D:BA and dire wolves - April 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then Colossal Biosciences Company threw dire wolves at us. Pause.

Initially, I intended to discuss the penultimate S1 Daredevil episode, which had Bullseye coming back, and Murdock (Daredevil) taking a bullet for Fisk (Kingpin) because of reasons? Apparently? Does anyone care about those two anymore anyhow? Dire wolves are more interesting than MCU, these days.

…Of course, these days, at least some news outlets discuss with an authentic feeling, who makes a better jam and/or spread – king Charles III of Great Britain or Megan Markle, his younger daughter-in-law. Seriously, and compared to this sort of news, MCU’s D: BA show is cutting-edge political drama or something along those lines. Nevertheless, what about the dire wolves?

…I am a sceptic when it came to CB’s claims. See, while the RL dire wolf (let us leave Westeros out of this, the topic is already quite confusing), is a true canine, (as opposed to a bear-dog, a bear, or any other kind of mammal carnivore), it also belonged to a completely different genus than the modern wolves do. However, so what?

See, even CB admits (sort of) that their dire wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – are not exactly purebred dire wolves, more like grey wolf/dire wolf hybrids. Eh? The problem with that statement that in nature hybrids occur only between animals that share the same genus, albeit belonging to different species. Pause.

Let us try again. We are talking only about mammals here; in other animal groups, such as birds (say, songbirds), or amphibians (such as the tailed salamanders) the hybrid situation might be quite different, but along the mammals? Either it works or it does not.

See for yourselves. On one hand, we have horses and donkeys, whose hybrids are sterile and can’t really make a new species; big cats, whose hybrids aren’t sterile but can’t survive in the wild due to health-related reasons; and the two species of the gnu antelope, whose hybrid offspring also aren’t sterile but have plenty of health defects that they die quickly enough. Pause.

On other hand, we have the beluga and the narwhale whales, for example, or the better-known polar and grizzly brown bears, whose hybrid offspring are viable and are increasing in numbers. The wolf branch of the wild dog family, incidentally, is in this boat too, as the various coyote/grey wolf/domestic dog hybrids of eastern North America are growing more numerous and are establishing their own independent populations…

That said, those wild dogs are all in the Canis genus, while the extinct dire wolf is not, not anymore, at least not at the moment. In addition, if you look at the related animals that belong to different genera, they do not form hybrids – just look at rhinos or elephants, for example. African and Asian elephants do not hybridize, not even in captivity, unlike the big cats, and the black and white rhinos of Africa do not hybridize – unlike the feral domestic dogs and the Ethiopian wolf. The latter is a separate, albeit related, species to the grey wolf of the northern hemisphere – the term ‘wolf’ covers almost two dozen animal species, living and extinct, most of whom are related to each other (i.e. they’re canines), but some are not…

Where were we? Right, the DNA of the dire wolf isn’t in as a good a condition as that of the woolly mammoth is – what’s left of the dire wolf are mainly fossilized bones, teeth, and the like. Extracting DNA from them, even if the dire wolf was in the same genus as the grey wolf, doesn’t guarantee success; the fact that the surrogate mothers were domestic dogs, aka a third canine species, separate from the other two (I’m going with this theory), only complicated the situation: how did their pregnancies go? How did the births go? Did the mothers survive or not? However, no, all we get are sterilized reports of a success, and automatic reactions to those reports. Neither is a reliable source of information and so far no one outside of CB has much to go on. Still…

Remember Ms. Nicole from my last week’s entry? Or rant, whatever. As it was said, she was hired by CB, or something similar to make six videos about mass extinctions; so far, two of them were aired, but we talked about this; the point is that one would expect her to jump onto the dire wolf promotion bandwagon, because CB are her employers or something, but no. She is keeping mum about them instead and seems to have outright distanced herself from the CB. Does she know something about this that we do not? Maybe, maybe not, but I, for one, am sceptical of just what CB’s latest wolf pups are. Real life does suck, but sometimes it is less sucky and more complex and complicated instead…

This is it for now. See you all soon!

Sun bear vs. moon bear - Jan 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and family can always be counted on to make you feel worse. I hate them. So, let us talk about something else: bears. Yes, the wild mammals that inspired Winnie the Pooh and Paddington Bear, among other characters.

There are currently eight species of bears found in the world, so, in the spirit of 2023, let us have a face-off between just two bear species: the sun, or the Malaysian bear, and the moon, or the Asiatic black bear.

Where, and how, to begin? The sun bear is one of the smallest modern bears, right there alongside the giant panda. It is about 120-150 cm long, (the tail, less than 10 cm long, does not count), and weighs about 35-80 kg. Those are dimensions of a large dog breed, put otherwise.

The moon bear is somewhat larger out of the two: it is about 120-180 cm long, (plus an equally short tail), and weighs about 65-150 kg; the American black bear may not be much bigger, but it is certainly quite a bit heavier than its’ Asiatic counterpart, up to 400 kg heavy – but we’re talking about the sun bear instead.

Physically, the two bear species differ in that the sun bear has a yellow patch on its face and chest, while the moon bear has more of a white napkin on its’ chest. In addition, despite the similar-sounding names, the moon bear is more reminiscent of the sloth bear instead – but we are digressing.

