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!

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 #66 - May 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though it is weird sometimes – for example, there is a granny of a singer, who is both over 90, and owns over a dozen of mature and fully-grown lions and tigers, (though not bears, apparently – somehow, she had missed them). The good singer is actually half-boasting about that – I am guessing she is waiting for the mammals to eat the granny and then be acquitted, because they are, well, animals, and are not really subjected to the American law…and if they are euthanized or whatever when the granny gets eaten, it’s no skin off the singer’s nose either – win-win. What next?

The province of Ontario – during the long weekend – broke all of the rules of social distancing, yet they still want the borders with U.S. closed. Imbeciles. This is why I hate other people too, and not just myself. Ergo, let us talk about the other animals instead – and how about the walrus?

…Yes, we’ve talked about the walrus a long time ago, when we’ve discussed the AFO episode ‘Polar bear vs. Walrus’ – remember it?.. but first, here is a shout-out to NatGeo’s latest mini TV-series, ‘Barkskins’, which we’ve mentioned earlier as well. This is a fairly decent and enjoyable drama, and a pleasant change from ‘The Wrong Missy’ and ‘The Lovebirds’ that we’ve discussed earlier.

As for the walrus itself…where to start? The walrus is the biggest pinniped of the Northern Hemisphere – males can reach up to 4 m in length and weigh up to 2 metric tons. Despite its physical similarity with the eared seals, (aka fur seals & sea lions) rather than the true seals, the walrus is in its own group, not exactly too close to either of the seal groups, and it is a single species, with two or three subspecies, (scientists are not sure about the number).

The walruses prefer to live in the shallows of the northern seas, where they feed on bottom-dwelling sea animals – molluscs, worms, crustaceans, etc. There are stories about walrus orphans that became full carnivores, but that evidence is anecdotal, and in the last few decades there wasn’t any new ones, so that is probably a salty sea tale or whatever.

Once, the walruses lived all over the Arctic waters, living in herds of hundreds, if not thousands of animals. Now, however, their numbers have fallen – even with the conservation efforts, the global warming is affecting them as well as the polar bears, and the walrus females are not that much more fertile than their polar bear counterparts are – they become sexually mature only at four to five years of age, and give birth to new pups only every three to four years. The pups in question grow slowly – for the first two years they feed only on milk, but during that time, they grow up to 2 m in length and over 300 kg in weight.

…The walruses supposedly grow until they reach about 20 years of age, and they live for a very long time, if they survived their initial childhood. Humans aside, the only animals that mess with fully grown walruses are killer whales and polar bears – and it’s a mixed bag with polar bears, (they prefer to go after walrus pups and females, not the mature males, and if they can afford it, they go for seals instead), and as for killer whales… I have not seen much evidence of killer whale on walrus attacks, so I am guessing that they would rather eat anything else than a walrus first, especially a mature male one.

Finally, here is a piece of the original fiction about it instead:

A walrus is a big and heavy beast. It looks like a bag of blubber, but got plenty of brawn too.

A walrus has two ivory tusks jutting from beneath the bristly moustache. It got flippers instead of feet, too. A walrus is an aquatic beast.

A walrus will dive deep and graze on the sea floor like a cow on a meadow. It eats seaweed and mollusks, and once it is done, the walrus will emerge, grab an ice floe or the shoreline with its tusks and get out of the water completely. It will lie down and sleep.

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

Quarantine entry #53 - May 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and on this particular day, there is nothing going on in real life that is exceptionally noteworthy, the rant of a certain musician on Twitter aside. People are falling apart, as simple as that, and the fact that such captains of industry as the aforementioned Twitter, Google and Facebook are allowing their workers to work from their homes even in the post-lockdown world doesn’t help. Working from home means co-existing with your family 24/7, and this is what the lockdown has already exposed as overrated – you need to have some space from your family, some time off, and if that isn’t happening, then it isn’t happening, and you got an unavoidable meltdown instead. What else?

…People have been asking me as to why I have not been discussing Ubisoft’s latest ‘Assassin’s Creed’ installment – the one with the Vikings. My answer is plain: I do not do ‘Assassin’s Creed’ as a rule, and this version is essentially ‘Assassin’s Creed’ meeting the ‘Vikings’ of History channel, and in case you have forgotten, I wasn’t impressed with that TV series either. Frankly, I’m going to call a spade a spade and call out, saying that if it wasn’t for the lockdown, the ‘ACV’ wouldn’t receive as much publicity as it did, but this is the hand it was dealt instead, the end.

