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It has been far too long since Ferrebeekeeper featured any miraculous molluscs! Therefore, today we are going to return to a timeless favorite topic and feature a predatory nudibranch sea slug that looks like a rogue lace jabot. This is Dirona albolineata (a.k.a the alabaster nudibranch) a predatory slug which lives in the cold rich waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean from Alaska down to San Diego. The translucent slug grows to a length of 18 centimeters (7 inches) and hunts tiny invertebrates of the coastal zone such as bryozoans, little arthropods, hydroids, ascidians, and, um, lesser mollusks.
The beautiful little milky slug is generally whitish but specimens have been found which were pale pink, peach, or lavender. As a simultaneous hermaphrodite, the slug has an unusual mating ritual where he/she/it meets another alabaster mollusk and both parties copulate both as male and female (they each fire a reproductive dart into the other’s body and both parties leave the union fertilized). The leaf like appendages upon the slug’s body are known as ceratae. These scales are protective and serve as armor or as a diversion (under extreme duress, the snail can jettison the twitching scales in hopes of diverting a predator), however they also greatly increase the snail’s body area and help respiration/gas exchange. Or to be more plain, the ceratae are like a cross between gills and plate mail for this translucent hermaphroditic mollusc.
It is International Cat Day! I should probably feature my beloved pets Sepia & Sumi, but, although I love them with all of my heart and never tire of their astonishing antics and loving personalities, I am not very good at photographing them (in real life, Sumi is the cutest person in the world, but in photos she always just looks like a squiggling black blob with scary needle teeth).
Scary?
So, until I master cat photography, cat bios of my two little friends will have to wait, and today’s post whisks us off instead to the great inclement steppelands of Mongolia and Central Asia. Here in the endless desolation is the habitat of nature’s grumpiest-looking cat, the irascible yet magnificent Pallas’ cat (Otocolobus manul). Pallas’ cats are almost the same size as housecats, however because they are lower to the ground and have incredibly long two-layer coats, they look like comically puffed-up owlcats. The cats live in steppes, deserts, mountains, and scrub forest from Afghanistan through the Hindu Kush and Pakistan up into Russia, Mongolia, and Inner Mongolia (China). They are solitary predators living on whatever birds, invertebrates, lizards, rodents, and other small mammals they can catch in their range. Pallas’ cats give birth to litters of 2-6 kittens and they live up to eleven years in captivity.
Like all cats, Pallas’ cats are astonishingly adept predators, but the barrenness of their range, climate change, and habitat loss makes life chancy for even the most gifted hunters. Additionally, humankind has long overexploited the cats for their astonishingly warm fur. The outer fur and the dense inner fur form an airtight insulation around the cats which keep the tiny creatures toasty even in the godforsaken peaks of the Hindu Kush or in Gobi desert winters. Portions of the cats are also used by worthless dumbasses for ineffectual traditional medicine. As you might gather, the species are not exactly doing great, but their range is so large and SO inhospitable that humans haven’t pushed them to the edge of extinction yet.
For a long time, the Prospect Park Zoo had a pair of Pallas’ cats named Nicholas and Alexandra. Nicholas looked pretty sweet–like a big furry gray marshmallow, but Alexandra looked like she ate the devil-cat from “Pet Semetary” for breakfast. She liked to sit in her rocky enclosure and stare through the thick glass at the tamarin enclosure across the corridor. If zoogoers got in her sightline, she would put her ears back (and they were tiny ears to begin with), and hurl herself at the glass hissing and clawing. The effect was sort of like being attacked by Yul Brenner’s demonic disembodied head (if it were fat and covered with fur). I once saw her clambering on the high granite boulders in her habitat and poor Nicholas jumped up to see what she was doing. She hurled him off the 10 foot tall rocks (onto some other sharper, lower rocks) with nary a qualm, like a kid tossing his schoolbag on the floor. Her casual ease with ultra-violence was chilling. For a while there was a video online which featured a solemn cat-loving child asking a Brooklyn zookeeper if Pallas’ cats could be kept as pets and the young zookeeper got a scared look and said “That, um, would be a really bad idea.”
