Like a Sturgeon

Last week, I showed my blog to my cousin, who just turned 20 (geez, we’re getting old). This was apparently a good move, since he sent me an e-mail earlier this week saying, “I think the lake sturgeon is endangered, but it’s kind of an older book.” A web search turns up threatened in New York, species of concern in Minnesota, and endangered in Ohio. And it’s plenty ugly, so good call there.



Think the 3-foot long lungfish with a 100-year lifespan isn’t enough? Howzabout the Lake Sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens), right here in the Midwest, which, during its life of 150 years, can grow to 8 feet long. It has gigantic bony plates on its body, which grow smoother as it ages, because small spiky fish aren’t as digestible. The name “sturgeon” means “the stirrer” in various European languages (and, its scientific name means “reddish-yellow sturgeon” in Latin), which refers to its bottom-feeding habits. The “whiskers” (more technically barbules, which translates from Latin to… uh… whiskers) on their snout allow them to feel food items, such as crustaceans and small fish that are hiding under the substrate, which they suction up with their protruding mouth. Sound familiar?

As stated in the lungfish and tuatara posts, long life means one thing in the animal kingdom: slow to reproduce. Sturgeons take just as long to go through puberty as we do, reaching sexual maturity at 15 to 25 years of age, though they probably don’t have to worry about strange hair and cracking voices, what with being fish and all. Slow to reproduce means that this big fish is still getting over being used for meat, caviar, and isinglass (whatever that is). Pollution, damming, and the normal ol’ endangering factors still come into play.

Since this big bony fish has become protected in pretty much all of its range, the population has stabilized, even bumping it off the IUCN Redlist. It’s very much on its way to become one of those “Conservation Success Stories” like the bald eagle, but hopefully, when it’s pulled of the state endangered species lists, it gets some media attention too.

I Only Have Ears For You

I promised myself I wouldn’t post a mammal unless it was certainly ugly. I have come to the realization that, y’know, I’m a pretty bad judge of ugly. Bats with noses like satellite dishes are just par for the course. So, here’s a bat with ears about half as long as its entire body and facial glands on either side of its nose.



Those glands on the Virginia Big-Eared Bat (Corynorhinus townsendii virginianus) probably emit pheromones. Nothing quite like natural perfume sacs right next to your nose (it’s amazingly difficult to definitely determine this sort of thing). Like many other bats, they are nocturnal insectivores, feeding mostly on moths. Unlike most bats, they’re late sleepers¹, as they leave the cave about an hour after dark instead of an hour before. Since they fly fairly slowly, they’ve got their share of predators, including barn owls, and the less native feral housecat.

Big-eared bats mate in the fall and early winter. Since bats in temperate habitats tend to hibernate all winter, this might not seem like a good idea. But fear not, dear reader, for the female big-ear has a trick up her… sleeve. She is able to keep the sperm through the winter, ovulate in the spring, and have the baby (well, pup, actually) in early summer, when all the juiciest moths are out and getting in people’s campsites.

Not only are the big-ears late sleepers, they're also light sleepers in the winter. When the bats are hibernating, disturbances cause them to wake up, shift around, and lose valuable energy for managing their way through the winter². Thus, spelunking and other caving activities are potentially dangerous to these bats. Intrusions during other times of the year can directly affect young, or drive the bats to look for a new home.

To keep these occurrences at a minimum, gates or fences have been placed around the colonies by concerned government employees. Studies on big-ears’ favorite roosting places are being conducted to see what else we can do to study them. And, on the political front, in 2005, the Virginia Big-Eared Bat was chosen to honorably represent the Commonwealth of Virginia as the Official State Bat.

¹Like many college students.
²Also like many college students.

It Sucks to be Me

Blood-sucking. Slimy. Limbless. A face like an orbital sander mated with a shark. A species in concern in about 10 states. Sounds like we’ve got a candidate ripe for the honor of Endangered Ugly Thing, and EUT's new mascot. Meet the Ohio lamprey (Ichthyomyzon bdellium).



The Ohio lamprey is a 2 foot long, eel-looking fish, which is native to streams and rivers in the eastern Midwest (or western East) states. In their two years as adults they parasitize fish by sucking onto other fish with its gaping maw (also known as an oral disc; lamprey don’t have jaws), where it proceeds to suck the host’s blood¹.

Before the parasitic adult stage, baby lamprey (now isn’t that an adorable mental image?) spend four years buried in the riffles of small streams with their head poking out, filter feeding on algae and plankton. After this time, they develop eyes and an oral disc, make their way to a larger river, and find a suitable host. I’m not sure if how frequently they switch hosts, and it’s possible that the scientists don’t know either. After their first year, the lamprey disengage themselves from their hosts, and make their way back to the river that spawned them. Here, they will build a nest, often with the cooperation of other spawning lamprey, lay their eggs in the gravel, and die.

