Thanks to Sy and Finn for their suggestions this week!
Further reading:
Creeping Crinoids! Sea Lilies Crawl to Escape Predators, New Video Shows
New and Unusual Crinoid Discovered
Sea otters maintain remnants of healthy kelp forest amid sea urchin barrens
Sea urchins see with their feet
A sea lily [photo from this page]:
A feather star [still from a video posted on this page]:
Purple urchins [photo by James Maughn]:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
This week as we bring invertebrate August to a close, we’re going to cover some animals suggested by Finn and Sy.
We’ll start with Sy’s suggestion, crinoids, also called feather stars or sea lilies depending on what body plan a particular species has. We talked about them in episode 79 but it’s definitely time to revisit them.
Crinoids are echinoderms, a really old phylum of animals. Fossils of ancient echinoderms date back to the Cambrian half a billion years ago and they’re still incredibly common throughout the world’s oceans.
Ancient crinoids had five arms the way many starfish do, which makes sense because crinoids are related to starfish. At some point each arm developed into two, so many crinoids have ten arms or even more, and many have arms that branch. The arms are used for feeding and have feathery appendages lined with sticky mucus that traps tiny bits of food floating in the water.
There are two big divisions of crinoids today, the feather stars and the sea lilies. Feather stars are more common and can swim around as adults if they want to, although most stick to crawling along the sea floor. They swim by waving their feathery arms. Sea lilies look like flowers as adults, with a slender stem-like structure with the small body and long feathery arms at the top. I specify that sea lilies have stems as adults because a lot of feather stars also have stems as juveniles, but when they reach maturity they become free-swimming.
Even though the sea lily looks like a plant, and some species even have root-like filaments that help it anchor itself to the sea floor or to rocks, it’s still an animal. For one thing, it can uproot itself and move to a better location if it wants to, crawling with its arms and pulling its stem behind it, which is not something a plant can do except in cartoons. If a predator attacks it, the sea lily will even shed its stem completely so it can crawl away much faster. Since echinoderms in general are really good at regenerating parts of the body, losing its stem isn’t a big deal.
The biggest sea lilies today are deep-sea species, but even they only grow a stem up to about three feet long at most, or about a meter. This wasn’t the case in the ancient past, though. The longest crinoid stem fossil ever discovered was 130 feet long, or 40 meters.
Crinoids filter food particles from the water that flows through the feathery arms. Even though they look like feathers or petals, a crinoid’s arms are actually arms. They have tiny tube feet on them that act sort of like fingers to help the crinoid hold onto pieces of food, and to do a better job of holding the food, the tube feet are covered with a sticky mucus. The mouth is in the middle of the arms on the top of the body.
Crinoids absorb oxygen directly from the water. Its body contains a system of chambers and pores that are full of water, and by contracting special muscles, the crinoid moves water around in its body to transport nutrients and oxygen and to collect waste material.
Crinoids are closely related to starfish, sea cucumbers, sand dollars, and sea urchins, which brings us to Finn’s suggestion. Finn suggested urchins, which are also echinoderms. In fact, at the end of episode 79 I mentioned that one day I’d do an episode about urchins, and it only took me six years to get here!
Many urchins look like living pincushions because they’re covered in spines. That’s where the name urchin comes from,
Episode 394: Mantis Shrimp!
Monday, August 19, 2024 • Duration 11:44
Thanks to Anbo and Siya for suggesting the mantis shrimp this week!
The Kickstarter for some animal-themed enamel pins is still going on!
Further reading:
Rolling with the punches: How mantis shrimp defend against high-speed strikes
The magnificent peacock mantis shrimp [picture by Cédric Péneau, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117431670]:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
As invertebrate August continues, this week we have a topic suggested by Anbo and Siya. They both wanted to learn about the mantis shrimp!
The mantis shrimp, which is properly called a stomatopod, is a crustacean that looks sort of like a lobster without the bulky front end, or a really big crayfish. Despite its name, it’s not a shrimp although it is related to shrimps, but it’s more closely related to lobsters and crabs. It can grow as much as 18 inches long, or 46 cm, but most are about half that size. Most are brown but there are hundreds of different species and some are various brighter colors like pink, blue, orange, red, or bright green, or a rainbow of colors and patterns.
