The Fossil Record

Scientists smell a giant rat!

Did you know that rodents first appeared in the fossil record about 54 million years ago?  They've been causing trouble ever since.  I don't doubt that they will probably outlive, outsmart and out-populate every other creature on the planet, including humans.  

To make matters worse,  scientists have recently discovered a GIANT rat, as big as a cat, in the crater of an extinct volcano in Papau, New Guinea.  

The crater, which is two and a half miles wide with walls rising almost half a mile high, houses a "lost world" of mountain rainforest, and contains strange, rare creatures.  In addition to the monster  rat, scientists there found about sixteen new species of frogs, three species of fish, one gecko, a small marsupial and more than twenty different insects and spiders.  

The giant rat measures about 32 inches long and weighs almost 4 pounds.  That makes him almost as big as the one I had living in my garage last year.  Mine rattled the pots and pans so loudly in my kitchen one night that I thought he was a burglar trying to cook himself an early breakfast.  Did you scientists listen to me when I told you to come film him for your BBC special?  Nooooooo!!!!!  You went all the way to New Guinea instead.  

I won't say I told you so.

Be quiet, he can hear you.

The Great Grey Owl, one of the world's largest Strigiformes,  grows to an average of 24 to 33 inches tall, with a wingspan of almost 60 inches--but only weighs about as much as a quart of milk. Great Greys live in northern Europe and Asia, across Canada,  in Alaska and in the northern Rocky Mountains of the United States.  They  love to eat rodents and other small animals.  In the video below, one of these majestic modern-day raptors reveals how his head can act like a satellite dish to pick up the sounds of tiny creatures, even as they try to hide from him under the snow.

Learn more about the Great Grey Owl on The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's awesome All About Birds website.

Now that's a big baby!

My friend Eric, who lives in Portland, showed me this video of the Oregon Zoo's gorgeous and very playful eight-month-old and 1,005 pound baby elephant, Samudra. The young Asian elephant, who is the first third-generation elephant to be born in the United States, weighed a whopping 286 pounds at birth. He could weigh anywhere between 6,000 and 14,000 pounds when he's a fully grown adult. Asian elephants reach their maximum size when they are 25 years old. Their average lifespan is 45 years. 

Learn some more interesting facts about Asian elephants here and read the updates about Samudra's life story here. 

Dog days of summer

It's toasty outside now that I'm back in south Texas, so I'm thinking cool thoughts about this handsome fellow I met up at the Seneca Park Zoo in New York State a few days ago.  He's an arctic grey wolf, Canus lupus arctos, the largest species of all wolves. Adult male arctic wolves  can weigh over 100 pounds.

Even New York is too hot for this guy, though. He normally lives between the edge of North America and the North Pole, hunting for rabbits, caribou and musk ox.  

He has a brilliant white coat that distinguishes him from his close cousin, the North American gray wolf, who was just removed from the federal list of threatened and endangered species this past March.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, the arctic wolf is the only subspecies of wolf that has not yet been threatened, due to its isolation from humans in its native environment. As mines and oil pipelines encroach upon their territory and interrupt their food supply though, we may see arctic wolf numbers begin to decline.

You can read some interesting facts about Nikko, the Seneca Park Zoo arctic wolf, here.

Bigfoot sighting?

Story and photo from Associated Press

RIDGWAY, Pa. -- It's furry and walks on all fours. Beyond that, about the only thing certain about the critter photographed by a hunter's camera is that some people have gotten the notion it could be a Sasquatch, or Bigfoot. Others say it's just a bear with a bad skin infection.

Rick Jacobs says he got the pictures from a camera with an automatic trigger that he fastened to a tree in the Allegheny National Forest, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, hoping to photograph deer.

"We couldn't figure out what they were," Jacobs said of the images captured on Sept. 16. "I've been hunting for years and I've never seen anything like this."

He contacted the Bigfoot Research Organization, which pursues reports of a legendary two-legged creature that some people believe lives in parts of the U.S. and Canada.

"It appears to be a primate-like animal. In my opinion, it appears to be a juvenile Sasquatch," said Paul Majeta of the bigfoot group.

However, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has a more conventional opinion. Agency spokesman Jerry Feaser said conservation officers routinely trap bears to be tagged and often see animals that look like the photos.

"There is no question it is a bear with a severe case of mange," Feaser told The Bradford Era.

I see London, I see France...

Frogs don't need underpants. That may be old news, but listen up: scientists at the Hiroshima University in Japan have created transparent amphibians!

The see-through frogs result from the genetic engineering of a recessive gene (meaning both parents must contribute the same genetic code for their offspring to have a certain trait, like blue eyes or red hair) for transparent skin.

Though transparent fish already exist, the transparent frogs are the first four-legged animals produced with this trait. "It was the first time in the world, so I wanted to shout for joy," said Professor Masayuki Sumida at the University.

The new creatures may be helpful some day in school biology classes to those who are squeamish about dissecting frogs--just hold them up to the light instead!

(ITN photo)

Teeny tiny owl

The American Bird Conservancy has released this photo of a very rare Long-whiskered owlet, species name Xenoglaux loweryi, that has been spotted undisturbed in the forests of Northern Peru for the first time ever. This beautiful little guy has eluded bird watchers who have been trying to find him for thirty years!

Xenoglaux means "strange owl," and he sure is a little strange-looking with his long eyelashes and big orange eyes. Strange-looking, but so adorable!

Scientists think there are only less than 1,000 of these owls existing in the world today--and the number may be less than 250 total. The species was discovered in 1976, and has been captured in nets a few times, but has never been observed in the wild until now.

For more pics of the Long-whiskered owlet, click here.

New cat on the prowl

The World Wildlife Fund announced the other day that scientists have determined the clouded leopard found on the island of Borneo to be a different species from the cat of the same name found on the mainland of southeast Asia.

The scientists, who have discovered about 52 new species of plants and animals in Borneo over the past year, studied the two cats' DNA to see if they matched. They found about 40 differences in their genetic makeup. Lions and leopards have only 56 genetic differences! They think the mainland and island species diverged, or separated and changed, about 1.4 million years ago.

The clouded leopard is named after its spots, which look like clouds on their fur. Those spots provide great camouflage in their jungle environment--not to hide them from predators (since they are at the top of the food chain) but to make the quiet and sneaky cats almost invisible to their prey.

The medium-sized clouded leopard has, for its size, the longest canine teeth of any living cat. For an interactive diagram of the clouded leopard click here !