Fun Fact of the Day 6/30

So, I was sitting around today when a special came on the National Geographic channel all about rats. Naturally, I watched it, and it was really awesome. So, in honor of our furry friends, I'll share a few facts about rats and why you should regard them not with revulsion, but with admiration.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of these rodents, and one which very few people are aware of, is their remarkable intelligence. Many people can recall examples of experiments in which a rat or mouse was placed in a maze with some cheese at the end as a behavior test, but what few realize is just how smart rats are when it comes to these things. The experiment depicted in the special I saw today was a particularly telling example of this. The scientist (I can't remember his name, my apologies) placed rats in a maze with a cookie hidden in it. Along the way, several random objects were placed, such as plastic toys and the like. What was discovered by placing electrodes on the rat's brain during testing is that the rat actually constructs a mental movie of sorts of the path taken to the food, for future use. Then, in future tests with the same rat, the scientists would observe the rat pausing upon encountering the first landmark from before. Then, on the computer, the same pattern of neurons fired as when the rat followed the maze before, even though the animal was stationary. This thus showed that the rat was actually pausing to think about the direction to the food, and when it resumed movement, it reached the cookie much faster. So, rats actually have the ability to "record" memory very vividly for future use!

Then there is their rather fascinating physical adaptations as well. They can smell twice as good as a human, which is astounding for their size. Additionally, they can squeeze through tiny spaces because of their ribs, which are actually hinged at the spine to allow the animal to compact itself. This means that if a rat can fit it's head through a space, it can fit it's entire body through as well. They can tread water for three days straight without drowning, and can hold their breath for three minutes at a time, making them excellent in the water as well. Point being, rats are really quite awesome.

Fun fact of the Day 6/29

Not to worry, I still have a post in the making about all the squirrel stuff, you know, if you care. But while that's still going, I have yet another fun fact which may brighten your day (or just bore you).

Today's fun fact concerns a common misconception which many people have regarding the grouping of primates. Namely, people tend to mis- or over-use the term "monkey". For instance, after viewing "King Kong" (which is a kick-ass movie, by the way, particularly Peter Jackson's remake), you might feel inclined to say "aw, that poor monkey". To this I say nay nay. You see, King Kong is not at all a monkey for one simple reason: he doesn't have a tail. Instead, Kong is in fact an ape, not a monkey. But the tail's not the only difference, it's mainly a difference in classification.

Primates, a taxon which includes all simians, including lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans, is broken down into two suborders:

-Strepsirrhini: the prosimians= lemurs and their kin, excluding tarsiers
-Haplorrhini: tarsiers, monkeys, and apes

It's the latter of those groups that contains the issue we're focusing on. Haplorrhini is thus broken down into old and new world monkeys. The old world group contains superfamily Homioidae, which is the ape family. Apes are thus separated from monkeys in classification, and are distinguished by the absence of tails, among other anatomical factors.

In short, apes are not monkeys, there is a defined difference.

Fun Fact of the Day 6/28: Why You Are Nice

So, it's about time I started posting some interesting tidbits every day once again. I'll get the post all about the squirrel research I helped with up later, but for now, let's explore something at least related, shall we?

It's an aspect of animal behavior called altruism. Now, altruism is used colloquially to describe any act that is beneficial to others. You might call yourself an altruist if you give money to a homeless person, or donate to a charity. However, in biological terms, altruism has a specific definition, and is thus a specific behavioral phenomenon. Speaking in these terms, altruism is defined as an act which is beneficial to another individual or group of individuals, and is costly to the individual completing the act. Say, for example, that you jump in front of someone about to be stabbed, and you take the hit instead. The other person has directly benefited, and you have taken the cost upon yourself of having a knife thrust into you by some asshole. Even if you weren't stabbed, you still took the risk, and that's considered a cost. Now, several animals display behavior that can be classified as altruistic. In the case of the squirrels I help study, individuals will cry out in alarm when there is a sighted predator, giving away their position (and thus putting themselves at risk), and alerting others to the danger (thus benefiting them by giving them early warning of a threat).