There are two things almost everyone knows about the mantis shrimp. One, it can punch so hard with its claws that it breaks aquarium glass, and two, it has 12 to 16 types of photoreceptor cells compared to 3 that humans have, and therefore it must be able to see colors humans can’t possibly imagine.
One of those things is right, but one is wrong, or at least partially wrong. We’ll discuss both in a minute, but first let’s learn the basics about these fascinating animals.
The mantis shrimp lives in shallow water and spends most of its time in a burrow that it digs either in the sea floor or in crevices in rocks or coral, which it enlarges if necessary. Some species will dig elaborate tunnel systems while others just wedge themselves into any old crack that will hide them. It molts its exoskeleton periodically as it grows, like other crustaceans, and after that it either has to expand its burrow or move to a larger one. Most species live in tropical or subtropical areas, but some prefer more temperate waters.
It has eight pairs of legs, which includes three pairs of walking legs, four pairs with claws that help it grasp items, and its front pair, which are hinged and look a little like the front legs of a praying mantis. That’s where the “mantis” in mantis shrimp comes from, although of course it has lots of other names worldwide. In some places it’s called the thumb splitter.
The mantis shrimp has two eyes on stalks that move independently. Its brain extends into the eye stalks, and the section of the brain in the eye stalks, called the reniform body, is what processes vision. This allows it to process a lot of visual information very quickly. Reniform bodies have also been identified in the brains of some other crustaceans, including shrimp, crayfish, and some crabs. Scientists also think that the eyes themselves do a lot of visual processing before that information gets to the reniform body or the brain at all. In other words, part of the reason the mantis shrimp’s eyes are so complicated and so unusual compared to other animals’ eyes is because each eye is sort of a tiny additional brain that mainly processes color.
The typical human eye can only sense three wavelengths of light, which correspond to red, green, and blue. The mantis shrimp has twelve different photoreceptors instead of three, meaning it can sense twelve wavelengths of light, and some species have even more photoreceptors. But while our brains are really good at synthesizing the three wavelengths of light we can see, combining them so that we see incredibly fine gradations of color in between red, green, and blue, the mantis shrimp doesn’t process color the same way we do. So while its eyes can sense colors we can’t, its brain doesn’t seem to do anything with the color information.
Episode 393: Little Spiders
Monday, August 12, 2024 • Duration 18:41
Thanks to Siya, Zachary, Khalil, and Eilee for their suggestions this week!
The enamel pin Kickstarter goes live on Wednesday, August 14, 2024!!
Further reading:
How spiders breathe under water: Spider’s diving bell performs like gill extracting oxygen from water
Aggressive spiders are quick at making accurate decisions, better at hunting unpredictable preys
Into the Spider-Verse: A young biologist shares her love for eight-legged creatures
A New Genus of Prodidominae Cave Spider from a Paleoburrow and Ferruginous Caves in Brazil
The diving bell spider [photo from this paper]:
Jumping spiders are incredibly cute, even the ones that eat other spiders [photo taken from this excellent site]:
The spoor spider's web looks like a cloven hoofprint in the sand [photo by JMK - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39988887]:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
I’m excited this week, because on Wednesday my little Kickstarter to fund getting more enamel pins made goes live, and also we’re talking about some weird and fascinating spiders! Thanks to Siya, Zachary, Khalil, and Eilee for their spider suggestions!
A lot of people are afraid of spiders, but don’t worry. All the spiders in this episode are small and completely harmless unless you are a bug. Also, they probably live very far away from you. Personally, I think most spiders are cute.
Let’s start with a spider suggested by Siya, who pointed out that we don’t actually have very many episodes about spiders. Siya suggested we learn about the diving bell spider, a tiny, remarkable animal that lives in parts of Europe and Asia.
The diving bell spider gets its name because it mostly lives underwater but still needs to breathe air, so it brings air with it into the water. A diving bell made by humans is a structure shaped sort of like a big bell that can be lowered straight down into the water on a cable. If the diving bell doesn’t tip to one side or another, the air inside it stays inside and allows a human diver to take breaths without coming to the surface. A diving bell made by spiders is made of silk but is shaped sort of the same, with an entrance at the bottom. The spider builds its bell among water plants to anchor it and keep it hidden. The spider brings air from the surface to replenish the supply of air inside the bell.