Habitat-wise, the two bear species are similar: the sun bear lives in the tropics of Southeast Asia, whereas the moon bear lives further up north, in South and East Asia instead, where the climate is more temperate instead. Regardless, the two bear species behave more like each other, than like the sloth, the American black, or the giant panda bears: both are tree-dwelling animals, which feed upon… what?

The tropical sun bear is more of a specialist, (though not as much as the giant panda): it eats fruit, honey, termites, ants, beetles, bees, and their larvae. The temperate moon bear is more of a generalist, as it eats vegetation, fruits, nuts, insects… and big, hooved mammals, including domestic livestock. There’s a reason as to why it is considered more closely related to the American black, the brown, and the polar bears than to any other modern bear species, you know?

Lifestyle. The sun bear is one of the more arboreal of bear species: it finds most of its’ food (see above) in trees, and it finds escape from its’ own predators in trees, in particular humans and tigers. It actually got a big attitude for its’ small size and can usually hold its’ ground against such smaller carnivores as big snakes and leopards.

The moon bear spends more time on the ground than the sun bear does, but moreso than the brown or the American black bears do, for comparison. It even hibernates in trees sometimes, for it lives in a seasonal climate, especially in the northern half of its’ habitat. It is less aggressive than the sun bear is, but proportionally it is the more stronger and powerful bear species out of the two.

Weaponry… Both bears are armed with teeth and claws, but the moon bear has more powerful teeth and jaws, out of the two, as it eats more red meat in its’ food rations. By contrast, the sun bear eats more of softer, squishier foods, such as honey and fruits, where less chewing is required. Hence, it does not have such impressive teeth and jaws, and actually looks a bit like an anteater, with its’ extra-long tongue. It also has an extra-large jaw gap, but while it looks cool to us humans, the other animals are not as impressed by it.

The moon bear, on the other hand, has teeth and jaws typical of a bear: it is a relatively large and powerful omnivore, and so its’ teeth and jaws are designed to handle tougher stuff than just fruits, insects and honey.

The paws and claws, on the other hand, (pardon the pun), are more similar between the two bear species, as both are, well, tree-climbing bears and their limbs have evolved along similar lines: strong, powerful, with claws that are reminiscent of grappling hooks.

Combat style? Also reminiscent of most, if not all the bears: stand upright and pummel each other with the forepaws and claws. Teeth and biting are more secondary, (though still important, obviously) – and so, which bear would win?

I am still going with the Asiatic black/moon bear. While the two bears are mostly equally matched, the Asiatic black bear shows an edge, however slight, over its’ sun bear cousin. The sun bear may have a better fighting attitude, but among the animals, size and physical strength often matter more, and the moon bear would just be better able to absorb the physical punishment of its’ tropical cousin than vice versa. Still, opinions may differ, and I’m open to listen to them.

That is all for now, see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #105 - July 4

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Yesterday, we had an argument/fight again. I hate those, but, sadly, it seems to me that the main way that anything changes in our family is through conflict, which brings us to arguments slash fights. I hate those, but they are unavoidable and necessary. Pity that COVID-19 made everything worse. What next?

As we are starting to finish our bird of prey talk, let us turn to owls instead. There are two types of owls – the ‘true’ owls and the barn owls. The latter differ from the true owls by coloration, and their ‘facial disk’, (if you ever saw an owl, any owl, on a photo, you would know what we are talking about), is proportionally larger and whiter than that of a ‘true’ owl. In addition, the barn owls and their relatives are generally paler than their cousins are, and finally, they have no ‘horns’.

…The horns, of course, as tufts of feathers that grow on heads of such different owl species as the screech owl, the long-horned owl, and the great horned owl, among others. Sometimes they are barely noticeable, as they are in case of the short-horned owl, or even more so – in case of the snowy owl, but they can be there. Most scientists, (ornithologists and otherwise) agree, that these tufts serve no practical purpose, but are more of a decorative feature on those owls. Maybe it helps them in courting each other?.. The point is that no member of the barn owl family has those tufts, but some ‘true’ owls do. What next?

Owls swallow their smaller prey whole, and spit up what they cannot digest as pellets. Some other birds do that as well, from hawks to the nightjars, (also known as nighthawks, but they are completely separate birds from the birds of prey), but it still isn’t entirely certain as to just who are the owls’ relatives? In addition, the modern classification revision does not make it any better, either.

…Yes, there was a revision of avian taxonomy sometime in the past, (unlike the mammal, which appears to be a more modern development). I missed it, and so I’m not going to dwell upon it; basically, the point is that the owls’ similarity to hawks, falcons, eagles, vultures and so on is only superficial and practically skin-deep – the two groups of birds are able to co-exist, but only because the owls are nocturnal. Yes, they can see during the day, but they are not doing as well during that time, as the other birds’ mob them, and in some case – as in cases of the corvids – those birds themselves can be quite big. Anything else?

Here is a piece of original fiction to round up today’s entry instead. I hope that you will enjoy it:

Once upon a time, when a red fox and a hare were busy with an eagle owl, a different bird, a great grey owl, was sitting on a different tree at a different spot where the forest met the open field, and it too was busy hunting.

Any owl is Meta - they got soft feathers, silent wings that make no noise whatsoever; their talons are twisted and sharp- no one can escape from them, not a mouse, not a squirrel, not a sleeping bird. This particular great grey owl was hunting mice.

