Kiwi Bird

Finds its way around with the aid of its beak...

The kiwi, also known by the name apteryx, is without a doubt one of the most interesting, curious birds in existence.  It lives only in New Zealand, where five species are found.  Out of those 5 species of the Kiwi Bird, two are currently vulnerable, one is endangered, and one is critically endangered.  All species have been adversely affected by historic deforestation, but currently large areas of their forest habitat are well protected in reserves and national parks. At present, the greatest threat to their survival is predation by invasive mammalian predators. The kiwi is a national symbol of New Zealand, and the association is so strong that the term Kiwi is used all over the world as the colloquial demonym for New Zealanders.

About the size of a chicken, this bird, which hardly merits being called "winged" since its wings are quite tiny and inadequate for flying, is covered with a kind of long and hairy plumage.  The base of the beak is circled by a thick moustache of tactile hairs.  Its eyes are very small and are of not much use, though it is a bird of nocturnal habits.  The feet are extremely robust and appear too large for a body of this size.  The kiwi bird is a remarkable runner and has long claws on its solidly built toes.
Its beak is probably the kiwi's strangest possession.  The beak is very long, slightly curved, and flexible; it is covered with a cutaneous membrane which is supplied with nerves.  The nostrils are placed near the end - unlike other birds where they are found at the base of the beak and seem to have an olfactory function which is unique in the feathered realm.

The kiwi emerges from its hiding place at night and begins to search the surface of the ground for the larvae of the insects which are its staple diet.  It scrabbles among the humus and the dead leaves beneath the trees and traces its prey by smell.  The extremely secretive life led by the kiwi bird in depths of the forest is still imperfectly understood.  The kiwi nests in a hollow trunk or between two large roots of a tree.  It lays only one egg, which is large when compared to the size of the hen kiwi and is the same size as a cassowary egg - enormous for a bird no bigger than a chicken.

*For additional information about this bird, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi
*For interesting facts about these critters, visit: http://www.kiwibird.org/interesting-facts-about-kiwi-birds-2.html (This link is no longer active)

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Jaguarundi Cat

The strangest of the New World cats...

The jaguarundi is like no other species of the Cat family.  It has short legs and, with its long thin body, resembles a weasel more than it does a cat.  Its coat is thin and smooth, the hairs being light grey at the base and dark brown at the tips.  When angered it bristles and its coat takes on a greyish color.  Its coat carries no markings or variation in tone, of any kind.  Even when very young, its coloration is uniform.  Oddly enough, there seems to be two distinct types of jaguarundi, called "color phases" by zoologists.  One is a more or less dark grey, sometimes even black; the other is a bright red.

For a long time, it was believed that two separate species existed, but ever since young have been found in the same litter demonstrating each of these color phases, it has been realized that the two different color phases belong to one and the same species.  The jaguarundi cat lives in pairs, except when the female is bringing up her young.  It lives in the most varied kinds of habitat and can be found in grasslands, in abandoned plantations and even in forests.  Below, is a map that shows their natural range of habitat:

It hunts small mammals and catches a number of grain-eating birds which flutter about while they are plundering the seeds of grasses.  It was once mistakenly thought that the jaguarundi was partially a tree-dweller, but this is incorrect due to the fact that it lives on the ground and sleeps beneath a covering of grass.  This particular cat does not fear water.

It can easily be tamed and becomes as docile as a domesticated cat, albeit its instinct to hunt never leaves it.  Perhaps this is why I have heard some people refer to even the domesticated cats as being "eco-terrorists"... Ha! Anyway, because of its dull coloring, it is seldom hunted and, as a result, it has escaped the massacres which other felines have suffered.

The jaguarundi breed all year round (like rabbits?).  After a gestation period of 70 to 75 days, the female gives birth to a litter of one to four kittens in a den constructed in a dense thicket, hollow tree, or similar cover.  The young are capable of taking solid food at around six weeks, although they begin to play with their mother's food as early as three weeks. Jaguarundi cats become sexually mature at about two years of age (okay, maybe not like rabbits; ha!), and have lived for up to 10 years in captivity.

