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 #16 - April 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. I do not have COVID, but have been suffering from indigestion all morning. I hate my life. Period. So, let us talk about something else. How about dragonflies?

Firstly, they are some of the oldest insects ever – their ancestors, i.e. Meganeura and co. – have evolved way back in the Carboniferous, and since then, the modern dragonflies have changed little, aside from size, of course. The ancient Meganeura was the size/had the wingspan of a modern eagle! Next?

Next, aside from dragonflies proper, there are also damselflies. They are small, slightly built dragonflies, which, unlike most of the species, rest not with their wings spread out to their sides, but folded over their backs, as the butterflies do. Moths, on the other hand, rest with their wings flaring out, just as the dragonflies do. And speaking of dragonflies, they are proportionally better and faster fliers than the damselflies are, they are physically bigger, more formidable.

This brings us to their larvae. As far as insects go, dragonflies have an incomplete metamorphosis – they have no pupa stage, as the butterflies, moths and mosquitoes do, for example. However, unlike the grasshoppers and locusts, the dragonfly larvae are very different from the adults: they are aquatic, they live underwater, and they move by jet propulsion, not unlike as the marine cephalopod mollusks do. They breathe through gills, but for their final molt, they leave water, climb onto rushes or some other tall plants, and molt into mature insects. This is a process not unlike that of tadpoles and frogs, only more abrupt. And yes, dragonfly larvae, (not damselfly) eat tadpoles, just as the adult frogs eat adult dragonflies.

…Not that the dragonfly larvae are so formidable themselves – other water animals eat them, such as the bigger diving beetle species. Next?

The dragonfly larvae do have a secret weapon – their lower jaw can extend and grasp its prey, bringing it to the rest of the mouth from a distance. Nature can certainly be weird! What next?

…My stomach problems have subsided slightly for now, and nature’s bounty has not really come back to our piece of American suburbia. Maybe it is too early for them, which brings us back to the dragonflies – so far, there aren’t any. There are some early flies, and bees, and mosquitoes, but not dragonflies. They probably have not molted into their adult winged forms, for as I said before, there are some early flies and mosquitoes already, which the dragonfly adults eat. Their jaws don’t extend as their larvae’s do, but they got legs, specialized to trapping and catching other insects in mid-air; they aren’t very useful for walking, but adult dragonflies hardly ever walk – they’ve evolved to be aerial hunters, period. Among the vertebrates, only the swifts, (look slightly like swallows, but much closer related to hummingbirds), probably are proper comparisons: these birds cannot get off the ground, (while the swallows can), but their aerial acrobatics are astounding!.. Nature sure can be awesome. Anything else?

Sadly, no. We are mostly stuck inside, and does anyone care that the dragonflies may be flying so fast that they have evolved motion camouflage? No? And what about their popularity in jewelry? Yeah, that is warmer, but still no cigar. Fair enough, and there is no superhero with dragonfly powers, at least I do not think so. Pity. (There are several Marvel supervillains named that, but they are all minor characters, so we will not be mentioning them anytime soon).

…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!

Quarantine entry #14 - April 4

…It came to pass to my knowledge that I’ve talked about the alligators – especially the American alligator – a lot in the past entries; much more so than about the bears, so yeah, my apology, if yesterday’s material was something of a re-use, but while we’re down in the lockdown, we don’t have too much of the new material to go on about. What next?

Firstly, real life sucks. (Cough obligatory disclaimer cough). Second, what should we talk about? Should we talk about them bears some more? In AFO, the three best-known species have some –up – the brown bear, the American black bear, and the polar bear. The other bears species are quite famous themselves, (cough giant panda cough), but the aforementioned trio is the big three. Did you know that the polar bear is also known as the ice bear? I did not know, not until recently, anyhow. And-?

And if we are going to talk about trivia, let us talk about bats instead. Those small mammals are the only mammals that truly fly; everyone else is a glider instead. They do not even look anything like bats – seriously, compare a bat and a flying squirrel. The duo do not even have superficial similarities! Rather, a bat’s superficial similarities is with the bird and the extinct pterosaur; the three vertebrate groups are not really related to each other, but physically they seem to have more in common than with anyone else. Next?

The bats’ classification is a mess. Initially, they were thought to be more closely related to primates, but now they are considered to be a sister group to true carnivores, true ungulates and cetaceans. Sometimes scientific logic is hard to discern, and the fact that bat evolution isn’t much clearer than the modern bird one, isn’t helping – bats: appeared in the Eocene already…as did bears, for comparison, but whereas bears took some time acquiring their modern shape, the bats already sprung up largely primed and ready, save for the echolocation, of course.

Pause. There are eight species of existing bears (yet), and several extinct ones. All of them – the extinct cave bear and short-faced bear, the ancient giant panda and spectacled bear, (the only surviving relative of the short-faced bear family), the modern polar bear – they all are built around the same lines; the polar bear actually has viable hybrids with its’ closest relative, the brown bear, and that isn’t something that happens in nature very often. But what about bats?

