Seals vs. Sea Lions

I hear this one all the time. It's a perfectly understandable confusion; these two animals are very similar in a lot of ways. If you're not a marine scientist or even an aficionado, there's not a whole lot of reason or opportunity to learn what the differences are between a seal and a sea lion.

This post would be more accurately titled "True seals vs. Eared seals" (more on this later). The family of pinnipedia is divided into three main categories: walruses, the eared seals (sea lions and fur seals) and the true seals (like the harbor and elephant seals). Within the eared seals, there are several types of fur seal, which have a thicker undercoat than sea lions. But aside from typical nit-picky species differences, fur seals and sea lions look pretty much alike. Therefore, since it's the only good image I've taken recently, the photo I'm using to illustrate the eared seals is a northern fur seal.

There are lots of similarities between true seals and eared seals. They're both mammals. They both belong to the family of animals called pinnipeds (meaning "wing-foot"). They have five digits on each flipper. And they both have sensitive whiskers for the detecting, pursuing, and capturing of prey.

But once you actually see them side by side, the differences become a lot clearer. 

This is a an eared seal (and a human, if you want to be pedantic about it):

My photo, and you're about to see it a lot.

This is a true seal. A harbor seal, to be exact:

From Wikipedia

You'll notice several differences immediately, but the biggest one is their general body type. The eared seal is definitely more of an athlete, with a svelte, lean, muscular body. The harbor seal is, er, well, more of a fast food and binge-watching TV sort of animal. Rounder. More to love, and all that. 

Both animals are very differently equipped. The eared seal has a rotating pelvis-- it can pull its rear flippers under its body and "walk" on all fours. Please excuse my terrible MS Paint illustrations of this:

Resting

In Rotation

Underneath

Here's that standing eared seal photo again, with the rear flippers highlighted:

With true seals, their locomotion is primarily reliant on the amount of blubber they contain. Basically, it goes like this:

A true seal's flippers are much smaller, partly to stay out of the way when they go bouncing along.

Both animals are graceful in the water (though eared seals can move a bit more quickly), but eared seals got the upper hand out of the water, too. 

You can also look at color. Eared seals are pretty much universally a dark brown. They may have some blondishness from sun bleaching, but for the most part, they're chocolate colored. True seals are usually seen in a wider range of colors (all neutrals, but more varied, for sure). The harbor seal is spotted, for example. 

But if you're on a boat and you look in the water and see both animals looking up at you, there's one fast and easy way you can tell them apart. 

Sea lions and fur seals have external ear flaps (little coverings for their ears), hence the family name "eared seal":

True seals don't:

My photo

So, that's the difference. Wasn't that fun?!

Giraffes are awesome! (And also kind of jerks)

If you're a big fan of giraffes, you may not want to read this post. It might change your view of them.

If you hate giraffes, you're probably not going to find anything here to REALLY fuel your rage. But it might help vindicate you a little bit.

If you're neutral or kinda meh on giraffes, well-- you're in the right place, my friend!

Giraffes (or giraffe, as the commonly accepted singular/plural), are pretty freaking awesome!

They have extreme vertebrae! Giraffe have seven vertebrae in their necks, just like us humans. But while ours are a centimeter or so thick, a giraffe's neck vertebrae are a little under a foot long each. A fully grown giraffe can have a six foot long neck!

Speaking of six feet, giraffe moms give birth while standing up! Baby giraffes have a six foot fall to welcome them into the world. Luckily, baby is also about six feet tall at birth, so it's more of a slide than a thump. But we think the jolt might help baby take its first breath, and possibly break the umbilical cord.

Giraffes' tongues can be up to eighteen inches long! The general rule is that for every foot a giraffe is tall, their tongue will be an inch long. So for an eighteen foot tall giraffe, their tongue will be about eighteen inches long.

Their tongues are a dark purple/ black color! At least the first 6-7 inches or so. Why? Simple: sunscreen.

They eat dead animals! 

...

Wait, what?

Yeah. It's true. This is the life-changing giraffe fact, and your little Halloween twist. MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Wait! Come back! There's a good reason, I swear!

Giraffe sometimes eat the carcasses of dead birds and other small animals. You thought they were herbivores, huh? Well, they mostly are. The eating of carcasses isn't for the meat, it's for the bones. Which sounds worse until you realize that plants don't have a whole lot of calcium in them, and the giraffe has a massive skeleton to support. For healthy bone growth, they need to source the calcium from somewhere.

Ew.

There's more where this came from (MY BRAAAAAAAAAINSSSSSSS) but that's all for today, kids! Enjoy!

Factual Shark Week: FORKS!!!!

So since Discovery has, er, jumped the shark with Shark Week this year, I decided I'd do a Factual Shark Week of my own and take it back to its roots: educational fun to make people excited about sharks and show that they aren't mysterious monsters.

And I thought I'd take it here on the blog by talking about the most awesomest part of sharks: their teeth.

Shark teeth come in many shapes and sizes, but for our purposes there are four kinds. Today we're talking about fork teeth.