But speaking in terms of evolution, there is an inherent problem with altruism at face value. Why would any animal have the programmed impulse to put itself at risk? In terms of natural selection, it's a conundrum, because (in theory) animals without the behavior would not put themselves at risk nearly as much, and would be more likely to reproduce and out-breed the altruists, leading to the population becoming more selfish over time and weeding out the altruists. Yet in populations like the Belding's ground squirrel meadow I spent the last 11 days in, this doesn't happen. So, the question for evolutionary biologists and ethologists was, why?

That question was a remarkable issue for biologists for years. Even Darwin lamented in "On The Origin" that species like the social insects (which are full of individuals blindly sacrificing themselves for the good of the colony without reproducing themselves at all) could be the death of his theory. The puzzle remained irritatingly unsolved until the 1960's, when a British biologist named W.D. Hamilton came along and offered the answer. In his 1964 paper "the genetical evolution of social behaviour", Hamilton proposed a model for how altruism had evolved, without breaking the rules of natural selection. It involved a mechanism called kin selection.

In order to understand kin selection, a brief discourse upon how it works must first be made. Now, you are filled with genes, composed of DNA. Duh. But an important part of how heredity works is understanding the principles which explain your genetic relationship with other people. For instance, if you have a brother or sister, you share the same parents. Thus, it is highly likely that you share a number of the same genes with your sibling. You might have the same color eyes, for example, or have similar facial structure. And similar principles also apply to your behavior. Humans are a bad example for this, because so much of our behavior is learned rather than genetically programmed, but bear with me. If your brother has a gene that makes him afraid of spiders (theoretically, of course), it is more likely that you will also have this gene. You might not actually have it, but the point is that (because he's your brother) you have the highest probability of sharing that gene because of your close relatedness to him. His cousin has a slightly lesser chance of sharing the gene, and a second cousin has an even more scant chance. When you get to friends (i.e., people unrelated to him at all), it's basically a crapshoot over whether they'll have that gene or not because they're not related to him. So, the point here is that if you have a gene (or set of genes) that code for a certain behavior in response to a certain stimulus, your relatives (depending upon how closely they are related to you) are likely to have it as well.

Now, lets come back to kin selection and dear Dr. Hamilton. Altruism, according to Hamilton's paper, can be explained using the phenomenon of relatedness outlined above. How? Well, it's really pretty simple. Natural selection favors individuals with a higher fitness. Fitness is the reproductive success of an animal. But more basically, an animal with high fitness is able to spread it's genes better or more often than an individual with low fitness. Usually, this is achieved by a particular animal being stronger or better adapted, and thus more likely to reproduce. But with altruism, natural selection can favor behavior negative to oneself if it promotes fitness indirectly. See, if you examine altruistic behavior in animals very closely, it almost always occurs among related individuals, and not distant relatives or unrelated individuals. The reason for this is that in order for altruism to be adaptive, it must promote an individual's fitness more than a non-altruistic individual. So, if an animal saves it's sibling, the chances are that it's sibling shares many of the genes that it does, and even if the altruistic animal dies as a result of it's act, most of it's genes will will be passed on by the closely related family member, including the genes for altruism.

The result is what is now called "Hamilton's rule", a mathematical model for altruistic behavior. It reads as follows:
rB > C

In which:
r= coefficient of relatedness (an arbitrary value describing how closely related the two individuals are
B= the net benefit to the recipient of the behavior
C= the net cost to the actor

Thus, in order for altruism to be adaptive, the above inequality must be true. So, that explains why you are compelled to be nice to your family: because they'll pass on your genes even if you take a knife for one of them.

Posts in the works

Not to worry, I've got several lengthy posts on things coming up, including a really long fun fact. I haven't forgotten about my blog and my nine readers ;)

I'm Back!

Yep, my dad and I got back from camping/staying in a cabin yesterday, so I figured posting on the blog is appropriate. I did study squirrels on the trip, for about 10 days. I'll make a full post on the research later, with pictures and everything. Additionally, I'll resume fun facts as well. You know, if anyone cares.