Apparently Pallas’ cats have trouble reproducing in captivity for some reason, but I have always hoped that Alexandra clawed a hole in causality and had kittens. Also, on International Cat Day I like to hold Sepia in my lap as she purrs happily (in my 98 degree bedroom) and imagine the wild Pallas’ cats leaping magestically through the high mountain peaks of the jagged mountains of Central Asia. May it ever be so and may cats of all sorts ever flourish.
There is a scene in The Spy Who Loved Me where James Bond is impersonating a marine biologist (with the fake name “Robert Sterling”!) in order to infiltrate the underwater lair of a sinister supervillain. Bond has brought all sorts of potentially dangerous luggage, and is dressed in high 70’s fashion…and also happens to be traveling with Barbara Bach, so the villain is a bit suspicious about this new scientist. “What fish is that?” he quizzes Bond, pointing out the huge undersea window at a magnificent fish covered in poisonous red spines.
Without hesitation, Bond correctly replies “Pterois Volitans” a red lionfish. It was a scene that delighted the 12-year old me, since I was a saltwater aquarium enthusiast and, like “Robert Sterling” I knew the Latin name for that fish too. It was hard not to imagine successfully infiltrating an underwater lair with a beautiful Soviet agent/Ringo Starr’s wife (although that never did end up happening to my 12 year old self). Also…what was this Indo-Pacific fish doing in Sardinia?
But The Spy Who Loved Me turned out to be ahead of its time (indeed, in retrospect, the supervillain’s plot to save the oceans from human destruction seems far-sighted too). Lionfish are clever and aggressive predators which hunt in groups (schools?, prides?, packs?). They are covered in poisonous spines which give pause even to human fishermen with our lines, hooks, poison, and spears. And the beautiful aggressive fish are taking over. Invasive lionfish escaped from home aquariums and became, uh, feral (is any of this language correct?) and they are now a huge problem in warm seas and oceans around the world. Lionfish rapidly eat through the delicate tropical fish which form the backbone of reef ecosystems and leave the habitats dead and dying (although climate-change, acidification, and overfishing are probably exacerbating their deadly impact). As the oceans warm, the fish (which are a sort of scorpionfish) are expanding their territory into what were once temperate oceans.
However, all is not hopeless. This article began with ridiculous James Bond stuff and then got serious, but now there is a potential solution to the lionfish problem taken directly from a Bond villain’s playbook. Concerned marine biologists have teamed up with engineers to build autonomous predatory underwater robots to rid the Caribbean of invasive lionfish. These creepy robots swim through the oceans until they finds a red lionfish. The death machine then sidles up around the invader and zaps it with a mighty jolt of electricity.
Lionfish are largely unafraid of predators (although some sharks, triggerfish are able to despine them and some groupers and sharks can apparently gulp them down). I wonder if they will wise up to sinister predatory robots that appear from nowhere. Will the robots curtail the problem, or will the lionfish adapt around tehm too? Or will none of this even happen? Keep your eyes peeled to find out the rest of this story as it evolves.
Flatfishes are an order (Pleuronectiformes) of predatory fish found in oceans worldwide. There are over 700 distinct species in 11 separate (and sometimes very distinct) families. Familiar flatfish include flounder, turbot, plaice, sole, and tonguefish (to name only a few).
Flatfish undergo two great changes. First they hatch out of an egg and become transparent tiny fry living among the zooplankton. These baby flounder have an eye on each side of their heads–like all the other vertebrates. Then, when they reach adolescence, they change a second time in a bizarre way. One eye migrates over the young fish’s forehead. Half of their body becomes pale and smooth. To reach adulthood they abandon the vertebrate’s familiar symmetry and become strange asymmetric monsters.