The spider does this by surfacing briefly. Its belly and legs are covered with tiny water-repellent hairs, and after surfacing the hairs trap air, so that when it dives back into the water it’s covered with little silvery bubbles. It swims down to its diving bell and rubs the bubbles off its body, which rise into the bell and are trapped there by the closely woven silk. Then it goes back to the surface for more air.
Once the bell is full of air, the spider only needs to replenish the air supply about once a day under normal circumstances. That’s because the bell itself acts as a sort of external gill. It’s able to absorb oxygen from the water quite efficiently, but it still loses volume slowly because nitrogen from the air diffuses into the water. If not for that, the spider probably wouldn’t need to come to the surface at all.
The diving bell is the spider’s home, especially for the female. Unlike most spiders, the female diving bell spider is much smaller than the male and she hunts differently. The male is an active hunter, swimming quickly to catch tiny animals like mosquito larvae, so he’s large and strong but only has a small diving bell. The female spends most of her time in her diving bell and only swims out to catch animals that come too close, or occasionally to replenish the air in her bell.
When the spider leaves its diving bell to hunt, air bubbles remain trapped on its abdomen, which allows it to breathe while it’s hunting too. Then it can dart back to its bell to get more air or hide if it needs to.
Episode 392: Moon Jellyfish, Kung Fu Mantis, and Octocorals
Monday, August 5, 2024 • Duration 12:05
Thanks to Kari and Joel for their suggestions this week! You can find Kari Lavelle's excellent book Butt or Face? Volume 2: Revenge of the Butts at any bookstore.
Our Kickstarter for some enamel pins goes live in just over a week if you're interested!
Further reading:
Jellyfish size might influence their nutritional value
History of Taiji Mantis
Glowing octocorals have been around for at least 540 million years
The moon jellyfish [photo by Alexander Vasenin - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32753304]:
A Chinese mantis [photo by Ashley Bradford, taken from this site]:
Also a Chinese mantis:
A type of octocoral:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
It’s finally Invertebrate August! We have some great episodes coming up this month, so let’s get started. Thanks to Kari and Joel for their suggestions this week!
First, we’ll start with an invertebrate from Kari Lavelle’s latest book, Butt or Face? Volume 2: Revenge of the Butts! It’s a sequel to the hilarious and really interesting book we talked about last summer. Kari kindly sent me a copy of the book and it’s just as good as the first one. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the answer of whether the picture in the book is of an animal’s butt or face, but let’s talk about the moon jellyfish.
We’ve talked about jellyfish in several previous episodes, most recently in episode 343. Moon jellyfish is the term for jellies in the genus Aurelia, all of which look so identical that it takes close study by an expert, or a genetic test, to determine which species is which. We’re going to talk about a specific species in this episode, Aurelia aurita, but most of what we’ll learn about it also applies to the other moon jelly species.
Aurelia aurita lives in temperate, shallow water and is often found in harbors and close to shore. It’s mostly transparent and can grow up to 16 inches across, or 40 cm, although most are smaller. It’s sometimes called the saucer jelly because when its bell is open, it’s shaped sort of like a saucer or shallow bowl, if the bowl was upside down in the water with pinkish-white internal organs inside and short stinging tentacles. That’s most bowls, I think.
Unlike a lot of jellyfish, the moon jelly doesn’t have long tentacles that hang down from the middle of the bell. Instead, its tentacles are short and thin and line the edges of the bell. There are hundreds of them, but while the tentacles do have stinging cells, they’re not very strong. If you were to pet a moon jelly, you probably wouldn’t even feel the stings but you’d probably get sticky digestive mucus on your hands from the tentacles. The mucus is sticky to trap tiny pieces of food, which can include everything from fish eggs and various types of larvae to microscopic animals called diatoms and rotifers.
The moon jellyfish can survive in water with low oxygen, and in fact it prefers low oxygen water. Since most larger marine animals that live near the surface need a lot of oxygen to survive, the moon jelly can safely find its tiny food in low-oxygen areas without worrying too much about predators. Actually the moon jellyfish doesn’t worry about much of anything, because like other jellies, technically it doesn’t have a brain, just a nerve net.
