More weird animals and animan traits.

National Geographic has a good article on the wild deep sea life of the Catalina Canyon off the coast of Cali. I'll look for pix.

Make that Monterey Canyon....

Tadpole sized creatures who build fine mesh houses (translucent) of mucous which traps food. When it outgrows the house, it leaves it and makes another.

The following quote describes a colony that looks like a rope:


There's an eel which can unhinge it's jaws like a snake to swallow prey it's own size.

I love this stuff!

Gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) Range: Florida and southern parts of ajoining states. Either threatened or endangered in all states but Florida.

Length of shell reaches 15 inches and lifespan up to 60 years.

This tortoise likes long-leaf pine forests, dry prairies, and oak hamocks with dry sand. One of its favorite habitats, the long-leaf pine forest, has mostly been replaced with slash pine tree farms with the trees planted too closely together to allow for the growth of proper ground vegation that the tortoise needs to eat.

This is still a fairly common turtle in Florida on protected land. It digs a burrow up to 40 feet in length that serves as shelter for up to 360 other species including burrowing owls, indigo snakes, rattlesnakes, gopher frogs, and a number of mammals. During fires that sweep the forests and prairies, the animals in the burrows are protected.

Gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) emerging from burrow.



Rare photo of gopher frog—Rana capito—at entrance of gopher tortoise burrow. Gopher frogs range along the coastal plain from N. Carolina through Florida west to Louisiana. They live in burrows during the day and emerge at night to feed returning to the burrow early in the morning where they are occasionally seen. They prefer to breed in ephemeral or seasonal ponds to avoid predation of the offspring by fish. Since their ecology is tied, to a great degree, to the gopher tortoise burrow the viability of this frog depends on the preservation of habitats frequented by the tortoise.

And they have been know to eat lawyers or so I have been told.

Antlion. Order Neuroptera. Range: southern U.S.

This common insect in the South digs pits in sandy soil as the larva. It conceals itself under the bottom of the pit revealing only the head. When an ant or other insect blunders in the pit, the antlion flicks up particles of sand to create mini-avalanches making the insect slip to within the antlion's jaws. The adults look similar to damselflies, but antlion adults are noctural and have clubbed antennae.

Left: cross section showing normal position of antlion with jaws exposed.
Center: Photo of fully-exposed antlion larva.
Right: Photo of actual antlion pit.
Bottom: Antlion adults:

Red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) Range: Dry plains throughout Australia.
Size: Males—up to 175 lbs. Females—up to 65 lbs.

Red kangaroos are extremely well adapted to the hot, dry regions of Australia. Except for the hottest four months of the year they obtain all the water they need from their food. During the summer extra water is required to keep cool, but compared to man, their water requirements are paltry. Whereas on a very hot summer day a human would need a minimum 2 1/2 gallons of water, a red kangaroo can get by with one drink of two to three quarts every week or two. With this low need for water, individual territories may be ten miles from the nearest water, the distance limited only by the energy required to get to the water.

Reproduction is either a bust or boon matter. During drought years, virtually none of the young even make it to the pouch, and even in most years joeys don't survive to weaning. Only with a number of wet years in a row is the vegation lush enough to alloow the survival of many young.

Running kangaroos spend much less energy than comparable-sized mammals because of massive elastic tendons in their legs, tail, and back that store energy in the landing part of the hop.

Right: Male red kangaroo.
Below: Female red kangaroo (blue phase).

Ambush bug. Family: Phymatidae.

So named because they lie in ambush on flowers, expecially goldenrods, and catch insects visiting the flowers. The unusual shape and colors of this insect breaks up the outline, making the insect blend in with the flower.



This link is an excellent top view of an ambush bug. The head is on the right.
http://stephenville.tamu.edu/~fmitchel/insects/t_1082.jpg

Hi Coluber,

At first I thought you meant "Assassin Bug", which this looked like, but then I found this web site which describes the subtle differences between the two critters. Interesting. http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/CritterFiles/casefile/insects/bugs/assassin/assassin.htm

Best Regards,

I peeked Rosbourne but I am not sure I really want to know more or see more of those bugs. Pretty scary.

Gastric Brooding Frog:
http://www.towson.edu/~forester/Herpetology.html

Unfortunately, this frog is now thought to be extinct.

And many amphibians are vanishing...

Asian Tiger Mosquito

Asian tiger mosquito-Aedes albopictus—eed'-eez albo-pic'-tus.

An easy to identify mosquito first seen in the U.S. in Houston in 1985. It immigrated from Japan and Asia in used tires shipped to the U.S. Since 1985 it has quickly spread via interstate highways to at least 30 states, mostly in the Southeast, but also as far north as Delaware and Minnesota.

Interesting that they took the interstate highways.

I have always thought that they, mosquitoes, did not bite me but I might just be a stage five person.

It is interesting that you find interstates in that bug k.



http://fireant.tamu.edu/antfacts/

These guys really got to me once.

I guess the take the interstate highways to avoid all those stoplights. But seriously, it was probably the open trucks with containers and tires with stagnant water traveling the interstates that spread the mosquito so rapidly.

Joanne: Some people might not attract mosquitoes, and you may be one of the lucky ones. I think a stage five person has been bitten a very large number of times. I don't normally use repellent any more, and either avoid areas with a lot of mosquitoes or just put up with them. I think I've already had West Nile, so I don't worry about that.

Coluber2001, I must be in the no attraction group because I rarely get bitten only when the critters are desperate and there is no one more tasty around. Maybe once a year if that in Texas not at all when I was in Colorado or on the East coast. My mother was the same she would say that we had poison blood.

You had West Nile virus, yikes that is horrible. Many people here in Dallas had it last year and it is expected to be bad again this year.

I suspect I had West Nile, because I came down with a flu-like illness several days after spending a couple of weeks camping in Florida.

I think most people make too much of the illness. Only 20% of the people with West Nile have any symptoms at all, and of those, only 1 in 150 have severe symptoms. I think about 500 people in five years have died in the U.S. Most likely everybody will get the disease eventually, and it will be a childhood disease. If there was really a bad problem with West Nile, they would make a vaccine for people; they have one for horses.

I worry more about the city spraying poison into the air to kill mosquitoes. Nobody knows the effect of the poison on humans. If the spray was effective, it might be justified, but only the mosquitoes in the air at the time are killed. Every day new adults emerge, so they should spray every day or more to achieve anything, but don't tell them that.

The sparying worries me too. I rather know the devil I know than risk an unknown.

Different species of Hairstreaks range throughout the U.S. They are small, about the size of a nickel, and often gray colored with some orange. I saw hairstreaks for years feeding on flowers and noticed the filaments projecting out from the hind wings but never knew their function. One day I watched one on a flower moving its hind wings up and down alternatingly, and it struck me that the projections were antennae mimics.

A bird diving on this butterfly would aim at what appeared to be the head, only to have the butterfly escape in the opposite direction. Once airborne, this insect would be nearly impossible for a bird to catch because of its erratic flight.