(An Adolescent Flounder, as its eyes migrate and it becomes opaque)
Very few animals have asymmetry of any sort (wrybills, hermit crabs) and even fewer are asymmetric in a systemic way (sponges). Flatfish give up their symmetry on adulthood: they lose their ability to swim smoothly and see all around them…but, in turn, they gain prowess as lurkers. This helps them to hide in an ocean full of strife and peril. Equally importantly, it helps them to hunt.
Flatfish are exceedingly gifted predators. They thrive by eating unsuspecting fish, mollusks, arthropods, and worms which are scampering (or crawling… or propulsing?…or whatever) along the ocean bottom. Pleuronectiformes are powerful, quick, agile, and invisible. The horrifying hunting strategy of the flatfish is to lie perfectly still on the ocean bottom and gradually change color to match the substrate (they can match sand and pebbles and ripples and even chessboards). Then, when a happy little shrimp minces endearingly along the ocean floor, suddenly the land itself opens a huge maw and SNAP! delicious shrimp supper for the stealthy flatfish.
For all of their gifts as predators, flounders are hardly the apex predators of their watery ecosystems. They live in a world of super-predators: diving birds, grabby cephalopods, sharks, bigger fish, and cunning marine mammals. And that is to say nothing of all-consuming humankind: fisherfolk hunt for flounder with spears, traps, hooks, and nets.
The flatfish, like most teleosts, are being fished to oblivion (even as their habitats rapidly change due to thermal fluctuation, invasive species, pollution, and acidification). This troubles me for all sorts of reasons. It represents the growing doom in the world ocean, from whence came all Earth life and upon which all life depends. We evolved from teleosts. Flounder are distant cousins. Also I think they are beautiful in a bizarre way. Their asymmetry strikes me as amazing and alien, yet somehow completely appropriate, practical, and compelling.
Also, um, I like to eat flounder.
Anyway, I mention all of this because lately flatfish have supplanted doughnuts as the central fixation of my art. They represent life to me…and so I have been drawing them by the dozen (and I am working on a book of intricate pen and ink flounder). Here is a teaser flounder. More next week!
Benevolent Flounder (Wayne Ferrebee, 2016, color pencil and ink)
Black necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis) image from angolafieldgroup.com
Who doesn’t love cobras? These beautiful and dangerous snakes have fascinated humankind since prehistory. Ferrebeekeeper has already written about a lovely red spitting cobra from East Africa: today we cast our eyes to sub-Saharan Africa to learn about the black-necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis) another spitting cobra which lives across the great continent.
The black-necked spitting cobra lives across a huge swath of Africa—from Northern Namibia to southern Mauritania in the west and from the Somali coast down to Tanzania in the east. The adaptable snakes can be found everywhere throughout this vast range except for the jungle fastnesses of the Congo rainforest. Except in dense rainforests, the snakes do well in all sorts of ecoregions and they are famous for thriving in scrublands, forests, grasslands, and deserts (as well as in new habitats like farms and cities). Although the snakes largely prey on small rodents, they are gifted hunters and can also live on virtually any small creatures (including arthropods, birds, reptiles, amphibians) and even on eggs. Its own predators include a variety of fierce raptors and certain other snakes. I find it alarming that Africa contains snakes capable of catching and eating a 2.3 meter (seven foot long) cobra which sprays venom!
The black-necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis)
The black-necked spitting cobra comes in an assortment of colors from yellowish copper to olive to reddish to gray. Many have distinct bands of red, white or gray on their necks (although some individuals are missing these bandings entirely). The most dramatic specimens are glossy black with red or white necks—like death metal priests! Female snake usually lay clutches of 10-15 eggs, but they can lay up to 22 eggs at a time. The snakes can be diurnal or nocturnal to suit circumstances (and their mood). Unlike the genteel red spitting cobra, black-necked spitting cobras love to spit venom and will do so at the slightest provocation (or for no reason at all—like Kid Rock).
photo by MrG http://www.photog.co.za)
In comparison with some of their relatives, the black-necked spitting cobras are not especially poisonous. Only five to ten percent of untreated human bites prove fatal. Their venom primarily consists of cytotoxins—compounds which damage cells instead of attacking organs or neuro-connections. Although fatalities from bites is low, bites can be accompanied with substantial tissue necrosis.
