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Here is a rare trigger fish of the Xanthichtys genus (which lives throughout the tropical reefs of the Indo-Pacific and Australia). This beauty is Xanthichtys lineopunctatus, the linespot triggerfish. Because it is mysterious and rare, I can not say much about its life and habits–although we know it is a triggerfish–a clever, omnivorous parrot of the ocean equipped with sharp eyes, a supermouth capable of biting through steel cables, and fearless temerity (and a special hunger for small invertebrates).
Anyway, like many triggers, Xanthichtys lineopunctatus is also equipped with op-art color patterns which would not look out of place on an 80s trapper keeper or 3 ring binder. Yet the real defining feature of this fish is its ridiculous anime face which features big soulful eyes and a pouty serrated mouth. It is hard to catch the winsome qualities in words, so I will defer to “reef-builders” an aquarium site whose writers actually have one of these fish as a pet (which gave them ample time to capture its Japanese cartoon good looks).
It was a long and somewhat unsuccessful day…and there are only 13 minute left for writing a blog post, but I would be remiss if I didn’t offer something. So here is a completely adorable juvenile green filefish as captured by the matchless camera of Tara Murphy.
I was unable to find out much information about this particular fish…so this post might be of the adorable baby animal category, rather than the informative category. Filefish are weak swimmers and they often try to mimic coral or plants, a purpose which this endearing baby fish seems ideally suited.
Yesterday’s post was heartfelt and quite opulent…but it was also a bit of a downer, so today let’s get back to core strengths and feature one of those amazing Tetraodontiformes which I promised we would be seeing.
Awww! it is a juvenile yellow boxfish…surely one of the most endearing fish in the ocean. The yellow boxfish (Ostracion cubicus) is not only as cute as a button, it is also extremely successful. The fish ranges across the coral reefs of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and can even be found in some parts of the south east Atlantic Ocean. Adults grow to be 45 centimetres (18 in) and, as with all of us, their bright yellow fades with age. The fishes mostly eat algae but they are omnivores and will also sample worms, sponges, corals, mollusks, arthropods, and even other fish.
Because of its cube shape, the boxfish is not a swift swimmer, however it can swim very efficiently and precisely thanks to swift fluttering strokes from its nearly transparent rounded fanlike fins. Its box shaped skeleton and armored plates gives it great strength and durability which means predators would pretty much have to eat it whole. This would be a mistake not only because it is a difficult to swallow a hard, sharp cubical fish, but also because the boxfish is capable of releasing the neurotoxin tetrodoxin (TTX) from its skin if it stressed or frightened. This protects the boxfish from predators (or being stuck in a dead-end job in a cubical), but it also makes this a difficult fish to have in an aquarium.
This is why the young boxfish are so colorful: it is a warning not to eat them (or even stress them out). Can you imagine if this were the case in the affairs of hominids? The 80s would have been the most poisonous decade ever. Fortunately, color denotes other things for us primates…which is why looking at yellow boxfish is such a treat.
Do you know what the biggest new trend of 2019 is? It’s QUOKKAS! Finally the ‘teens feature a popular movement that Ferrebeekeeper can get behind.
Quokkas are cat-sized marsupial herbivores of the genus Setonix, a genus which has only a single species Setonix brachyurus. Quokkas are most closely related to kangaroos, wallabies and pademelons: together these animals make up the family known as macropods. Quokkas weigh from 2.5 to 5 kilograms (5.5 to 11 pounds) and live up to 10 years. They have brown grizzled fur and live on a variety of vegetation native to their little corner of southwest Australia. Wikipedia somewhat judgmentally notes that they are promiscuous. Females usually give birth to a sole joey which lives in their pouch for 6 months and remains dependent on the mother for several months beyond that.
Quokka populations have declined precipitously since Europeans colonized Australia. They are outcompeted and preyed on by invasive cats, foxes, and dogs, and they have suffered extensive habitat loss to farms and homebuilding (plus they have some native predators such as snakes). The great Jerusalem for the quokka is Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth. Rottnest means “rat’s nest” in Dutch (which I feel like I could learn!). Apparently the 17th century Dutch explorer, Willem Hesselsz de Vlamingh, spotted extensive colonies of quokkas on the island and mistook the creatures for giant rats.