…As for ‘Stargirl’, the latest darling of the DC TV-verse, I’m not going to touch it right now either – I’m not a big fan of DC TV-verse, ‘Stargirl’ may be superhero drama meeting a teenage rom-com, or sit-com, or whatever – don’t care. This is not my TV show for now, the end. What is left?

…I feel like talking about lions, actually. Of course, we have talked about them repeatedly in the past, so let us do this now once more – I am feeling sufficiently nostalgic, here and now.

So: the lion is the king of the beasts. People claimed that it could stare into the sun without blinking. However, so can the other cats – the anatomy of their eyes permits that. ‘Tis just that the lion is so regal-looking, so majestic! It appears that a lion is never looking at anyone directly, but only at some point in the distance, as if it does not notice you. And its’ roar is something else – it isn’t roar, it’s thunder!

When it comes to strength, the lion does not attack only the African bush elephant, (namely, the fully-grown animals), the African rhinos, (ditto), and the polar bear, (because the latter is never found in the African wilderness). Anything else is fair game. The lion’s strength is such, that it can break a bull’s back with one paw strike. However, more often, the lioness will jump onto the prey’s back, grab the muzzle with its paws, and by jerking around, it either suffocates the beast or breaks its’ neck, whether it was a wildebeest, some other antelope, a zebra, or even the African buffalo.

…Yes, there are several subspecies, or even species, of the African buffalo, which is only a distant relative of the American buffalo, aka the bison that we have discussed in the past. However, right now, we are talking about the lions, which is the only species in the Panthera genus that hunts in packs, as the wild dogs do – aka in prides. All the rest of the ‘roaring cats’ are solitary hunters. Beyond them, we got the cheetah and maybe the cheetah’s South American cousin the jaguarundi, which also live in family prides, especially the cheetah. Too little is known about the jaguarundi to make a concrete statement.

Finally, the lions used to live beyond Africa – in Eurasia and even in North America, (which used to be connected to Eurasia via a land bridge in the past epochs). As you know, those beasts were called cave lions in Europe and American lions in North America. Whether they actually lived in caves, or were only depicted there by the Stone Age humans, is another story. These days, lions live only in Africa, and in the Gir Forest in India, Asia, and their status slash well-being is contradictory and worrisome. A sad end for the king of the beasts there!..

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Shadow polar bear - April 25

For a change, here's a polar bear, augmented with the shadow template from the latest Pathfinder: Campaign Setting book. (Nidal). How it looks?

SHADOW POLAR BEAR CR 6

XP 1,600

N Large outsider (native)

Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +8

DEFENSE

AC 20, touch 12, flat-footed 17 (+3 Dex, +7 natural, -1 size)

hp 52 (5d8+30)

Fort +10, Ref +7, Will +4

Defensive Abilities shadow blend

OFFENSE

Speed 50 ft., swim 30 ft.

Melee bite +9 (1d8+7), 2 claws +9 (1d6+7 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Abilities hide in plain sight, resistance cold 10

STATISTICS

Str 25, Dex 21, Con 23, Int 4, Wis 18, Cha 14

Base Atk +3; CMB +11 (+15 grapple); CMD 24 (28 vs. trip)

Feats Endurance, Run, Skill Focus (Survival)

Skills Perception +8, Survival +8, Swim +19; Racial Modifiers +4 Intimidate, +4 Stealth

ECOLOGY

Environment cold coastlines or plains

Organization solitary or pair

Treasure none

AFO - Elephant vs. Rhinoceros

And now that most of the non-AoS Marvel™-related events are behind us at the moment, let us go back to AFO. True, we have gone over most of them through the years, but we have saved the best for last, really. Let us talk about the ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’ episode.

What sets it apart? Firstly, the quality of CGI. It was always very good in the AFO episodes (for its time), but somehow in ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’, the CGI was especially well done. Good!

Secondly, (technical aspects are important, but for us, they are not that important) is the fact that both combatants in this episode were herbivores and unlike some other episodes, (such as the ‘Jaguar vs. anaconda’), this scenario – an elephant fighting a rhino – is rooted in real life.