Why is he smiling about that? What a jerk!
In conclusion, the black-necked spitting cobra is a very interesting and visually striking snake (not to mention a born survivor) but I feel it would make an extremely poor housepet.
Antennarius commerson – Giant frogfish (Commerson’s frogfish)
This is Commerson’s frogfish aka the giant frogfish (Antennarius commerson). It is a voracious carnivore which attacks anything small enough to be prey (which is pretty much anything smaller than itself–since the fish has an extremely extensible body). Commerson’s frogfish is a chameleon—it can change color to resemble the tropical sponges of its native habitat –yellow, red, orange, gray, or black, with all sorts of stripes and splotches (though the creature seems to betray a predilection for yellow).
Giant frogfish, (Antennarius commerson) photo by Rokus Groeneveld
Giant frogfish, Antennarius commerson
(photo by “Hole in the wall”)
The frogfish is an anglerfish and its front dorsal spine is tipped with a pinkish shrimplike lure (a feature known to biology as an esca). The fish lives in tropical and semi-tropical water of the Indo-Pacific (an eco-region which comes up repeatedly in this blog). Despite being known in English as the giant frogfish, Antennarius commerson only grown to 38 cm (15 inches) in maximum length which demonstrates that horror is relative (and that frogfish are not large from a human perspective). Although it is not classically beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, there is something oddly charming about its grumpy expression. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I do!
Antennarius commerson – Giant frogfish (Commerson’s frogfish)
Copyright Teresa Zubi
A Fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox); photo by Keven Law)
Behold, the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), the top predator of Madagascar (exempting, as always, our own very predatory kind). The fossa weighs between 5.5 and 8.5 kg (12 to 20 pounds) and lives mostly on primates—namely the lemurs which are everywhere indigenous to the strange micro-continent. Since lemurs are brilliant climbers, the fossa is also an arboreal specialist and it can run down trees headfirst and execute stunning acrobatic leaps which would make a trapeze artist blanche and retire. The predator prefers hunting lemurs but it also dines on bats, reptiles, tenrecs, rodents, birds, and whatever other small living creatures it can catch.
The first time I saw footage of a fossa, my mind kept insisting it was a cat…no a weasel…no a stretched-out bear. Its extreme similarity to familiar predators combines in a sinister way with its lithe alien movements to make it seem very peculiar. I wonder too if some desperate little tree-creature part of our brain doesn’t respond badly to the fossa-for it is difficult to look away from one in action, and it has many similarities with analogous predators encountered by our arboreal forbears. It hunts both by day and night. It climbs, swims, runs, and lurks with great skill–so there is never any true safety for animals which it preys on.
Male Fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) by Darren Naish
According to taxonomy and genetics, the fossa is indeed closely related to cats, bears, weasels, seals, and all of the other members of the order Carnivora. The fossa is perhaps most closely related to viverrids (the civets and genets), but it shares many features with felines as well, and may be considered to be descended from an intermediary form. The ancestor of the fossa first came to Madagascar around 20 million years ago, during the Miocene as forests dwindled and grasslands spread on Africa and as Madagascar drifted particularly close to the great continent.
Fossa yawning (photo by beachkat1)
Fossas live to around twenty years of age. They have social lives similar to cats, and even have similar vocalizations. Fossas of both genders have bizarre elongated external genitals (and the male member is equipped with backwards pointing spines). Additionally, they secrete an orange substance which “colors their underparts”. You can go look up details and pictures on your own time. The mother fossa gives birth to litters of two to four (though occasionally as few as one or as many as six) cubs, which mature slowly. Physical maturity is not reached until the age of two and the young fossa do not reproduce until a year or two after that. Fossa have always been solitary and rare, but human habitat-destruction (among other ills) seems to be making them even scarcer.
