Quarantine entry #69 - May 29

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but everybody knows it… What is next?

Let us talk about zebras instead. As everyone knows it, they are the wild, striped, (black and white), horses of Africa… only not.

Yes, zebras are kin to horses and donkeys, (as well as to the rhinos and the tapirs), and they look like horses covered in stripes. In reality, however, the genetic evidence shows that zebras and horses, (both wild and domestic) are the most distant relatives out of the three equine groups; the zebras and the donkeys, (again, both wild and domestic) are much closely related to each other than they are to the horses, no matter how similar the three groups of perissodactyl mammals may look to each other.

…’Perissodactyl’ means ‘odd-toed’ – horses, zebras and donkeys have a single toe on each foot; the much more massive and robust rhinos and tapirs have three toes on their front legs, and four on their hind. The artiodactyls – even-toed ungulates – have two or four toes on each foot, an even number instead. Next?

…The two groups of herbivores are not close relatives to each other; the artiodactyls, in particular, these days are recognized as the sister group of cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises. The latter names are informal themselves, and are gradually being taken out of circulation or are being clarified and reworked in various official sources themselves.

None of that involves the perissodactyls – they are their own group, (ok, a biological order), separate from the cetacean—artiodactyl team. In the past, they had their own aquatic representatives… actually, the Malaysian tapir and the Asian species of rhinos still spend a lot of time in the water; moreso than the South American tapirs, let alone the African rhinos, which are the most terrestrial of the bunch, as well as the most biggest.

Horses, donkeys and zebras, however, shun wet places unless they need to drink, and actually can flourish in places where their artiodactyl counterparts do not do so well – for example, the dry steppes of Central Asia. Camels, of which we have talked before, of course, flourish in deserts, but camels themselves are an old group of ungulates, and their own heyday has passed – these days, there are three species of ‘true’ camels, and four species of ‘camelids’, but we’ve talked about camelids & camels before, and right now, we’re talking about zebras instead.

There are three species of zebra – Grevy’s zebra, plains zebra, and mountain zebra. They differ from each other in stripe patterns and in general body shapes, and they also live slightly different places from each other. The quagga, which is a perissodactyl ungulate that had a striped neck and head, but not the body, was a subspecies of the plains’ zebra instead.

Why the quagga is mentioned? Because just like the Thylacine and Steller’s sea cow, this animal died out in the ‘historical’ times; there are photos, and maybe skins and bones of the animal, but no live quaggas, not anymore. There are rumors of scientists being able to reverse-engineer extinct animals, such as the giant ground sloth, the woolly mammoth, and the passenger pigeon, but the initial rush of this excitement quietly fades away, and we are left with nothing, not even the status quo.

As for reverse engineering the quagga using breeding and hybridization… that is trickier. The modern zebras can hybridize with each other and have fertile offspring, but the zebra-horse and zebra-donkey hybrids do not do so well, on the other hand…

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

Quarantine entry #43 - May 3

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It changes from day to day, from hour to hour, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You can do your best to manage it, but the catch is that no person is an island – unless you became trapped on your own during the lockdown/etc., and that has its own issues – and you are co-existing with your fellow humans with their own personalities, character traits and etc. It is not a problem… normally, after an entire month – and we still have about two or three weeks left at least – is another thing, and you just cannot help but to fight, even if you normally hate fighting. Why?

Because all people are different, all have their unique personalities, and you have to co-exist by compromising. Normally this works, but the lockdown/quarantine/etc. has sharpened this issue and now everything is slowly marching to a boiling point, pardon the mixed metaphors. The Donald isn’t the most popular politician in the U.S. right now, but he isn’t entirely wrong when he began to dismantle the (self)-quarantine issue – it cannot last forever and people are going out already, whether they need to or not. Humans are social animals, true, but all are social in their own way… and in the Western society this individuality is the main social ‘sacred cow’, closely related to its’ political counterpart, the ‘democracy’. Put otherwise, as I may have written a long time ago, but still, in the person of the Donald, their own petard hoisted up the U.S. society & government… and now the Democrats got Joe Biden to oppose him. Pause.

I don’t have anything against Joe Biden, but the fact is that he got elected by the Democrats is because he’s safe and mainstream, which is fair enough…only the Donald is neither of those things…hence why he may’ve gotten elected in the first place, back in 2016, and odds are, he’s going to get re-elected in the election-2020, because the Republicans aren’t going to bring down a winning horse for as long as they can help it. Moreover, thanks to COVID-19, the Democrats do not really want to win the elections-2020, lest the end up being responsible for handling the medical disaster. With Biden at the help, it is a safe bet to assume that the Democrats are likely to lose and remain the opposition that criticizes everything but is not really responsible for anything.