Now let us be rational – the ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’ episode is atypical, but it is not unique; AFO did feature two other unusual contestants: the walrus in the ‘Polar Bear vs. Walrus’ episode and the hippopotamus in the ‘Hippopotamus vs. Bull Shark’ episode, and both times the oddballs won. Why?

…Because as it had been discussed in the past, carnivores tend to be built along similar lines; a bear, (either brown or polar, it does not matter) is only distantly related to a tiger, but their skeletal structures are similar. The stoat (ermine, long-tailed weasel, etc.), the bear and the sea lion are related, but they live different lifestyles, and yet their skulls are similar, because they evolved towards the same goal: to feed on other animals. There are plenty of differences – the sea lion specializes in slippery fish, the bear is more of an omnivore, etc. – but the similarities are present as well – and this brings us to the elephant and the rhinoceros.

…Actually, no. This brings us to all of the ‘pachyderms’ – the elephant, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus. When they were first discovered by the Europeans, the latter had never seen anything like that in Europe, and so, when they began to scientifically classify them, (as opposed to, say, kill them in gladiatorial battles), they put them together as ‘the pachyderms’, the ‘thick-skinned animals’. At the modern times, this term is not so much incorrect, as it is outdated – the ‘pachyderms’ aren’t really related to each other at all, they are much more distant from each other than a tiger and a bear are, comparatively speaking – the rhinoceros is a perissodactyl, an odd-toed hoofed mammal, a cousin to the horse, zebra, wild donkey (and the tapir, which looks kind of like a caricature elephant, and is something of a pachyderm by itself), the hippopotamus is an artiodactyl, an even-toed hoofed mammal, but a peculiar one – it is the most reminiscent of the shared ancestor of both even-toed hoofed mammals and the cetaceans, and the elephant is a proboscidean, a paenungulate, whose closest relatives are the sea cows, the dugong and the manatees, (which physically resembles whales and dolphins instead), and the hyrax, a strange little mammal that looks more like a rodent, (and is the size of one). I.e., the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the elephant are the results of three different lineages that led to the same goal: a large, even mega-large, herbivore that towers over the competition…literally. The hippopotamus went sideways by becoming ‘the water horse’, a semi-aquatic animal that lives mostly at the river’s edge, getting the best of the both worlds…while its’ only living cousin, the pygmy hippopotamus, is a much smaller animal that is active mostly at night, and while the two species do share the biological family, they aren’t very close relatives either.

The rhinoceros’ situation is similar – the five surviving rhinoceros species belong to four different families, (though the Sumatran rhinoceros might have died out by now, sad), and…

And they behave differently, the African species are much more terrestrial than the Asian ones are, because there are no hippopotamus species in Asia, and its’ niche there is vacant.

…Okay, there is the Malaysian tapir species, but it is not a widespread species, (though neither are the Sumatran and the Javan rhinoceroses), so it doesn’t come into conflict with its’ rhinoceros cousins, so let’s put it aside. Basically, all of the ‘pachyderms’ tend to lean towards an aquatic lifestyle, both the prehistoric elephants and rhinoceroses have hippopotamus-like species in their family tree; the modern African elephants (two species) and rhinoceroses (also two species) are the most terrestrial of them all, and the ones that had evolved in more extreme conditions, food-wise: there is proportionally less food in the African savanna than it is in the Asian jungle.

…Yes, one of the African elephant species lives in the African jungle, and it is smaller than its’ bush cousin is – and that was the elephant featured on AFO. The rhinoceros featured there was also the biggest modern rhinoceros – the white rhinoceros, as opposed to the black rhinoceros, which lives not in the savanna, but in scrubland, and feeds on leaves, rather than grasses. It is slightly smaller than the white rhinoceros is, but is about 45% lighter instead, and that is important, because in the elephant-rhinoceros-hippopotamus world, size, weight and strength are intertwined: the bigger an animal is, the heavier and stronger it is; the fights of the ‘pachyderms’ have no finesse, just massive damage inflicted on the combatants…literally and directly. The elephant, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus represent three different linages occupying the same niche, and so they function along the same lines, with some different details. The hippopotamus is aquatic, while the elephant towers over its competition, proportionally, it is more gracile than the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus are. And?

And the elephant is proportionally stronger than either the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus are. In a world where brute strength is one of the key factors, this makes the elephant the top herbivore in Africa (and Asia), and as such, it dominates its’ nearest rivals, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus by a wide margin, and thus its’ victory on AFO was justified.