Speaking of predators, for a long time scientists have wondered why anything bothers to eat jellies. They’re mostly water, which makes them easy for other animals to digest, but they contain almost no nutritional value. A study published in March 2023 determined that the bigger the jellyfish is, the more fatty acids its body contains, and fatty acids are an important nutrient. The main difference between a little jelly and a big jelly (besides size) is what they eat, so scientists think the bigger jellies are eating prey that contain more fatty acids, which slowly accumulate in the jelly’s body too.
Next,
Episode 391: Welcome to Snake Island
Monday, July 29, 2024 • Duration 10:52
Follow the enamel pin Kickstarter here!
Let's learn about some snakes this week! Thanks to Eilee, BlueTheChickenWing, and Richard from NC for their suggestions.
Further Reading:
Snake Island's Venomous Vipers Find a New Home in Sao Paulo
'Rarest Snake' in the U.S. Hatches at Tennessee Zoo
The golden lancehead [picture from first article linked above]:
The Martinique lancehead/fer-de-lance:
The Louisiana pine snake, and a pine cone:
Show Transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
After today, the next four weeks will be all about invertebrates, or animals without a backbone, because it’s almost Invertebrate August! But this week let’s learn about some animals that are basically nothing but backbones, snakes! Thanks to Eilee, BlueTheChickenWing, and Richard from NC for their suggestions!
Also, if you like enamel pins even slightly as much as I do, I’m starting a Kickstarter in a few weeks to make some more. These will be bigger than the ones I made a few years ago and will include an aye-aye. Where else are you going to get an aye-aye enamel pin? There’s a link in the show notes if you want to sign up for an email reminder when the campaign goes live in mid-August. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kateshaw/familiar-friends-enamel-pins
Anyway, let’s start with Snake Island, suggested by Eilee. Snake Island is off the coast of Brazil in South America, and it’s quite small, only about 106 acres total, or 43 hectares. It’s hilly and a little over half of it is covered with a temperate rainforest, while the rest is grassy or just bare rocks. No one lives there these days and it’s a protected area that only scientists are allowed to visit, with the exception of members of the Brazilian navy who occasionally stop by to maintain the lighthouse that keeps ships from smashing into the rocky coast. Lots of birds live on the island or visit there, but other than that it’s mostly just snakes.
Specifically, the critically endangered golden lancehead pit viper lives on Snake Island and nowhere else in the world. It can grow nearly four feet long, or 118 cm, and is pale gold or golden-brown in color with darker splotches. It’s also incredibly venomous—but no one has ever been bitten by one as far as we know. If somehow you were bitten by one, it probably wouldn’t be a pleasant situation but you also probably wouldn’t die. That’s mainly because the golden lancehead’s venom is adapted to kill birds and reptiles, not mammals. And that’s because there are no mammals living on Snake Island.
The golden lancehead spends most of its time in trees or bushes, hunting for birds. It mainly eats two particular species of small bird that live on the island, although it will also eat other birds, lizards, and invertebrates like insects. Some reports say it will even eat smaller golden lanceheads. There’s another snake that lives on the island, Sauvage’s snail-eater, and the golden lancehead might occasionally snack on one of those. The snail-eater is also present on mainland Brazil and isn’t venomous. You can probably guess that it mainly eats snails. It’s small and thin, lives in trees, and is brownish-yellow with darker stripes and splotches.
The issue with Snake Island and its snakes is that there isn’t that much land available for the snakes to live on, and the forest has been damaged by human activity. Big chunks of forest were cleared by fire when people decided to try growing bananas on the island, which didn’t work very well. No one lives there now, but poachers do occasionally visit the island to catch snakes for the illegal wildlife trade. The golden lancehead is starting to show signs of inbreeding and disease as a result. As if that wasn’t bad enough, because the island is so close to the coast of Brazil, and mainland Brazil has its own problems with deforestation, fewer birds are migrating through the area every year.
Episode 390: The Wallaby and Wiwaxia
Monday, July 22, 2024 • Duration 11:50
Thanks to Jaxon and Lorenzo for their suggestions this week!
