Quarantine entry #52 - May 12

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Today is May 12, 2020, and so far, neither U.S. nor Canada are making much noise about ending the lockdown/self-isolation/etc. The RF might’ve ended its’ period, for various reasons, but now that Putin’s press-secretary got the COVID-19, I’ve no idea as to what this country will do next, or rather – what this country’s president, aka Vladimir Putin, will do.

…On the other side of the ocean, the Donald is escaping female journalists – remind me, as to why he was not impeached before? Oh, because no one in D.C. really wants it: not the Republicans, and not the Democratic leadership in the person of Ms. Pelosi and co. USA! USA! …When will the lockdown end?

On the other hand, let us talk about something else. How about the koala, since we have talked about the kangaroos previously?

Now, the former is just as much a symbol of Australia as the kangaroos are, but it is very different from them, and I am not just talking about the obvious.

Take, for example, classification. By most conservative standards, there are at least 4 to 6 species of ‘true’ kangaroos, and with all of their cousins, there is a lot more. By contrast, there is only one koala species; it is the last member of a dynasty of specialized eucalyptus leaf-eaters and even by the marsupial standards, this beast is a rather dim bulb. Undoubtedly, it makes up in part for its’ dimwittedness by being so adorably cute, (not unlike Leo Fitz from AoS), but still. Leo Fitz is also a genius, you know!..

Putting AoS aside for now, does the koala have any relatives? Aye, they are called the wombats, and you can see one of them in one of ‘Brave Wilderness’ YouTube videos. The wombats, (I believe that currently there are two or three species of them), don’t look too similar to the koala; in fact, they’re its’ opposites in several important areas – the koala lives in trees, the wombats on the ground, and in burrows; the koalas are very noticeable, while the wombats aren’t so much; the koala hides a nasty temper behind its’ plush toy looks, while the wombat is more placid and can be tamed fairly easily, especially by marsupial standards; but! Their lifestyles are similar, as both the koala and the wombats are solitary, asocial herbivores, whereas the kangaroos small and especially big usually live in family herds instead. Why?

One of the explanations is that the kangaroos are only very distant relatives of the koala and the wombats; the koala might be the very basic model of the marsupial evolution that would eventually lead to the modern wombats, while the kangaroos belong to the second, completely separate branch of the Diprotodont order, and their closest relatives are the possums.

No, you have read it correctly: the opossums are the shy, mostly nocturnal, primarily arboreal marsupials of the American tropics, with just the Virginian opossum living in the North America. The possums that have no ‘o’ before the ‘p’ are their Australian counterparts – small to smallish arboreal marsupials that often are active at night rather than during the day. They do not really look like kangaroos-

-There are tree kangaroos, which look generally like the rest of the kangaroos, but are usually discussed separately from the rest of the roo family. Looks like the kangaroos’ evolution also involved an arboreal stage sometime in the past. Why ‘also’? Because we are coming back to the koala, which is the most arboreal member of its’ family branch of all the members there, living and extinct. The latter includes the marsupial lions, (the Thylacoleo group), and also the Diprotodonts and their relatives – the extinct rhino-sized wombats. Put otherwise, the wombats, the koala and their extinct relatives were the ‘robust’ herbivores, while the kangaroos and their relatives, (including their own extinct giants, such as the Procoptodon), were the speedy ‘gracile’ ones.

…The marsupial lions, of course, are a group apart, and not just because they were the koalas’ closest relatives, (in the past, when there were marsupial lions in Australia, there were also several species of the koalas as well). They were the most efficient and the largest of carnivorous marsupials, much more formidable than the Thylacine, (now also extinct, sadly – at least in the canon), and the Tasmanian devil, (still existing, but clearly needing human help to survive), and that was during the time when Australia’s top carnivores were all giant reptiles – Megalania, (self-explanatory by now), Wonambi, (a giant constrictor snake), Quinkana, (the last of the truly terrestrial crocodiles of Earth), and so on. Put otherwise, unlike the placental mammals, who got rid of their competition fairly quickly, by the end of Eocene or so, the Australian marsupials, (and to a lesser extent – their South American cousins), had to deal with both the giant flightless birds and the last of truly giant reptiles; they are now gone for good, but there are gaps in the Australian ecosystem, and not even the new, introduced, placental species can repair it, (and as the Thylacine situation shows, it can very easily backfire instead)…

Well, this is it for now. It’s due to those gaps and extinctions at the end of the last Ice Age why we have only the kangaroos as authentically large marsupial herbivores – the koala is too specialized a leaf-eater to evolve further, (probably), and the wombats aren’t much larger than the modern badgers are – their giant cousins did all the heavy eating. Ah well, time and tide wait for no man or beast… See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #23 - April 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though supposedly the worst of COVID-19 in the U.S. is over. Great. Considering that NYC alone has at least one mass grave by now, I am not being overly enthusiastic and optimistic here. Anything else?

…Honestly, I would like to talk about the kangaroos now. Why them? Because they are both real and unique. They are one of the best-known symbols of the Australian fauna, alongside the koala, and they deserve it. There are other jumping mammals in the rest of the continents, but they are smaller than the kangaroos are, on average. Pause.