Quick quiz! What have all the aquatic vertebrates I’ve written about had a problem with?
Time’s up! If you guessed “Dams,” you’re correct! With the lamprey, dams stop them from being able to move to their feeding grounds as adults. The entrance of more silt in the streams, usually from runoff, gives the juveniles problems with filter feeding.

There are people working on fixing these problems, through land conservation and habitat monitoring. Determining good solutions for lamprey preservation requires that we learn a lot more about them. Sampling is hard due to their habits of being either buried in a stream or a fish for five-sixths of their life. Getting people interested in them is the first step toward saving them, so I’m trying to do my part.

¹Can anybody think of a parasitic vertebrate that isn’t a lamprey? I know of the male anglerfish, but that hardly counts.

Like a Salamander Outta Hell

There has to be a story behind the eastern hellbender's name. It sounds like Dante on a drug trip, a motorcycle gang, or a punk metal band¹ (the Ozark Hellbenders would perform cover songs heavily involving banjos). If anyone has the actual etymology behind the name, I'd be glad to hear it.

Despite having an ugly sounding name, the eastern hellbender, Cryptobranchus alleganiensis, is, in fact, not pretty. As an adult, they can achieve lengths of 11 to 20 inches. Folds of skin hang from their sides, through which they breathe. The hellbenders have lungs, but those are used only for buoyancy. Their heads are flat, with tiny, beady eyes. Their habitat exists under rocks and debris in clear, fast-moving streams.

These giant salamanders hunt crayfish, small fish, and large insects, searching mainly using lateral lines and then sucking in prey, a method not shared by any other adult salamander. Also seperating them from other salamanders is the fact that the hellbender practices external fertilization, where the female will drop the eggs and then allow the male to fertilize them. After this, the male will guard the eggs for two to three months until they hatch.

Hellbenders are endangered in Ohio, Maryland, Illinois, and Indiana, threatened in Alabama, and a species of concern in New York. Pollution is a major problem facing eastern hellbenders, and for that matter, many amphibians. This is due to their ability to breathe through their skin. Any chemical with a higher concentration in the water than their body is drawn in, be it oxygen, nitrogen, or agricultural runoff. Damming rivers cause silt to clog the hellbender's nesting site (remember the lungfish?). The bad rap that the hellbender gets also doesn't help, as there are many legends of the salamanders sliming fishers' nets or poisoning river water. Photos of herpetologists, gloveless, holding it, might help dispel these myths. So if you happen to be creeking in the eastern Midwest (or western East), and see a gigantic salamander, consider yourself lucky to be in the presence of the largest salamander around.

¹They are a band! That's what I get for looking too far on the internet for hellbender research. Though, they look more indie than punk metal.

Hey, Aqualung

I have seen a few blogs that mention the plight this animal is in, but with less life history than I'll provide you with.

Yeah, it's kinda blurry. Aquaria are not good places for snapshots.

The Queensland (or Australian) lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, is a fish with, as its name suggests, a lung (living in Queensland, Australia is secondary). This is to help it manage when levels of dissolved oxygen in the water are low, which is likely to happen in the slow-moving pools that it inhabits. It is completely aquatic, in contrast to African or South American lungfish (with two lungs) that spend entire dry periods burrowed in a mucous cocoon with an airhole to the surface. However, N. forsteri can spend hours out of water if it's kept moist, according to this study.

Appropriately described as "a living fossil," lungfish certainly look the part. They can grow up to three or four feet in length, and have large, platelike scales and fins that look ready to attempt to flop onto land. In Australia, lungfish fossils dating back 100 million years (when our mammal ancestors were running from Compsognathus) have been found, and there are minimal differences. The Queensland lungfish, even moreso than the other lobe-finned fish, helps give an idea of how the water-land transition happened in vertebrates about 370 million years ago¹.

Alright, so it's not endangered, it's threatened. They are very long lived, which, in population terms, means slow to reproduce. The majority of problems facing the lungfish are actually facing the eggs.Invasive tilapia prey on the young and eggs. Also,dams on the rivers in which they live flood out the vegetation in which they breed. I've seen links to this petition, but I'm trying to be more of an educator than activist (and I linked to it anyway).

There doesn't seem to be any official Queensland lungfish breeding programs in existence. There are, however these guys, from whom you can buy a baby lungfish for just $850! Don't forget to buy the 6 foot tank. They are CITES approved, whose job is to check up on the trade of threatened and endangered species. Breeding for pets is not the way to save animals in the wild, so programs on releasing lungfish and saving habitat are the way to go. Kids! Just be sure to ask your parents nicely for a lungfish. And say please and thank you.

¹As a somewhat random aside, I want to point out that flies are never described "living fossils," even though they were in their modern form a good 100 million years before the lungfish.

Death in the Fast Lane

I'd like to begin with a profile of the species that started it all, at least for me: Thamnophis radix radix, the eastern plains garter snake.