So far, there is no case of bat hybrids – not in the wild and not in captivity. On their own, bats divide into megabats and microbats. The former are better known as fruit bats or flying foxes. Their echolocation is less derived, and their eyesight and sense of smell are better. That is because they eat mostly tropical fruits (and sometimes pollinate flowers), and you do not need echolocation to find them.

Some of the microbats also pollinate flowers, but most of them are carnivores and insectivores of one type or another. That said, they also differentiate into horseshoe bats and their relatives, who have elaborate nose leaves on their noses, and such bats as the free-tailed bats that have plain noses instead. (This division is not so clear-cut, but you get the gist). Otherwise, ecologically, the two bat groups are similar; there are bat species that are outright carnivores rather than insectivores, and the three true vampire bat species feed on blood, but in general? The majority of microbats eats insects and other invertebrates, just as most of megabats eat fruits. Is that it?

Yes, pretty much. People are pointing out that if I talked about Batman, my blog would be more popular, but I do not like DC, I do not like DCEU, and I do not really feel like talking about it. Maybe some other time instead. (Cough WW1984 movie cough).

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

Quarantine entry #13 - April 3

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It goes on, but it still sucks. I am tired of reiterating it, but there is only so much fresh material that I can use, and what is left, anyhow?

…Well, not DW – I am putting it on hold again, maybe AFO? Therefore, I watched its’ penultimate episode – ‘American Alligator vs. Black Bear’, and again, I was hit that the Black Bear won where the lion had failed – in luck: the Nile Crocodile was able to get a good grip, and the American Alligator was not. That all it took.

…Now, when we have discussed this episode for the first time, I made something of a comment that it was important that both of those animals were American, because otherwise? There’s a Chinese alligator that lives in China, (i.e. only in the Yangtze River) and there’s an Asian black bear, also known as the moon bear, which is roughly the same size as the American black bear, save that it has a white spot on its’ chest. Now, the American black bear is usually monochrome in color – the basic color is black, but there is also cinnamon, brown, even white – the spirit bear of the West Coast. However, it is all solid color, no spots or anything else. As a matter of fact, only the American black bear, the brown bear, and the polar bear are all-monochrome: the giant panda, (which is lately been identified as a true bear once more), is decisively chiaroscuro, while the other bears, while usually black, also usually have a splash of white on their chests or muzzles.

The main coloring exception is the Malaysian bear, probably the smallest (physically) bear of them all: its’ spot on the chest is not white, as in case of the Himalayan bear, but yellow. Hence, the whole sun/moon bear dichotomy, I suppose…

Back to the alligators? Of the alligators and caimans, the American alligator is the biggest, while the Chinese alligator is slightly over two m in length and weighs about 45-50 kg – that is compatible with a grown-up human man. Considering that without firearms bears kill humans easily enough – well, the brown and the American black bears do – I doubt that the moon bear is any different, as it is the Old World counterpart to the American black bear. Plus, the Chinese alligator is less confrontational than its’ American relative, so, again, I doubt that it would’ve went after any bear the same way that the American alligator went after the American black bear on AFO. Anything else?

Well, the Chinese alligator is the only member of the alligator and caiman branch that lives in the Old World, while the New World has several species of true crocodiles living alongside alligators and caimans in the American tropics. However, aside from the American crocodile per se, they are fairly shy and retiring creatures, and they are much harder to see than the crocodiles of Africa and Australasia, especially the Nile and the saltwater crocodiles.

…The Old World also has the gharials, the final members of the crocodilian family. Previously, they were thought to consist only of the ‘true’ gharial, as opposed to the ‘false’ gharial, which was supposed to be one of the ‘true’ crocodiles’, but now it is also part of the gharial group. Sometimes animal classification can have some real twists and turns – just look at the pandas, (getting back to the bears). I.e., these days the aforementioned giant panda is a true bear once more, while the red or lesser panda belongs to its own family, and apparently consists of two species, rather than just one. And yes, the two species of red panda are very similar to each other, only a specialist can distinguish between them, but, nevertheless, there is two of them. Hah.

…Well, this is it for now. The lockdown still sucks. Life still sucks. Anything else is up for discussion. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #12 - April 2

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. COVID-19 continues to walk all over the planet, and the US is still the worst-case scenario… proportionally speaking, because so far out of the overall 50 000 deceased people, one-half belongs to Italy and Spain still, which is even worse. Ergo, to distract myself from all this misery, I keep on watching DW; this time, I took on the ‘Jesse James vs. Al Capone episode’, and boy, was it a hit!

Let us elaborate. On one hand, we got Al Capone, who, within the DW-verse, is a direct successor of the nameless Mafia representative of DW S1. On the other, we got Jesse James, who, within the same universe, is the preliminary to Sancho Villa in S3. Pause. Trivia aside, this essentially meant that DW made a ‘cowboys vs. gangsters’ episode, and-?

And the cowboys won. Why? Because they had better weapons; in particular, the Bowie knife was a better weapon than the gangsters’ stiletto. So-?

So nothing; the real beef here may be about how the fight was stereographed, (or staged, or whatever the proper verb for that is). See, the ‘Jesse James vs. Al Capone’ episode is unique in that two (out four) members of team Cowboy were able to walk away. This feels kind of prejudiced and staged, but, then again, a lot of DW was prejudiced, and all of it was staged, hence why it was undone at the end.