On Hiatus With Squirrels

Well, I've been since Sunday. My dad and I are camping up at Rock Creek Lodge, out of Bishop, and internet is understandably limited, when available at all. Not that it matters, I've scarcely had the time or need to use a computer at all. See, I spend the time up here helping study Belding's ground squirrels in a nearby meadow, with a team of graduate students and a professor from the University of Chicago. Today was my first full day of work, and I helped tag a number of squirrels and observe activity budget data (what the animal does at 10 second intervals). In short, alot of fun, more on it next week when I come home.

Fun Fact of the Day 6/11

Well, because I had a Jurassic Park party last night, I'm really rather itching to share a fun fact about dinosaurs in some capacity. So, I've puzzled over just what exactly to write here, and then I settled on the idea of enlightening people to a fact which few people know about some dinosaurs. Now, it's commonly known, at least to a degree, that dinosaurs and birds share an evolutionary link. It's been the scientific consensus for a number of years now, and one can see the implications it's made in films like "Jurassic Park", in which the "Velociraptors" (actually deinonychus, see this fun fact for details) were fast, predatory pack hunters, moving more like killer ostriches than bipedal lizards. But in recent years since the film came out, another remarkable (if more superficial in an evolutionary context) bird-like feature of dinosaurs has become apparent: feathers. Now, before we discuss this feature in full, it is best to first explain it's restrictions within dinosaur classification. Feathers occur in many groups of dinosaurs, particularly on the smaller winged ones (duh) like Archeopteryx. But the group of dinosaurs that is believed to all have feathers is the group known as the Dromaeosaurids, or--if you prefer--the "raptors". This group includes Velociraptor and all of it's counterparts, such as Deinonychus and Dromaeosaurus. The first evidence that Dromaeosaurids had feathers was discovered in 1999, when impressions of feathers were found in the rock surrounding a well-preserved Sinorthosaurus fossil in China. Since then, similar evidence has been found for other members of the family, such as velociraptor, described fully in this paper. So, the scaly monsters that invade the kitchen in Jurassic Park can, since the turn of the century at least, be seen as looking more like killer birds. Personally, I think they look even more awesome that way =)

Fun (or perhaps disturbing)Fact of the Day 6/10

So, the reader submission thing didn't really work, but that's fine, it's to be expected, after all. Instead, I will regale you with one of the decidedly less fun facts that I know, particularly if you're male. It concerns small catfish of the amazon in the Trichomycteridae family, collectively known as Candiru. Now, alot of myth surrounds the rather nasty parasitic habits of this fish, but much of it is simply hype. What is true is that there is at least one documented case of one of these little fish entering and affixing to the walls of a man's urethra. Yep, that little thing swam right up into his penis and spread it's spines...ouch. It had to be surgically removed. But males will be relieved to know that the supposed attraction of these fish to urine is in fact not true, as is the myth that they can swim up urine streams (yuck...). Instead, these little guys root about for food in the slightly acidic mud at the bottom of still parts of the Amazon, and tend to avoid humans as a natural source of parasitic attachment. Still, it does make one shudder just a wee bit, if you'll pardon the pun.

Fun Facts: Readers Choice (you know, if you want)

Urgle! I forgot to post a fun fact today! No matter, I'll make it up to all nine of you. I'll do a double fun fact tomorrow, reader-survey style! What animal do you want a fun fact about tomorrow afternoon? I'll pick two, and then away we'll go.

Fun Fact of the Day 6/8: Stream of Consciousness

So, I feel like, instead of one fully developed fact, I'll simply vomit a stream of little tidbits, sound good?