Now, if anyone is reading this in any state from Indiana to Montana to Kansas, inclusive, and has a knowledge of local snakes, you're probably thinking "Plains garter? Endangered? We've got tons of 'em!" Yes. Yes you do. But if you'll look at the range posted on ODNR's website about them, you'll see a tiny dot in northwestern central Ohio. That is Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area, where I spent much of my high school career.

Visually, the plains garter is nothing too impressive. It gets to be at most 2 feet long, which you can compare to the harmless black rat snake at 6 feet. In terms of coloration, I was hard pressed to tell it from the common eastern garter snake. The difference consists of a row of dots under the lateral stripes on the plains garter. It is even behaviorally unobtrusive, as it manages to be less likely to bite than the common garter snake, which I have picked up dozens of times without getting bitten. Its preferred habitat is, of course, plains and praries, but more specifically, near the ponds and drainage areas to be found in such habitat. Food sources for the plains garter include large insects and small rodents (agricultural pests, if anyone's wondering why we should save these snakes), along with amphibians and earthworms.

A threat facing many endangered species, habitat loss, is what has endangered the plains garter snake in Ohio. We're already at the eastern edge of its range, and the conversion of more and more prairies into developed land, agricultural fields, or even forests, has led to fewer numbers of plains garters.

Another issue plaguing these snakes is traffic, which is how I became came to know of the plight of this species. As a freshman in high school, I wanted a science fair project where I could do research on wildlife. I managed to get in touch with the contract herpetologist with ODNR, and he suggested that I perform a road mortality survey at Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area. Consequently, for the next four years, my fall season was spent by peeling dead snakes off the road. A few unfortunate specimens were the plains garter. This is why many of the pictures I have of them look like this:
Though there were a few less... "vitally challenged" specimens:
There is hope. ODNR has enlisted the Columbus and Cleveland Zoos to breed captured plains garters to release their offspring in the wild. This colony has been breeding since 1999, with releases every fall since.

A short note on biodiversity:
I have mentioned that plains garter snakes look a great deal like common garter snakes. They also both live in similar areas. They eat about the same thing (earthworms, small rodents, frogs), but a study in the late '70's showed that there were plenty of those to go around, so there's no competition for food. "Hey," says the contrarian, "why do we need two of these, if they fill the same niche? Why do we need to save the one, if there's another just like it?" Well, they aren't exactly alike. There are habitat differences (the common garter snake is a habitat generalist), along with many genetic differences that don't show up in ecological research. What happens when a disease comes by and takes out a large number of common garter snakes, but the plains garter is immune? You'll be glad it's there, helping keep the rodent and insect population in check.

Beware! The Blob

I’ve tried to write about the Blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) before, but gave up due to lack of information. It was first suggested to me about a year and a half ago, and has been suggested a few times since then. I think I’ve found enough information about it and its close relatives to do it justice. First things first, though: the Blobfish does not look like a deflated Ziggy.



















Yes, that is a picture of the Blobfish, and yes, that picture makes it look like someone let the air out of Ziggy’s oversized head. However, that picture was taken of a dead specimen on a research boat, right before it was pickled in formaldehyde. Blobfish don’t rely on swim bladders to remain buoyant like other fish, because the pressure of half a mile of water would squish the air right out of them. Instead, their flesh contains a gelatin-like substance that is nearly equal to the density of water. This means they can float effortlessly in the water, but makes it look like they melted above the surface. As to what they really look like, this is a much better picture:



















These fish, who now resemble their Sculpin brethren much closer, bob along the ocean floor around the coast of Australia and New Zealand. There, they eat whatever floats or crawls by—mostly crabs, snails, and octopuses¹.

Everyone seems to think Blobfish are lazy. Yes, they are adapted to using as little energy as possible to eat and move, but they are not deadbeats. While other fish spawn and leave, the Blobfish is an attentive parent. They will clean and sit on the eggs, protecting them from parasites and predators.

More efficient fishing methods have caused no end of trouble to all kinds of sea creatures. Trawling the ocean floor for crustaceans also picks up bycatch like the Blobfish. Callum Roberts and other scientists are worried about the future of this majestic fish. While it’s not officially listed as endangered, the government is certainly worried about it.

Public knowledge about bycatch in general, and the Blobfish in specific, is growing. Professor Roberts has certainly been trying to get the word out. There is also this British kids’ show that depicts the Blobfish fairly accurately, as well as adorably. They also sound like British Zoidbergs, which seems appropriate.



¹You can argue all you want about the proper plural of “octopus.” There isn’t one.

Mr. Bighead

Years ago, I read about this month’s EUT in the Animal Wonders edition of Zoobooks, the same place I first learned about the Axolotl. The illustration was strange enough to catch my eye and imagination for a good few months—a long time for my flighty young mind¹. I recently rediscovered this animal whose complete disproportion struck me at such a young age.


