…Oh, sure, given that the Donald has his own problems… or perhaps, is his own problem, there is a chance that the Democrats will win, (and it will be interesting to see as to what they will do… from the other side of the Canadian-American border), but this isn’t very likely, because if they wanted to win, they would’ve had Sanders as their main man instead. The man is not perfect, he is quite controversial…but at this moment in time and American history, this might be just want you need to have to win, and this is why the Democrats flocked to Biden instead. Anything else?

Well, for a while I wanted to revisit the camels today, especially the dromedary, or the one-humped camel. As we have discussed them back in April, camels are amazing animals, but they need more recognition - maybe Marvel can put them into one of their upcoming movies or something – but you know it is spring. Flowers are blooming outside, songbirds – and waterfowl – and birds of prey – are flying outside, the weather is clearing up, and we are largely stuck inside, rarely going further beyond our backyards, because of COVID-19. This is dumb, stupid, idiotic, but what can you do? Even Americans, Canadians, and the rest of the Western folk have a limit of defying authority, and it is lower than in RF, where defying the government is one of the cornerstones of society… but even so, there is still some upholding of the lockdown/quarantine/etc. going on…

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

Quarantine entry #17 - April 7

Obligatory disclaimer: as you all know, real life sucks, so where were we? Ah yes, yesterday, we have talked small – dragonflies. Today, let us talk big – elephants.

There are three species of elephants that exist in the modern world: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. In fact, we have talked about the African bush elephant way back when, when we discussed the AFO episode where this grey giant went against a white rhinoceros and won. Quite justifiably too, for elephants kill and dominate rhinos more often than it happens in reverse – but it does happen, so the elephant did work hard and took risks to take down the rhino. Next?

Again, the elephant featured in AFO was the African bush elephant; it is the biggest land mammal of the modern times as well as the biggest elephant species out of the three. The Asian elephant is in the middle, and the African forest elephant is the smallest. True to its’ name, this elephant is found only in the tropical forests of western and central Africa and is quite smaller than the African bush elephant is, and its’ ears are also more rounded in shape out of the two species. …In addition, the African bush elephant is found in a much wider range of habitats, and there is a well-justified theory that the two African elephant species are not all that closely related to each other, which may cause their taxonomic classification to be re-worked.

…The Asian elephant isn’t closely related to the African species to begin with, and if anyone cares as to how it is different from the latter, then the Asian elephant has smaller ears, smaller tusks, (its’ females are tuskless, and the males often are as well), and its’ trunk has only one ‘finger’ at the end, while the African elephants have too. In fact, the elephants that people usually see in circuses and zoos are usually the Asian species – they deal better with humans and captivity.

What next?

A mention of another TV show ‘Inside Nature’s Giants’, where a deceased elephant was investigated, and it was ‘discovered’ that as far as herbivores go, modern elephants are less efficient than, say, the modern giraffes are at digesting their food – plant matter. This is not surprising, since taxonomically speaking, elephants are not ‘true’ ungulates, but rather ‘near ungulates’, herbivorous mammals that aren’t hooved. Whether or not elephants have hooves or nails is another story, but their closest relatives are hyraxes, (small mammals that look more like hamsters or guinea pigs), and sea cows, (aka dugongs and manatees). It is a motley crew, and now that scientists put this trio into the Afrotheria group, which also contains African insectivores – golden moles, otter shrews, Madagascar tenrecs and the aardvark, it has become only motlier. Sometimes, scientific reasoning is really hard to understand.

…And now, some apologies. Firstly, when we were discussing camels, I forgot to mention that Old World camels can hybridize with each other; the result is a better version of the dromedary camel. The Muslims used it as a war beast when horses could not be used. There is also a llama/camel hybrid, but it is sterile, resembles a variant llama, and is not very popular with modern breeders these days; there certainly are not a lot of mentions about this ‘cama’ beast at all!

Secondly, when we were discussing dragonflies, I forgot to mention that while their eyes literally wrap around the dragonfly’s head, the damselflies’ eyes remain separate from each other. Informative, is not it?.. Anything else?

Sadly, no. There is a lot you can say about elephants, but none of it is too overwhelmingly exciting; the 3 modern species are the last remnants of once a great dynasty that practically closed with the last Ice Age, and humans have done their best to decrease the elephant numbers even more. Pity. Elephants are wonderful animals and they deserve our protection. Instead, humans have tried to make them into bioweapons, as the DW episode ‘Hannibal vs. Genghis Khan’ showed – team Hannibal used a live ‘war elephant’ on that S3 episode… but we’ve talked about in the past. …But as for the modern elephant circumstances, maybe with COVID-19 around, their chances will improve.

