All posts by Egonzo

Wildlife

The Tiger’s Pouch and Equid DNA: the Danger of Wearing Stripes.

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There is no survivor, there is no future, there is no life to be recreated in this form again.  We are looking upon the uttermost finality which can be written, glimpsing the darkness which will not know another ray of light. We are in touch with the reality of extinction.
—  Henry B. Hough,  Domesday Book   

  The largest part of being a graduate student is writing.  Many times you take the same class as 15 undergraduates. What sets you apart from them is usually an extra paper. If you are lucky you get to do a research paper. If you are me you get to write a historiography.  I will go on a tangent here briefly about why I hate these things and find them a complete waste of time. As a finished product, historiographies are hyped up literature reviews.  They are a collection of summaries of works done on a topic. You (or me in this case) have to try and go beyond the original authors interpretations, and form your own.

     Maybe it is because I have really only written historiographies on topics that I know relatively little about that I cannot seem to make that leap into forming my own. I could have formed many more interpretations had I been given clearance to research a topic thoroughly and not just look at how other people looked at it before.  I think they are bunk, and unless I have to write one I will not.  But, I have to.

     The trick to graduate school is to use all these extra papers to build towards your thesis.  I am working on wild animal collecting for the Nation Zoo in D.C. in the early 20th century, so I theoretically, I would try and pick topics that would allow me to run towards that.  I sort of have one for the circus paper, but I will talk about that one later.

     The reality is most of the time you cannot.  I took a seminar course over the holocaust course last semester and wrote (a lot) over something that has nothing to do with animals, zoos, museums, or any of the other scores of interests that I have.  I learned about source material and memoirs versus history approaches to things, so I do not chalk it a total loss.

     So getting to take a course over the British Empire should offer loads of things to study.  Oh, how it would if I did not have to write another stupid historiography.  Sources, and hopefully contradicting or argumentative sources are the key.  So trudging through the library that I live in I came up with things that happened during the reign of the Crown.

     I could write on the Piltdown Man, the Cardiff Giant hoax, Alfred Wallace and Darwin’s co-discovery, or any other number of things.  Great topics for research seldom make great topics of historiography.  So I chose something sort of related to animals, and now I have to, in some form or fashion, collect it into a coherent work in a manner that I disdain.

     Enough whining about that though, the thing that has piqued my interest is extinction.  For the purposes of this paper I will look at extinctions within the empire.  Specifically I will look at two. One from South Africa, another from Australia.  The passenger pigeon does not count for this. I will also add one that was ‘discovered’ relatively recently for a large mammal.

     First, the Quagga, this is the sand colored horse with the zebra striped head. The last one died in an Amsterdam zoo in 1883.
All accounts I can find say her name was Jane.

      The short story for the Quagga is that there was always a contention among scientist as to whether or not they were a distinct species of zebra or a subspecies.  Most likely the last wild Quagga was killed in the 1870s. The creature had disappeared before they could determine if it was a separate species or not.   However, the Quagga was the first extinct organism to have its DNA studied and researchers at the Smithsonian Institution discovered that it was not a new species but simple a special variant of the regular plains zebra.
    
     The Quagga Project began selectively breeding plains zebra in 1987. As of 2004, through fits, starts, and relocation there are over 80 zebra in nearly a dozen localities around Cape Town. This whole study brings up another argument over the difference in subspecies and what we would call “breeds”. Below is a VofA news report of the Quagga Project.