The scientific name of the Big-Headed Turtle (Platysternon megacephalum) means “flat-chest big-head,” which is obviously quite apt. Every article that mentions the Big-Headed Turtle states that its gigantic noggin is too large to fit in its narrow shell. So, to protect its head, the turtle uses a two pronged approach. One: the solid bone skull is covered with thick scales. Two: massive, very sharp jaws are coupled with a tendency to bite.

This turtle inhabits shallow, fast moving streams in Southeast Asia, where it enjoys a diet of fish and mussels. Swimming around in the heavy flow of these streams would take too much effort, so the Big-Headed turtle is an excellent climber instead, and ARKive has video to prove it. Its long flexible tail helps to prop it up as it uses its strong claws and beak to climb waterfalls. There are even stories of finding these turtles climbing trees and bushes. What they did when they got up there is anyone’s guess.

The Big-Headed Turtle’s big head seems to evoke one of two responses: it is either grotesquely disproportionate, or adorably baby-like. The second of these responses has led to a large number of them being caught for the pet-trade. While some captive breeding exists, there are not nearly enough Big-Head farms to supply demand for the pet trade. For this reason, it was placed on the IUCN Redlist in 2000, and is now CITES protected as well.

¹An incomplete list of animals that have, at one point, been “my favorite animal”: giraffes, raccoons, pangolins, mosquitoes, jellyfish, frilled lizards, chameleons, fireflies, sloths, and many more I can’t think of right now.

Plague of Locusts

I’m sorry I missed the end of August, but I was kind of getting married, so I hope you’ll excuse the late post. Since I just moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan¹, I decided I needed to write about a local Endangered Ugly Thing. Meet the Lake Huron Locust (Trimerotropis huroniana)












This locust is a drab-looking grasshopper, and not one to stand out in a crowd. It’s about an inch long, slate grey, and looks like a large number of related insects. The biggest characteristic that sets them apart from other grasshoppers is their habitat. Instead of living in thick grasses or dense woodlands, they live on meagerly vegetated beaches. There, they blend in with the sand and eat the sparse grasses that grow there.

Like most grasshoppers, male Lake Huron Locusts use the familiar melodic (or grating, depending on your preference) chirping to attract a mate. They also add an aerial element to their ritual, flying up in the air, snapping their wings to make a crackling noise². Eggs laid in the summer hatch the next spring, and mature in time to start the cycle again.

One of the largest threats to the Lake Huron Locust is the creation of summer homes on the dune habitats where these insects reside. This irks me, as the “summer” here lasts approximately from mid-July to mid-August. Protecting the dunes and the vegetation found there is the most effective method to keep these little locusts alive.

¹This is properly pronounced “da U.P., eh?”
²Does it surprise you to know that entomologists have a name for this? It’s called “crepitating”.

Groundhog Day

Greg, also from Not Extinct Yet, suggested that I write about the Blobfish. I really wanted to write about the Blobfish. If there’s any animal that could use a space on this blog, it’s the Blobfish. There’s really not enough information out there about it to get a full post out, though. My fiancée has been (strongly) suggesting a different animal since the Olympics in February. It’s somewhat cute, but in the end, it’s just a big Groundhog.

The Vancouver Island Marmot (Marmota vancouverensis —that’s a Road Runner & Coyote scientific name if I ever heard one) has been cut off from the rest of the mainland Marmots since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Like many rodents, these Marmots hibernate during the winter. Unlike most rodents, that hibernation lasts eight months. Even during those brief summer months, they spend most of their time in the burrows, coming out only to feed, lounge on rocks, and goof off.

Being a rodent of smallish stature (the standardized size comparison seems to be "a large house cat") predation is a fact of life for the Vancouver Island Marmot. Cougars, Wolves, and Golden Eagles all find the Marmot to be a tasty treat—no wonder it spends most of its life underground. Also being rodents, they have a high reproduction rate, where babies made in May are out of the burrow by July. A single female can produce about 15 young in her life.

This high reproduction rate may save the species. Man-made habitat changes decreased their naturally low population numbers almost to the point of genetic collapse. It was estimated that there were 21 wild Marmots in 2003, the rest (75 or so) in breeding programs in zoos and conservation centres. That breeding program has been remarkably successful, as they have released a total of 223 Marmots since then. Yes, some of them have fallen victim to predation and other natural deaths, but the wild population is up to about 120 now, and the captive population is steadily growing.

Look Out For Mr. Stork

I’ve wanted to write about the Marabou Stork for a long time. It is amazingly ugly. It has a bald head, except for minimal scraggly hair. The giant, pointed beak, perfect for ripping into large African carrion, is the color of decaying bone. There is only one reason that it hasn’t appeared on this blog yet: it’s not endangered. Amrita from Not Extinct Yet has saved me though. No, she didn’t go and shoot enough Marabou Storks to put them on the list¹. She found the Greater Adjutant (Leptoptilos dubius) which is closely related enough the Marabou Stork to fill its place on Endangered Ugly Things.