Image Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Puma_yaguarondi.jpg

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Pygmy Marmoset - Dwarf Monkey

The tiniest of all the anthropoid apes...

The pygmy marmoset, also known as the dwarf monkey, is a little-known inhabitant of the Upper Amazon basin.  This tiny creature is the smallest monkey in the world.  It is generally quite difficult to find or see them amongst the foliage of the tall jungle trees; discovering its whereabouts is a matter of purest chance, which partly explains why it is not a regular exhibit in zoos.  Not only are healthy specimens difficult to capture, they are also difficult to keep alive for longer than a few months and/or to keep healthy in a zoo for an extended amount of time.  This is not because they are naturally short-lived and unhealthy, but because attempts to artificially reconstruct their natural environment and provide exactly the right type of diet for them, usually fail.

In the trees, marmosets move more like squirrels than primates.  In some respects, they present more primitive features than most primates.  For example, they have claws rather than nails on their fingers, they have a non-prehensile tail, and they produce litters of more than two.  Their diet is thought to consist of insects and very ripe fruit, though the larger marmosets probably eat buds and flowers as well.  Per Wikipedia, "This monkey has a specialized diet of tree gum.  It gnaws holes in the bark of appropriate trees and vines with its specialized dentition to elicit the production of gum. When the sap puddles up in the hole, it laps it up with its tongues. The dwarf monkey also lies in wait for insects, especially butterflies, which are attracted to the sap holes. It supplements its diet with nectar and fruit."

Pygmy marmosets are active during the day and sleep at night in a hole in a tree.  They live in pairs or in family units consisting of the parents and their offspring from several litters.  The feature which distinguishes the pygmy marmoset from other marmosets, is the absence of tufts of hair on the ears.  Its ears seem to disappear almost completely in its thick, silky fur, leaving its round eyes as the most prominent facial feature.  Its movements are somewhat jerky and disjointed, consisting of short, forward jumps as well as backward bounds.  Its call is a repetitious, short, shrill whoop.

Physical Description:  The pygmy marmoset/dwarf monkey is the smallest monkey on Earth, with a head-body length ranging from 4.6 to 6.0 inches and a tail of 6.8 to 9 inches. The average adult body weight is just over 3.5 ounces, with females generally a little heavier.  The fur color is a mixture of brownish-gold, grey, and black on its back and head and yellow, orange, and tawny on its underparts. Its tail has black rings, and its face has flecks of white on its cheeks and a white vertical line between its eyes.

Image Source:  http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/PhotoGallery/Primates/7.cfm (link is no longer active)

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Remora - Marine Suckerfish

It uses its sucker to hitch a ride throughout the ocean...

The diversity of the fish world is almost beyond belief, and among the many bizarre creatures in the sea, there lies a marine hitchhiker called the remora.  Nature has endowed this particular fish with a most useful device, a sucker.  This adhesive organ, located on its head, enables it to stick to larger fish such as sharks, whales, rays, etc., and even the hulls of ships, as this allows itself to be carried thousands of miles without the slightest effort - hence the marine hitchhiker and/or suckerfish title.

Since remoras lead a mysterious existence within the dim depths of the sea, we know very little about their biology.  We do know that they are not parasites because if they were, the sucker wouldn't be merely used for the attachment to a host for travel reasons.  In fact, remoras are perfectly capable of swimming and moving about under their own steam and do so most of the time.  Who knows, maybe they just get lazy at times; ha!  Some ichthyologists think that the sucking disc, which develops rapidly in the young fish, enables it to migrate in safety - well protected from its enemies as long as it remains attached to the body of some large predator (makes sense to me).

Young remoras sometimes attach themselves to the inside of the mouth or gills of manta rays, eagle rays, swordfish and some sharks (a dangerous creature to choose, if ya ask me).  While being attached to these types of marine life, these suckerfish, uh, totally depend on their sucker.