Further reading:
Rock-wallaby bite size 'packs a punch'
Tiny Australian wallaby the last living link to extinct giant kangaroos
Extraordinary Fossil of Giant Short-Faced Kangaroo Found in Australia
Wiwaxia corrugata - The Burgess Shale
The nabarlek:
The banded hare-wallaby:
Wiwaxia was a little less cute than wallabies are:
An artist's rendition of what Wiwaxia might have looked like when alive [picture from last page linked above]:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
Every so often I get an animal suggestion that I’m positive we’ve already covered, but then I’m flabbergasted when it turns out we haven’t. That’s the case for the animals we’ll learn about this episode, with thanks to Jaxon and Lorenzo!
A while ago, Jaxon left us a nice review and suggested we talk about wallabies. I was CONVINCED we’d talked about the wallaby repeatedly, but I think I was thinking about the wombat. We’ve hardly ever mentioned the wallaby, and it’s such a great animal!
The wallaby is a marsupial that basically looks like a miniature kangaroo, although some species grow pretty large. The resemblance makes sense because kangaroos and wallabies are closely related, but everything else about the wallaby family tree is confusing. That’s because there are a lot of animals called wallabies that aren’t actually the same type of animal. “Wallaby” is just a catchall term used by people to describe any animal that looks kind of like a miniature kangaroo.
Wallabies are native to Australia and New Guinea, but various species have been introduced to other places where they’re invasive, including New Zealand, France, England, Scotland, and Hawaii. Most of these non-native populations happened by accident when pets or zoo animals escaped into the wild, but some were introduced on purpose by people who didn’t know they were causing damage to the local ecosystems.
One thing everyone knows about kangaroos, which is also true for wallabies, is that they hop instead of running. Their hind legs are extremely strong with big feet, and in fact the name of the family they share, Macropodidae, means big feet. So, you know, Bigfoot exists but maybe doesn’t look like most people think. The animal hops by leaning forward and jumping, with its big hind feet leaving the ground at about the same time, and landing at the same time too before it bounces again. Its big tail helps it balance. But there’s a lot more to this hopping than you might think.
While the wallaby or kangaroo has strong leg muscles, what’s even more important is that it has very strong, very elastic tendons in its legs. These basically act like massively strong rubber bands. When you stretch a rubber band, it stores energy that it releases when you let go of it and it snaps back and whips you in the thumb and you wonder why you did that because it hurt. The tendons in the wallaby’s legs store energy when it hops, and when it lands, the energy releases and helps bounce the animal right back into the next hop. Once it gets going, its muscles are only doing a fraction of the work to keep it hopping at high speed. Even better for the animal, a lot of its breathing is regulated by its movements when it’s hopping, so it always has plenty of oxygen to power its body while moving fast. When it lands after a bounce, the impact pushes its breath out of its lungs, but the action of bringing its legs forward helps suck fresh air in. It’s an incredibly efficient way to move, and allows the animal to travel long distances to find food and water without spending a lot of energy.
Wallabies eat plants, and naturally the bigger species can eat bigger, tougher plants than smaller species. The exception is the dwarf rock-wallaby, according to a study published in March of 2024. There are over a dozen species of rock-wallaby,
Episode 389: Updates 7 and the Lava Bear
Monday, July 15, 2024 • Duration 17:50
It's our annual updates episode! Thanks to Kelsey and Torin for the extra information about ultraviolet light, and thanks to Caleb for suggesting we learn more about the dingo!
Further reading:
At Least 125 Species of Mammals Glow under Ultraviolet Light, New Study Reveals
DNA has revealed the origin of this giant ‘mystery’ gecko
Bootlace Worm: Earth’s Longest Animal Produces Powerful Toxin
Non-stop flight: 4,200 km transatlantic flight of the Painted Lady butterfly mapped
Gigantopithecus Went Extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 Years Ago, New Study Says
First-Ever Terror Bird Footprints Discovered
Last surviving woolly mammoths were inbred but not doomed to extinction
Australian Dingoes Are Early Offshoot of Modern Breed Dogs, Study Shows
A (badly) stuffed lava bear:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
This week we have our annual updates episode, and we’ll also learn about a mystery animal called the lava bear! As usual, a reminder that I don’t try to update everything we’ve ever talked about. That would be impossible. I just pick new information that is especially interesting.