     The problem that I foresee with this is not one of science, but of perception. As mentioned in the video, this must not give people that feeling that it is okay if something goes extinct now, we can just recreate it in a lab somewhere. While that is amazing that we can do that, it is ecologically a moot point.  That way of thinking is prevalent in today’s youth and public. We live with a “fix-it later” mentality. For some species there is no later. 
     Once these animals are gone, there can be attempts made by brilliant people to restore what they can, but they are extinct.  That word, like so many others, has been thrown around and attributed to so many things that the depth and reality of what is means to be extinct is sadly gone.  
     There are two people I always think about when I study the Quagga, one is the hunter in South Africa that killed the last remaining one in the wild. What did he think, how did he feel?  Don’t get me wrong, I am a hunter. I am not trying to ban hunting, but did he know there were fewer and fewer or did he not care? Maybe it was business as usual and he thought he could kill one today and then go out and kill another tomorrow or next week. 
     The other fellow I feel for is the zookeeper in Amsterdam who came into work on August 12, 1883 and found Jane.  The last of her kind, the last of her species. (actually a subspecies, but our zookeeper wound not have known that) She would have either been dead that morning, or not been put on display and died while they were tending to her. What kind of finality would that be to feel? This is the end of the Quagga, there never will be another one.  
    Another incident occurred in another realm of the British Empire, Australia. Specifically Tasmania.  The Thylacine held on a bit longer than the Quagga. That may be said this way: Europeans arrived later in Tasmania.  While the Quagga was hunted for food, skins, and to lessen competition for grazing land, the Tasmanian Tiger was hunted due to its bad reputation with farmers.  The famous, or infamous, photo below was widely circulated to help encourage the removal of this ‘problem’ species. 
     So the farmers and settlers did their level best to protect their livestock from the dog-headed-pouched-one. 
     Problem was, man is a very good hunter, and eventually all the hunts, and trophies, and collections came down to this: 
      This here is one, Wilf Batty, who gallantly bagged the very last known wild Thylacine in existence. 
There is no Thylacine Project akin to the one for Quaggas. The Tasmanian Tiger’s claim to fame has been recent “sightings” around southern Tasmania.  The south is still sparsely populated and some are hopeful that the Thylacine has escaped there and remained hidden.  If one is discovered that would be great, we would get to see it one more time. Finding a breeding population would be a miracle, and many are highly doubtful that it will ever happen. For now the Tasmanian Tiger has fallen not even to a realm of hope that genetics and DNA offers, but is inhabits the world of the cryptids. 
    Something else that is different between the two is that politics had time to get involved. Too little, too late seems to sum it up nicely. Robert Paddle’s book The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine explains in great detail and with more clarity that I can. One point that I do want to make from this book is this: There had been a conservation movement pressing for thylacine protection since 1901. This cause was lead mostly due to it becoming increasingly difficult to obtain specimens for overseas collections.  Political difficulties prevented any protection from coming into force until 1936. 

     Official protection of the species by the Tasmanian government was introduced on July 10, 1936, 59 days before the last known specimen died in captivity.  
    In fact, the Thylacine unfairly bridges the gap within the cryptozoology world between true cryptids that are not known to have ever existed, (or with some existed into modern times coexisting with mankind) and those that humans have seen (helped) off the planet. Maybe that is the draw.  
    Fun coincidence if you noticed in the photographs, the Quagga’s head is striped while the rear of the Tiger is.  Maybe human being hate strips.  Morphologically the Thylacine is interesting too, both sexes have a pouch. The only other marsupial that does is the water opossum. The tiger’s pouch is also reversed compared to other marsupials. Their pouch faces the rear and not the head as it does on a kangaroo.  
     Back to the stripes thing, there is a species that still exists and it might not be as endangered as you might think.  I will talk more about the Okapi in the next post, how it was discovered and how that even links into my circus studies. Pygmies are involved.  
Photos were ripped lovingly from wikipedia.org.
Wildlife

Pigeons and Goldfish or Taxonomic Rebate

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    Last Thursday BBC news,  and other sources I am sure, reported on a scientific finding about pigeons and their sense of smell. Pigeons sniff their way home reveals a study on how pigeons use scent to navigate.  The study also involved stopping up one pigeon nostril. Sources do not reveal if this was done with small corks or if some graduate assistant had the arduous task of rolling up toilet paper to stick in the bird’s nose.

Study photo from the BBC, note the GPS pack,
or is that the sardine can the Bernand and Bianca
flew in in The Rescuers?

     What they discovered was birds that could not breath through their right nostril took a “more tortuous route” home and stopped more frequently than the other tested birds.  They at least made the 40km trek and none were severely injured or killed due to their non working nasal passage.  None, at least, were reported, and in today’s psyche well, that is just as good.

    I have always had a fascination with pigeons. Most people I know call them rats with wings. Having wings, and more importantly not having a long then hairless tail, makes these creature a bit more endearing to the public as a whole.  I did a paper on pigeons in the third grade. Here is where english is important, I did the report when I was in the third grade, not the pigeons.

     What I found out was that they were all descended from the common rock dove. Scientific discoveries of this magnitude must be shared, sometimes forcefully, with relatives that raise doves.  So, for some time I was embattled with my aunt referring to all her doves as pigeons and giving the common street pigeons a nicer moniker of dove.

     We, and by we I mean my family while I was growing up, had all manner of feathered beings about our place.  We raised chickens, guineas, quail, turkeys, peacocks, chukar partridges, emus, and a cockatiel.  One of our suppliers had fan-tail pigeons.  I was enamored with them.  To this day I am not sure if my dad got them because I was interested in them, or if because he wanted them. Either way we came home with ten pair.

     20 strutting, cooing, displaying fan tail pigeons are quite a site.  The variety of color and markings was amazing.  As they reared young, something interesting began to happen.  Each successive generation feathered out with less color and more white.  Phenotypic results for genetics. A lesser controlled study than Mendel’s peas, but more fun to watch.