So why is this dwindling macropod suddenly so popular? Quokkas do not have a particular fear of humans (an exceedingly unwise outlook, in my humble opinion). Additionally, because of the shape of their faces, they seem to have satisfied chilled-out smiles. Indeed, they might actually have chilled-out smiles (they seem pretty benign and happy), but no quokkas returned my phone calls, so I can’t speak to their true emotional state. Anyway, the combined lack of fear of humans and the endearing smiles make them perfect in “selfies” and adorable digital animal photos. The internet is thus good to the quokkas whose popularity is soaring by the day. Perhaps they can parlay this digital fame into population growth and success in the real world (although I suspect the internet’s content-makers would caution the quokka that there is limited correlation between digital and real-world success).
Now that you have read the little essay, here are some adorable grinning quokka pictures. I really hope these guys flourish because just look at them!
It’s the day before the deadline for filing taxes here in America—an ordeal which only grows more complicated (thanks, Intuit, for lobbying to keep the code as complex as possible). From sea to sea, Americans are staring in baffled confusion at heaps of forms and receipts and rules. Well, probably the organized ones are happily enjoying their calm evenings and successful lives, having filed months ago…but that certainly doesn’t include everyone! Anyway, in an ill-conceived effort to make this deadline more palatable, here are some pictures of adorable baby tapirs!
Tapirs are actually perissodactyls. Their closest relatives are the horses and rhinoceroses. Perissodactyls were once the dominant quadruped grazers of the grasslands and forests of the Miocene and the Oligocene, but in more recent geological periods the odd-toed ungulates have been fading away. We can still catch glimpses of these glory years with pictures of adorable tapirs though.
Ferrebeekeeper has mentioned tapirs before—in connection with the baku, a mysterious and compelling mythological creature said to feast on dreams. I promise to come back and talk about tapirs properly and at length—they are exceedingly interesting survivors or a great age, however today we are focused only on their adorable properties. Look at how cute these dappled babies are (the little tapirs lose their protective dots as they grow into adulthood). Good luck with your own red tapir, er, I mean red tape. We will return to regularly scheduled posts tomorrow…just as soon as I drop some documents in the virtual post-office box.
Miniature Donkey Foal
Yesterday I promised to blog about donkeys. This donkey post was meant to be a towering work of research covering many different aspects of these lovable albeit stubborn equines. I was going to write about their domestication in remote prehistory, their profound utility to human society throughout the long millennia, and their importance in the most ancient art and literature. I was even going to make references to the wild onager, an exquisite endangered species of donkey which runs faster than thoroughbred racehorses (and is very nearly the world’s fastest land animal). But then it occurred to me that I could write about all of this in the indefinite future and, for today, write a picture-heavy post about adorable miniature donkeys!
Miniature donkeys snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie with a toddler (photo by David Caird via the Daily Mail)
The miniature donkey is more properly the Mediterranean miniature donkey. They were originally bred in Sardinia, Sicily, and southern Italy as dray animals, but a far-sighted American donkey enthusiast imported them to the United States in the 1920s just because he liked them. The largest miniature donkeys stand a majestic 9 hands tall at the withers when fully grown (for non-horse people this translates to 91 centimeters (3 feet) tall at the shoulders), but most are smaller. Miniature donkeys can pull carts, act as shepherds or companion animals, and generally do whatever their ancient forbears did, however, in today’s world the miniature donkey is largely kept as an endearing pet. They are particularly successful as therapy animals—they go and cheer up the elderly, the disabled, or children with terminal illnesses (which presents a touching picture of their gentle temperament).
Miniature donkeys acting as therapy animals (look how fancy they can dress up!)
These little donkeys can be gray, brown, black, sorrel, or spotted (or rarely white). Most donkeys have pale “points” around their eyes and muzzles and a “cross” of longer fur which runs down from the top of their head to their tail and meets with a stripe of fur running from shoulder to shoulder up across their withers (Christian mythology claims this cross denotes a blessing from Jesus to all donkeys for their loyalty and friendliness–but donkeys’ cross-shape manes long predate the New Testament). Donkeys in general–and miniature donkeys in particular–are noted for their great intelligence. This intellect also makes them recalcitrant to certain human projects: stubbornness is a noted feature of donkeys (although patient & mild-tempered trainers assert that this famous obduracy largely stems from mishandling). Miniature donkeys have similar habits and needs to horses, but they have longer lives. The average life span for these tiny donkeys is 30 – 35 years! If you are blessed with sufficient acreage and outbuildings, and you feel that you will live long enough to have miniature donkeys as pets, it is important to remember that they are highly social heard animals and will suffer without constant companionship from other donkeys and horses (although people who keep them as shepherds aver that a flock of goats will also keep them occupied). These donkeys are so cute! I just love them (and I couldn’t help but notice a shocking number of the photos of them feature people hugging on them), but I think my housecat would object to having one in Brooklyn…to say nothing of my landlady or Mayor DeBlasio!
