More weird animals and animan traits.

I always thought that chimney swifts looked like the f-86 Sabre jets, until I ran across this photo of this Russian Mig-15. What do you think?

chimney swift

Adult chimney swift roosting next to nest inside chimney.

Chimney swifts are daytime aerial insect-feeders found ubiquitously east of the Rocky Mountains in the summer. Swifts roost in hollow trees and in chimneys in cities. They can be seen diving en masse into chimneys at dusk. Unfortunately, because many people line their chimneys or cap them, many roosting and nesting areas are not available to these birds.

As many people have built communal birdhouses for purple martins, some people are now building free-standing chimney towers to provide nesting and roosting areas for the swifts. Purple martins, swallows, and swifts are desirable birds to have in one's neighborhood because of the huge number of mosquitoes and other flying insects they consume.

Link to plans for construction of free-standing chimney roosting and nesting tower. http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/nature/birding/chimneyswift/chimneyswift-index.htm
Chimney swift tower construction at Chaetura Canyon. http://www.chimneyswifts.org/page16.html

Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea)—leather-skinned turtle.

On average, this is the most massive reptile alive with females averaging over 660 lbs and the largest male recorded at one ton.

Leatherbacks feed primarily on jellyfish that they catch in the open ocean at varying depths. During the daytime there is a layer of zooplankton called the deep scattering layer that hovers at about 1,800 feet where the jellyfish are found; this layer rises to the surface at night. The turtles spend most of their time during the day diving to the scattering layer spending about ten minutes per dive, coming to the surface for a gulp of air, and returning in a sharp dive back to feed.

Leatherbacks are found throughout the world's oceans including the cold latitudes in water as cold as 41 degrees F. During the four months of the nesting season females crawl up onto tropical beaches to lay their eggs. Females lay up to eleven clutches of 70-90 eggs every ten days or so, and this is repeated every 2-3 years.



Leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) nesting.

Ocean sunfish (Mola mola) Maximum length: about 11 feet. Maximum weight: 4,000-5,000 lbs. Food: Mainly jellyfish.


Ocean sunfish (Mola mola)

More sunfish pictures by the same photographer: http://www.oceanlight.com/html/mola_mola.html

oh, that is really a weird animal. :-)

Red-sided garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) Range: A subspecies found from northern Alberta to southern Oklahoma. Food: frogs and toads, fish.

These snakes are renowned for their huge aggregations outside of hibernating dens in the spring in Canada. They hibernate in underground dens for 8 months and emerge in the spring when outside temperatures become higher than that inside the den. Males emerge first in large numbers, and the females emerge later singly or in small groups. They are immediately mobbed by the males, forming "balls" with a single female and up to 100 males. The females secrete pheromones through their skin that incites the courtship behavior of the males.

Females leave the vicinity of the den after mating and disperse up to 11 miles away to feed and give birth to live young. In September the red-sided garter snakes head back to the same den before temperatures drop so as not to be caught by cold weather and stranded.

Red-sided garter snakes aggregating

Another larger aggregation of red-sided garter snakes: http://www.herpbreeder.com/worldspecies/Snakes/snakeimage/thamnophissirtalisparietalisharaldholler.jpg

More information on red-sided garter snakes:

Most reptiles, like birds, lay eggs—oviparity, but some lizards and snakes retain the shell-less eggs within the body until they are ready to hatch—ovoviparity. A few lizards and snakes are known to nourish the young, directly, inside the mother's body via a type of placenta in the oviduct, somewhat similar to mammals. This is called viviparity.

However, it is difficult to tell whether a snake or lizard is simply retaining the egg within the body or is directly nourishing it via a placenta; therefore many herpetologists call all live birth viviparity. The red-sided garter snakes and the shingle-back skinks—previously in this thread—are known to feed their young via a placenta.

Red-sided garter snakes in Canada are famous for the Mating "balls" they form and are actually somewhat of a tourist attraction. Female snakes leaving the den, singly or in small groups, are mobbed by dozens of males. This strategy insures the fertilization of all females. One lucky male gets actual intromission with the female with his hemipene. Snakes have two hemipenes, often covered with flounces or soft spines and sometimes bifurcated at the tip. Mating lasts for 20 minutes in this snake's case, and the male snake leaves a plug in the orifice of the oviduct to prevent furthur fertilization from other snakes. The female immediately leaves the den area after sex, to excape danger from predatory animals attracted by the masses of snakes.

In Canada red-sided garter snakes are away from the denning area only 3 months of every year.

Potter wasp. (Eumenes sp.) Potter wasps are a number of species of wasps that construct tiny pots out of mud or clay to hold a paralyzed insect on which they lay an egg. The larva upon hatching feeds on the insect.