...It is still late winter and mice are hidden from sight by a thick layer of snow, but an owl’s hearing is sharp enough to penetrate it, and the great grey owl has specifically long legs to reach through the snow. There! There a mouse is scurrying. The owl spread its’ wings and launched a spectacular aerial attack right through the snow.

The snow exploded. This particular mouse made its’ winter home in a bear’s den, and the owl, unwittingly, scored a perfect hit on the bear’s nose. (It was hard to reach, but those long legs and sharp talons are good for something).

The still mostly asleep bear was not amused. With one shake of its’ massive head it was free, with one snap of its’ huge jaws it snapped the owl up and sank back beneath the snow to wait for the proper end of winter. The end.

PS: Oh, and the mouse was in another corner of the den, sleeping its’ own nap in its’ own home, lined with the bear’s fur because it was small enough to get away with this - but that is another story.

End

This is it for now. See you all soon! Comments? Criticisms?

Quarantine entry #88 - June 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes you get to see something new and unusual in it all the same. Case in point – bears, brown bears, to be more precise. For the last few days, Yahoo News and similar websites were discussing about the various mutant grizzlies that had appeared in the Banff national park. One is all white, (but not an albino, a different mutation). The second is still a cub, mostly brown, but with a white head, giving it a rather panda-like appearance. Cool, eh? But so what?

For one thing, it helps us to understand as to how the bears’ coloring scheme has evolved in general. With the exception of the giant panda, the modern bears are largely monochromatic, especially the American black, the brown, and the polar bears, but as those recent cases of mutated grizzlies showed, there are always exceptions to this rule, and just because a bear is supposed to be brown, (or black, or white, or etc.), doesn’t mean that it is going to be.

Yes, most discolored animals tend to die-off more quickly than their normal-colored counterparts for a variety of factors, but if an animal is large enough, (say, a sperm whale, or even ‘just’ an African bush elephant), then it may survive into adulthood and reproduce.

This is where it gets even trickier, because genetics. An animal’s coloration, (whether it is an elephant, a zebra, a hyena or a guinea pig), is defined by the DNA that it had inherited from its parents – usually. Sometimes the DNA misfires and we get albinos, leucistic animals, melanistic, (all black), and so on, but if they do reproduce, there is no indication that this genetic flaw will be inherited by its’ offspring, because the latter have different DNA – a mix from both parents, which changes the game entirely. Put otherwise, while breeding in captivity is one thing, (just look at all the breeds of domestic pigeons, geese, or even goldfish, for example), breeding in the wild is something else, and while it is possible that a ‘miscoloured’ animal will survive to sexual maturity, (as the first out of the two grizzlies in our case is a sexually mature animal and not just a cub), the odds of its’ offspring inheriting its’ atypical coloration is even less. What next?

Hard to say. For today, actually, I wanted to discuss the cockroaches. Yes, they are far less majestic than the bears are, but they are far, far older, having appeared back in the Mesozoic, during the Cretaceous period. Superficially, they are similar to beetles, but they are much less derived than the beetles are; whereas the beetles undergo a full metamorphosis, (rather like butterflies, honeybees, and flies), the cockroaches do not – their youngsters are not grubs like those of beetles, but are miniature versions of the adults.

Another important difference of cockroaches from beetles are the ooteca – whereas beetles just lay their eggs into rotting wood, ground, onto tree bark or someplace else, the cockroaches actually carry them in a sort of an ‘egg case’ until the eggs hatch and the young cockroaches scatter to begin their own lives.

…In any case, the physical similarity of cockroaches and beetles is superficial; whereas beetles are found all over the world, in all sorts of ecosystems, cockroaches are much more tropical, and in the wild are found usually in jungle ecosystems, or elsewhere wherever there is plenty of heat and moisture. Since their closest relatives are the termites, this does include underground. Pause.

…Termites deserve their own mention – sometimes they’re still called ‘the white ants’ because of their color, but they are very different insects from ants. Sometimes it’s obvious – the termite mounds are much bigger, in a different league altogether, from anthills, or hives of bees and wasps – and sometimes, not so much: whereas all worker ants, (wasps and bees), are all females, in the termite communities, both sexes are represented equally, plus worker and soldier termites are much more different from each other physically than those of ants or wasps.

Out of the two groups, the termites are the more derived ones, and may have involved from the cockroaches, (albeit different ones than those that live in human houses), but so far, no one knows for certain. Fossils of both cockroaches and termites are rare finds, so it is hard to make any decisive statements about them, at least right now.

…Moreover, for now, this is it. See you all soon instead.

Quarantine entry #87 - June 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. On the one hand, the official U.S.-Canada border will remain closed until July 21^st at least, because reasons. On the other,… wait.

…Let’s talk media, for a second. These days, at least some of mass media sites, such as Yahoo News, tend to illuminate such important events as the border closure and the prolonging of CERB very sparingly – they just tell us about the happening of one fact or another, and that is it. What and how it all went down – we do not know.

Instead, we are given brief polls on that site, basically the standard yes-or-no question with some minimal variations. Are those questions supposed to matter? In the West, true, people do believe that their opinions matter, but the fact is that if their opinions are handled in a sufficiently detached manner, then it suddenly becomes much harder to understand as to how precisely it does matter.

