zoo-logic

the wonders of the animal world from ants to zebra, highlighting some of the most recent and fascinating findings in zoological research

[zoo-logic]

Hello everyone! Apologies for being so quiet on here lately. At the moment I am investing all my social media energies into the spectacular animal pictured above - which unfortunately also holds the status of the most illegally traded mammal in the world.

Pangolins are extraordinary animals. They are the world’s only truly scaly mammals, and when curled up, this tough coat of armour makes them almost completely predator-proof! Pangolins are expert anteaters, consuming more than 70 million ants and termites per year with a sticky tongue so incredibly long that it is rooted in their pelvis. Whilst raiding the nests of their prey, they are able to seal their eyes, ears and nostrils shut in order to protect them from swarming ants and their bites or stings, while their scales keep them away from their skin. Sadly, while these scales are an excellent adaptation to the pangolin’s natural environment and lifestyle, they also put them at great risk of wildlife trafficking. Made of keratin, the same as rhino horn and just like our hair or fingernails, they are believed to have medicinal properties in parts of Asia and Africa, which has led to unsustainable levels of poaching and illegal trade of these unique and fascinating creatures.

Here at the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group, we recently nominated the Sunda pangolin for Arkive’s Valentine’s poll to find the world’s favourite underappreciated species. To come top in this would be an AMAZING boost for raising awareness of pangolins and the threats they face as the most illegally trafficked mammals on the planet. World Pangolin Day is also coming up on the 20th of February and it would really add to our celebrations for Sunda pangolins to have just been crowned the world’s favourite underappreciated species! To find out more about why Sunda pangolins deserve a whole lotta love read our blog post here and then please cast your vote for the Sunda pangolin before midnight PST tomorrow!! Thank you all and please share far and wide to help spread the love :) Find out more about pangolins: IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group - IUCN Red List - Save Pangolins - Arkive Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for loads more interesting facts as we count down to World Pangolin Day 2016!

[zoo-logic]

Happy Valentine’s Day!! There are just over 11 hours left before voting closes - share your love for pangolins today by getting in your vote for the Sunda pangolin in Arkive’s poll for the world's favourite unloved species!

[zoo-logic]

Hello everyone! Apologies for being so quiet on here lately. At the moment I am investing all my social media energies into the spectacular animal pictured above - which unfortunately also holds the status of the most illegally traded mammal in the world.

Pangolins are extraordinary animals. They are the world’s only truly scaly mammals, and when curled up, this tough coat of armour makes them almost completely predator-proof! Pangolins are expert anteaters, consuming more than 70 million ants and termites per year with a sticky tongue so incredibly long that it is rooted in their pelvis. Whilst raiding the nests of their prey, they are able to seal their eyes, ears and nostrils shut in order to protect them from swarming ants and their bites or stings, while their scales keep them away from their skin. Sadly, while these scales are an excellent adaptation to the pangolin’s natural environment and lifestyle, they also put them at great risk of wildlife trafficking. Made of keratin, the same as rhino horn and just like our hair or fingernails, they are believed to have medicinal properties in parts of Asia and Africa, which has led to unsustainable levels of poaching and illegal trade of these unique and fascinating creatures.

Here at the IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group, we recently nominated the Sunda pangolin for Arkive’s Valentine’s poll to find the world’s favourite underappreciated species. To come top in this would be an AMAZING boost for raising awareness of pangolins and the threats they face as the most illegally trafficked mammals on the planet. World Pangolin Day is also coming up on the 20th of February and it would really add to our celebrations for Sunda pangolins to have just been crowned the world's favourite underappreciated species! To find out more about why Sunda pangolins deserve a whole lotta love read our blog post here and then please cast your vote for the Sunda pangolin before midnight PST tomorrow!! Thank you all and please share far and wide to help spread the love :) Find out more about pangolins: IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group - IUCN Red List - Save Pangolins - Arkive Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for loads more interesting facts as we count down to World Pangolin Day 2016!