• The largest overall snake in the world is the Anaconda (Eunectes murinus), which can reach lengths of around 25 feet and weights of 550 pounds
• Crocodilians (which include, crocodiles, alligators, caimans, and gharials) are well-known for their bone-crushing bites, but it also little known that their jaws conversely are very weak when opening, and can be held shut with a good grip.
• Walruses use their tusks for both sparring amongst themselves and to anchor themselves to the seabed when feeding in the mud for clams, which they locate with their sensitive lips and whiskers
• Unlike most bats, fruit bats do not use echolacation, but instead have enormous eyes for seeing in the dark. The Flying Fox of australia is the largest bat in the world, and is considered a fruit bat.
• Both sharks and platypuses share the same sixth sense: the ability to detect electrical impulses. Platypuses have receptors on their leathery bill for this sense, just as sharks have on their snouts
• The largest eyes in the world belong to Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, or the "colossal squid" of antarctica, which can be nearly 2 feet across
• Charles Darwin actually was initially very aloof about his finches, as he forgot to write down what island each of them were from. He had to use another naturalist's notes to establish where each species had come from.
• sharks have been around in the fossil record for 400 million years
• You are never (statistically) farther than 8 feet from a spider
• The tiger shark is called the "garbage can of the sea" because of it's propensity to eat bizarre things. Among the objects purported to have been found in these animals stomach are: a dog, license plates, a roll of tar paper, nails, part of a suit of armor, handbags, linoleum, and even parts of people
• Hippos cannot swim, they can only walk along the bottom. They also only spend the day in the water, and come out at night to wander distances as far as 6 miles to graze
• Elephants eat four meals per day: three are the same time as our breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the last is at around four o'clock in the morning
• Peregrine falcons can enter a dive and reach speeds of over 200 miles per hour, opening their wings to hit targets (usually pigeons or other birds) and pulling a g-force of around 10 in the process. Needless to say, at this speed, the falcon's extended talons often rip the unlucky target clean in half

So, good?

Crododilian Columbus Counterparts Cruising on Currents

The saltwater crocodile, also known as the Indopacific and Estuarine crocodile (and colloquially called the "salty" by some Australians) is an animal with an impressive range, spreading from much of Australia to the southern parts of Indonesia. But one question that has continually puzzled scientists about this animal is how it travels within this range. Namely, the question is: how do saltwater crocodiles travel over large stretches of open ocean? This may sound easy, but the animals are actually poor long-distance swimmers, negating their ability to simply hop in the ocean and, you know, go. They're not Michael Phelps. But a new study published this week has finally revealed how the scaly travelers overcome this issue: they use ocean currents. Like sailing ships with wind, it was discovered using acoustic tagging that the animals use ocean currents to carefully ride their way to distant locations, whether they're on the same continent or not. This is facilitated by the crocodiles remarkable ability to go very long periods of time without food/water. They can retain internal water and can go weeks between meals, particularly after eating something large. This means that a crocodile could easily slip into the ocean and ride the currents with minimal swimming or energy exertion. Fascinating! This made my day so much cooler.

If you'd like to read the story in full, EurekAlert has it here.

Best Shirt Ever

So, I found this shirt yesterday on the internet with the help of my bestest buddy, Thomas Petty, and today I decided to buy it. And why not? It's a Jurassic Park Staff T-Shirt! Now I can strut about with authorization as an authentic member of the Isla Nublar/Isla Sorna Staff. Best job ever, if you're not, you know, getting torn apart. This shirt will help me make friends in college.

Fun Fact of the Day 6/5

"And the thing about a shark is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then..."

I open today's fun fact with a quote from one of my favorite movies, Spielberg's "Jaws", specifically the character Quint. Now, I love sharks, and the bad image of them portrayed in this movie is indeed negative (you're more likely to be killed by a pig, falling airplane parts, or a toilet then a shark), the movie truly is a great film, and despite it's bad PR for sharks, I do love it. The quote above is taken from Captain Quint's famous speech late in the film about his experience on the sunken USS Indianapolis. But it brings up an interesting part of shark anatomy: their eyes. The reason that they appear white, as they apparently did when tearing apart Quint's fellow sailors, is because sharks need to protect their eyes during a bite, to keep scratching/biting/stinging prey from damaging them. Most species have a special membrane that shuts over the eye during a bite, but in the great white, they simply roll their eyes back, producing the white eye seen by scared-shitless Quint. How then do they navigate in those last seconds? Well, sharks have six senses (no, they do not see dead people, don't even think about making that joke, because I've heard it before when explaining this), and the extra one is the ability to detect electrical impulses, even those as weak as the ones given off by working muscle tissue. These are picked up by small pores on the snout called ampullae of lorenzini, allowing the shark to bite with it's eyes safe and sound.