     Years later I discovered that Charles Darwin was a pigeon fancier himself.  His interest in the specific breeding techniques that lead from the rock dove to the elegant and sometimes gaudy displays of modern pigeons led him in part to think about things differently.  In fact, animal husbandry of all types, full well known by Darwin, in no small part contributed to his theory.

     Now how fun it is for me to know that by my dad getting pigeons for me, at least that is how I think of it, and that is what counts, I got to see the same generational changes that Charles Darwin did.  But, you say, those are fancy pigeons, with their fan tail and not-pigeon-colored plumage.  What about the common street pigeon?

     My dad worked at a refinery, the same one my grandfather worked in the lab for, and the same one that he was determined that I would not work in.  They have reboilers, towers, and units all around that are conducive to street pigeon fare. On two separate occasion they found a young bird who had fallen, or was pushed, out of his nest.  We never ascertained which happened, either they were klutzes and semi ashamed or their siblings were of the worst sort. In either case their mothers had not hatched any stool-pigeons.

    They were fed a modest diet of slightly whisked eggs and smashed grapes, (the pigeons not the refinery workers) until they were old and strong enough to make the trip to our house.  They rode in the car, with neither nostril plugged.  They both took up residence within the realm of the fan-tails. They made the same noises, their strut was a bit the same, but they lacked the Carnivale plumage and over developed sense of self that came with their over-developed-absolutely-horrible-for-flying fan-tails  of their companions.

     Taxonomically they are the same species, but are different breeds.  Similar to how all modern dogs are Canus domesticus whether they are a Graat Dane or a chihuahua.  The dodo is taxonomically related to modern pigeons, although farther back than the Genus, I believe.  A large flightless pigeon growing some three feet tall, that is essentially the dodo. Where it fits into my life and way of thinking comes later.

    We also had horses, registered American Quarterhorse horses, papered, documented, bloodlined horses. Basically same as the pigeons just controlled breeding for regisration sake. Much less cooing and slightly less strutting involved as well. I am not here to talk about the horses.  The horses had to drink, and being of an industrious people we had a huge vat to water them from.

     In life, this vat was used for creosoting telephone polls, or at least that is was I remember being told.  Large enough to hold enough water for the horses in the pasture, and large enough that we routed a water spicket out to it rather than move it again. You would think that registered pure-bred horses would have bettter manners, but they do not, they still drink with their mouths full. A horse trough equivalent of bread crumbs in the water pitcher presents its own challenges.

      Enter the small beings that could eat some of the deposited horse food that was deposited at the trough.

     I said the small beings. Ours never got that big, although some did get nearly 10 inches long, none weighed 30 lbs, as this one supposedly did.  If you want to read more about this monster from a lake in southern France, and all the argumentative comments on its authenticity and photoshop one link is here.

     Interestingly enough, and how they fit into this stream of consciousness, the koi started showing the same phenotypic changes as the pigeons: more of the new generation’s feathers were white than the previous.  All were well on their way to plain vanilla koi.  The interim generations were marked with a gold and white holstein cow or paint horse pattern.

This is not our horse trough the water was never that clear
Just an example of the interim patterning I was talking about

     My point is, if there is even a point, that all the evidence is there, one just has to look at it and put the pieces together. One first glance what do fan-tail pigeons have to do with goldfish that live in a horse trough?  The answer is apparently more than you think.  I was lucky enough to see things like that and become part of that natural changing world.  The most profound answers can be found in the most humble of places.  I miss being a part of that.

     What I do not miss is having to feed that menagerie between getting home from school and doing my homework.  Actually, that is probably not as true as I would like it to be.  Animals to be are the most wondrous of things to watch.  I mean animals besides ball fetching pooches and @&#^ eating kitties.  Animals that interact without you. You feed them and they are happy with that and go about their required animal tasks dutifully.

    The only place that can come close to that experience in the human realm is International airports.  Thousands of people buzzing around, all you have to do is feed them and they go about their tasks as if you are unimportant or do not exist.  Interesting, yes, but not the same almost “divine” experience you get from living among troops, flocks, crashes, and pods of animals.  The International airports smell worse than farms too.

      Now that you have waded, trudged, and sloshed through that muck I will explain my title choice of this blog. In fact, this is something I have had in the planning stages of artwork for awhile now.  A large family coat of arms featuring prominately the platypus and the dodo.  The shield would contain images of exploration and education, maps, compass roses, books, and quill pins. While the shield itself is made of fossil bones and tusks.