Strictly speaking, the term ‘kangaroo’, derived from one of the Australian Aboriginal language names for the eastern grey kangaroo, (as opposed to the western grey species), applies to only four species of those mammals: the already-mentioned eastern and western grey kangaroos, the red kangaroo, and the less-known antilopine kangaroo. All the rest of them critters are wallaroos, wallabies, tree kangaroos, potoroos, rat kangaroos, bettongs and so forth. The primary difference between all of those ‘roos is their size – the four species mentioned separately are the biggest, the three genera and the eight species of rat-kangaroos and co. are the smallest, but all of them can jump, (except for the tree kangaroos, I suppose), and they all eat plants. There are rumors that some extinct species of kangaroo were carnivores instead, but they do not surface very often. What next?

…The mention of the prehistoric kangaroos brings us to the last episode of the ‘Monsters Resurrected’ mini-series, one that dealt with the Megalania. It was a giant prehistoric monitor lizard, (in case there is someone who does not know; probably a unicorn), and it fed, among other things, on giant prehistoric ‘roos, such as Procoptodon. From what I can remember, the giant monitor lizard preferred to ambush its’ prey period, venomous bite or not, because otherwise? Its’ chances were more ambiguous, because even modern kangaroos, (I am talking about the big four here), are tough, even against people with firearms, and Procoptodon was even bigger and more massive than they are. Ergo, if the Megalania did not get lucky and Procoptodon could escape or fight back, then things could go in favor of either beast.

Aside from Procoptodon, that episode of ‘Monsters Resurrected’ also featured Diprotodon, a rhino-sized cousin of the modern wombats (there are several species) and the koala, (about one species, but maybe several subspecies), and the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo. Megalania defeated them all, but, again, it is only because the scriptwriters wanted it so. Otherwise… Diprotodon was as big as the modern rhinos are, had a powerful bite of its own, and was even more massive than Megalania was – with a successful counterattack, the giant lizard would be in so much trouble!..

Yes, the modern Komodo dragons kill the water buffaloes that co-exist with them, but, honestly, I feel that there is something artificial about the entire situation. Water buffaloes are not that stupid, and if the Komodo dragons harassed them regularly, the mammals would have figured something out. Instead, I’m guessing, the entire ‘hunt’ of a Komodo dragon for a water buffalo is so disproportionally slow, and when a water buffalo dies, so many dragons feast on it, that it is a completely different situation from water buffalos and tigers in the national parks on Asian mainland, for comparison. That said, Megalania was much bigger than the modern Komodo dragon is, so I am not entirely sure that it worked out in the same way.

As for Thylacoleo… Listen, during the Pleistocene, Australia was home to last truly huge reptiles of bygone ages; aside from Megalania, (aka a giant lizard), there was also Meiolania, (a giant horned tortoise), Wonambi, (a giant constrictor snake) and Quinkana, (the last of the truly terrestrial crocodiles). They all died out as the Ice Age ended; maybe it was because of humans, but as far as humans go, the Australian Aboriginals weren’t all that well-equipped or well-armed to handle a creature like Megalania…which brings us to ‘Monsters We Met’.

This was another mini-series, one aired back in the 90s, a trilogy of human take-over of the planet. There is a companion book too, ‘Land of the Lost Monsters’ (or something similar), and it is much more derived than the original trilogy; the point is that the second episode of ‘Monsters’ was about the human take-over of Australia and their interaction with the native fauna, which featured Diprotodon and Megalania. These depictions were not as good or realistic as they were in ‘Monsters Resurrected’, but the latter was certainly inspired, (at least in regards to this episode), by the former. That aside, in ‘MWM’, the second episode claimed that by using fire-based hunting – aka suddenly start a fire, kill or capture anything that escapes and pick-up the charred corpses afterwards – humans were able to defeat Megalania and its’ kin. Pause.

Yeah, there are the cryptozoologists, who insist that Megalania has survived in Australia even to this day. The same is said about its’ other predators – the marsupial mammals Thylacoleo and Thylacine, (the latter died-out during the European colonization of Australia instead). So far, there is nothing to prove the cryptozoologists right, but there is nothing to prove them wrong either, and it would be interesting to learn that the marsupial lion or wolf survive somewhere out there even to this day. Pause. Let us get back to the kangaroos?

Another pause. Procoptodon, Diprotodon, and similar mammals died out alongside the marsupial carnivores and giant reptiles; whether it was because humans arrived in Australia, the climate changed or something else, but die out they died. The smaller, proportionally tougher marsupials survived… in a manner of speaking. Last year, (or in 2018?) Australia was marked by some monstrous fires, even humans barely survived them, and Australian wildlife suffered even more; people had to help them survive, both professionally and on the spur of the moment; even so, quite a few mammals, (including the koalas), died. Did I mention that real life sucks? If so, then sorry, but that incident seems to have been forgotten already, because of the COVID-19 and all. Humans have really short memories, it looks like…

…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!