Remoras are sometimes used to catch sea turtles; a line is attached to their tail and when released near a turtle, they immediately batten onto its carapace.  From here, all the fisherman has to do is haul in the line, land the turtle, free the remora and start again.

Because of the shape of the jaws, appearance of the sucker, and coloration of the remora, it sometimes appears to be swimming upside down. This probably led to the older common name reversus, although this might also derive from the fact that the remora frequently attaches itself to the tops of manta rays or other fish, so that the remora is upside down while attached.

---End of Post "Remora - Marine Suckerfish"

Anglerfish

A fish that fishes!

The anglerfish has no distinct shape.  It looks like a tattered shopping bag, with a skin like an old rag.  It has no particular color, but many colors arranged in irregular patches.  It is, in fact, hard to distinguish when it rests on the sea bottom.  As it is disguised, it gently raises a long spine from its dorsal fin.  On the end of the spine is a bit of skin - a true fishing line, complete with bait!
When a little fish comes to see if this might be something good to eat, in a split second it is gobbled up, sucked in by the great current of water created when the anglerfish opens its huge mouth.  This happens so quickly that the jaws seem to not move at all.

Some anglerfish, like those of the Ceratioid group (Ceratiidae, or sea devils), employ an unusual mating method. Because individuals are presumably locally rare and encounters at least doubly so, finding a mate is problematic. When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were female. These individuals were a few centimetres in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these "parasites" were highly reduced male ceratioids. The presence of multiple males breeding with a single female makes this a good example of polyandry. At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well-developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. The male ceratioid lives solely to find and mate with a female. Yeah, that sounds like a simple life, eh?

There are, in all the seas of the world, hundreds of different types of anglerfish.  I once read that there are over 350 types, but who knows, by now there may be even more that have been discovered since then.  The best known is the fishing anglerfish, or turbot, much sought after as a food fish.  Only the tail is eaten, which is fortunate, because the head is so ugly (large and flat with a toothy, protruding lower jaw) that it would take away anyone's appetite upon first sight; ha!
The head and jaw make up a third of the length and most of the weight of this fish.
Anglerfish live on the sea bottom at depths that vary from species to species.  They move by making little jumps on their short, stubby fins.  They hunt without moving, attracting little fish with their "fishing lines," so to speak.

Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Representatives_of_ceratioid_families.jpg

Related Blog Post:  The 'John Dory' Fish

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Beluga Whale

Thousand-pound canaries!

No, that's not a joke.  Although belugas don't fly like birds, their whistles are a bit like those of pretty birds.  Fishermen often call them "canaries of the sea."  Like canaries, the beluga whale sometimes find themselves in a cage.  They usually live in the Arctic seas, at the edge of the ice pack.  Freezing temperatures sometimes turn the surface of the water suddenly to ice and, at times, the ice can be so thick that these large cetaceans are unable to break it with their padded forehead.  When that happens, they die from a lack of air.  During severe winters, like the ones just described, they head south.  Several long-distance migrators have been found as far from the Arctic as Japan. That's a fairly good distance for such large creatures.

The adult beluga is rarely mistaken for any other species, because it is completely white or whitish grey in color.  The white coloration of the skin is an adaptation to life in the Arctic that allows the beluga whale to camouflage themselves in the polar ice caps as protection against their main predators, polar bears and killer whales.  Unlike the other cetaceans, the belugas seasonally shed their skin.  During the winter, the epidermis thickens and the skin can become yellowish, mainly on the back and fins. When they migrate to the estuaries during the summer, they rub themselves on the gravel of the riverbeds to remove the cutaneous covering.

These big, whistling mammals usually live in schools of about a dozen.  Sometimes, though, these schools include thousands of animals.  They fish for their own food in shallow water.  Belugas have formidable enemies, principally the killer whale, an enormous cetacean known as one of the fiercest of creatures.  Human fisherman also hunt these whales for their fat and even their skin.  If you're wondering about that, the skin makes for a very tough leather. Yeah, whatever happened to cow hides for leather? Speaking of that, I recently read that only 65% of leather is from cows. Anyway, when the baby beluga has developed for a year inside of its mother, it is born tail-first.  As soon as her baby is born, the mother mates again.  Every 5th year she takes off from childbearing.  Dang, that is one busy mother!