Here’s one with an alpaca!
Ah the magnificent platypus! I told you the other day that there were other mammals on the list of Ferrebeekeeper top ten blog posts and here is one right now…barely. With its duck-like beak, beaver-like physique (& fur), and egg-based reproduction, the lovable monotreme platypus has been capturing hearts and provoking perplexity ever since it was first discovered by European natural scientists.
The platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus)
Here at Ferrebeekeeper we concentrated on one of the platypus’ lesser known weird attributes—his scary venomous spur! (I say “he” not to encourage gender stereotypes, but because only the male platypus has venom glands). Of course platypuses are remarkable in so many other ways. Genetic evidence suggests that monotreme lineage dates back to the dawn of the Mesozoic era! These adorable furry egg-laying rapscallions split from early mammalian ancestors back before the ascendancy of the dinosaurs.
Of course it isn’t just zoologists and paleontologists who are fascinated by platypuses, In my former life as a toymaker, I noticed that all sorts of toys and toy retailer names involved platypuses. Not only was there was “The Purple Platypus” a stylish independent toy store, there were also multitudinous platypus plush creatures. A platypus is the hero of the popular animated show “Phineas and Ferb” (ostensibly a lovable family pet, Perry the platypus is actually “Agent P.”, an international special operative working for OWCA—the Organization Without a Cool Acronym). There was even a platypus figure in the extremely rare “Deluxemorphs” toy set of the now defunct Zoomorphs.
Perry the Platypus AKA “Agent P”
So that our top ten list does not become a stale list of links to old (albeit extremely popular) posts, here is a galley of platypus mascots and adorable platypus cartoons.
Some sort of Business Platypus?
A Platypus was one of the mascots of the Australian Olympics!
Look at all of the adorable beaks and flippers! It’s amazing that all mascots aren’t platypuses…
Hey! That’s not a mascot–it’s original Aboriginal art!
Pfeffer’s Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Metasepia pfeffer (photo by Paz Santos)
In the waters of the Indo-Pacific swims an animal so profoundly fancy that it is difficult to find enough adjectives to summarize it—filigree, frilly, extravagant, surreal, frond-coated, Liberacci-esque? Perhaps the name says it best: Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish (Metasepia pfeffer) is an adorable 2- 4 inch cuttlefish which lives in the tropical waters around Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Like leafy sea dragons, scorpionfish, and mighty wobbegongs, the little cuttlefish is a consummate master of disguise. Unlike those other camouflaged sea creatures, Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish is capable of changing color and shape. It is also capable of many different means of locomotion: it can walk along the sea floor on its tentacles, hover in the water using the fringe-like fin around its mantle, or it can zip through the sea via jet propulsion.
Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish hunts shrimp and tiny fish in the shallow sand and mud coasts of its habitat. It utilizes complicated camouflage to hunt, but when roused it becomes a scintillating hot-mess of flashing red, white, magenta, yellow, and black in order to warn predators about its real self-defense. It turns out the list of endearing adjectives above is missing a few critical words: deadly, lethal, and poisonous. The flesh of these little cuttlefish contains a toxin as fatal to other animals as that of its famous neighbor, the blue-ringed octopus, a tiny but potent poisonous cephalopod of the Indo-Pacific responsible for many swimmer fatalities.
Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish is therefore as deadly as it is adorable, a combination which ought to make it a mainstay of action movies. Speaking of movies you should click the following link to watch an amazing Youtube movie of Pfeffer’s Flamboyant Cuttlefish. The happy little mollusk ambles along the ocean floor to jaunty music before zapping a shrimp with its horrifyingly alien feeding tentacles. You should watch this all of the way: it is not a film to be missed.
Thus having successfully combined flamboyance, film, and horror, I am off to Tinseltown! I will try to blog from LA but I promise nothing. Baby, let’s do lunch!
Since I have already written so many mammal posts I am creating a new blog category for mammals (I will leave out human concerns to concentrate on zoologic overviews of other species, but please remember that technically we too are mammals and all of the posts on this and every website could fall under this category). To make way for the mammals I deleted the “celebrity” topic for good (I had hoped to make fun of our queasy fascination with lackwit celebrities–but other than an one sighting of the disquieting Richard Simmons, I had nothing). Begone vile celebrities! The age of the mammals has dawned.