I love sharks =)

Drunk Monkeys

I'm not joking.

A giggle and a lecture. I recommend both.

Fun Fact of the Day 6/5

One might be inclined, upon first glance, to look at an animal like, say, a moose and comment upon the impressive stature of it's horns. Indeed, I often hear people say things like a deer's horns, or a sheep's antlers, etc. Point being, many often make the mistake of assuming that "horns" and "antlers" are congruent and thus, interchangeable terms; or they don't know the difference. So, allow me to clear it up. The difference between horns and antlers as anatomical structures is their permanency. Horns are structures which grow from a young age in a particular animal, and remain permanent. In contrast, antlers are structures which grow seasonally, and are shed seasonally as well. Additionally, both antlers and horns can be indicators of sexual dimorphism, wherein only one sex has horns or antlers. This is more common with antlers, but some animals also have only horned males or (in rare cases) females as well. But that's beside the point, the real point is that there is a defined difference between horns and antlers. For instance, gazelles have horns. They begin to grow as juveniles, and while they do stop growth at some point, they are never shed. They are made of permanent bone, and are conjoined to the skull. Now compare this to a deer or a moose (which is actually a large deer). They, instead, have a cycle of antler growth and shedding. In winter, deer do not have antlers, males included. In spring, males begin antler growth anew, with small stubs appearing and growing rapidly into branching structures. By late spring/early summer, these knobs will grow into nearly full racks of antlers, with older males displaying a larger set of antlers each year. But these antlers are still velvety, meaning they are covered in a fizzy layer of skin and fur as blood flow continues to supply nutrients for their growth. This velvet remains present as the antlers grow through the summer. In early autumn, the antlers "dry out", as blood flow stops and they become calcified structures free of tissue. This, in turn, causes the velvet to dry up and become itchy for the deer, and they spend a great deal of time rubbing it off on trees and rocks. Finally, as September-November rolls around, the antlers on all male deer are complete in growing, and are ready for use. It is at this point that another major difference between horns and antlers also becomes apparent. Antlers are used in the fall for what is called the rut, the breeding season. In this, the males become very active and aggressive in the search for females, and they use antlers to fight with other males exclusively. Horns, in contrast, can be used for this too, but because of their permanence, they are more versatile in their applicability and can also be used for defense, or even digging or scraping. So, there you have it. Antlers: yearly structures, grown anew for reproductive competition in males. Horns: permanent structures, more wide in application.

Fun Fact of the Day 6/4

I'm going to bed soon, so I'll keep today's tidbit brief, but nonetheless fun. How about insects? I just bought a used copy of E.O. Wilson's "The Insect Societies" today, so I have bugs on the mind anyway. My personal favorite aspect of so many insects, as implied by the aforementioned title, is their intriguing-nay-fascinating social structures. You see, the subtitle of that book I bought was "The Super Organism", and not as a 50's era sci-fi reference either, because many insects have social structures so amazingly cohesive that they tend to evolve almost as a whole organism rather than a collection of individuals. Ants and Bees are the two most intriguing examples of this, and tonight I wish to highlight one particularly delightful tidbit about the latter gregarious insect, bees. Specifically, it has to do with a behavior colloquially known as the "waggle dance". The waggle dance is a behavior demonstrated by honeybees after foraging, and is used to communicate to other bees in the hive the location and direction of a resource such as food or water. In it, a bee will return to the hive after having located a specific resource, say, a potentially useful clump of pollen-rich flowers. In order to inform it's comrades of the way to reach this clump of flowers, the bee performs a rapid and very intricate series of movements which replicate those needed to reach the food, and also reflect the turns needed and angle of light along the flight path. The result of this quick dance is the ability of the rest of the bees to thus locate the resource from their waggled directions. Amazing, no? A more detailed description can be found in this video.