The Greater Adjutant hails from Southeast Asia, roosting near wetlands that teem with its prey. What kind of prey? Whatever it can catch. Insects, crustaceans, frogs, fish, carrion, rodents, even slow ducks. Much like the Marabou Stork (and the vultures they compete with), the ugly bald head is a great adaptation for shoving one's face deep inside a rotting carcass².

Their large nesting colonies form in leafless trees around these wetlands during the dry season. As the water recedes, the aquatic animals this stork preys on are that much easier to grab. The Greater Adjutant uses this abundant resource to produce their eggs, and feed their hatchlings. I can't find any pictures of young Adjutants, but they can't be any uglier than the adults. Come the rainy season, they migrate to other wetlands in Northern India until the next breeding season.

The draining, clearing, and general messing-around-with of wetlands in the area has left only two breeding populations of these giant birds. One is in Cambodia, the other in Assam, India. Between these two areas, there are less than one thousand individuals. Along with the destruction of their habitat, the eggs and adults are also hunted, presumably because there's a lot of meat on a four-foot tall bird.

The Greater Adjutant is protected in the areas in which it's found, but enforcement is not always up to snuff. It seems that there was a big push to stop egg collection, which helped increase Adjutant numbers the next year. Hopefully these conservation efforts will continue to keep these magnificent, if horribly ugly, birds around.



¹ I’m imagining the IUCN listing—Threats: Conservationists.
²Think about eating a bowl of jello without your hands. Wouldn't that be so much more pleasant if you were bald?

Hail to the Victors Valiant

I apologize for the unintentional two-month hiatus. Thanksgiving, leading right up to finals left me little time to search for Endangered Ugly Things. Next semester, I am only doing thesis work and teaching the Invertebrate Zoology lab, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my regular update schedule. This specific animal had to wait until after the regular college football season, to not upset my relatives who are Ohio State University alumni.
















The Wolverine (Gulo gulo) is, for all intents and purposes, a very big weasel. Forty-five pounds big. They are found around the world, under the Arctic Circle. Due to the large amount of food each individual requires, they have massive home ranges, with males wandering around an area of nearly 250 square miles. They can take down large prey (up to Caribou), but tend to scavenge when they have the opportunity.

The Wolverine has gained the same sort of reputation in North America as the Hyena does in Africa—a mangy, dangerous, scavenger (my dad has other names for the University of Michigan Wolverines). They aren’t mangy, but they are mainly scavengers—why fight a moose when it’ll die of starvation soon enough? They can also be quite dangerous, but name a fifty-pound animal that isn’t¹.

I suppose what really irks me is the instant inclusion of scavengers into the “evil” category. Wolverines, hyenas, ravens and vultures all tend to get thrown into this role. I suppose this trend comes from the association with death, but I tend to see them more as janitors. They serve a vital role in cleaning up the ecosystem (would you like to be neck deep in deer carcasses?), and they get absolutely no respect for it. As the mutant Logan states "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice."

Despite their ferocious image, the mothers take good care of their young, keeping them close and safe for more than a year after they are born. It’s at this stage of life that Wolverines are the most vulnerable to other predators in the area, but when there’s a protective mother Wolverine in the area, that’s not all that vulnerable. Videos of the baby Wolverines are just as cute as you’d expect baby mammals playing to be.

Despite declining numbers due to the expanding range of humans, predator poisoning regimes, and trapping, Wolverines are not listed by the IUCN. They’re not even federally listed in the US (despite multiple petitions for such), due to lack of data on their numbers, though there may be some pressure from groups who still want to trap these animals. They are, however, listed as endangered in Canada. As information grows about these animals, hopefully we can begin to better protect this ferocious (sometimes) scavenger.

¹Dad mentioned the Capybara. Wikipedia says they “…are gentle and will usually allow humans to pet and hand-feed them.” Dang. Alright, smart guy, name a second one.

Song of the Shrimp

New visitors from the Scientific American article: Welcome! I hope you find some things that interest you here. My forum is starting to pick up, and I would love to see some new blood there. Bryan, who I met at the Green Futures expo, I hope you can forgive me for not writing about the animal you suggested, but I completely forgot. For two months. Sorry.













This is the California Freshwater Shrimp (Syncaris pacifica). It doesn't look like much, which is actually a anti-predatory device, as its translucency helps hide it from predators. If hiding doesn't work, it has a protective spine useful for jabbing into a predatory fish's mouth.

These shrimp are only found in a few counties in the Bay Area in California, and seem to be fairly picky about their habitat. They live in the runs¹ of streams that have undercut banks, exposed roots, and overhanging vegetation. All of these features provide the Freshwater Shrimp with numerous hiding places.

The problem comes when those hiding places are disturbed. There are quite a few ways this can happen, all of which have the final result of removing the vegetation that these shrimp call home. The trees that provide the overhanging roots are removed when a stream is channelized, and agriculture and livestock fill the stream with runoff that buries those roots in silt.