In the RF, the situation is different – people, the common people, know that the higher-ups in the Kremlin and etc. don’t care about their opinions, unless it is backed-up by force, so when they have enough, they go into the streets… therefore, the aforementioned higher-ups in the Kremlin and etc. do their best to appease their ‘electorate’ just enough to prevent the aforementioned revolution… usually. Right now, with their own COVID-19 epidemic on hands, this system is breaking down…sucks to be them…but real life sucks to begin with.

Elsewhere in the world, it is different. In the U.K., (and the rest of the EU), news about COVID-19 and the like are much more sparse than they are in the U.S. In Canada…well, we have just talked about how the Canadian government handles COVID-19 – apparently, they make all the decisions, but give polls to their electorate to reassure them that their opinion still matters and they can always vent, of course, online. Put otherwise, Canada may not be the RF, (thank God), but neither is it the U.S., (captain Obvious says ‘No duh!’). What next?

I admit that I wanted to talk to you about our old favorites, the elephants, today, but then I caught a glimpse of a cartoon. It was about bears, fair enough. The titular character is a grizzly bear, who used to be a circus actor slash jack-of-all-trades in his youth, but then settled down. He is also a bachelor, (because plot reasons), but has a girlfriend, also a grizzly/brown bear, who comes and goes throughout the show’s episodes. He also has a romantic rival, a male black bear, who is something of a jock, but who appears very rarely in the show, because it is a children’s cartoon… so what’s my point?

My point is that in this episode, the male grizzly’s old flame from the circus came to visit him. She was a spectacled bear from South America, a real party animal, (pun intended), and she is much smaller and more petite than the other bears of the show, (mostly brown and black, though there is a giant panda cub as a distant relative of the titular character too). And-?

And that is actually realistic – the spectacled bear is smaller than the brown bear is: about 120-200 cm, with the males being larger than the females are, (but that is a common trade of all the bears, especially the modern ones), and much heavier – up to 115 kg on average, while the female spectacled bears usually weigh – on average – only 65 kg. Apparently, this sort of discrepancy puts the spectacled bear right alongside the polar bear for being one of the most sexually dimorphic modern bear species, even though the latter is only a very distant cousin to the spectacled bear; both are true bears, of course, but the spectacled bear is much more closely related to the now-extinct giant short-faced bears of the previous epochs. (In particular, the short-faced bear Arctodus simus was featured in one episode of ‘Prehistoric Predators’, and had cameo appearances in some other, remember?) Ironically, however, diet-wise, the spectacled bear has only 5% of meat in his overall diet; it might be the next most herbivorous modern bear after the giant panda! Maybe that is how it was able to survive the last Ice Age when the short-faced bears died out, and keep in mind, that the American tropics are also home to the jaguar, which might be less physically formidable than the spectacled bear is, but much more formidable and carnivorous – the spectacled bear manages to avoid it by living in places where the jaguars are rare – mainly in the Andes mountains of north and west South America. If given the chance, spectacled bears are just as ecologically dexterous as the brown bears of the Northern hemisphere are, but these days, while the brown bears are Least Concern, the spectacled bears are Vulnerable instead, so there is that. Real life sucks for those fascinating creatures, it looks like, but that is real life.

…For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #82 - June 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and I cannot even escape into AoS, because I am currently trapped where it is not available, (because there is no TV and all). Pause.

Well, because I do not want to tackle reality just yet, I will acknowledge that for the moment the final season of AoS is still staying in the AC time period – aka the post-WWII USA and they have already encountered their very first racist – a certain Mr. Sharpe. Right now, the character is mostly a comic relief, (this is the first time he has appeared in MCU period, and given AoS’ record of accomplishment, and it is possible that he will soon die anyhow… where were we?)

Ah yes, the racist. AC itself fiddled with the issue of racism in the USA post-WWII, especially in the second season, when agent – now chief – David Sousa suddenly had a non-captain Rogers’ rival for agent Carter’s heart of an Afro-American descent, cough – but now…

Well, now it seems that the final season of AoS is stealing plot ideas from the third season of AC that never was, which is good. Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ actually did manifest despite AoS’ present, and the result was insipid, and also cancelled after a single season, even though despite its’ flaws, it had a better, more compact plot than AoS usually had. Disney rocks?

Getting back to the issue of racism in the States, in particular – now, listen: the George Floyd situation manifested because of management and mismanagement of the protests, the Americans wanted a diversion from COVID-19, and so they got it! Now, people are talking about reforming the police, (a major federal organization, putting it mildly), Confederate statues are being pulled down, (seriously, what the Hell?!), and COVID-19 was put on a backburner, though now it is coming back – either because the George Floyd narrative has ran its’ course, the man has been buried, and, hopefully, at least some people on the top of the American society have begun to think as to what COVID-19 will do to American population now that the self-isolation was effectively torn down.

…As we have said before, in Canada the situation is different, less intense, and more artificial-feeling. It is possible that Trudeau is using it as a smoke screen… period, because he isn’t handling the COVID-19 chaos very well, but then again, right now, Canada is supposedly run by a Liberal/Conservative/NDP joint effort, and where are the other two? Scheer keeps on fighting with Trudeau, the end, and Singh, (for whom and whose NDP party I have voted, FYI), is simply a no-show. The Hell? Trudeau is flawed, (though he is better than the American Donald is by default), but at least he is trying to do something, which is more than you can say about the other two. Sigh. Canada may be better than the U.S. is, but these days? That is not much to go on about.