    What makes these two animals perfect for my way of thinking and looking at nature is that on the one hand, here is an animal that, at the very least taxonomically should not exist, and does. On the other is an animal that should exist and does not.

     One is the marvel that is great change, a venomous mammal that lays eggs.  Once those eggs hatch the young nurse on milk from a mother with no nipples.  The milk, like yours is produced in specialized sweat glands and secreted just like sweat.  The platypus just has not given itself a nipple yet.  So the next time you see someone eating cereal of having a great big glass of cold milk, or you see those ads in magazines, thing to yourself, nay, offer up your hopes to the drinker that they enjoy that refreshing glass of cow sweat.

From a NSF press release about the decoded genome of
the Platypus. Read it here

     The other, the portly feathered inhabitant of Mauritius who sings about a Jolly caucus race to Alice, the world symbol of extinction. Why is that, do you think? Dinosaurs should certainly be that poster child, after all they have been extinct for much much longer. No, it is the fact that humans, learned, traveling, reading, civilized(?), non-pooh-slinging (again?) humans, new of this animal, saw it, captured it (it was held, alive for a time, in King Rudolf II’s great sceintarium in  Prague.) introduced it to rats, dogs, and weasels, and for the first time we watched a species disappear form the planet.  We also knew irrevocably that it was our fault.

     For me, life is this dichotomy of what nature is capable of producing, and what mankind are capable of destroying. We are completely out of harmony with our world.  I am not advocating paleo-diets or a return to hunting and gathering. We did after all slaughter our own swine, and beef on the same farm.
We are outcompeting nature to the detriment of our future.  Yes the world did not cease to spin when the last dodo died, nor did the sky blacken and fall with the demise of the carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon, or the tasmanian lion.  But we did lose something, a bit of wonder, we are becoming a world that is replacing natural magic with cgi.  While cgi is great for reconstructions, they are not alive, they will always be a far second best.

Documentaries, Museums, Television, Wildlife, Zoos

Standard More about Me or And now here’s your Host

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Sir David Attenborough recording a chorus of frogs in 1954.
Photo courtesy of wildfilmhistory.org, a fantastic site

Given that we are all living in the 21st century together and through the good advice of trusted associates of mine I have started a blog.  I shall retro-act a New Year’s resolution of creating one and then cross it from my list.  I am not at all entirely sure what this will always consist of or where it will go in the future.  My guess is that it will just provide more filler for me to work on instead of actually doing work for my classes.

I am working towards a Master’s degree in history.  My main research focuses on live animal collecting for zoos.  There is also some tangential work being done on specimen collecting for museums.  I have three minor’s in Anthropology, Geology, and Earth Sciences.  I am a Natural Historian of the 19th Century vein.  Not unlike Porthos who claimed a beheading axe a gift from the Tsarina of America, I  self proclaim my college hours and experience to be a Bachelor of Science in History.  I can do that, its my blog.

What I hope my followers (all both of you) will get out of this is a concise inclusion of things that are going on in the science world presently. I confess many issues will include links to BBC news.  I also hope to enlighten some about what went on in the world of science in the past.  We all grow up with iconic images of famous people, I shall use Darwin as an example. In our mind’s eye we see him old and white-bearded, about 23.

However this is not the Darwin that sailed on the Beagle. It was a younger man (Darwin really wasn’t 23 with the white beard) that lost his cookies over the Beagle’s railing explored Argentina, and ate large flightless bird over a campfire.  A specimen which turned out to be a new species, upon that realization Charles went around gathering up everyone’s table scraps to make another scientific contribution via Richard Owen’s descriptions.

Those are the stories I want to share. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I, but if you do not I will also fill updates with reviews of books I have had to read for class and the ones I have chosen to read for pleasure, they are seldom the same. Some movies we go to, but that is infrequent, as well as reviews for a few theatre performances, and local symphony happenings.

I will also try and highlight anything I do along the way to a PhD somewhere over time’s horizon.  I am notorious for visiting a city and really only going to two places: the zoo and their Natural History Museum. I will try and keep these things brief enough to read between laps your boss makes in your office, but some will require a bit more page time.

Updates will be infrequent, and sometimes more than once a day. I look forward to constructive comments from my captivated and attentive audiences as well as any questions that you guys have. I will try to cite sources that I use, even though the one for the above Darwin anecdote escapes me at the moment.

So, for a brief semi introduction, this will have to suffice.  Once I get my blogging sea legs under me, I will go into more detail about why I call this blog The Platypus and the Dodo and maybe some back history on me that could be found in the about me section, if you are inclined to give a fig about who I am. Most of you do, and the only reason you will check the “About Me” section is to see if I have lied.