Dr. Wildlife

The Furry Fandom's Resident Zoologist. Focused on saving endangered species through creative solutions. They/Them. 

[drwildlife]

Living mainly in the canopy of tropical rainforests, the extensive webbing between the Wallace's Flying Frog's toes allow it to glide from tree to tree. The species can be found from Thailand, Laos and Vietnam through Peninsular Malaysia to the island of Borneo. Photo by S. Dalton

[drwildlife]

The horned casque and skull of the helmeted hornbill accounts for over 10% of the bird's entire weight. These critically endangered species are often illegally, but openly, traded on social media platforms such as Facebook. 📸 Tim Laman

[drwildlife]

One of the strangest looking of all the small cats is quite possibly the jaguarundi. Their slender, elongated bodies, small flattened heads, and long tails are more reminiscent of an otter than a cat 🦦

[drwildlife]

After watching the first episode of Prehistoric Planet , I felt inspired to try my hand at bringing one of the little T. rex "ducklings" to life. First time trying to create a dinosaur in Illustrator so definitely lots to improve on but this little one was so fun to create!

[protectoursharks]

Boleophthalmus pectinirostris or the Blue-spotted Mudskipper 

Mudskippers are one of my all-time favorite fish. Yep, even though here they’re not in the water, they’re fish! They’re found in mud holes in the intertidal zones of South-East Asia. They’re extremely territorial and fight by extending their fins and kinda running into each other (bottom left). They also jump up into the air in hopes of attracting a mate (top left).  

[drwildlife]

Mudskippers are so amazing! 

[drwildlife]

The intelligence of gorillas will never cease to amaze me! The other day I was treated to a wonderful view of Nassir, a Western Lowland Gorilla at the Toronto Zoo, using a bowl to sip water from a nearby pond. I was nerding out SO hard about this!

[tiifu-ndovu]

[er-cryptid]

Conservation Status Categories

[uncharismatic-fauna]

A Garden of Common Garter Snakes

Also known as the eastern garter snake, the common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) is a species of snake found throughout North America. Populations can be found in almost any habitat and many are highly adapted; currently there are 13 recognised subspecies with distinct morphologies and behaviours. Most commonly garter snakes are found in forests, grasslands, wetlands, and rural and agricultural areas and are a popular sight for beginner herpetologists.

The appearance of the garter snake can vary greatly depending on area and subspecies. In general, T. sirtalis can be identified by a dark, usually black, brown, or olive body with three yellow, white, green, or blue stripes running down the back and sides, and a light underside. Some garter snakes will also sport red or dark brown spots, sometimes creating the appearance of being totally red. The best way to identify common garter snakes is by the scales around their mouths, which sport distinctive black stripes. Most individuals grow to be 40-60cm long and weigh about 150g, although some have been recorded at over 1m.

Although most consider the common garter snake to be non-venomous, they actually do produce a mild venom. This is most useful when hunting, as T. sirtalis feeds on a variety amphibians and small mammals. In addition to their venom, some populations have also developed a resistance to a toxic chemical  called  tetrodotoxin which is produced by a common prey animal the rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa). This adaptation has pitted the two species against each other in an evolutionary arms race, where the rough-skinned newt grows more toxic and the common garter snake becomes ever more resistant. In addition to these hunting measures, T. sirtalis will spray a foul-smelling fluid when threatened by predators such as hawks, snapping turtles, bullfrogs, large fish, and predatory mammals.

Like most snakes, T. sirtalis is active during the day. As ectotherms they rely on the weather to regulate their internal temperatures, so they are most often seen in the warmer spring and summer months. In their southern range the common garter snake is active year-round, and in colder areas they hibernate from October to March. Males emerge from hibernation first and form large ‘mating balls’ around emerging females, consisting of up to 20 individuals wrapping around each other in an attempt to reach the female. This allows the female to warm up faster and be ready to mate. Some tricky males will emit the same pheromones as females when emerging in order to recieve the same treatment; in this way they too are able to warm up more quickly and can reach ready females faster than their competitors. Females are oviviparous, meaning they develop eggs inside the body. After a gestation period of 2-3 months, up to 40 young are born live. They become sexually mature at about 2 years old and can live up to 6 years in the wild.