…That is it for this installment, see you all next time!

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.

Pathfinder: divine guardians

Also, here are a couple of divine guardians, (polar bear and walrus, duh) from Pathfinder Bestiaries, 4 & 5:

DIVINE GUARDIAN EMPEROR WALRUS CR 9

XP 4,800

N Gargantuan animal (cold)

Init –1; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +25*

DEFENSE

AC 20, touch 5, flat-footed 20 (–1 Dex, +15 natural, –4 size)

hp 126 (12d8+72); fast healing 5

Fort +14, Ref +7, Will +8

Defensive Abilities ability healing; Immune cold, disease, mind-affecting effects, poison; Vulnerable fire

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., swim 60 ft.

Melee bite +16 (4d6+15/19–20) or slam +15 (2d6+15 plus trip)

Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft.

Special Attacks

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12^th; concentration +10)

At will – dimension door, hold portal

3/day – alarm, knock

1/day – arcane lock, augury, clairaudience/clairvoyance, commune, dismissal, guards and wards

STATISTICS

Str 31, Dex 9, Con 22, Int 6, Wis 19, Cha 10

Base Atk +9; CMB +23; CMD 32 (can't be tripped)

Feats Diehard, Endurance, Improved Critical (bite), Iron Will, Vital Strike, Weapon Focus (bite)

Skills Perception +25*, Sense Motive +5*, Swim +22

SQ blessed life, divine swiftness, hold breath, sacred site

ECOLOGY

Environment cold oceans

Organization solitary, pair, or herd (1–3 and 5–20 walruses)

Treasure none

DIVINE GUARDIAN DIRE POLAR BEAR CR 9

XP 4,800

N Large animal (cold)

Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent; Perception +23*

DEFENSE

AC 22, touch 12, flat-footed 19 (+3 Dex, +10 natural, -1 size)

hp 115 (10d8+70); fast healing 5

Fort +14, Ref +10, Will +6

Defensive Abilities ability healing; Immune cold, disease, mind-affecting effects, poison; Vulnerable fire

OFFENSE

Speed 40 ft., swim 20 ft.

Melee bite +15 (1d8+9), 2 claws +15 (1d6+9 plus grab)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks

Spell-Like Abilities (CL10th; concentration +13)

At will – dimension door, hold portal

3/day – alarm, knock

1/day – arcane lock, augury, clairaudience/clairvoyance, commune, dismissal

STATISTICS

Str 29, Dex 17, Con 25, Int 6, Wis 20, Cha 18

Base Atk +7; CMB +17 (+21 grapple); CMD 28 (32 vs. trip)

Feats Endurance, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Run, Skill Focus (Perception)

Skills Perception +23*, Sense Motive +5*, Survival +11, Swim +21

SQ blessed life, divine swiftness, sacred site

ECOLOGY

Environment cold coastlines or plains

Organization solitary or pair

Treasure none

Animal Face-off: Polar Bear vs. Walrus - July 7

With AoS on the leave until September, my blog suffers from a small hiatus of reviews. There were River Monsters, but, sadly, they have jumped the metaphorical shark – the last season, (one of the shortest ones yet), was committed to ‘mysteries of the deep’…

Okay, make no mistake – JW is still the man, and RM is still heads ahead of the swill that had been aired on ‘Shark Week’, for example, but compared to the previous seasons, ones that were focusing on proper fishing rather than something reminiscent of MonsterQuest, (which wasn’t a bad show in itself, but RW is still the better one), RM has certainly jumped the shark…and left the rivers for the ocean. It should rename itself, then, since it no longer deals with the rivers, and other bodies of freshwater, eh?

…That said, the main issue with the S8 of RM is the abruptness and shortness of the season – clearly it is not as popular as it once was, and perhaps it is time to end it, on a high note, before it is ended on a low one instead – but we got distracted. There are other good shows airing on the TV at the moment – the first season of ‘Preacher’, the second season of ‘Killjoys’ and of ‘Dark Matter’, the latest season of ‘Mistresses’ – but none of them are so intense as AoS, or AC (‘Agent Carter’) had been, which, considering that AoS isn’t all that great itself lately, is just sad.