A Fossa Cubs born at Catoctin Wildlife Preserve in Maryland
I started writing this post imagining that the fossa would be esoteric and largely unknown to most of my readers, but the internet quickly revealed that it is a film star and a media darling of our age. Apparently a fossa was the villain of “Madagascar” an animated children’s film about lemur society and a zoo-breakout. How did I miss an animated movie about lemurs? I’m going to go watch that right now.
Livyatan Melvillei (image painted by Balazs Petheo)
Behold the terrifying ocean monster, Livyatan Melvillei! This predatory toothed whale lived 12-13 million years ago during the Miocene epoch and grew to 13.5 to 17.5 meters (45–57 feet) in length. A large adult whale could have weighed up to 50 tons. The extinct megapredator is named for Herman Melville and for the Biblical leviathan (“Livyatan” is from the Hebrew word for Leviathan). The great whale’s family is currently listed as “incertae sedis” which means “status uncertain,” a taxonomical place-holder used when biologists are trying to ascertain a creature’s relationship to other related organisms within a larger order.
Livyatan Melvillei with smaller baleen whale
In terms of body size, the modern sperm whale is probably slightly longer and heavier, but the livyatan had stronger jaws and much larger teeth. Paleontologists describe the mighty creature as having “the biggest tetrapod bite ever found,” which is no trivial matter, since the tetrapods include all mammals, reptiles (like dinosaurs), amphibians, and birds. Of course plankton feeders (like blue whales and whale sharks) have larger mouths, but the sperm whale and the livyatan have more powerful maws filled with large sharp teeth. The 36 centimeter (1.2 foot) long teeth of livyatan are the largest known teeth from the animal world which were used for eating (which is to say the tusks of elephants, walruses, Odobenocetops, and narwhals tusks were larger, but were not used for biting into plants or animals).
Livyatan Melvillei BITING a smaller baleen whale (painting via dino-rider)
Livyatan Melvillei presumably swam the deep blue ocean hunting for seals, dolphins, baleen whales and whatever other sea creature was large enough to command its attention (giant sharks, huge squid, huge fish, and bizarre giant birds?). Like the sperm whale it seems to have had a spermaceti organ in its head although it is unclear if this was used for echolocation, auditory signaling, or aggressive male sexual display (i.e. head-butting). It must have been quite a (horrifying) sight to see one of these giant monsters biting apart a 10 meter (33 foot) long baleen whale. Sadly, the ever-changing dynamic of ocean life caused the great toothed whale to go extinct at approximately the same time as megalodon, the largest known shark (which was a contemporary of the great whale). Numerous websites speculate which great animal would have won an ocean duel–which is foolish, since whales are clever animals and thus the obvious victor.
Giant Short-Faced Bear (by Joseph S. Venus)
With the possible exception of the polar bear, the brown bear is the largest land predator on Earth today—which brings up the question of whether there were larger bears alive in prehistory. Amazingly, the answer is a resounding yes! The short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) lived in North America during the Pleistocene. It ranged from Alaska down to the Gulf of Mexico. The huge bears first appeared 800,000 in the past: yet they only died out 12,500 years ago (a time which coincides suspiciously with the proliferation of humans in the Americas). The largest short-faced bears are estimated to have weighed up to 957 kilograms (2,110 pounds) and they stood 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall at the shoulder.
The short-faced bear derived its name from its broad squat muzzle—a feature which gave the bear an incredibly powerful bite. Using these powerful jaws the bears could crack open huge bones and gobble up the marrow. Yet short faced bears also had longer thinner legs and arms than living bears. The combination of graceful runners’ limbs and bulldog-like muzzle has greatly perplexed scientists. Was the bear a predator who ran down Pleistocene megafauna and then bit its prey to death, or was it a huge scavenger which wondered across the continent looking for carrion to crack apart with its ferocious jaws. There is still not scientific consensus about the lifestyle of the immense bear, however what is certain is that the short-faced bear was one of the two largest mammalian land predators known to paleontology (the other contender for the title is the even-more-mysterious Andrewsarchus).