After our episode about animals and ultraviolet light, I got a great email from Kelsey and Torin with some information I didn’t know. I got permission to quote the email, which I think you’ll find really interesting too:
“You said humans can’t see UV light, which is true, however humans can detect UV light via neuropsin (a non-visual photoreceptor in the retina). These detectors allow the body to be signaled that it’s time to do things like make sex-steroid hormones, neurotransmitters, etc. (Spending too much time indoors results in non-optimal hormone levels, lowered neurotransmitter production, etc.)
“Humans also have melanopsin detectors in the retina and skin. Melanopsin detectors respond to blue light. Artificial light (LEDs, flourescents, etc) after dark entering the eye or shining on the skin is sensed by these proteins as mid-day daylight. This results in an immediate drop in melatonin production when it should be increasing getting closer to bedtime.”
And that’s why you shouldn’t look at your phone at night, which I am super bad about doing.
Our first update is related to ultraviolet light. A study published in October of 2023 examined hundreds of mammals to see if any part of their bodies glowed in ultraviolet light, called fluorescence. More than 125 of them did! It was more common in nocturnal animals that lived on land or in trees, and light-colored fur and skin was more likely to fluoresce than darker fur or skin. The white stripes of a mountain zebra, for example, fluoresce while the black stripes don’t.
The study was only carried out on animals that were already dead, many of them taxidermied. To rule out that the fluorescence had something to do with chemicals used in taxidermy, they also tested specimens that had been flash-frozen after dying, and the results were the same. The study concluded that ultraviolet fluorescence is actually really common in mammals, we just didn’t know because we can’t see it. The glow is typically faint and may appear pink, green, or blue. Some other animals that fluoresce include bats, cats, flying squirrels, wombats, koalas, Tasmanian devils, polar bears, armadillos, red foxes, and even the dwarf spinner dolphin.
In episode 20 we talked about Delcourt’s giant gecko, which is only known from a single museum specimen donated in the 19th century. In 1979 a herpetologist named Alain Delcourt, working in the Marseilles Natural History Museum in France, noticed a big taxidermied lizard in storage and wondered what it was. It wasn’t labeled and he didn’t recognize it, surprising since it was the biggest gecko he’d ever seen—two feet long, or about 60 cm. He sent photos to several reptile experts and they didn’t know what it was either. Finally the specimen was examined and in 1986 it was described as a new species.
Episode 388: Washington’s Eagle
Monday, July 8, 2024 • Duration 11:36
Further reading:
Audubon's Bird of Washington: Unraveling the fraud that launched The Birds of America
The Mystery of the Missing John James Audubon Self-Portrait
Washington's eagle, as painted by Audubon:
The tiny detail in Audubon's golden eagle painting that is supposed to be a self-portrait:
The golden eagle painting as it was published. Note that there's no tiny figure in the lower left-hand corner:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
This past weekend I was out of town, or to be completely honest I will have been out of town, because I’m getting this episode ready well in advance. Since July 4 was only a few days ago, or will have been only a few days ago, and July 4 is Independence Day in the United States of America, I thought it might be fun to talk about a very American bird, Washington’s eagle.
We talked about it before way back in episode 17, and I updated that information for the Beyond Bigfoot & Nessie book for its own chapter. When I was researching birds for episode 381 I revisited the topic briefly and realized it’s so interesting that I should just turn it into a full episode.
We only have two known species of eagle in North America, the bald eagle and the North American golden eagle. Both have wingspans that can reach more than 8 feet, or 2.4 meters, and both are relatively common throughout most of North America. But we might have a third eagle, or had one only a few hundred years ago. We might even have a depiction of one by the most famous bird artist in the world, James Audubon.
In February 1814, Audubon was traveling on a boat on the upper Mississippi River when he spotted a big eagle he didn’t recognize. A Canadian fur dealer who was with him said it was a rare eagle that he’d only ever seen around the Great Lakes before, called the great eagle. Audubon was familiar with bald eagles and golden eagles, but he was convinced the “great eagle” was something else.
