving gifts of blue glass. That's how you know you're "in". I even learned to speak crow! (Or at least understand it.)

And then a pair of goshawks took up residence in the area and had a clutch. Two prairie falcons also moved in. They burned through one entire subgroup and most of the other in less than ten days before they entire flock left the area for almost a year.

Damn, I hated seeing some of them getting killed. Especially the leader of group one, Big Guy. He was nearly raven sized and one of the early victims. And my earliest and first friend. One of the goshawks mauled him but didn't kill him immediately. Defeathered his left wing except for the end primaries and stranded him on top of a large palm tree. That's where I last saw him.

 

[Klystron]

I even learned to speak crow! (Or at least understand it.)

Never spent time with crows but lived among the smaller corvus grackles that colonized my backyard. I learned to mimic many of their calls and responses, and associate certain sounds with activities. The dark males loved roosting in the tops of palm trees warning of cats, snakes and other predators while the dusky females foraged on the ground.

An enormous raven used to greet my pickup truck each morning from its perch on a wooden gate at the entrance to the Caliente EW range in NE Nevada. An equally gigantic badger denned beneath the raven's perch. See both creatures in the morning; expect sunny weather.

 

[BillTre]

Do you know what the limiting factor for the colonization of crustaceans to a particular area is?

The bioavailability of molybdenum!

Without it they can't produce the hormone that allows them to molt properly. Hence the reason for "bad molts" in pet crustacea. (Most modern prepared fish foods contain it now. If uncertain they usually list it on the ingredients list) Bad molts can be ghastly by the way. Especially in a creature you've come to like.

I hadn't heard about molybdenum before, but there are also other reasons molting can get messed up.
One is the coordinated expression of molting and related hormones.
Another is weird geometries, which I have created years ago in leg transplantation experiments on crayfish.

Your anemone trick sounds like a good one.
Send it into an aquarium site or magazine. They would probably like it.

 

[BigDon]

Thank you Mr. Tre.

Spent years on one. The now defunct Fishindex dot com.

Posted reams of stuff.

While I never had the misfortune of running afoul of wasps and hornets swarms and actually got away with bee charming twice, I did have the bad luck to have an arm engulfed by a large carpet anemone on three different occasions.

On the unpleasant-o-meter that's at least a six out of ten. Large "thermal excursions" (over 19%) and ruptured kidneys rate higher. (10 and 8, respectively.)

The boss was great. He'd let you have the rest of the day off after that. And if you managed to extricate yourself without injuring the anemone, you got the rest of the day off with *pay*.

What a swell guy.

Once I instigated a prank with the other employees that caused him to chase us all off the premises with his cane and fire everybody (for 24 hours).

We had two entire tanks set up to receive what was probably the last permitted import of a single red Asian arrowanna before they were put on the endangered species list. Going to a collector, of course. The extra tank was an emergency back up. Wholesale this creature went for a thousand dollars a foot, and we had a three and a half footer coming it. And after the boss left for the evening...

The planned display tank we were going to hold the fish for pick up suffered a malfunction. The darn fuse box for that section was having issues. So when we received the fish from the airport the fish went right into the tank in the back. And all would have been nice and normal except...

The boss had a three and a half foot long ceramic red Asian arrowanna on a shelf. An expensive gift from a grateful customer. Even had a slight bend to it like a bass trophy. *Somehow* this ceramic arrowanna ended up in the display tank, on its side, with its head and tail looking like they were floating just off the bottom by that slight bend. To keep algae manageable no daylight was allowed in and the boss turned the tank lights on at ten am. So even the evening shift showed up and we were all lying in wait as he hit the lights.

Yeah, I almost kinda feel bad about that look on his face. Amazing how many different colors a man's face can go through.

Then when he realized he been had, (we had to show him actually) he started swinging that cane around like Tashiro Mifune on crack as we all broke for the parking lot. Fortunately for all concerned he needed the cane to walk, so he couldn't do both at the same time. He did manage to take out one of his favorite neon signs though.

That didn't help at all.

 

[Klystron]

...I was labeled a Master Fish Breeder by the good folks at Steinhardt* Aquarium back in the early '90's ...

Other than the financial issues, it was the best time of my life.

I envy you.
For members and guests not familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, the Steinhardt Aquarium remains the 'jewel in the crown' of the California Academy of Sciences, itself a centerpiece of Golden Gate Park, situated across from the De Young and Asian Art Museums.

Academy of Sciences photo taken from top floor of the De Young museum.

Visitors enjoy a wonderful day of science exhibits including cool fish and reptiles, with a short walk across the quad to view fine art from many cultures. Free open air concerts play regularly within the park. The streets south of Golden Gate Park offer restaurant cuisines from around the globe.

Adventurous tourists may head east through the Panhandle to tour the famous Haight-Ashbury district below the University of California SF medical school campus.

 

[BigDon]

Klystron, I've spoken with researchers about my former job and was told there were people with Master's degrees who would have been envious.

When Genentech moved in across the freeway we would get very interesting people come into look at our stock. Some became very good customers. Though there were sometimes awkward moments when I would gaff a bit, being used to lecturing "the common man" about complex processes and then doing the same to a holder of multiple PhDs...with some, who I later learned were dept. heads, being somewhat direct about the matter.