The fossilized skeleton of a short-faced bear at the (amazing-sounding) American Bear Center
A Brown Bear (Ursus arctos)
This blog frequently describes mammals which are extinct or not well known—creatures like the pseudo-legendary saola, the furtive golden mole, or the long-vanished moeritherium, however today Ferrebeekeeper is going all out and writing about one of the wild animals which people think about most frequently.
“Oh no! Humankind is thinking about us.”
The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is beloved, feared, worshipped, hunted, despised, and glorified by humankind. These great bears are arguably the largest land predator alive today (their only rival is their near-cousin, the polar bear). A Kodiak brown bear can weigh up to 680 kg (1500 lbs) and stand 3 meters (10 feet) tall when on two legs. Brown bears can run (much) faster than the fastest human sprinter. Likewise they can climb and swim better than we can. They are literal monsters—mountains of muscle with razor sharp teeth and claws. However, bears have become so successful and widespread not because of their astonishing physical prowess, but because of their substantial intelligence.
A female brown bear in an English zoo waves to appreciative zoogoers.
Ursus arctos live in India, China, the United States, Russia, and throughout Europe. Because they live across such a broad swath of planet Earth, brown bears are divided into nearly twenty subspecies, but these various brown bears all share the same basic characteristics and traits. Brown bears are primarily nocturnal and crepuscular, but they can hunt and forage during the day if it daylight suits their needs. Since they are ingenious omnivores, they are capable of living in many different landscapes and habitats. Usually solitary by nature, the bears sometimes gather together in large numbers if a suitable source of nutrients becomes available (such as a salmon run, a dump, or a meadow full of moth larva). The bears eat everything from tiny berries and nuts on up to bison and muskox. Although the majority of bears live primarily by foraging, some families are extremely accomplished at hunting. Brown bears pin their prey to the ground and then begin devouring the still living animal. This ferocious style means that humans greatly fear bear attacks, even though such events are extremely rare everywhere but Russia (where all living things continuously attack all other living things anyhow).
Brown bear cub with mother in Alaska (photo by superbearblog.com)
Bears are serial monogamists: they stay together with a single partner for a few weeks and then move on romantically. The female raises the cubs entirely on her own. Gravid bears have the remarkable ability to keep embryos alive in a suspended unimplanted state for up to six months. In the midst of the mother bear’s hibernation, the embryos implant themselves on the uterine wall and the cubs are born eight weeks later. Remarkably, if a bear lacks suitable body fat for nursing cubs, the embryos are reabsorbed.
Entertainer, Bart the Bear, poses with his trainer/human liaison
Experts believe that brown bears are as intelligent as the great apes. There is evidence of bears using tools, planning for the future, and figuring out formidable puzzles (although they are terrible at crosswords). Their high intelligence can make bears seem endearingly human—as in the case of a beer-drinking bear from Washington State. After drinking one can of a fancy local beer and one can of mass market Busch, the bear proceeded to ignore the Busch while drinking 36 cans of the pricier local brew before passing out. There are famous bear actors with resumes more impressive than all but the most elite film stars. In other cases, bears and people have worked together less well. Brown bears used to live throughout the continental United States, but they were hunted to death.
“The figure of a shaman’s bear ally, paws outstretched, ready to assist in healing. It comes from the Nanai people and was collected in the Khabarovsk region in 1927. The “healing hands” of this bear were held to be especially helpful in treating joint problems.” (from http://arctolatry.tumblr.com)
Humans and bears have a love-hate relationship: although bears have been driven out of many places where they once lived, the practice of bear-worship was so widespread among circumpolar and ancient people that there is even a word for it: “arctolatry”. Bear worship is well documented among the Sami, the Ainu, the Haida, and the Finns. In pre-Roman times, bears were worshiped by the Gauls and the British. Artemis has a she-bear form and is closely associated with Ursus Major and Ursus Minor. Yet bear worship stretches back beyond ancient times into true prehistory. Cult items discovered in Europe suggest that bears were worshiped in the Paleolithic and were probably of religious significance to Neanderthals as well as Homo Sapiens. Indeed, some archaeologists posit that the first European deities took the form of bears.
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