Audubon made four more sightings over the next few years, including at close range in Kentucky where he was able to watch a pair with a nest and two babies. Two years after that he spotted an adult eagle at a farm near Henderson, Kentucky. Some pigs had just been slaughtered and the eagle was looking for scraps. Audubon shot the bird and took it to a friend who lived nearby, an experienced hunter, and both men examined the body carefully.
According to the notes Audubon made at the time, the bird was a male with a wingspan of 10.2 feet, or just over 3 meters. Since female eagles are generally larger than males, that means this 10-foot wingspan was likely on the smaller side of average for the species. It was dark brown on its upper body, a lighter cinnamon brown underneath, and had a dark bill and yellow legs.
Audubon named the bird Washington’s eagle and used the specimen as a model for a life-sized painting. Audubon was meticulous about details and size, using a double-grid method to make sure his bird paintings were exact. This was long before photography.
So we have a detailed painting and first-hand notes from James Audubon himself about an eagle that…doesn’t appear to exist.
Audubon painted a few birds that went extinct afterwards, including the ivory-billed woodpecker and the passenger pigeon, along with less well-known birds like Bachman’s warbler and the Carolina parakeet. He also made some mistakes. Many people think Washington’s eagle is another mistake and was just an immature bald eagle, which it resembles.
But here’s the problem. Audubon wasn’t always truthful. He painted some birds that he never saw but claimed he did, because another bird illustrator had painted them first. Once he claimed he went hunting with Daniel Boone in Kentucky in 1810, but at that time Boone would have been in his 70s and was living several states away.
Audubon also claimed that he discovered a little bird called Lincoln’s sparrow, but this wasn’t the case.
Episode 387: The Link Between Fossils and Folklore
Monday, July 1, 2024 • Duration 13:30
Thanks to Richard from NC for inspiring this episode!
Further reading:
Paleontologists Debunk Popular Claim that Protoceratops Fossils Inspired Legend of Griffin
The Fossil Dragons of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland
The Lindworm statue:
A woolly rhinoceros skull:
A golden collar dated to the 4th century BCE, made by Greek artisans for the Scythians, discovered in Ukraine. The bottom row of figures shows griffins attacking horses:
The Cyclops and a (damaged, polished) elephant skull:
A camahueto statue [photo by De Rjcastillo - Trabajo propio, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=145434346]:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
This week we’re going to learn about the link between fossils and folklore, a topic inspired by a conversation I had with Richard from North Carolina.
We know that stories about monsters were sometimes inspired by fossils, and we even have an example from episode 53. That was way back in 2018, so let’s talk about it again.
In Klagenfurt in Austria there’s a statue of a dragon, called the lindorm or lindwurm, that was erected in 1593 to commemorate a local story. The story goes that a dragon lived near the lake and on foggy days would leap out of the fog and attack people. Sometimes people could hear its roaring over the noise of the river. Finally the duke had a tower built and filled it with brave knights. They fastened a barbed chain to a collar on a bull, and when the dragon came and swallowed the bull, the chain caught in its throat and tethered it to the tower. The knights came out and killed the dragon.
The original story probably dates to around the 12th century, but it was given new life in 1335 when a skull was found in a local gravel pit. It was clearly a dragon skull and in fact it’s still on display in a local museum. The monument’s artist based the shape of the dragon’s head on the skull. In 1935 the skull was identified as that of a woolly rhinoceros.
In 1989 a folklorist proposed that the legend of the griffin was inspired by protoceratops fossils. The griffin is a mythological creature that’s been depicted in art, writing, and folklore dating back at least 5,000 years, with early variations on the monster dating back as much as 8,000 years. The griffin these days is depicted as a mixture of a lion and an eagle. It has an eagle’s head, wings, and front legs, and it often has long ears, while the rest of its body is that of a lion.
The griffin isn’t a real animal and never was. It has six limbs, for one thing, four legs and two wings, and it also has a mixture of mammal and bird traits. I can confirm that it’s a lot of fun to draw, though, and lots of great stories and books have been written about it in modern times. Ancient depictions of a griffin-like monster have been found throughout much of eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, northern Africa, and central Asia. Much of what we know about the griffin legend comes from ancient Greek and Roman stories, but they in turn got at least some of their stories from ancient Scythia. That’s important for the hypothesis that the griffin legend was inspired by protoceratops fossils.