 

[BigDon]

I have met, maintained and owned some incredibly intelligent fish over the decades. The high water mark for cold blooded aquatic intelligence seems to be the freshwater spiny eels of the genus Mastacembelus. (Why did that bold?) They make very nice pets if you know how to maintain them.

They even beat out cichlids in the abstract reasoning department.

The best one to keep would be the lemon eel, as they seldom exceed eight inches and still display a personality. (Some of the others easily exceed three feet.) The tire track eel is one of the most personable but get close to four feet long when full grown.

and while the fire eel is a very handsome fish, black with red reticulations, it's also as delicate as discus to environmental conditions and can be difficult to keep alive.

Fun fact:

Spiny eels invented the vibrating bone saw before we did. If you look along the dorsal surface on a sizable specimen you'll notice a row of seemingly small, triangular spines the exact shape of great white shark teeth, small serrations included. These aren't surface features, but actually anchored deep into their bodies.

Spotted one of our stock in a tank not conducive to said eel's good health. Was accidently transferred with driftwood pieces placed in the tank to provide territories and cover. Fortunately, because of the other denizens of the tank, I was wearing suede welder's gloves. So I netted out the eel but had to grasp it to keep it from jumping, when the fish went completely rigid, then started vibrating so fast the spines cut through the welder's glove and outer skin of the palm of my hand faster than I could release it!

My boss, who was busy in another section said later:

"Oh yeah, they do that. Be careful."

 

[BigDon]

More observations where I learned things, spiny eel division.

But to make my point, I need to mention lions first.

When lions kill prey, they use their well documented strangulation or suffocation techniques. But when lions try to kill *each other* they use an entirely different attack, that is, they try to bite out their opponent's lower spine, just above the sacrum.

Structurally this is the weakness point in any quadruped. This also extrapolates very well in defending oneself or others from large, aggressive canines. Strike the dog not on the head, but just above the hips. Though this works best if you're not the subject of the attack, due to orientation issues. Dog's heads are *designed* to take damage as they attack things with their faces for a living. Their lumbar vertebra? Not so much.

And if you absolutely have to...

Keep in mind a dog's lower jaw has a very, very low tolerance for rotational torque. It will easily dislocate if you grab and twist it. A good friend of mine was attacked by a full grown great dane and only suffered minor injury to his hand employing that technique. Most dogs have nothing left after you disable their jaw.

Anywho, back to fish.

So I owned a tire track for close to 20 years. Her name was Snoots, due to spiny eels having prehensile or at least highly mobile noses. With three flaps like flower petals around their nostrils.

The majority of spiny eels are what I used to refer to as "gentleman predators" Not very territorial at all and seldom molest things that don't fit in their mouths. Conversely spiny eels of any size won't tolerate being bullied and have a very direct way of dealing with aggressors.

There are a lot of African catfish roughly 8 to 12 inches in length in the aquarium trade. Some look very similar to each other but have very different habits, but also, due to their intelligence some can be driven "rogue" by bad or neglectful fishkeepers. I was trying to rehabilitate a bad catfish at home, which I had done before, but this cat started picking on Snoots. After the third good bite on the end of her tail in as many hours Snoots had had enough. Waited for an opportune moment, extended from her den and bit out the catfishes vent!

Turns out, from conversations with Dr. Sanchez, this is an invariably lethal insult. With death resulting from the inability to maintain osmotic balance. In around four hours in most cases.

Probably hurts a lot too.

And after I started watching for it at work I saw a couple of other cases, after the fact. Had to have a talk with the younger employees about who goes in with who after that.

 

[BigDon]

And my old boss, as you may surmise, was a colorful character. He was the spitting image of Sir Richard Attenborough. (The owner of Jurasic Park in the movies.) Could have easily been mistaken for twins.

Annnddd that's where the similarities ended.

Where one would imagine a pleasant British accent, replace it with a whisky graveled Chicago accent. And good Lord, the man was famous for casting a quick glance about the place, and if they wasn't any "polite company" present would come up with an off colored joke that would get *me* to stop in place!

"Dude!"

But not only was he on the Board of Directors at Steinhardt, (hence my long acquaintanceship with that fine institute) he got his advanced degree back in the forties. I looked at his diploma from the University of Chicago on the wall and once commented.

"Ichthyotomy huh? What is that, the science of removing fish from someone?"

His reply was unrepeatable here, but seems to be, (if I respelled it correctly) the science of the form and structure of fish.

 

[BillTre]

 

[BillTre]

Found this shot:

Which sure looks like it is the series from which the shot in this post came from.

 

[berkeman]

Little fish is like, "Lah de dah, lah de dah..."

 

[256bits]

Mother hen and her brood of chicks!

 

[Astronuc]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/27/us/dog-steals-purple-unicorn-gets-adopted-trnd/index.html
https://people.com/pets/dog-stealing-unicorn-toy-from-dollar-general-store-rescued-north-carolina/

He looks like our dog, but she would tear apart a stuffed animal. Someone described the dog as a Lab mix, but it appears to be an American Staffordshire terrier mix. Perhaps a mix of American Staffordshire and Labrador retriever.

 

[fresh_42]