There is quite a bit of good news going for the California Freshwater Shrimp. For one thing, its numbers appear to have almost quadrupled between 1991 and 2000. Another thing is that a number of teachers and students are using this as their rallying species to help teach people about freshwater habitat, and saving some endangered species in the process. If anyone in those programs reads this: I salute you. You will be able to tell future generations that you helped save a living thing from extinction.

¹Runs are the areas in streams halfway between the shallow, fast moving riffles, and the slow, deep pools. This site explains these quite well.

I'm Not Dead

Last month, Phantom Midge made a wonderful suggestion for an EUT that I hadn’t thought about. I had known about it for ages, and, like her, had been pronouncing it wrong for years¹. Somehow, without any foreknowledge, I’m managing to post this on an exceedingly appropriate day, as today is the 70th anniversary of its discovery as a living animal.










Order Coelacanth (pronounced See-la-canth) had been well documented since 1836, and fossils show that it lived for 345 million years between the Devonian period and the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs died out. This must have come as a big surprise for the West Indian Ocean Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) caught by fishermen off the coast of South Africa in 1938. These fishermen were friends with the curator of a small, local museum, and she would frequently check through their catch for anything interesting. Needless to say, something interesting was, in fact, found. Dinofish, who seem to be experts on this matter, have the whole long story on their site in far more detail than I can manage.

Coelacanths spend most of their time in deep (90-200m) caves, where they suction feed on any fish smaller than their head. Exceedingly sensitive eyes, along with an electro-sensory organ help them hunt. These are not small fish, getting up to about 6 feet in length and weighing about 175 pounds, thus surpassing the other “Living Fossil” fish I wrote about². Coelacanth tail fins are split into three fleshy sections, and all eight of their fins move in a mesmerizing, visualized wonderfully—as always—in an ARKive video.

I was surprised the Coelacanth is listed at all, much less as Critically Endangered. I thought there would be far too little information on its numbers and habits to be called anything other than Data Deficient. Analyses of populations in 1989 suggested that there might only be 500 individuals left. The low population, ironically enough, might be attributed to by-catch. This could explain why all the natives were so perplexed when the Europeans got excited by the catch of a fish they knew to be inedible³. Since then, conservation and outreach programs have given fishermen the tools to release the fish directly back to the murky depths from which they came.


¹In Freshman Zoology, I made a list of letter combinations that made an “s” sound. “Coe” always annoyed me, because I’ve never seen it outside of biology.
²Wikipedia has some nice articles about the term “Living Fossil.” Coelacanths are a “Lazarus taxon,” while the Australian Lungfish falls into the wider “Living Fossil” expression. I don’t think I’ll ever get a chance to write about an “Elvis taxon.”
³Never underestimate the local population when it comes to ecology.

Black Bead Game

I really wanted to write about the whipscorpion that Phantom Midge found, but I hate to say, there is little to no information about Trithyreus shoshonensis. So, my fall back this week is an animal that I got a picture of during my spring break trip to the Columbus Zoo. Growing up, I remember learning that the Gila Monster was one of two venomous lizards. This is the other one.

















Yes, the Mexican Beaded Lizard (Heloderma horridum) looks a whole lot like the Gila Monster. This so happens because they are within the same genus, and the major differences are that the Gila Monster is smaller and more colorful. Not having the hinged fangs of vipers, the Beaded Lizard delivers venom that flows along grooves in the teeth, and delivers by chewing. Digimorph gives a wonderful visual of that—check out the horizontal dynamic cutaway¹ and watch for the hollow bottom teeth. The venom is used mainly as a defense mechanism, and is typically non-fatal to humans—if you get medical treatment quickly enough. The small animals they prey on…well, that’s a different story.

The “beads” from which this lizard gets its name are osteoderms²: tiny bits of bone growing within the skin that lead to its studded appearance. This adds another layer of protection on top of the fact that they can maim with a single bite. They inhabit the scrublands and other semi-arid habitats of Western and Southern Mexico, explaining the other part of their name. Like some other arid-adapted lizards, the Mexican Beaded Lizard can store fat in its tail to provide food and water during times of scarcity.

Habitat loss, due to clearing for agriculture, is one large factor in this species’ decline. The one that really surprises me, however, is the pet trade. I’ve always been an avid fan of reptiles, and have no problems with keeping some as pets. But I draw the line at an animal that can kill me if improperly handled. To help stop this problem, they are listed by CITES, and there are breeding and head start programs to replenish their numbers in the wild.

¹Yes, it’s actually a Gila Monster. The principle is the same.
²Meaning “bone skin.”

Throwing Copper

Recently, I was featured in an article in a magazine distributed around Ohio¹. If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve linked to it here.

Two months ago, Pcrucifer asked if I take requests—indeed I do. While I’ve written about a number of snakes, I still get the feeling that the general public still thinks: “EEK! A snake!” Until that changes, I will continue writing about them. Water snakes are big and angry enough that they will always find a place here.