[zoo-logic]

Greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus) by zoo-logic phoenicopterus - flamingo; from Greek ‘phoinikopteros’, meaning red-feathered roseus - rose-coloured, red

[zoo-logic]

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, “What good is it?” If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

ALDO LEOPOLD

[zoo-logic]

The defining feature of our nearly 3000 species of snake is their conspicuous lack of legs, leaving the simple, worm-like bodies that we know so well. But uncovering the reasons why they have evolved this way has proven far from straightforward. While some scientists suggest that the ancestors of modern snakes lost their legs to improve their swimming ability as they moved into the sea, others have argued that they were terrestrial like many of the species we see today. Exciting new research has finally exposed the true story by examining a tiny but revealing detail in the snakes’ bodies - the shape of their inner ear. This little organ is responsible for hearing and balance, and as such, its structure is strongly linked to a snake’s habitat use. In the new study, researchers used CT scanning to show that a fossilised species from the Cretaceous period, Dinilysia patagonica - which is agreed to be closely related to the ancestor of modern snakes - shared specific structures in its inner ear with modern-day burrowing snakes. These features make the snakes more sensitive to vibrations in the ground, and importantly, are absent from all aquatic snakes and terrestrial species that do not burrow (or only do so when they’ve been disturbed). Based upon these fascinating results, the researchers predict that the hypothetical ancestor of all modern snakes was most likely a burrower - not a swimmer. Ref: Yi H. et al., 2015. The burrowing origin of modern snakes. Science Advances 1: e1500743 [link]

[zoo-logic]

Red panda (Ailurus fulgens) by zoo-logic ailurus - from Greek ‘aílouros’, meaning cat fulgens - bright, splendid Variously compared to raccoons, bears, and cats, genetic analyses have shown that red pandas are in fact the only living representatives of an independent musteloid family, the Ailuridae, which is most closely related to skunks. Their rich reddish coats provide excellent camouflage amongst the branches of fir trees in their mountainous forest habitat, which are covered in a similarly coloured moss.

[zoo-logic]

Marching through the forest in colonies up to a million strong, army ants are some of the most formidable predators on the planet. Their extraordinary collective behaviour gives them the power to overcome almost any obstacle that gets in their way - including seemingly uncrossable gaps along their trail. By grabbing hold of each other’s bodies, the ants are able to form ‘living bridges’ that can allow thousands of their fellow colony members to safely cross, reducing the time and energy that would be lost by instead having to find a way around the gap. New research on the species Eciton hamatum in Panama has found that the creation of these bridges is much more dynamic than previously thought. The ants will initially build the bridge at the narrowest possible crossing point, but will then extend and move the bridge by adding more individuals to help create the shortest possible route. However, every worker that is taken up in forming a bridge is one less that will be performing other important tasks such as foraging for food. The bridge therefore stops moving and lengthening when the costs of adding more individuals outweighs the benefits of shortening the trail, and eventually dismantles when the number of ants crossing the bridge becomes low. Ref: Reid C. R. et al., 2015. Army ants dynamically adjust living bridges in response to a cost–benefit trade-off. PNAS [link]

[zoo-logic]

The unsolved mysteries of the rainforest are formless and seductive. They are like unnamed islands hidden in the blank spaces of old maps, like dark shapes glimpsed descending the far wall of a reef into the abyss. They draw us forward and stir strange apprehensions. The unknown and prodigious are drugs to the scientific imagination, stirring insatiable hunger with a single taste. In our hearts we hope we will never discover everything. We pray there will always be a world like this one at whose edge I sit in darkness. The rainforest in its richness is one of the last repositories on earth of that timeless dream.

E. O. WILSON | The Diversity of Life

[zoo-logic]

Yucatan woodpecker (Melanerpes pygmaeus) by zoo-logic melanerpes - from Greek ‘melas’, meaning black, and ‘herpes’, meaning creeper pygmaeus - of short stature

[zoo-logic]

The Zoological Society of London has today announced the incredibly exciting news that they have successfully eliminated the lethal chytrid fungus from a wild amphibian population for the first time. Tadpoles of the Mallorcan midwife toad (Alytes muletensis), a fascinating and unique species that until a few decades ago was believed to be extinct, were collected from all infected ponds on the island and kept in a laboratory for a week. Whilst there, they were bathed daily in a treatment solution containing an antifungal known as itraconazole, before being returned to the wild. In the meantime, the environment surrounding each pond was sprayed liberally with a chemical disinfectant, including gravel, rocks and plants where the toads would spend time after they metamorphosed and left the water. Early results show that the combined treatment of both tadpoles and environment successfully eliminated chytridiomycosis from local populations, and that the effects can carry over to tadpoles in subsequent years without the need for repeat treatments. Using these methods, researchers are coming close to eradicating chytrid fungus from the entire island of Mallorca and therefore eliminating the lethal threat it poses to this extraordinary amphibian. Ref: Bosch J. et al., 2015. Successful elimination of a lethal wildlife infectious disease in nature. Biology Letters 11: 20150874 [link]

[speciesofleastconcern]

Wow this is huge–not sure about disinfecting the ecosystem tho, sounds made up to me

[badgerofshambles]

yeeeeeaaaah I don’t know about this.