(Of course, this isn’t just the TV – the movies too seem to suffer from something similar, and lately they are even scrapping their plans for various sequels, they are trying to achieve something original…so, we’ll have to see how it works.)

In any case, while I have been enjoying the new shows, I still went out to look for some old favorites of mine, including AFO, (‘Animal Face-Off’). It was a very good show back in the 2004, and certainly no less, (and no more) scientific than ‘Shark Week’ had been, for example. (And still is – ‘Shark Week’, that is). Sadly, after a single season, it got cancelled, but that is another story – you can still see it online even now, so let us not bitch too much about it.

Therefore, the episode I watched today was ‘Polar Bear vs. Walrus’, and the polar bear lost. Why? AFO, (being the sort of show that it was), has actually given the answer, (indirectly), to its audience, especially to those who had been paying attention to all the experiments done on (any given) episode.

What is a polar bear? It is a predator, a mammal of the order ‘Carnivora’. As such, basically, it is a typical carnivore, with teeth-studded jaws and powerful paws, armed with formidable claws. Like other bears (brown and black, for example), it uses paws to subdue its prey and teeth and jaws to dismember and eat it. If you compare skulls of a bear, (regardless if it is polar, grizzly, or black), and a weasel (short-tailed, long-tailed, etc.), and some other carnivore (or even their relatives, fur seals and sea lions), the skulls will be quite similar, especially if you look pass the differences in sizes and size-related differences. (This fact hints at the fact that weasels and bears are related to each other, however distantly, but we are not talking biological classification now.)

Put otherwise, a polar bear has a standard tool kit of a carnivore, not counting its’ size and strength. A walrus has not. It has a very different kit - one that is suited for defence, including against polar bears in question.

Technically, a walrus is a pinniped, not a carnivore, but the two orders of mammals are closely related to each other, BTW. Diet-wise, a walrus would eat shellfish and similar creatures rather than anything else, but in the past, there was some (anecdotal) evidence of orphaned walruses growing up to be more active hunters – of seals and similar sea life. I.e., it does have some mental hardware to be as formidable as a polar bear is, and perhaps even more so.

Moreover… as it was said before, the polar bear is a typical carnivorous mammal; it is also the biggest carnivorous mammal on Earth in the modern times and it is the top mammalian predator in the Arctic (not counting the killer whale, but the killer whale doesn’t live in the Arctic all the time – the polar bear does). It preys mostly on seals, but it will eat anything else, from the lemming (a small, vole-like rodent of the north) to the walrus in question – and everything else, alive or dead, in between. Sometimes it even captures the belugas and the narwhals – a northern species of toothed whales… The walrus has evolved precisely to stand-up to it. It has specifically evolved to be powerful enough to fend-off a polar bear – the big size, the thick armor of blubber, and the tusks: the polar bear’s presence was a powerful factor in the walrus’s evolution.

Yes, the evolution went both ways, and the polar bear, especially in theory, can take down a walrus…but it would rather eat something else. A ringed seal, or a harp seal, or a bearded seal…for example, not a walrus. Anything else but a walrus, really. And when the polar bear does charge a walrus, it is usually a cow or a calf – not a bull in its prime, as it was on AFO. A fight between a polar bear and a walrus is a long and exhaustive affair, unlike what AFO has shown, and moreover, the walrus has a better motivation (usually) - it is fighting for its like, unlike the polar bear...until the last few decades, when the global warming changed everything. 

…To add injury to insult, AFO has shown a polar bear hunt a walrus live, from footage that would later shown, (in 2006), on David Attenborough’s ‘Planet Earth’ TV series. There, a polar bear did attack a walrus – and the walrus got away, while wounding the polar bear very badly in the process (it died later on). I.e., polar bears tend to attack walruses only from desperation, and usually they lose. Usually, because lately the global warming had hit both them and walruses very badly; with the pack ice melting, both animals are being increasingly driven to the shoreline, where the polar bears have an advantage, especially in speed. If you ever see a TV program called ‘Polar Bear Battlefield’, you will see a pack of summer-weakened walruses being successfully overrun by equally hungry polar bears – and the bears won.

Polar bears and walruses have lived alongside each other for several thousand years at least, and have learned to coexist with each other within the cold Arctic Ocean and the adjoining tundra. Now humans are changing this balance of power – and both species are the losers. Let us reverse this disturbing trend of global warming – before it is too late.