I once found one of these pots and fired it in my kiln. Taking it out, I didn't notice any change in color and placed it on a shelf. Sometime later I noticed that the whole pot had collapsed into a little pile of fine sand. Apparantly the pot was made of fine sand held together by the wasp's saliva, and the heat of the kiln burned out the organic "glue," and the moisture from the air forming around the particles of sand collapsed the pot.

Potter wasp pot.


Potter wasp (Eumenes sp.) ink drawing.
http://community-2.webtv.net/willwork/WillWorkForBugs/scrapbookFiles/mailedD12.jpg

Green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) Range: southern U.S. and Mexico.

A medium large spider about the size of a half dollar including the legs. It's commonly found in the South on the tops of plants where it waits in ambush to capture large insects attrracted to flowers. In late summer, her abdomen swells up with eggs. After she lays them and forms an egg case around them, she holds the case in her jaws until they hatch. Hatchlings disperse by letting out a long strand of silk on a windy day. When the silk is pulled sufficiently by the wind, the spiderling releases its grip on the plant and is carried off to a new location.

The setae or hairs on its legs are a means of hearing are, basically not unlike the way we hear, and thus is a form of convergent evolution. The hairs are called trichobothria—hair pit. The terminal end is in a pit and has a nerve attatched to it. Any slight sound or close movement vibrates the trichobothria, and this is sensed by the spider.

Similarly, the sounds we pick up are transferred to the cochlea, a coiled tube in our inner ear. The tube is filled with a fluid, and the sound vibration affects the fluid passing the vibration onto tiny hairs connected to nerves.


Lynx Spider (Peucetia sp.) holding egg case in jaws.

Green lynx spider (Peucetia viridans) with captured moth.
http://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2782

Lynx spider with detatched egg case and hatchlings. http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~reglor/invertgall/mlynx.jpg

Asp or puss moth caterpillar. (Megalopyge opercularis) Range: Texas east to the southeastern U.S.

Asps have poisonous spines hidden under the flannel-like hairs. Symptoms from contact range from a mild rash to severe pain and swelling of limb, fainting, nausea, vomiting, and difficulty breathing.
Symptoms may last an hour or two and up to two or three days.

These caterpillars are about 1 to 1 1/2 inches long and look dissimilar to most other caterpillars. For unknown reasons, they become epidemic in numbers during some years.

http://www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/general/pics/lacewngl.jpg[/IMG]

Giant ground sloth—Megalonyx jeffersonii
Right: saber-toothed cat—Smilodon. Not in scale.

Megalonyx was one of at least four ground sloth species that expanded their range from South America to North America after the Central American land-bridge formed about 3 million years ago.

Megalonyx was 12 feet tall at the shoulders while on all fours. It was able to stand on its hind legs and massive tail to reach almost as high as a giraffe to browse on tree leaves.


A major predator of Megalonyx was Smilodon, the saber-toothed cat, which was about the size as an African lion. One theory explaining Smilodon's protruding canines is that when attacking Megalonyx, the cat's canine teeth would push between the sloth's cervical vertebrae severing the spinal cord.

Ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, mammoths, mastodons, and many other megafauna mammals went extinct 11,000 to 10,000 years ago not long after the influx of humans to North America. Multiple theories exist as to why these megafauna disappeared, the two most common being overhunting by humans and climate and environmental change. Here is a link with a new theory that seems more workable than others: http://www.well.com/user/elin/extinct.htm

Largest known *land* mammal. The whales still dwarf them.

Sorry! The largest land mammal.

Gotcha

Replica fossil skull of Megalania. 31 inches.



Projected painting of Megalania head.



Megalania prisca—ancient giant butcher.

Megalania, a predatory lizard, went extinct in the late Pleistocene about 20,000 years ago— perhaps more recently—and lived concurrent with people on the Australian continent. It is thought to have been the largest lizard to have ever lived, reaching at least 18 feet and posibly more. Weight was estimated at 900 lbs.

Megalania was a Varanid and related to present-day monitor lizards—Varanus—including the Komodo dragon.

Ornitholeste, a dinosaur, is about to capture a meganeura dragonfly. Pterodon is flying at right. Eryops, an amphibian, is on the shoreline at the right.

passenger pigeon—Ectopistes migratorius


Passenger pigeon: Range Eastern North America.The last bird died in 1914 in the Cincinnati Zoo. At one time the most numerous bird in the world. A single flock was comprised of as many as two billion birds.

The story of the passenger pigeon is a depressing one demonstrating man's immoderation and lack of harmony with nature.

For those who can stomach it here is a good link: http://www.wildbirds.org/apidesay.htm