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

Quarantine entry #15 - April 5

…With DC discussion being put on hold, let us get back to real life. Thanks to COVID-19, it still sucks, but we are not talk medicine here, but rather zoology, or even biology. Ergo, let us talk about camels instead!

So far, there are not any camel-themed heroes or villains, at least none in the mainline comics, though for a while the Marlboro™ cigarettes used camel imagery in their ads, but nicotine is not a good thing, it is anything but, so moving onto the animals themselves…they got super-powers up the wazoo.

Firstly, their hump does not store water, but rather fat, which enables the camel to survive in leaner times. Secondly, their feet and knees have calluses that allow them to walk on hot – or cold – desert sand without any discomfort. Moreover, their fur is thick enough to handle the same heat and cold extremes of their desert homes. Pause.

Right now, science recognizes three species of existing camels. One is the dromedary or the one-humped camel. In the wild, it is found in Middle East and in East Africa (aka the Horn of Africa) – in the North Africa, it is more of a domestic animal instead. It got a single hump, (duh), and it is usually the camel featured in movies, TV series, cartoons, and etc. – it is much better known than its’ cousins.

The other two species are the wild Bactrian camel and its’ domesticated cousin – apparently, as in case of some other animals, (such as the yaks), the two animals are genetically different enough to be classified as different species. Anyhow, the wild Bactrian camel lives only in the remote areas of Mongolia and northwestern China; its’ domestic sibling is found all over Central Asia, including the historic region of Bactria, for which the two-humped camel is named. (Also, the two-humped camels have longer and shaggier fur than the dromedary camel does).

…Bactria, if anyone is interested, was located on the territories of modern Afghanistan, (cough, Taliban, cough), Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, (both are former Soviet republics; neither is particularly flourishing or interesting to the West, at least officially. Ouch). As such, it has both deserts and mountains, but the Old World camels are not found in mountains; their American cousins are.

Technically, however, they are not camels, but camelids, and they have no humps. There are four species of them, but at least one of them, the alpaca, is found only in captivity – it is one of the smaller Tylopods, (aka camels and their cousins), and is bred mostly for its’ wool, which may be better than a sheep’s.

The camels themselves – especially the domesticated Bactrian species – also have their wool harvested, at least sometimes, and it too is as good as a sheep’s is. Consequently, there were attempts to release them into the wild. It was a mixed bag – the Bactrians, released in North America in the 19^th century didn’t make it, whereas in Australia feral camels became a problem with no clear solution in sight.

Getting back to the New World, alongside the alpaca, there’s also the llama, which is domesticated about as fully as the alpaca is, but it was bred for strength and endurance, and its’ fur isn’t as fancy as the alpaca’s is – but it’s still good, strong, and thick. (The alpaca nor the llama are really neither eaten nor milked, while the Old World camels sometimes are – especially milked. A camel is a very useful domestic animal in the desert, it looks like! Cough).

Their truly wild cousins, the vicuna and the guanaco have shorter fur; the guanaco in particular has appeared on various nature specials, often narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and if you ever watched one, (especially now, with the lockdown and everything), then you would’ve noticed the familial resemblance to the Old World camels, no doubt, especially in the head and neck. Anything else?

Camels and their American relatives are artiodactyl animals, aka with even-numbered, (or cloven), hooves... but they don’t have hooves as the deer, cattle, and antelopes do; rather, they kept their toes with hoof-like nails, especially the camels proper, and as such, they are kept separately from the aforementioned animals, in their own biological family – the Camelidae – and their own suborder, the aforementioned Tylopoda, which contains both the existing species, discussed above, and their extinct relatives as well. They are a rather mixed bag, contain purely wild species, purely domestic ones, and also the dromedary, which is found both in the wild and in captivity, and as such, their statuses according to CITES and similar organizations is also mixed. That said, all camelids are large, powerful animals with strong teeth and powerful legs and should be treated respectfully, even in zoos.

…Yes, camels proper are not really found in zoos anymore, but the llama and the alpaca still are, especially in the petting zoos, roadside zoos, and similar attractions. They are smaller and weaker than the Old World camels are, but nevertheless try to remember that they are still camelids, and as such, they have a ranged weapon as well – they can spit out their cud with a great force, powerfully enough to stun or to blind their attackers, or whom they perceive to be attackers, and that can hurt!

Well, this is it about camels and their relatives for now. See you all later, and, hopefully, the lockdown will end sooner, rather than later!