Conservation status: Because of their wide range and large population, the common garter snake is rated Least Concern by the IUCN. One subspecies, the San Fransisco garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia), is considered endangered due to habitat loss and water pollution, which seriously impacts the availability of prey.

Photos

Mark Kluge (via iNaturalist)

Heidi Rockney

Kevin Urbanek

Jackson Shedd

[amnhnyc]

Strutting through the week like the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena)? This scavenger lives in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and India, inhabiting savannas, scrublands, and semi deserts. While it prefers to eat carrion, it also supplements its diet with fruits, seeds, and leaves.

Photo: Balaji Venkatesh Sivaramakrishnan, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr

#AnimalFacts #hyena #africa #NaturalHistory #nature #wildlife #dyk https://www.instagram.com/p/CcB7s95rrSX/?utm_medium=tumblr

[amnhnyc]

It’s a “tuft” life for the Tufted Puffin (Fratercula cirrhata). This sea bird inhabits the North Pacific, where it lives in a large colony that nests on rocky cliffs.

It uses its thick bill to dig burrows as deep as 5 feet (1.5 meters) into a cliff! Throughout much of the year, it has an orange bill, and its body is covered in sleek black plumage. But come breeding season, a patch of white embellishes its face, its bill becomes a bright orange-red color, and a golden yellow tuft grows above each eye! The transformation happens to both males and females.

Photo: Alex Derr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, flickr

#AnimalFacts #TuftedPuffin #birds #puffin #nature #dyk https://www.instagram.com/p/CcMX1zprqdU/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[todaysbird]

the white-necked crow is a large corvid endemic to the island of hispaniola - previously, they were found in puerto rico as well, but they have been extirpated from their former range. strangely, despite their name, they feature no white on the body. they do sport a distinctive red iris rarely found in birds. they are vulnerable due to habitat loss and degradation.

[drwildlife]

Fruit makes up about 60% of a Sumatran orangutan’s diet with durian and figs being the most frequently consumed.  When fruit is scarce, they will also eat leaves, flowers, bark and even the occasional insect or egg! Photo | National Geographic

[drwildlife]

The moment you have all been waiting for is finally here 👀

See you in the classroom 🐍

Wednesdays @ 7PM EDT | Exclusively on Twitch

[drwildlife]

BIIIIIIG yawn! Feat. Kilat the Komodo dragon at the Toronto Zoo

[mindblowingscience]

Boa constrictors move ribs to avoid suffocating when they kill prey

The boa constrictor has developed a way to control air movement in its lungs using ribs in the lower part of its body, so it can breathe while it squeezes the life out of its prey

The boa constrictor can move different parts of its ribcage independently, allowing it to breathe even while it crushes prey using its body.

The mammals, reptiles and birds that this snake hunts can survive for several minutes as the constrictor squeezes the life out of them using the upper third of its body. But that part of its body also contains the lungs, so at first glance this might suggest these snakes risk suffocating themselves while killing prey.

John Capano at Brown University, Rhode Island, and his colleagues have worked out how the snakes cope. Capano says they draw air into their constricted lungs by selectively rotating ribs farther down the body.

“They seem to have very refined control over which segment of their body they actually are ventilating with,” he says. “This explains how it is that they’re using a ribcage to ‘kill’ another ribcage, but that they themselves are fine.”

Continue Reading.

[tiz-aves]

 [Genus, positively avian] | Dunkleosteus

Dunkleosteus is a small and extinct genus of large, armoured, jawed birds that can be divided into ten different species;

D. terrelli - The best preserved and researched species of the genus, fossils were found in the east of the USA and Belgium. Also it measured around 8.79 metres in length and 4 tonnes in weight, which makes it more massive than the second largest birds, namely the elephant birds of Madagascar, which were only around 3 metres tall and weighed 650 kilograms.