The Giant Otter, Pteronura brasiliensis
I already have plenty of posts about goats, pigs, wombats, hyraxes, and bizarre intelligent monotremes with which to populate this category, but to kick the topic off properly I am writing today about the alpha-predator of the Amazon. This mammal is the king of the Mustelidae (also known as the weasel family) and, if you have ever seen a lightning fast stoat hunting a rabbit, or smelled a skunk, or watched a badger drive off a bear, or witnessed a wolverine tear apart a moose, you will know that the weasel family is not joking around. [ed: what? When did you see any of this?] The largest mustelid is a particularly magnificent creature—the giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis) which lives throughout the Amazon basin and Pantanal. The giant otter is a long animal and males are up to six feet (2 meters in length) and weigh up to 100 pounds (45 kilograms). Much longer males measuring nearly 8 feet in length were once reported but it is believed that extensive hunting may have eradicated all of the really giant giant otters.
An Immature Giant Otter held by Wildlife Conservation Worker Diane McTurk in Guyana
Giant otters are tremendously accomplished fishers living largely on cichlids, characins (such as piranha), and catfish, but, as an apex predator they are opportunists who supplement their diet with snakes, crabs, turtles, and caimans. Although the otters are diurnal predators who hunt at daytime using their large acute eyes to find their prey, their hearing is also excellent and they possess extremely sensitive vibrissae (whiskers) to gauge the faintest water current. Like other mustelids, giant otters have fast metabolisms and they eat about 10% of their body weight per day. Their adaptations to aquatic life include webbed feet, ears and nostrils which clamp shut, powerful tails for swimming, and incredibly dense fur. As with their cousins the sea otters, this valuable fur proved to be their undoing. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hunted to the very threshold of extinction by furriers (and by fishermen who regard them as a clever nuisance). Their numbers still remain low today: only 2,000-5,000 giant otters are estimated to live in the wild.
Orphaned Giant Otter Cubs
Giant otters form family groups around a mated pair. Older offspring from years past stay with this pair and help out rearing the young cubs before venturing off on their own. They travel widely through the inundated forest during flood seasons and spend the rest of the year based around a fishing camp which they build beside a lake or a choice stretch of river. These camps consist of large multiple entrance home dens built under and around tree roots as well as several secondary locations (along with communal latrine areas). The otters might also alter river beaches to be more to their liking by removing vegetation. The fur of the giant otter is usually brown, red, or fawn and the otter’s bib is marked with cream and white stipples. These are for identification purposes: otters “persiscope” up out of the water to get a better view of each other and to learn whom they are meeting. Giant Otters are also famous for their complicated (and loud) vocalizations.
A Giant Otter "periscoping" (photo by Roberto Fabbri Wildlife)
Although the adult giant otter has no natural predators, young otters must look out for caimans, jaguars, and anacondas. Additionally the giant otters compete for prey with these creatures as well as with river dolphins, large predatory fish, and large turtles. The otters are always on the lookout for dangerous stingrays and electric eels. None of these natural threats, however, are particularly significant compared with the threat from habitat loss, logging, mining, and industrial pollution.
Some of the native humans indigenous to the great river basins believed the otters were river spirits who had, once taught valuable lessons to the first humans. Other native peoples (particularly fishing people) held that the otters were worthless nuisances to be killed or run off whenever sighted. Such sightings however grow increasingly rare as the giant otter, the longest mustelid, vanishes forever away from all but the wildest places in the rainforest.
A Wild Giant Otter Devouring an Armoured Catfish (photo by Roberto Fabbri Wildlife)
Fennec Foxes (Vulpes zerda)
The world’s smallest fox lives in the world’s largest desert, the Sahara. The adorable fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) is actually the world’s smallest canid of any sort: they are the tiniest members of the dog family weighing in at only 1.5–3.5 lb. Nocturnal omnivores, fennec foxes use their huge ears to listen for prey–and for predators such as the fearsome eagle owl. Additionally, since the foxes’ ears are filled with blood vessels, they provide a convenient way of cooling off in the oppressive daytime heat. Tiny pads on the foxes’ feet protect their delicate paws from hot sand and sharp rocks while muffling the noise of their movement. They dig substantial burrows and are renowned among people of the Sahara for their cunning and cleverness.
Snuggling a fennec fox kit
The fennec fox is the one of two species of fox which can live with people as a domestic pet (the other pet fox is the domesticated silver fox, which is the end product of 60 years of crazy Soviet experimentation). Hopefully their adorable little countenances will help you get through this extremely l…o…n…g week after the holidays.
A young fennec at a zoo (or possibly being arrested for cuteness)
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