Now, today I actually wanted to talk about bears, but somehow I was never able to get into the right frame of mind. Pity, because actually bears are quite fascinating mammals, hailing from the Eocene epoch, aka practically the very beginning of the Cenozoic. Their various species and genera came and went, but in the modern times? There are only eight species in three genera, including the giant panda that we have discussed earlier. It is the most ancient of the modern bears, and one of the most specialized, and probably one of the smallest ones too, (I am sorry, but compared to a brown bear? The giant panda is not that huge).

At the other end of the spectrum we have the polar bear, the most recent of the modern bears, that we have already discussed on this blog, for it was featured on AFO, where it’d lost to a walrus, as well as its’ closest cousins – the brown bear, (defeated a Siberian tiger), and the American black bear, (who took down the American Alligator). This leaves with the spectacled bear, the sloth bear, and the sun and the moon bears.

The moon bear is the Asian black bear, which is an ecological counterpart to the American black bear, and whom we have discussed in the past, largely because of the conjunction to the American black bear, (the American alligator and the Chinese alligator were featured as well).

The sun bear is also called the Malaysian bear, and it is one of the smallest bears, possibly smaller than even the giant panda is – and is one of the most arboreal of all the modern bears. Unlike the moon bear, its’ patch on the chest is yellow rather than white, hence the ‘sun bear’ moniker.

…Conversely, the sloth bear, (aka the true bear from the ‘Jungle Book’) usually has no patch on its’ chest, but when it does, it is white. The same goes for the American black bear, actually – usually, this bear is colored in a single color, but sometimes it does have a white patch on its’ chest instead, (though it ought to be noted that an American black bear can be of any color actually, not just black, but also cinnamon brown or creamy white).

…The spectacled bear usually doesn’t have a mark on its’ chest – instead, it has ‘spectacles’ on its’ face, and it is the only modern survivor of the short-faced bear lineage, (remember, it was featured on the ‘Prehistoric Predators’ series?). That said, those ‘spectacles’ can look very different from one spectacled bear to another, and some can reach the chest area, I suppose. In fact, physically speaking, all bears look like each other, and aside from the brown and polar bears, (which are each other’s closest relatives out of all the modern bears), and the giant panda too, I suppose, all of the modern bears are colored similarly too – in black, with lighter patches of fur on its’ back. Even the giant panda’s black-and-white checkered coat might have evolved from a similar design as well; what do you think?

…For now though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #57 - May 17

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Sometimes it isn’t so bad, as yesterday we went on a nature trail, and-?

And nothing, and everything, and all things in between. The nature trail, (actually, plural, as there were three of them, of which we completed one, and half-completed another), isn’t that different from the park back home… the park has just a paved path and as such, it is easier to get through.

…But what about the authenticity! – one can just hear the cry. True, but what authenticity? The nature trail may look real – as in wet, swampy, hard to get through, (especially for younger children), but it is largely safe, (provided that parents are there to prevent the children from getting too far into the water, period).

To elaborate: the wildlife there is safe – there are songbirds, (a cage bald eagle, raised in captivity, or two), chipmunks, (also squirrels, probably), waterfowl, (at this time of the year it were ducks), frogs, and snakes – as in garter and water snakes, naturally. The trail itself was peppered with children-friendly log piles, teepees, what else have you, so that the children wouldn’t get bored – and I doubt that there were any poisonous plants either, because children tend to put everything into their mouths, so poisonous plants are a no-no, parent supervision or not. What else?

Enter honeybees. I do not know if the Asian giant hornets were involved – we are on East coast right now, and so far, the giant hornets were found only on West coast instead – but the local honeybees were swarming, or doing something similar: a swarm of theirs was buzzing and flying around a hollow in a conifer tree.

…Honeybees, in particular North American honeybees, are not as aggressive as the Asian giant hornets, let alone the Africanized ‘killer’ bees, but when they are riled up, they can be quite aggressive on their own, especially when children are involved – hence I reckon that they won’t be around that nature trail for too long… or they will be, as the buildings were closed, and the staff appeared to be gone, period. The nature trails remain currently unsupervised, which raises, (for me), a question – how long until life finds a way and the nature trails will need to be reset? I have no idea… and this brings me back to our own park. It’s actually more dangerous than this nature trail complex, because aside from waterfowl, songbirds, squirrels and rabbits, our park also has hawks, (ok, they will never attack humans, unless the latter are bothering their nests, which is unlikely, given a number of factors), red foxes, (which can attack people, if provoked, cornered, or sick), and coyotes, (same as red foxes, but as larger animals that are more dangerous to humans, proportionally). Is it bad? Yes, but this is how nature is – it is not always safe for humans, period. What next?

Today I actually wanted to talk about pandas instead. There are two species of them – the giant panda, which is a ‘true’ bear, just the most ancient one of the modern species, and the red panda, which is a bear cousin, but has its’ own family. It is the size of a small racoon or a large marten, but just as the giant panda, it feeds on bamboo, and has false thumbs on its’ forepaws to better grip and handle the bamboo.

Pandas are not the only mammals that have false thumbs – so have the ‘true’ moles, for example, only their false thumbs have evolved to make their forepaws better digging shovels instead.