D. marsaisi - Fossils have been found in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, and while in the past D. marsaisi has been used as a synonym to D. terrelli, the snout BEAK of this species is much slimmer.

D. amblyodoratus - It is only known by a few skull fragments that were found in the upper Devonian layers of Kettle Point in Ontario, Canada. The head was like that of a stump spear, and the length of this creature is estimated to have been at 6 metres.

D. raveri - A small bird just around 1 metre long. It had large eyes in comparison to the rest of its skull. A skull fragment was found below the layers that D. terelli was found in, suggesting it could be a predecessor of D. terelli.

and all those other, less exciting ones

The genus and all it members existed from around 382 to 358 million years ago in the Late Devonian period, probably being at the head of the food chain for 24 million years before going extinct. Also perhaps of note is the fact that despite definitively being birds, they didn’t really need the air all that much, so they actually spent all of their lives in the oceans, much unlike the birds today, which inexplicably evolved to not be able to breathe underwater.

Like other placoderms Avians, members of the dunkleosteus genus had a two-part, bony, armoured exterior which probably made them slow, but powerful swimmers. Like other birds at the time, they didn’t have teeth, but two pairs of sharp bony plates that remind me of a moustache and formed a structure reminiscent of a beak, which of course would only be evolved some 300 million years later.

Oddly enough, the only parts of specimens that are consequently fossilised are the frontal sections, with other portions of the bird being lost to time. Only 5% of all discovered specimens have more than a quarter of their skeleton preserved, which is why many reconstructions of the hind quarters tend to be based on fossils of other, smaller placoderms birds.

Of course this was eventually proven to be a stupid way of action, as an exceptionally well preserved specimen of D. terrelli still had ceratotrichia (slender filaments of an elastic protein, superficially resembling keratin or horn) in a pectoral fin, implying the fin morphology to actually be much more variable than previously thought. This discovery also eventually led to a 12017 study to infer the body shape of D. terrelli, which gives it a much more shark like profile (sharks of course being the famous birds of prey that began evolving some 400 million years ago)

Weird bird!

D. terelli had a very simple mechanism for opening its jaw, which allowed it to both open them within 20 milliseconds and producing high bite forces of up to 7 400 Newton for the largest individuals, which still is less than half what crocodiles achieve, but oh well, birds. The pressure it achieved was high enough to puncture or even cut through cuticle or dermal armour, suggesting that this species predated on prey such as ammonites and other placoderms. The fossil record also suggests that instead of digesting them, bones were regurgitated.

Along with other members of their class, which definitively is not Placodermi, but Aves, members of the Dunkleosteus genus may have been among the first vertebrates to internalise the egg fertilisation process, as seen in some modern sharks (which I remind you, are ancient birds of prey). Some other placoderms may also have been viviparous, meaning that the embryo was developed within the body of the parents.

Studies on the lower jaws of juveniles have revealed that they were pretty much as robust as those of mature individuals, indicating that they could already produce high bite forces at a young age, albeit on a smaller scale. This is in direct contrast to the condition common in tetrapods (such as other birds, reptiles, mammals, and many more), where juveniles tend to have more gracile jaws. Juveniles likely lived in shallow waters while maturing, and moving to deep sea locations when they grew up.

Right, normally I talk about conversation and all that at this point, but they’ve kinda all been dead for millions upon millions of years, so unless Devonian Park happens, we’re out of luck.

Image credits: Johnson Mortimer, Prehistorica

Sources: Britannica [1] | [2], Shark Trust, FishBase Glossary, USA Today, Merriam-Webster, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, NCBI; Feeding mechanics and bite force modelling of the skull of Dunkleosteus terrelli, an ancient apex predator, Fossil Museum