Mammal Monday - We've a spring in our step

Image from here.

Continuing our interest in South Africa, the first of the countries on our great trek, I thought this mammal monday we'd devote to the South African national animal the Springbok. Which quite literally means jump (spring) bok (antelope/goat)...and jump these guys do. They can leap 3.50 m and can long jump of up to 15 m.

These little mammals, for anyone that's been to Africa, are pretty common to garden and it wasn't unusual for me growing up with the similar (but not quite the same) beasts - the impala - to mutter about how very dull they are. This being said Springboks have a pretty cool little habit called "pronking" (which comes from the Afrikaans for showing off) where they jump repeatedly 4 metres into the air, stiff legged, with their backs bowed. 

Image from here.

No one is quite sure why they do this but they seem to do it when nervous or over-excited so it could be:
1) indicate to predators they've been spotted and in doing so, show off their own strength and agility thus encouraging the wicked carnivores to look at less impressive jumpers
2) spraying scent from a gland near their ankle
3) I would argue mating, these things always have something to do with mating.

An interesting little fun fact: During the Second Boer War, a Boer force attempting to sneak up on the Royal Canadian Dragoons was defeated after their movements startled the nearby springbok, thus alerting the Canadian sentries, which is why the Dragoons have the springbok as their cap badge and as their mascot.

Image from here.

Ah wiki, what would I do without you....

Mammal Monday: Venom, Eggs and Mammalianess

Image: http://australian-animals.net/plat.htm

 We won't see these on our African adventures but I simply couldn't resist a mammal monday in honour of these egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammals, platypuses! These little guys are really cool because they are mammals but so markedly different from other mammals.

Firstly, they lay eggs - interestingly, they are in uetro for 28 days and only spend ten days incubating externally. Chickens on the other hand have their eggs on the inside for only one day and they are on the outside for 21 so technically platypuses keep their babies inside for a pretty long time considering.
Another fascinating baby-related tidbit is that mum platypuses have mammary glands but no teats so they excrete milk through their pores (bleurgh) and there are grooves on their abdomen to catch the milk in so that the babies can subsequently lap it up. 

Image: http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=1287

Both males and females are born with ankle spurs but only male platypuses actually produce venom, making platypuses one of the few venomous mammals around. Apparently they produce more venom during the mating season and while the venom won't kill a human it can cause long-lasting hyperalgesia (a heightened sensitivity to pain) that persists for days or even months...nasty little buggers.

Another interesting non-mammal feature that platypuses have is that they use electroreception - this means that they can locate their prey (in part) by detecting electric fields generated by muscular contractions. They are the only mammal to do this.

All in all, these little guys really are cool. Unusual yes, but who said normal was anything special.

As always, thanks wiki.

Mammal Monday - Fun Anyone?

Passed on to me by Gen on a glum Monday I couldn't resist sharing this little gem of a video. Oh to have this much fun and not fear sand in your orifices. If only we could all be elephant calves...

A quick exploration of wiki has taught me rather a lot about the awesomeness that is this week's featured mammal the elephant. Apparently, they are the only other species on the planet other than Homo sapiens and Neanderthals that have a death ritual and will bury their dead in shallow graves and with leaves. Even guarding the bodies for a day or two afterwards. There also seem to be all sorts of documented cases of elephants staying beside dying family members and trying to keep them alive, while babies appear to "weep" over dead mothers.

Another interesting thing is that elephants must learn behavior as they grow up, rather than it all being instinct. It seems that a way of measuring how much a creature will have to learn as it grows up is by measuring brain size at birth to adult brain size. The majority of mammals are born with brains 90% the size they will be as adults. Human babies on the other hand have brains 28% the size of an adults and elephants come in second at 35%, so elephants have the highest amount of learning to do as they grow, after humans. Isn't that crazy!

Hopefully, if I am wrong cousin Diane who works with elephants will correct me here (nicely of course). And you can learn more about elephant cognition here. After the rally I really am going to make good on the long-promised blog, "shit I googled today" but maybe it'll have to be "shit I wikied today" instead!

And finally, I must end with this picture because us Londoners have had lovely warm weather and thus we have celebrated the only way we know how...

Piccie from the Mailonline

Mammal Monday - it's a thing

I went to an exhibition at the Tate Modern this weekend and one room was devoted to the work of Vito Acconci and his performance pieces. The one that really struck me was entitled Sedbeed and given the nature of this blog it's probably improper for me to detail what the performance contained but in summary I'll tell you it was about an empty room, an artist under floor boards and the creation of human seed - for full details let the great-wise-wiki tell you more.

Now this exhibition happened back in 1972 and it got me thinking about how on earth anyone knew about anything before the advent of the internet. Nowadays you can't move for blogs about this, tweets about that and facebook event invitations, but before all of this how did people really get the word out about anything? And beyond this how did you know what anyone (except the critics and journalists who got to write about it) thought about exhibitions or shows or anything really. It's another question altogether whether we really care about what every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks about a thing but the scope of access we now have is pretty darn incredible. Only problem is, and you knew I couldn't be rejoicing in the interwebs without a little niggle, how on earth can one ever do anything original. Google even the whisper of an idea and you'll find someone's already done it, and probably better than you'd even begun to think of.

With this in mind we introduce (to the greater body of work already in existance) our contribution to #Mammal Monday and given that the Put Foot Rally is this year raising funds for a Rhino initiative we thought we'd start our with these little guys. How can you not support a charity for them!