…The latest edition of Luke Hunter’s guide to the ‘true’ carnivorous mammals of the world that I had access to claimed that there are two species of the red panda rather than one, but most other sources id them as subspecies instead. There are also two subspecies of the giant panda, (aka the panda bear) – the well-known black-and-white one, and the more obscure cinnamon-brown-and-white one, which is found only in China. Isn’t real life surprising? In addition, sometimes, it does not even suck!..

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

Quarantine entry #56 - May 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It is also tricky, both on a lesser level – i.e., co-existing with your family during the lockdown that cannot end because of various reasons, both of COVID-19-(directly)-related, and of Trudeau vs. Trump related. There are simple solutions, but no one likes them, and so the lockdown goes on, satisfying fewer and fewer people, no matter how good (and/or righteous) are its’ initial reasons were… What next?

Today, I want to talk about the otters, actually. To wit, they are 13 existing species of aquatic or semi-aquatic mammals, which belong to the Mustelid family, (aka the weasels and co.), but also – to their own subfamily, the Lutrinae. And-?

…Starting with the good old reliable taxonomy, there are about eight existing genera of otters, (that hold the aforementioned 13 existing species), and about twice as many extinct ones. As Mustelids, otters are more closely related to wild dogs, bears, and raccoons, rather than cats, hyenas, and mongooses. Their relationship with the pinnipeds – namely, seals, sea lions and walruses – is more obscure, taxonomically speaking, but ecologically? Otters and pinnipeds are two sides of the same coin… sort of.

Let us elaborate. The pinnipeds live in seas and oceans – as a rule. They come in several shapes, and in different sizes, but most of them are social, gregarious, noisy mammals that often are easy to spot on the shoreline; in the water, they may not be as formidable as the more ancient and derived cetaceans are, but they are still a force to be reckoned with; in one of his TV shows, Sir David Attenborough showed a bearded seal actually outmaneuver a killer whale, meaning that you don’t discount the seals just yet!

On the other hand, we have the otters. Aside from the well-known sea otter, and the much more obscure – and smaller – marine otter of South America, all otters live in freshwater bodies instead. They are social animals, and playful ones, but their basic unit is a single-family group, whereas pinnipeds – especially such big ones as the elephant seals, fur seals, and walruses – have harems instead. Proportionally, otters tend to be shier and less noisy and noticeable than the pinnipeds are; very often they are much less active during the day than at night, dawn, or dusk; in part, this is because of human pressure, but the biggest freshwater otters of them all – the giant otters of South America, (aka Pteronura brasiliensis), are freely active during the day instead, human pressure or not. What else is there?

The other animals. The aforementioned giant otter of South America is the most formidable of otters; family groups of these species were shown killing caiman, (cousins of the crocodile, remember?), and driving away jaguars, (though in the case of the latter, a safe, respectable distance was maintained, and the jaguars were young and not fully-grown or experienced). Put otherwise, as in most of them mammal societies, size and strength, multiplied by numbers of family group matter. The giant otters are the biggest and most social of the river otters, hence their also the bravest and the boldest. The other freshwater otter species – not so much, they are much more demure and tend to stay out of the way of such carnivores, as wolves, bears, and lynx, for example, (in the Northern Hemisphere, both in North America and Eurasia).

…The sea otter stands apart, not unlike the giant otter of South America; its’ closest relative – proportionally – is the spotted-necked otter of sub-Saharan Africa, (Hydrictis maculicollis), but the two animals don’t have much in common: the spotted-necked otter is a ‘typical’ freshwater otter, while the sea otter behaves more as the seals and pinnipeds do.

…There are freshwater seals – true, or earless, seals – in fast. They are subspecies of ‘marine seals’, the only truly freshwater seal is the Baikal seal, Pusa sibirica, and it is one of the smallest seals, under 1.5 m in length. It exists in the Baikal Lake, which is more of a freshwater sea, really, and is an exception that underlines the rule. The case of the sea otter, which is really the only otter known to most humans, that went into the sea, is the same. …The marine otter Lontra felina, a close relative of the North American river otter, looks much more like the other otters rather than like the sea otter. It behaves rather like the otters, instead of the sea otter does too… but we became carried away.

To summarize: otters have appeared later in Earth’s history than the pinnipeds did, and as such, they were unable to fully transition to the sea, as the seals and their relatives did, except for two species, of which only the sea otter can compete with the pinnipeds in the sea, ecologically speaking, and even it has some caveats in regards to its’ ecology, it is a very different mammal from the seals and etc.. On the other hand, they were able to keep the pinnipeds out of fresh water – the subspecies/species of earless seals that were able to make it there are found in places where river otters are uncomfortable to exist; all of them are more terrestrial than the pinnipeds are…

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

Quarantine entry #45 - May 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and the self-quarantine and what else have you have only made it worse. Earlier today, I have come across a children’s book – ‘The Bear that Wouldn’t Share’ or something along those lines – and it rather set me off. Start rant.