‘Tiger King’ wasn’t staged, and it did its’ best not to be prejudiced, but the truth is that it got lucky with timing – everyone got fed up with the quarantine, and so when something really big and exciting dropped in, everyone joined in on the discussion; the fact that it is a real-life drama, (I’m sorry, but Joe Exotic is a drama queen on top of everything else that he is), only added to the flavour, and Ms. Baskin may be getting the worst of it – I’m fan of Big Cat Foundation, but she isn’t the BCF, not really. Back to DW?

Here is the thing. In the last episode that we have discussed – remember, ‘Persian Immortal vs. Celt Warrior’? – the two combatants were equal, only not, as the Persian combatant had better weapons… comparatively speaking. Here, in ‘Jesse James vs. Al Capone’, we got a Winchester rifle compared to a pineapple bomb, which are not exactly comparable to each other, both deadly weapons or not. Colt revolver against Tommy gun – fair or not? It is hard to say, even though DW’s theatrics did a great job of distracting the viewers from realizing this fact, especially in the short term. Then again, DW did aim to entertain rather than to educate, and it quite succeeded in the former. And ‘Tiger King’?

...And ‘Tiger King’ thought to inform rather than to educate, and it too had succeeded in that area. People, certainly, are leaving the series having learned more than how much they did before, and right now, they have free time to do something with this knowledge, but-

-But it all comes down to the people in Washington D.C., who clearly have their own ideas of what to do during the lockdown, etc., and so the final result of the fallout from ‘Tiger King’ might be nothing – there will be a lot of noise from the couch experts, detectives, etc., a lot of nasty tweets and Instagram messages between all sorts of people, and – that’s it. Especially once the quarantine ends and people will hurry to return their lives back to normal, burying the past, however, recent, behind them – but first the quarantine authentically needs to end…

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

Quarantine entry #11 - April 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. At least now, the sink is unclogged and the weather has evened-out, and it is no longer raining. A puny yay, but still a yay nonetheless. What next?

Well, despite all the statement about how wildlife is coming back, so far, I saw little signs of it – just an occasional songbird or squirrel, and that is it. True, we are currently stuck in the suburbs, were almost everyone has a dog or a cat that needs to go for a walk or just out, and consequently, the more wild animals – songbirds, squirrels, groundhogs, deer, etc. – are keeping relatively low. Humans are one thing; cats and dogs, (and some of the local dogs are quite big animals), are another. Ergo, so far none of us is seeing any sort of a wildlife bonanza that the Internet, including Facebook, was talking about for a while. What next?

…Now would be the perfect time to talk about the ‘Tiger King’ documentary that was released on Netflix, but truth to tell, I am at a loss as how to tackle it. Despite its’ title, this documentary series isn’t just about tigers, but also about tiger trade, (especially in the U.S.) and about people who make money off the big cats, i.e. tigers and lions. It was a massive undertaking to make, air, etc., and it occasional wanders off the subject… but only slightly. Frankly, right now, discussing ‘Tiger King’ is out of my league, and so I am putting it off for now. What is left?

Well, I have re-watched yet another DW episode, this one being the ‘Persian Immortal vs. Celt Warrior’. Again, it was one of the better DW episodes, (though of course ‘Tiger King’ is still the more solid show out of the two). Why? Because of several reasons.

First, the Persian Empire did meet the Celtic tribes, chronology-wise, however slightly. Secondly, the weapons were not too typical, especially for the Persian Immortal – they included a battle-axe rather than a sword, and a chariot scythe. This brings us to the third reason – the chariots themselves. Horses – and warriors on horseback – came and went throughout the entire show, but this was the only DW episode that featured chariots and at least some chariot combat. Very remarkable and enjoyable to watch! …So why did the Celt lose?

Because he had the inferior weapons, when push came to shove, and inferior training too, I suppose. The Celts were always more individualistic than their Persian counterparts, (in the terms of the face-off in question), for at its’ heyday the Persian (aka the Parthian) empire rivaled the Roman…and both of them diminished simultaneously, and also fell at the same time – to the prophet Mohammed and the up and coming forces of Islam. Fun!

…As for the Celts, they would eventually ‘evolve’ into the natives of France, Great Britain & Ireland, Germany, and so on, and they would also pass on without a trace. They fell back against the Romans, while the Persians/Parthians were able to stand up to the Romans honestly, see above, and this was probably as to why team Persian was able to defeat their counterparts.

And the sling! Honestly! The sling appeared on DW several times, and it was always less effective than such as weapons as the bow and arrow. It may have been the second least effective weapon on DW after the various poisons, and so in S3, DW got rid of it, just as it got rid of the poisons in S2. Not that it helped it any – DW still got cancelled. Ah well, so passes the glory/fame of the world. Did I mention that real life sucks? (Just look at ‘Tiger King’ – some of the fallout following its’ release was clearly not intentional, but we’ll talk about ‘Tiger King’ some other time).

…This is it for now – see you all soon!