Fork teeth look like this:

Source

Basically, if you're a shark who eats smaller fish, you're going to want fork teeth.

Fork teeth help small fish eaters catch their dinner in two ways. The first way is by acting like our dinner forks: STABBY STABBY STABBY. The second way is by acting like a net when the shark's mouth is closed, preventing small fish from swimming right back out the way they came in.

So! There you have it. One variety of shark teeth down, three to go.

STAY TUNED.

Mothra vs. ... Butterfly-ra?

Just a quick one tonight, lovelies. If you've ever seen a winged insect and wondered if it was a moth or a butterfly, then boy, is this the post for you!

There are many different varieties of butterflies and moths, so it can be a bit hard to tell. But here are a few easy ways:

Butterflies are active during the day, moths are active at night. This seems like a "Duh," but it's true.

Butterflies most often rest with their wings up, moths with their wings open. Butterflies will open their wings when sunning-- being cold-blooded, they can take in extra heat from the increased surface area of their open wings. But they still often have them canted slightly upward. A moth's open wings will lie flat.

Moths are fuzzy. Moths have fuzzy antennae and bodies. Butterflies are smooth in both places.

Butterflies tend to be more brightly colored, moths tend to be more muted. This makes sense when taken with their most active time of day. Darker, duller colors make it easier to blend in at night, and brighter colors aren't really visible in the dark, so why bother? Butterflies have a few reasons for being brightly colored-- self-species identification, poison advertisement, poison mimicry. Of course, there are both brightly colored moths and dull colored butterflies. But for the most part, this rule holds.

There you go! This isn't everything, but it's a good start.

Go. Identify. Be happy.

Siiiiiiilent Flight!

This post title would have been so much better four months ago. Ah well.

Most people know that owls fly silently. The why of this is pretty simple: it makes them better hunters. Effortless, in fact. Their large eyes help them see in the dark. Their excellent hearing helps them pinpoint their prey. And their silent flight helps them swoop in undetected. They are amazing predators. But how do they do the stealth thing?

It all comes down to feathers. You know, those things birds are covered with.

These are macaw feathers, and fairly representative of the feathers of many birds:

Source

Now, feathers come in all different sizes and colors and levels of floofiness, but what I'm wanting you to pay attention to here is the symmetry. Notice that the shaft in the middle is offset, with one being much larger than the other. These are flight feathers-- found on the edges of the wings-- and the short edge of the feather is the leading edge. Macaw feathers are stiff and thick, almost like plastic. They sort of rattle together if you shake them in your hand.

Now, for comparison, an owl's flight feathers:

Source

There are several obvious differences between these two sets of feathers. Owl feathers are larger, wider, and more rounded at the tips. One other difference, though difficult to know without holding them, is that owl feathers are much softer, almost like structured down.

But there are a couple other things, more difficult to see here, that help owls fly silently. The first is the velcro-like structure of bird feathers. If you've ever handled a bird feather too much (or given it to a small child), they can look pretty tattered pretty quickly. What a lot of people don't know is that they can look pretty tattered on a bird, too-- the bird just preens them back into pristine condition. You can do this, too, the next time you handle a feather. Stroke the vanes of the feather gently with your fingers from the quill to the edges. It won't look as good as it does when the bird does it, but they've had tons of practice.

Anyway, this velcro effect will help by keeping the feathers together in one uniform piece so they break up the air as a whole instead of in tiny bits and pieces. But the real secret is in the leading edge of the feather.

Here's a close-up of a barn owl feather:

Source

A-ha! Those little tiny ruffly bits at the top-- those are the secret!!! Right there!! You can see it!!

Okay, okay. I'm not crazy. Just excitable.

But, really-- that's the secret. Those tiny barbs act like baffles to break up the air flowing over each feather and the wing as a whole. Break up the air, and you can fly like a ninja. An air ninja.

Aw yeah.

The Sad Truth About White Tigers and White Lions

How can you not love the majesty of this cat?

Source

Or this one?

Source

They are beautiful animals, both of them. But, despite much miseducation and misconception, white lions and tigers are not subspecies of their kinds. Nor are they typically very healthy, or even responsible to breed. They also aren't endangered-- though all subspecies of tigers and some populations of lions are. They are, in fact, simply genetic outliers of already established subspecies.

The white coloration of these animals is caused by a recessive gene mutation* that can only be achieved consistently through certain reproductive scenarios. There is about a 1 in 10,000 chance of this mutation occurring naturally. For lions, a slightly lighter coloration doesn't harm them much-- they are already pretty light in color and live in the open savannah. But for tigers, having stark white against black stripes in the shadows of the jungle is a death sentence. You can't hunt very well if your prey can see you coming a mile away. 

Also, white cats stand out more to human hunters, which is always a bad thing. 

Of course, when kept in human care these color variations are seen as treasured and rare, and therefore coveted. 

In fact, in India, ever since the first white tiger was captured by a Maharajah a century ago, it has been tradition to keep some at the Maharajah's summer palace. But the problem with keeping white tigers (and lions) is that the breeding needed to achieve the white coloration is rather drastic. A male first generation white tiger has a litter of cubs with an orange tiger female. These will all be orange. But if the male first generation white tiger has a second litter with one of his own (orange, second generation) daughters, the white coloration can appear in those (third generation) cubs.  