If you'd like to read a more elaborate page about this subject, visit:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beluga_whale

---End of Post "Beluga Whale"

Even though Beluga whales do not live in Antarctica, albeit they thrive in the icy Arctic waters up North, I thought of an additional blog link that involves a cool place:  "Lake Vostok - Mystery at Antarctica"

Angwantibo

A specialized hunter...

The angwantibo is not very quick, but it is fond of insects.  This little creature specializes in hunting caterpillars.  Having a very keen sense of smell, it finds them by their odor.  Some caterpillars are covered with stinging hairs, but that doesn't bother the angwantibo.  It scrapes them, stretches them out, and skins 'em before swallowing them.  It makes no sound except for groaning or hissing when frightened.  It holds to branches so tightly that it is very hard to make it loosen its grip.  Observations of the angwantibo in captivity have shown that its hands will grasp the bars of a cage with a reflex motion like that of a bird's claws.

Angwantibos grow to a size of 22 to 30 cm and have almost no tail at all. They only weigh up to 0.5 kg. Their fur is yellow brown to golden in color. Their snout is more pointed than that of the other lorids and this, along with their round ears, gives it the bear-like appearance that lends them their name in German: Bärenmaki "bear lemur." Solitary, nocturnal and arboreal, they prefer the underbrush and the lower layers of the forests. They spend the day hidden in the leaves. Like all lorisids, they are characterized by slow movements.

This small, tailless primate is very sensitive to noise.  It moves about at night, very quietly, in the brushwood and forests of equatorial Africa.  It can even, when in danger, move with motions so slow as to be imperceptible.  In this way it escapes its carnivorous enemies that find monkeys by watching for the disturbance of leaves in the trees.  Each angwantibo lives apart from its fellows and, in spite of its small size, has a large territory (several acres).
With its close relative the Potto (a small, slow-moving, nocturnal primate with a short tail), also African, it resembles the Loris of Asia.  These three animals form the family of Lorisidae.

---End of Post "Angwantibo"

Silky 'Dwarf' Anteater

Hiding in the treetops...
The anteater depicted below, is the dwarf and/or silky anteater, which is one of several South American species.  This little critter is hard to find.  ...No larger than a squirrel, it lives in remote tropical forests.  It spends its days sleeping, curled up high in the trees.  It moves only at night, and even then, it doesn't move around a whole heck of a lot.  In general, the dwarf anteater never comes to the ground.

Although this little creature is a tree-dweller, it has no thumb.  Each hand has only two fingers, but it also has strong, curving claws that make grasping easy.  In addition, the silky anteater is helped to be at home in the trees by a strong, prehensile tail - longer than its body.  This tail supports it when it moves from one branch to another.  The tail also steadies the dwarf, silky anteater when it uses its claws for defense or to dig out ant and termite nests, as that is its only source of food.   Its mouth is larger and its snout is shorter than those of other anteaters.

Quick description:  Silky anteaters are the smallest living anteaters, and also have a proportionately shorter face and larger cranium than other species. Adults have a total length ranging from 14 to 18 inches, including a tail that averages 6.7 to 9.4 inches long, and weigh anything from 6.2 to 14 ounces. They have dense and soft fur, which ranges from grey to yellowish in color, and has a silvery sheen. Many subspecies have darker, often brownish, streaks, and paler underparts or limbs. The eyes are black, and the soles of the feet are red.