What the book is about? A bear made some cupcakes; a bunch of other forest animals, including an owl and a red fox, ask him if they have any, and the bear refuses. By the standards of the children’s books, ‘Bear-Share’ made a point of pointing out that the other animals usually do not come over to the Bear’s – they are not really his friends, they just want his cupcakes. The bear refuses and goes to sleep. He wakes up, the cupcakes are gone, and no one has supposedly seen one, cough. And then he finds his son, the Baby Bear, eating one of them – apparently, the latter found them and promptly shared them with his friends, cough, because he’s a special snowflake (or whatever the lingo is) and doesn’t need dad’s permission or info, and his mom, the Mrs. Bear or whoever, isn’t around at all, (the original Bear might be divorced, widowed, whatever – how woke!). The original Bear sees this, is overcome by emotion, and asks for a piece of his final cupcake, and BB says – ‘Okay’, ‘Yes’, or something else along those lines. End recap. Pause.

Now, the thing is that sharing is good – when it is done with your friends, when it is done with those, who are in need, and so on, (just look at the COVID-19 world around us, cough). In this particular story, though, the lines are more blurry – the Bear does not appear to be truly friendly with the owl, the fox, and the rest, and as such, while sharing would be polite and kind, it was still his call. The Baby Bear took the initiative out of his paws without permission and behind his back, something that many parents would take offense about still.

…The main flaw, however, is the story’s script – if in the first half it overshares, explaining that the owl, the fox and co. aren’t really the Bear’s friends at all, then the second half undershares – i.e., the Bear sees his son, the last cupcake, and immediately understands that sharing is better than not-sharing, (all concepts of private property aside), the end. Maybe not the worst message, but the depiction of it? Sucks.

…And where’s the Mrs. Bear, anyhow? Up north with her new husband, Polar? …Yes, I understand that the ‘Bear-Share’ is a children’s book, a very young children’s book, but still, the way the story is written? Could have been better, even for the children. Anything else? (End rant).

Well, before I came across the ‘Bear-Share’ book, I wanted to talk to you about foxes – see, while the red fox and the Arctic fox are the best know, there are other vulpine species as well… pause.

Foxes of the genus Vulpes are the best-known foxes of all, they contain such ‘heavy-hitters’ as the aforementioned red and Arctic foxes, as well as the fennec and the corsac foxes, for example. Some scientists claim that they are the ‘true’ foxes out of them all, but we will not get into this issue here. Who is next?

…On the other end of the scale there the Ethiopian wolf, jackal, or fox, a wild dog much more closely related to the domestic dog and the grey wolf than to the ‘true’ foxes. Indeed, most people call it the Ethiopian wolf or jackal rather than a fox, because foxes and ‘true’ wild dogs, (aka the genus Canis), are quite different in several things, including size and behavior: even the smaller ‘true’ canids, such as the coyote and the jackals of the Old World, are notably bigger than the biggest fox – the red fox. Next?

…’True’ canids usually hunt in packs or small family units, while foxes are loners. The American foxes of the Urocyon genus, (i.e. the grey fox and its’ cousins), can even climb trees and subsist on plant matter for food, showing that they are really basal carnivores – the more derived carnivorans usually cannot eat plants… The grey fox is the biggest member of this genus, but it defers and backs down from the red fox, even though the two animals are roughly the same size and shape… Where were we?

Aside from the bat-eared fox of southern Africa, (monotypic genus Otocyon), which is an insect-hunting specialist in its own right, (not unlike the fennec of the ‘true’ foxes, but quite bigger in size that the fennec is), the rest of ‘foxes’ belong to various South American genera, which come in all shapes and sizes, though the most famous South American canids, the maned wolf and the bush dogs, aren’t called ‘foxes’ at all. (Mind you, the maned wolf is no ‘true’ wolf either, but still). They are called either ‘dogs’ or ‘foxes’, but they belong to their own genera and aren’t all that closely related to the ‘true’ dogs or foxes discussed above. Scientific classification can certainly make strange things!

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

The New Mutants trailer 2 - Jan 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In this particular instance, it is because I got sick, apparently, and this makes real life worse, for the obvious reasons. (Man, I hate common cold). Therefore, I look around, and what do I find but the trailer for this year’s ‘New Mutants’ movie. And?

And nothing – the trailer for the ‘New Mutants-2020’ film is a dark, horrific mess, with ‘horrific’ showing the genre – the ‘New Mutants-2020’ is shaping to be a horror film, so far. Belay that – it is a horror film, it looks like.

Well, FOX’S mutant movies were always a mixed bag – for every ‘Deadpool’ or ‘Logan’ we got ‘Dark Phoenix-2019’, for example. That said, we’re talking not about quality here, but genre, and my statement stands – for every traditional superhero movie we got something atypical, whether it was the very first ‘X-Men’ film, or ‘Logan’, or even ‘Deadpool’. It brings Illyana Rasputina, aka ‘Magik’, who is also the sister of Colossus, which had appeared in both ‘Deadpool’ movies up to date, so who knows? Maybe we will get some sort of a reference. It brings Wolfsbane/Rahne Sinclair, who might have been around the earlier X-Men films – I am not so sure. It brings Sam Guthrie/Cannonball, (ditto), and a new incarnation of Roberto da Costa, (Sunspot, who was in earlier X-Men movies, I am sure), and Danielle Moonstar/Mirage, (people claim that she appeared in the past X-Men films). They will be dealing with an incarnation of a mutant doctor named Cecilia Reyes, (who also might have appeared in the past films) and an entity named the Demon Bear, which is a giant demon bear, (duh), and who is certainly a new villain in the Marvel movies, regardless of genre, universe and whoever is making them. What is next?