I'm sure you can see where this is going. Inbreeding= bad. Inbreeding, in fact, results in vision problems, hip and spine deformities, kidney problems, and other assorted issues. White tigers aren't healthy and, quite simply, responsible zoos don't breed them. 

Now, before you jump up and say, "But I totally saw one at _____ Zoo!" Well, yes. Sometimes responsible zoos display these animals, because at least in our facilities we can give them a good life with access to all the medical care they'll need, and ensure their genes stay out of the very limited pool of the species we are trying to save. But, again, we don't breed them. 

What we do breed are the non-recessively mutated color varieties, as much as we can, responsibly tracking family trees and genetics to ensure inbreeding doesn't occur. Every single subspecies of tiger is currently endangered. Lions aren't yet on the list, but industry people are pushing to get them there. If we don't save these animals now, we may never get the chance. There are, for example, only about 400 Sumatran tigers left in the entire world. 

So while I love and admire big white cats as much as anyone, thinking about them mostly makes me sad, and I'm 100% onboard with focusing industry efforts to save the animals we need to. Cats have a mystery and power that makes them enchanting to us, and without them our world would be significantly less beautiful. 

Want to help save tigers? Support your local AZA accredited zoo-- as of 2011, AZA accreditation will only be given to zoos who do not breed recessive mutation cats. And the work most zoos do could quite literally not be done without the people who go there. If you want any more specific sources, feel free to email me or leave a question in the comments and I'll point you in the right direction. 

*This does not apply to true albinistic cats, who will have no stripes (in tigers), and reddish/ pink eyes. "White" cats have colored eyes. Melanism (all, mostly, or significantly black) is the reverse of albinism and also not included.

Sharks are CRAZY MoFos

Sharks are basically my favorite animal, excluding mythological ones. And assuming I can PICK a favorite, since I pretty much love them all.

Here's the craziest thing I know about sharks. Baby sharks come out of mom three different ways: live birth (long science word: viviparous), laying eggs which then hatch (long science word: oviparous), and ovoviviparous, which is as cool as it sounds. The young form in eggs which stay inside the mother until they are developed enough. They then hatch-- still inside mom-- and she gives birth to the live young.

THIS IS NOT THE CRAZY PART. That's still frickin' cool, right? But it gets better. SO MUCH BETTER. Er. Well, it gets SO MUCH CRAZIER.

So there's a shark called the sand tiger. Not to be confused with the plain ol' tiger shark. The sand tiger is more of a shallower-water species. But that doesn't stop it from having the CRAZIEST FETUSES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

See, sand tiger sharks are ovoviviparous (the eggs-hatch-inside-mom-and-live-young-swim-out thing). Like all female sharks, they have TWO uteri. The two uteri have independent openings but share the birth canal. And mom will develop eggs in both uteri at the same time.

That's still not the crazy part. The crazy part is that those eggs are literally in a race for survival. Whichever egg hatches first will EAT the rest of the young in its uterus before being born live. Typically only one pup from each uterus survives.

So every sand tiger shark born is already a winner.

Isn't nature amazing???

Possums Vs. Opossums

Earlier today I mentioned on Twitter that I had been trying to explain the difference between a possum and an opossum to my husband. A handful of replies I got made me realize that this would be an excellent Random Animal Fact for today, but it's a tad too long to fit into a tweet. Despite that, the easiest way to explain this is still on a very simplistic level:

This is a type of opossum, familiar to just about anyone who lives in North America:

From Wikipedia

This is a type of possum, familiar to those who live in Australia/ New Zealand:

From The Internet

Now, to be fair, you can consider both "possum" and "opossum" to be family terms, meaning there are many species of each. I suppose the easiest way to divide them is into Eastern and Western hemisphere varieties, the possum being found in the Eastern hemisphere and the opossum being found in the Western.

Both are marsupials, meaning they give live birth to premature young who crawl into Mom's pouch and finish their development there. One just happens to be a lot... scarier looking than the other.

I've worked with both. Opossums hiss, which can be off-putting, and they have teeth like some vicious predator, which can be off-putting. They have naked tails and black eyes and one of the ones I worked with had a skin condition that meant it was balding which was VERY off-putting. But they were still cool little creatures. (The one with the possum-pattern-baldness had been hit by a car and was un-releasable. She walked mostly in circles, but was very affectionate).

Possums are some of the cutest creatures on this entire planet. My beloved sugar gliders are a variety of possum and there's also a creature called a pygmy possum that I INSTANTLY knew I would love as soon as I heard the name. I mean LOOK! Just-- LOOK!!!

Source 

But to be fair, possums also have teeth like some kind of vicious predator (some people affectionately refer to sugar gliders as "flying staple guns"), they have the same black eyes, and sugar gliders make this noise called crabbing which basically sounds like someone murdering a duck. Loudly. So it's not all fun and games, even if their little faces do melt my heart.

There you have it. Now go forth and share.