So, I spent the last four years of my life at a university in Virginia doing undergrad research with a B. dendrobatidis expert (not naming names; you can figure it out pretty easily just from that info if you’re really interested). He’s been in the field probably since ‘the beginning’  (the Panamanian Golden Frog dieoff, the R. muscosa breakthrough in Colorado, etc) and has never been a strong advocate for throwing chemicals or any foreign substance into an environment in order to control Bd outbreaks. We know that certain beneficial bacteria can out-compete Bd for space on amphibian skin, and that some amphibians simply don’t get Bd (or, get it and then manage to live with it as more of a mutuality than a pathogen; lookin’ at you, African Clawed frogs). I am very understanding of the author’s very apparent frustration over the lack of an implementable probiotic strategy (MAYBE if we could get consistent funding we’d have a satisfactory answer by now), but microbial ecology is a brand-spankin’ new field and it’s going to take a long time to pin down the mechanisms of what makes for a stable, transmissible probiotic community (and even if that’s a realistic goal for all species of concern). The amphibian arks and frozen zoos are our best bet for maintaining amphibian biodiversity until we get this fixed. It’s not a great solution, no, but neither is opening a can of worms in exchange for quick results.

Now, I understand the desperation of the situation; everyone freaked out pretty good about the presence of Bd in Madagascar earlier this year, self included. But we also know that there are non-amphibian hosts for Bd, and personally (again, biased as heck) I don’t think that part of the equation has been studied enough for us to spray down the environment, treat the amphibians and call it a day. The downstream march is always there. The pet trade is always there, legal or not. This is a system with too many moving parts, and throwing something so static as an antifungal at it is not a long-term solution.

This also doesn’t consider the capability of many other pathogenic fungi to develop resistance to antifungal compounds over time ; long-term-low-dose usage of any chemical agent against an organism tends to lead to resistance, and there’s no reason to think that Bd is any different in that respect from  Candida or Aspergillus. In a similar vein: what’s the ‘bycatch’ here? What other organisms -maybe pathogenic, maybe not- will we be killing along with Bd, and what impact will that have on the rest of the ecosystem?

If this works for Mallorca, I’m thrilled; and I’ve no doubt that this lab has done their homework in spades to make this publication possible. My concern is that this will turn the tide towards chemical amelioration of wildlife disease, and I will call it in the air right here, right now: that will not end well.

tl;dnr: fund probiotics, dammit

(Other herps/micro people- feel free to sound off/correct/etc. This is something we all need to talk about, both in field and out. )

[zoo-logic]

I completely agree that it’s right to be cautious about the applications of this method - and the paper shows the authors feel that way too:

The development of disinfection strategies alone cannot eliminate the threat of chytridiomycosis, as evidence continues to accumulate that lethal amphibian-associated chytrid fungi are frequently being introduced into Europe and beyond [12,20]. Clearing site-level infection is no guarantee against pathogen reintroduction or the introduction of novel pathogens. [...] We acknowledge that Virkon S is a controversial chemical to use environmentally and our use of it was driven by the urgency of midwife decline on Mallorca [21]. [...] Research on the application of these chemicals for control of wildlife diseases must also include investigation of the potential impacts of chemical application to other biodiversity, the environment and associated ecosystem services.

Their results are from a relatively simple system, with only one amphibian host species covering an area of occupancy of less than 10 square kilometres, so I imagine its applications for more extensive populations would probably be limited. Even so, I think it’s a useful addition to the toolkit that might help to protect species where situations become critical as with the midwife toad, or perhaps where chytrid has only recently been discovered in a population and could be rapidly eradicated before it becomes widespread. I’d definitely be interested to know if they were conducting any long-term monitoring of the impacts of the disinfectant on the ecosystem as a whole as part of their research though. I would hope that blanket chemical treatments wouldn’t become widespread until we could confirm that they’re not going to make matters worse in the long run.