…I am actually looking up to this movie, that is what. SW9 proved to be as bad as it was supposed to, and the crew blaming it on the fans, (aka ‘fan service’) did not do any wonders to the movie. Yes, it went down the collective throat, but again, you have to be ‘Cats-2019’ level bad to fail at this achievement. SW9 was not, and so it went down and out. Yay. Now does anyone have any idea as to where Disney/SW will go next, or will it just fizzle out instead? My money’s on the latter – as far as movies go, SW9 was broken and reset once too many times. Anything else?

Sadly – no. Real life sucks. I feel rotten. Ricky Gervais made a ‘roast’ at the Golden Globes awards – really? Does anyone care anymore? Probably not, but did I mention already that real life sucks? If not, here is another reminder.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

Animal Face-off: Brown bear vs. tiger - July 9

Few days ago, I have revisited one of AFO’s episodes – the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ one. This time, I’m revisiting another episode – the ‘brown bear vs. tiger’. Technically, the tiger is the Siberian subspecies (as opposed to a Sumatran or a Bengal subspecies instead), but before we get into that…

‘Killjoys’ S2 seems to have gotten into the swing of it, focusing on at least two major plotlines: figuring one Dutch’s true past, and saving the ‘Old Town’ from ‘the Company’, (who is probably being run by a CEO called ‘the Man’ – ‘Killjoys’ are that imaginative, sorry). Fair enough, this isn’t any more stupid or flawed than ‘Agent Carter’ has been, and not unlike AC, ‘Killjoys’ is featuring a fairly small and tight cast of main and recurring characters, with a sufficient supply of sci-fi trappings thrown in for the necessary flavor. By now, the cast and the crew of the show have managed to get into a S2, (as did ‘Dark Matter’, BTW), now we got to wait and see if they reach as S3 level by the end of it.

Back to AFO. As I written earlier, the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ episode was probably surprising to some viewers, as a walrus doesn’t look like a winning fighter with its bulky and ungainly body (on land; in the water, it’s another story). With the ‘brown bear vs. tiger’ episode, the issue (if you would call it such) was something else: it became very clear that the bear was going to win, especially if you went by the mechanical data, which was how AFO operated, after all-

…This was actually one of the bigger basic problems that plagued AFO since the first episodes (‘lion vs. tiger’ and ‘crocodile vs. shark’) – all of the data was physical/mechanical, and an animal’s habits/behavior were not taken into account. This physical/mechanical data dictated that a bigger/heavier animal was going to win, especially in a one-on-one fight, and while it was true in some cases, in others it was not. In this episode, yes, the brown bear did win, and in a straightforward fight it would win because it was bigger, heavier and stronger than the tiger were, but in nature? Size is not everything, as the same brown and polar bears can demonstrate…

Of course, none of the above means that I had not enjoyed the episode – I did. The way that the show compared a bear and a great cat (a tiger), in regards to jaws and claws and physical prowess; how they had compared and contrasted the two – as far as I am concerned ‘brown bear vs. tiger’ episode was one of AFO’s better episodes. It just was…CGI’d, but given that the alternative was to have a tiger and a bear fight for real, which is very inhumane, no one really complained about the CGI, nu-uh.

However, in a computer simulation, the brown bear won because it was bigger and stronger than the tiger, but so is a polar bear…when compared to a brown bear: a brown bear, on the average, stands 2.5 m tall on hind legs, while a polar bear is about 3.0 m instead. A brown bear has proportionately longer claws than a polar bear does, but the polar bear’s claws are sharper than a brown bear’s claws are. In strength too one would probably expect the polar bear to have an edge over the brown, especially if one checks using mechanical props, (top-notch or not), not unlike what lion has over a tiger, but-

However, in comes the real life. Due to global warming, the polar bears have been moving south and the brown bears – up north. In recent years, they have started to encounter each other for real, and some scientists have recorded footage of their interactions. It went like this: one night, a group of polar bears have discovered a whale carcass and were eating it. Along came a single brown bear (well, a grizzly bear, because this was in North America rather than Siberia), smaller and/or shorter than the polar bears were, and it…promptly chased them around the carcass, eeyup. Attitude matters, as does experience, and mechanical stand-ins with computer calculations cannot account for this. People who operate mechanical models and run computer calculations can, but it is much harder without live footage – and the episode of ‘bear vs. tiger’ did not really have any footage of bears interacting with tigers. If it had, it would have shown that bears can usually see tigers off…so why there was no footage? No one knows, I bet…

Anyhow, the brown bear chasing polar bears around is one point. The polar-brown bear hybrids is a different one. Yes, there are lion/tiger hybrids, but they occur only in zoos and are sterile, just as donkey/horse hybrids are, for comparison. Brown/polar bear hybrids are found in the wild, and they are not sterile, either. Considering that the polar bears have become their own, independent species only 10,000 years ago and that some scientists believe that brown bears can evolve into a polar-bear-like-form (or a subspecies?) yet again, how is this for a lab study (of bears, tigers, etc.)? Study of animal bodies and bones is one thing, but it cannot compensate for the study of animal behavior. AFO did try to keep animal behavior in account, (though not so much in the ‘brown bear vs. tiger’ episode), but the main focus was on jaws, claws, teeth, horns, tusks and etc., and this had limited the scope of the show, causing AFO to be cancelled after just 12 episodes. Pity, because the show was a good one.