The Copperbelly Water Snake (Nerodia erythrogaster neglecta), like the rest of the genus, is fond of water, though it is not as aquatic as some of its relatives. Typically found near wetlands and swampy forests in the Midwest, it hunts down any animal it can fit in its mouth², usually frogs, tadpoles, and small fish. Unlike many Water Snakes, the Copperbelly has is uniform color on its back. Its belly, surprise-surprise, is bright orange. I was asked why they have a bright red belly. I can’t seem to find the answer.

While they are normally found near wetlands, they have a large enough range that they frequently move between wet spots, and even hibernate in the higher, drier areas. This movement causes some issues when there’s a human-made impediment in the way. Pcrucifer even called them “a snake for whom roads are a real problem.” I am familiar with this problem.

However, being squashed by cars is not their biggest threat. Some of these threats are becoming very predictable. I asked my English major girlfriend³: “They’re a wetland species, why are they endangered?” Without hesitation, she answered, “Because wetlands are disappearing.” Yes, I would be hard-pressed to find a wetland animal I’ve written about that doesn’t have “Habitat loss” as one of the threats.

There are people who worry about this snake, and lots of people who worry about wetlands. As the Copperbelly is only recently federally listed, recovery plans are still in the works, but I’m sure current wetland efforts can’t be hurting.

¹To people with a certain electric company. So, if you live in Ohio and can’t find it, that’s why.
²Remember, this is a snake we’re talking about here. “Can fit in its mouth” is bigger than “the size of its head."
³Who wrote about the Andean Condor.

Swamp Rattler

There’s an EUT that I’ve known about for a long time that even I’m surprised I missed. In the second post, more than a year ago, I wrote about one of the endangered snakes I found in the road mortality survey in high school. Well, there was another endangered snake, and somehow, it has slipped through a year of blogging.















This rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus) goes by a number of names, such as Swamp Rattler, Black Rattler, but I’ve always called it a Massasauga, which apparently means “Great River Mouth” in Chippewa. By those names, it should come as no surprise that these snakes are typically found in wetland areas, as well as near rivers and streams. They are typically ambush hunters, lying in wait for small rodents to wander within range. Since rattlesnakes are a group within pit vipers, they have heat-sensing organs to find their prey.

Unlike most rattlesnakes, Massasaugas hibernate alone, finding crayfish burrows in which to spend the winter, below the frost line. I don’t know how many of those crayfish are… uh… forcefully evicted from their burrows, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was how most Massasaugas found their over-wintering hole. Females mate in the spring, yearly or every other year, depending how healthy she is. Birthing (remember, rattlesnakes have live young) happens in the late summer, with a litter of five to nineteen bouncing… uh, slithering babies.

While their range stretches from New York to Minnesota and from Missouri to Ontario, they are endangered within each state or province in their range. So, despite the fact that the Massasauga’s range takes up most of the Northeastern United States, it really only exists in small isolated populations. One of those happens to be the Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area, where I spent each fall in high school peeling dead snakes off the road. I suppose I can’t really let this post go by without a personal anecdote, so here goes. Freshman year, when we were still trying to figure out what we were doing, and I couldn’t yet drive, Dad and I came across a live Massasauga near the edge of the road. It wasn’t atypically big, probably two feet long. I had been given a two-foot long snake hook, but I hadn’t brought it with me, because I would pick up any non-venomous snake with my hands, and two feet wouldn’t be near long enough for any venomous snake. After collecting the data, we realized that we were supposed to take the snake off the road, so it wouldn’t get run over, which was achieved by stomping, yelling, and throwing roadside litter near it¹.

So that was a little off topic. They are not particularly endangered due to road mortality (I only found four of them in four years of study), but for two other major reasons. The first reason is that people don’t like snakes, especially venomous ones. There are kind, little old ladies with wonderful stories about how they chopped a Swamp Rattler’s head off with a shovel. Reported cases of deaths due to Massasauga bites are few and far between, mostly due to the fact that the people did not get proper treatment in time. The second reason is simply habitat loss, just like for the Alligator Snapping Turtle, as wetlands continue to be developed.

Despite the fact that the Massasauga is state listed throughout its range, it is only listed federally as a species of concern. Most conservation programs focus on the education of the public in an attempt to let them see this snake as a part of the ecosystem, instead of a potential threat. Habitat conservation is also a big part of saving this snake, and there are a few captive breeding programs in Canada working to release more of these beauties into the wild.

¹This was before we started taking photographs of each one. Otherwise, the picture would be much better than the above, or even my other option, this one.

The Delhi Sands of Time

I think I may have found the most controversial EUT to date. Many websites still call this animal “the only fly presently on the Endangered Species List,” which was correct, until last year. I seem to have a thing for writing a fly post in December, but you’ll have to check back next year to see if the trend still holds.


















The Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly (Rhaphiomidas terminatus abdominalis) is endemic to the fine sand (also known as Delhi sand) dunes of southern California. The second part of its name comes from the fact that the adults feed on nectar from flowers in a manner reminiscent of hummingbirds, or, probably more accurately, hawk moths.

Parts of the lifestyle of this insect are still unknown. They are typically only seen as adults. There is a single mating season each year, from August to September, where the female will lay about 50 eggs into the sand. At that point, who knows? The larvae stay underground for probably two years, and may be predatory. I would be willing to guess that those suppositions come from studies of other Flower-Loving Flies (family Apioceridae).

The Delhi Sands area covers about 40 square miles, and it is thought that the Flower-Loving Fly occupied most of it. Now, with habitat degradation and loss, it now lives in 2.5 percent of that entire area. The conservation efforts for this animal, begun in 1993, has stirred tempers, and even gotten a (very brief) mention on NPR. To protect the habitat, the Fish and Wildlife Service set aside areas for the fly to thrive. The problem: some of that land is private property. Needless to say, landowners and developers got angry, which, of course, got conservationists angry. To this day, no one has stopped shouting.

Catfish are Jumpin'

I know I’ve been way behind on my posts. My college has a schedule where the semesters are split into a twelve-week section, typically with three classes, and a three-week section, where one takes a single class and stuffs twelve weeks’ worth of information into it. So, the number of posts has suffered—in November due to finals, and in December due to heavy work load¹. So, to make up for it, I’m going to see if I can put out two posts a week during Winter Break. First up, I present more evidence as to why Ugly Overload has an “Oversized Uglies” category.



This is the Mekong Giant Catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), whose upper size limit is nine feet and 660 pounds, making it the world’s largest freshwater fish. They inhabit the Mekong River, the eleventh longest river in the world, which stretches through China, Thailand, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, and Vietnam. While the young have the whiskers that give catfish their name, those are lost as they age. I can’t seem to find a maximum age for these, but they can get quite old, considering the generation time is listed as 14 years.

The Giant Catfish is a grazer, eating the aquatic vegetation growing on the bottom of the river, though this source states that they’ll take “other food [read: meat] in captivity.” During the course of their lives, these massive fish will migrate up and down the river, from upstream breeding sites to downstream feeding sites.

As there is a lot of meat on a 600-pound catfish, it came to no surprise to me that one of the major causes of their decline is overfishing; even though that has mostly stopped, they’re still getting over it. Despite this, the Mekong Giant Catfish was moved from Endangered to Critically Endangered in 2003. The IUCN cites habitat loss and degradation—that is, damming and pollution—as the major causes.

Not all hope is lost. In an interview with National Geographic, one of the researchers says that there’s still a chance that these giants can make a comeback. They’ve been working on artificial spawning since 1985, and captive breeding since 2001. These, along with better pollution regulations, could bring the Mekong Giant Catfish back from the brink.

¹I just wrote a ten-page paper on genitalia evolution. Look up the Argentine Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata), if you dare. Or, for that matter, Echidna reproduction.

Indiana Jones

There’s a species that I mentioned in the original essay that I haven’t written about yet. Its ugliness is questionable, but there are a lot of people who don’t like bats. I had hoped to get this up by Halloween, but various factors conspired against it.























This is the Indiana Bat (Myotis sodalis), which, as its name suggests, is found in Indiana. About half of the entire world population roost there, with the rest of them spread out among the nineteen surrounding states. Their genus, Myotis, means “mouse-eared”, and includes more common species such as the Little Brown Bat, and three others that are found in Ohio¹. The species name, sodalis, is Latin for “companion,” which is an appropriate name for them, as they roost in groups of at least one hundred individuals.

As far as shape and nightly habits go, the Indiana Bat is like most other small (they weigh up to 7.5 grams), insectivorous bat—hunting by echolocation, swooping after moths and mosquitoes all night, and coming back to roost at dawn. They make their roosts under sloughing bark of dead trees, typically near streams. In the winter, they find caves in which to hibernate. Their exacting standards for these hibernacula (the technical term) are one of the reasons that they are endangered. The caves must be between freezing and 50°F, and maintain about 95% humidity.

The National Fish and Wildlife Service states that one of the major threats to the Indiana Bat is human disturbances of their hibernating caves, much like the Virginia Long Eared Bat. However, even gating erected to keep people out can disturb the environment of the cave, if done improperly. Many people are also worried about their summer roosts being disturbed, or cut down.

There certainly are conservation programs in place to try to help them out. They are listed as endangered, federally and internationally. The major goal of the conservation programs is to prevent the disturbance of the nesting sites. In the Wayne National Forest, there is a single hibernaculum, but hardly a tree can be cut down without at least a few nights of monitoring for these furry fliers.

¹And likely in nearby states as well. What can I say; I’ve lived in this state too long to not be a little biased.