[zoo-logic]

The Zoological Society of London has today announced the incredibly exciting news that they have successfully eliminated the lethal chytrid fungus from a wild amphibian population for the first time. Tadpoles of the Mallorcan midwife toad (Alytes muletensis), a fascinating and unique species that until a few decades ago was believed to be extinct, were collected from all infected ponds on the island and kept in a laboratory for a week. Whilst there, they were bathed daily in a treatment solution containing an antifungal known as itraconazole, before being returned to the wild. In the meantime, the environment surrounding each pond was sprayed liberally with a chemical disinfectant, including gravel, rocks and plants where the toads would spend time after they metamorphosed and left the water. Early results show that the combined treatment of both tadpoles and environment successfully eliminated chytridiomycosis from local populations, and that the effects can carry over to tadpoles in subsequent years without the need for repeat treatments. Using these methods, researchers are coming close to eradicating chytrid fungus from the entire island of Mallorca and therefore eliminating the lethal threat it poses to this extraordinary amphibian. Ref: Bosch J. et al., 2015. Successful elimination of a lethal wildlife infectious disease in nature. Biology Letters 11: 20150874 [link]

[zoo-logic]

While climate change will challenge the fitness of many species, others will benefit from new environmental conditions that are better suited to their needs. For example, recent research suggests that Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) have been benefitting from glacial retreat in Antarctica since the last ice age, with populations increasing by an astonishing 135 times over the past 14,000 years. As Adélies nest on bare ice-free ground, warming temperatures have provided them with much more space in which to breed. Interestingly, although glacial retreat has been the main driver of changes in population at scales over thousands of years, short-term studies over years or decades have found the most important factor to be sea ice extent, which affects the penguins’ ability to feed. When we are trying to predict how populations might respond to climate change, we should therefore think about not only drivers of immediate fluctuations in survival rates, but also long-term population trends. Ref: Younger J. et al., 2015. Proliferation of East Antarctic Adélie penguins in response to historical deglaciation. BMC Evolutionary Biology 15: 236 [link]

[zoo-logic]

Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) duckling by zoo-logic anas - duck platyrhynchos - from Greek ‘platus’, meaning flat, and ‘rhynchos’, meaning bill

[zoo-logic]

It is no accident that we see green almost wherever we look. It is no accident that we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life; no accident that we are surrounded by millions of other species, eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting. Without green plants to outnumber us at least ten to one there would be no energy to power us. Without the ever-escalating arms races between predators and prey, parasites and hosts, without Darwin's 'war of nature', without his 'famine and death' there would be no nervous systems capable of seeing anything at all, let alone of appreciating it and understanding it. We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth.

Richard Dawkins | The Greatest Show on Earth

[zoo-logic]

Cockroaches are the ultimate survivors. Famous for their hardiness, they have wandered the Earth in their modern form since the age of the dinosaurs approximately 200 million years ago. Although they can go for long periods of time without food or water, they have a remarkable ability to eat just about anything - including hair, wallpaper paste and leather book-bindings. A new study reveals that their flexible diet is supported by jaws that use a combination of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ muscle fibres to cope with a wide range of materials. Cockroaches have mouthparts known as mandibles, which consist of horizontally-aligned blades a bit like scissors. When the mandibles are activated by fast muscle fibres, energy is released rapidly to allow quick but comparatively weak bites. In contrast, slow muscle fibres gradually build up to maximum strength, and the use of these can enable a cockroach’s bite force to reach up to 50 times stronger than its own bodyweight. In relative terms, this is 5 times more powerful than the force we can generate with our own jaws. Ref: Weihmann T. et al., 2015. Fast and powerful: biomechanics and bite forces of the mandibles in the American cockroach Periplaneta Americana. PLoS ONE 10: e0141226 [link]

[zoo-logic]

If I told you that the surface area of a sea otter could cover a professional hockey rink, you might be forgiven for being a little confused, as these charming creatures are only a maximum of about 1.5 metres long. The secret lies in their fabulous fur coats, which are some of the densest in the animal kingdom. An adult male may have up to 800 million hairs on its body (for comparison, we have only about 100,000 hairs on our head!). Fascinating new research has found that body hair such as this can increase the surface area of animals by up to 100 times. This means that not only would a sea otter’s true surface area cover a hockey rink, but your cat could cover a ping-pong table, and a honeybee a slice of toast. The aim of the study was to assess how body hair affects an animal’s ability to stay clean. While it is clear that having fur greatly increases the potential surface area available to pick up dirt, it also acts as a shield that keeps particles away from the body and makes them easier to remove by actively grooming, shaking or secreting chemicals, or by passive displacement of dirt. Mammalian eyelashes, for example, act to redirect air flow and help to prevent dirt from being deposited in the eyes. Ref: Amador & Hu, 2015. Cleanliness is next to Godliness: mechanisms for staying clean. Journal of Experimental Biology 218: 3164-3174 [link]

[zoo-logic]

Banded mongoose (Mungos mungo) by zoo-logic The African savannah can be a dangerous place, so it always pays to have someone watching your back. Banded mongooses live in closely-knit social groups averaging around 20 individuals, which allows them to be more vigilant against predators, as well as providing other benefits such as cooperative defending of resources and raising of young.