Protoceratops lived between 75 and 71 million years ago and its fossils have been found in parts of China and Mongolia. It was a ceratopsian but it didn’t belong to the family Ceratopsidae, which includes Triceratops. It grew up to about 8 feet long, or 2.5 meters, with a big skull and a neck frill, but while that sounds big, it actually was on the small size for a ceratopsian. At most it would have barely stood waist-high to an average human, so while it was heavy and compact, it was probably smaller, if not lighter, than a modern lion. It ate plants and while it had teeth, it also had a beak, sort of like a turtle’s beak.
Folklorist Adrienne Mayor published a number of papers and a book in the 1990s discussing the links ...
Episode 386: The Greater Siren and the Anhinga
Monday, June 24, 2024 • Duration 10:11
Thanks to Kai and Emily for their suggestions this week!
The greater siren [photo by Kevin Stohlgren, taken from this site]:
The anhinga [photo by Tim from Ithaca - Anhinga, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15526948]:
An anhinga swimming [photo by Wknight94, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons]:
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
This week we’re going to learn about two animals, one suggested by Kai and the other suggested by Kai’s mom Emily. It’s so awesome to hear when families like to listen to the podcast together. This episode even includes a mystery animal I bet you’ve never heard of.
Let’s start with Kai’s suggestion, the greater siren. The greater siren is an amphibian, specifically a salamander, but it’s probably not the kind of salamander you’re thinking of. For one thing, it can grow over three feet long, or about a meter, which is pretty darn big for a salamander. It’s dark green or gray in color with tiny yellow or green speckles, and while it has short front legs, those are the only legs it has or needs. It also has external gills which it keeps throughout its life, unlike most salamanders who lose their external gills when they metamorphose into adults.
The greater siren lives primarily in Florida, but it’s also found in coastal wetlands throughout much of the southeastern United States. It’s mostly nocturnal and during the day it hides among water plants or under rocks, and will even burrow into the mud. At night it comes out to find food, which includes crayfish and other crustaceans, insects and spiders, little fish, other amphibians, snails, and even algae. It swallows its food whole, even snails and other mollusks. It poops out the shells and other undigestible pieces.
The grater siren’s body is long but thin, sort of like an eel, with a rounded tail that’s slightly flattened to help it swim. While it does spend its whole life in the water, it has small lungs that allow it to breathe air if it needs to. It can wriggle above ground for short distances if it needs to find a new pond or river, and sometimes it will sun itself on shore. In drought conditions when its water dries up, the greater siren will burrow into the mud and secrete mucus that mixes with dead skin cells to form a sort of cocoon. The cocoon covers everything but the siren’s mouth, so it can still breathe. Then it enters a state of torpor called aestivation, and it can stay in its mud cocoon for a long time, possibly as much as five years, and still be fine once the water returns. It does lose a lot of its body fat and its gills wither away, but it regenerates them quickly once it has water, and will gain weight quickly too once it has food.
In early spring, the female siren lays her eggs in shallow water. The male fertilizes them and takes care of them for the next two months, when they hatch into little bitty sirens that go off on their own right away.
The greater siren has tiny eyes and probably doesn’t see very well. It has a good sense of smell instead, and it can also sense movement and vibrations around it with its lateral line system. This is an organ found in many fish and a lot of larval amphibians, although the greater siren retains it throughout its life. It allows the animal to sense the movement of water in extremely fine detail. The greater siren can probably also sense electrical impulses, which is something that all animals generate when they use their muscles.
If there’s a greater siren, you may be thinking, there must be a lesser siren too. There is, and it’s very similar to the greater siren, just not as big. It only grows about two feet long at most, or 61 cm.
Kai mentioned that the greater siren looks a lot like the axolotl, a critically endangered salamander found only in Mexico. I checked to see if the two salamanders were closely related and was actually surprised t...
Related Shows Based on Content Similarities
Discover shows related to Strange Animals Podcast, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
