More weird animals and animan traits.

Hello, Rosborne: I've been on the road for a couple of weeks and have done some thinking on this matter. I haven't had a chance to read your websites yet, so that may yet change my opinion.

I think my premise that coral snake bites would always be 100% fatal to birds of prey is totally wrong. Assuming that a bird received a full dose of venom, the bird would surely die, but considering the small size of these snakes and their small mouths and fangs, it's reasonable to assume that in many cases the amount of venom delivered would be miniscule, perhaps only enough to produce localized pain and partial paralysis. I think that in a population of hawks living in an area with a viable population of coral snake every hawk would have multiple encounters with these snakes until the hawk either receives a fatal bite or a temporarily disabling bite. That hawks have such keen sight and fly high and cover large territories, encounters are very likely considering the brightly-colored snakes.

It's always possible that the birds are genetically programmed to avoid the color red in response to the early coral snakes venom evolution, but this process would have to have happened in every species of hawk and eagle etc., and this seems way to complicated. I think the learning experience is more likely.

I've always found it difficult to imagine what the world had been like before the arrival of man, especially technological man, and the effect we've had on the natural world. Ecological niches would have in balance and saturated with the resident species. A case in point is the greatly reduced numbers of snakes in the wild.

Hi Coluber, welcome back.

I agree that not all Coral Snake encounters are fatal to the hawks, thus allowing them to learn.

But I also wonder if there's a genetic component to this in which birds (and other predators) have inhereted a wariness of bright colors.

Certainly snakes (and amphibians) have been evolving the colorization/poison combination for a long time, so if there is any type of "color sensitivity" in the predators, it might be focused by selection.

Photo by johncangphoto.com. Swallow-tailed kite clutching twig with spanish moss it plucked from tree for nesting material while in flight.



Swallow-tailed kite. Elanoides forficatus. Range: Summers-from March-in Florida, Gulf states and Atlantic states to S. Carolina. Winters in South America. Wingspan: up to 50 inches.

This is a beautiful bird of prey that can be seen overhead in Florida in the warmer months. It is considered to be the most aerial of birds of prey grasping its prey of large flying insects and other small animals that it plucks from the ground and trees, and eating while airborne. It also drinks and gets nesting material while on the wing.

Coral snakes
Coral snakes have been shown to instill fear in naive motmots, a bird native to Costa Rica (coral snakes aplenty!) . Birds taken from nest before left nest naturally so no experience of snakes possible and in a lab based exp, they showed fear when shown models of coral snakes. Even to specific colours of red black and yellow. however showed no fear to blue and green stripes!!! So would appear that avoidance of the coral snake pattern is innate ie born knowing not to go near them. An evolutionary method of species survival??? Thus mimics gain clear advantage by not being eaten as often. Some predators may still attack but will most probably attack head end therefore disabling any potential threat.

meet fossy the fossa

well I know I'm dim but how do you post an image?

Reduce the URL down to the part which points specifically to the JPG file, like this: http://www.greenapple.com/~jorp/amzanim/fossa.jpg

And then enclose it in the IMG tags



Your link doesn't point specifically to a JPG, so it fails to display in IMG tag enclosure. Hope that helps.

Fossa's are cool

Steve: You're trying to post a google thumbnail image, and that won't work. Enlarge the image or let it come up, and copy that.

Snakepro: Is there an online source for the motmot experiment? Rosborne thought that there might be an innate fear of coral snakes, but I thought it unlikely. It follows that there might be other birds with similar instincts, but we wouldn't know for sure without further testing.

It has been observed that, regarding aposematic coloration in insects, the naive birds must have a bad experience with the insects—monarch butterflies, for instance, and that the birds sometimes learn to tear off the wings to eat the body, which has a lower level of toxins.

Thanks guys

I will study your posts and hope to improve my illiteracycomputernonskills

glad you liked the fossa Ros, isnt it amazing?

Like a dog/cat/puma hybrid

Glyptodon fossilized skeleton.




Artist projection of Doedicurus sp. another genus of glyptodont.


Glyptodonts were edentates?-an Order containing the armadillos, sloths, anteaters, etc.?-that were extinct by 10,000 years ago in the late Pleistocene epoch. They arose in South America, but some species did arrive in the U.S. after the Central American land bridge appeared 2-3 million years ago.

An approximate size of the bony shell would be about 5 feet with a thickness of about one inch. Sizes of glyptodonts varied with the species. Doedicurus sp. was the only glyptodont with the defensive mace on the end of its tail.

Deep Sea Angler

Timber rattlesnake?-Crotalus horridus.
This snake has been extirpated in some of its former range and and has a low population density in much of its present range because of hunting, overcollection, and low reproduction rates.

It has a long lifespan of up to 30 years, but females reproduce only every 3-7 years after gaining sufficient fat reserves. Reserves are needed not only for neonate production but for the mother's nutrition during a long fasting period. From a study done in Pennsylvania by herpetologist Rulon W. Clark, it was discovered that interested females mate in late summer or autumm, hold the sperm in their oviduct, and allow fertilization only after emerging from dens the next spring. The young are retained in the mother's body until they are born alive in the late summer. The mother's normally don't feed while carrying the young meaning a fasting period of nearly one year including the denning period.

These snakes are very social, and gravid females spend their time in aggregations basking in sunny locations to maintain sufficient body temperatures. This is when they are especially vulnerable to predators, hunters, and collectors.
More info: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/rattlesn.html



Left photo: Dark phase timeber rattlesnake. Crotalus h. horridus.
Middle photo: Light phase Crotalus h. horridus.
Right photo:Canebrake rattlesnake subspecies Crotalus h. atricaudatus.





Range map of timber rattlesnake including canebrake subspecies. Canebrake - Crotalus horridus atricaudatus
Range: Southeastern U.S. from Eastern Texas through North Carolina, excluding Central and Southern Florida

Excellent article in Natural History Magazine by Rulon W. Clark on the results of his field study of timber rattlesnakes in Pennsylvania.

My favorite of all ' strange creatures' are sea creatures.
I have always had a facination with thier adaptations.. the projected ages of these creatures and thier wierd abilities. Like creating light..
I have bookmarked pages but I can not find them. So I want to post pictures of some of the ones I find really facinating, but apologize for the fact that I dont have stats on them, no information.. just neat pictures

Incredible pictures, shewolfnm. Should you find the literature to go along with them, just hit "edit" and put it in.

This is an amazing spider found in the Namib desert of Southwest Africa.
It's called the golden-yellow wheel spider?-Carparachne aureoflava.

As far as I know, it's the only animal to use the wheel in locomotion, and possibly only the second organism to use a wheel structure. Flagellated bacteria apparantly use a wheel device to rotate the flagellum. What looks like a whipping back and forth is actually a spiral rotation with the base of the flagellum in a wheel-like device.

The wheel spider lives in burrows in the steep side of a sand dune. A parasitic wasp preys on it by removing prodigous quanties of sand in a
parallel burrow that collapses the spider's burrow exposes it to the wasp. The spider folds up it legs and throws itself down the dune oriented like a wheel in one direction and not a ball. The movement is so fast that the wasp neither can track it by sight nor odor.[IMG]

Pictured are the spider used its wheel posture to escape, Carparachne and its gecko prey, and the spider falling prey to a parrasitic wast.

A friend of mine insists that I include our species as using a wheel-shape for locomotion, not the automobile or bicycle, as one may suspect, but that very occasionally we may bend our body into a wheel shape to roll after a fall.

Ros: Is this the so-called "furry" lobster, the arthropod that has been on the news lately?

Yes it is. Cute little fella isn't he?