The silky anteater lives alone except during mating season.  The single baby is cared for by both parents.  It is fed first on milk, then on an insect broth regurgitated by the parents.  I know, it sounds a little gross when I mention regurgitation being used for feed, but hey, that's the way they roll.  Oh, the young anteater also rides on its parents' back (how cute).  Anyway, check out this little devil below:

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Aardvark - Earth Pig

Here is one of the most curious animals from Africa...
The name comes from earlier Afrikaans (erdvark) and means "earth pig" or "ground pig" (aarde earth/ground, vark pig), because of its burrowing habits. The aardvark is not closely related to the pig; rather, it is the sole recent representative of the obscure mammalian order Tubulidentata, in which it is usually considered to form one variable species of the genus Orycteropus, the sole surviving genus in the family Orycteropodidae. The aardvark is not closely related to the South American anteater, despite sharing some characteristics and a superficial resemblance.

The aardvark has the snout of a pig, the body of a kangaroo, the ears of a mule, and it digs underground like a mole!

Aardvarks are found in non-forested areas of central and southern Africa, preferable where there is sandy or clay soil.  This solitary, nocturnal animal sleeps during the day in its burrow.  At nightfall it goes out to hunt for food.  It cannot run quickly and is, therefore, cautious and fearful.  If it senses the slightest danger, it stops, supports itself on its strong tail, and quickly digs a shelter in which to hide.  It is so strong that it can dig such a shelter in a few minutes, escaping in this way from most of its enemies.  Its hearing and sense of smell are well developed, which is a good thing since it can't run very fast, etc.

Termites and ants are the aardvark's preferred food.  It destroys their nests with the long, sharp claws of its forefeet and then collects the insects with its sticky tongue.  It swallows them by the hundreds until it is satisfied (Are you starting to understand why it is called "earth pig"?).  If it does not return to its own burrow, the aardvark will dig a new one, where it will spend the day.
Each year, in October or November, the female gives birth to a hairless baby.  The young stays in the burrow for two weeks, after which it goes out with its mother.  At the age of six months, it is strong enough to dig its own shelter.

In African folklore, the aardvark is much admired because of its diligent quest for food and its fearless response to soldier ants. Hausa magicians make a charm from the heart, skin, forehead, and nails of the aardvark, which they then proceed to pound together with the root of a certain tree.  Also, some tribes will use their teeth to make bracelets that are regarded as good luck charms.

[Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Porc_formiguer.JPG]

---End of Post "Aardvark - Earth Pig"

Strangest Animals on Earth - Resource Links

...Just to change it up a bit, instead of doing the usual blog post about a certain creature and whatnot, I'm going to provide a post with resource links and a video that features what many label as being the "Strangest Animals on Earth."  This particular search query popped into my head a few moments ago, and I thought it would be neat to provide some links to some of the search results that came up.

Many of the animals found on these pages (the ones I'm about to link to) are the same, but if you browse through 'em all, you'll see a good variety of strange life forms via Earth.  If you're in a hurry and not in a pictorial searching/saving mood, the video I provide should shoot out 100 bizarre animals in just under 13 minutes.  But first, I'll list the resource links below:

* Strangest and Rarest Animals in the World - http://buzzinn.net/strangest-and-rarest-animals-in-world/ [Link is no longer active]

* 9 Strangest Animals on Earth - http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2009/02/03/the-9-strangest-animals-on-earth/ (I deactivated the link to that page since the images on there are no longer available.)

* The 25 Weirdest Animals on Earth - http://list25.com/the-25-weirdest-animals-on-earth/ [Link is no longer active]

* The weirdest animals on Planet Earth - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/5966251/The-weirdest-animals-on-Planet-Earth.html [Link is no longer active]

Now, for the video link, 100 Weirdest and Rarest Animals in the World:

This nature blog is fairly new, so I haven't had a chance to do a lot of blog posts yet, but I did notice that a few of the animals I featured on here showed up in some of those resource links, which was the Aye-Aye, Blobfish, Anglerfish, Axolotl (Mexican Salamander), and the Walking Stick (Insect).  Anyway, I hope you enjoyed checking out all those freaky creatures...

Random Image:

Depicted above is the Yeti Crab.  Yeah, that thing looks crazy, eh?  If you're more into the Yeti Legend instead of the Crab, then visit:  Abominable Snowman - Yeti Monster

---End of Post "Strangest Animals on Earth - Resource Links"