The Gulf Oil Spill

To put it briefly and lightly: It makes me sick.

My Favorite Artist

So, I'm supposed to be at a pool party right now, but I have to finish burning discs for my mom, so I have to wait until that's done to bicycle on off. In the meantime, I'd figure I'd share a personal facet of mine: my favorite artist. I mean, I'm no connoisseur of art, I didn't even take Art history a couple of years ago. But nonetheless, I do find myself drawn to one particular artist, not so much for meaning as simple aesthetic pleasure and appreciation. That artist is Charles R. Knight, and, as one might guess, he had a little something to do with paleontology as well as art. Born in Brooklyn in 1874, Knight seemed to have a childhood similar to mine, at least in the respect that he was deeply interested in nature and animals. The similarity ends there however, seeing as Knight turned this interest into paintings, despite being legally blind with astigmatism. The result of Knight's subsequent career under the employ of the American Natural History Museum was a series of some of the most amazing restorations of the natural world (both prehistoric and modern) that I've ever seen. Dinosaurs, Ice Age creatures, and modern animals all seem to come to life in Knight's paintings, and in my humble opinion, he's one of the more under appreciated artists of the 20th century. And his art touches upon one of the less appreciated parts of science as well: aesthetics. It is my opinion that much of the joy of science, especially Zoology, comes from the acquisition of understanding about a particular aspect pf the natural world. But something that may not become immediately clear is the aesthetic interpretation of that knowledge. It's one thing to know how an animal lived, but it only really becomes meaningful if you can look at a fossil and see it as part of a whole, and see it moving and living and blending into the ebb and flow of evolution. I think that's why I like Knight so much: his art really shows just how meaningful and beautiful the natural world is under the lens of science. Anyway, that's my word vomiting on that, I hope you liked it.If you want to see more of Knight's art, I suggest this link. After all, art's just sort of dry without some dinosaurs in it, right?

Fun Fact of the Day Double Header 6/3

Since I didn't post yesterday due to the IB water fight, among other things, I will post two separate fun facts today, in keeping with the daily regimen I promised.

Fun Fact #1: Raccoon Intelligence
Raccoons are well known little mammals, easily recognized by their bandit like mask around their eyes, striped tails, and nimble behavior. Raccoons are members of the family Procyonidae, which also includes coatis and ringtails, and are the largest animals included. One thing that Raccoons are very well known for, as any individual who has had the misfortune of dealing with them as household pests will tell you, is their remarkable intelligence. Raccoons, in a series of studies in the 1960's, were found to be able to figure out relatively complex locks and puzzles, solving them in 10-11 tries, and remembering how to solve them for up to three years. This makes them very resilient pests around suburban and urban areas as well. I myself saw one special where the entry methods of raccoons were recorded as they attempted to enter a backyard and mess about in the koi pond there. At first, the home owners simply places trellis over the pool at night, weighing it down with rocks. The raccoons figured out, however, that this was easy to defeat, as all one needed to do was lift it up on the edge and crawl underneath. They also tried motion sensitive lights to scare the raccoons if they approached, also to no avail. The animals simply avoided parts of the yard that triggered the lights. A similar technique was tried by installing tiny turret canisters around the planters and pond, which would spin quickly and noisily in a circle when triggered, spraying a chemical irritant. Did this stop the raccoons? Nay nay. They simply figured out the radius of the turrets, which was only a couple of feet, that was required to activate them. Then, they would simply find areas of the perimeter where there were large gaps between the turrets, and stroll on through. Impressive, no?


Fun Fact #2: Raven Intelligence
I've always liked Ravens, despite their reputation as common annoyances, or harbingers of death. Their physical stature is impressive, especially since they are the largest members of the corvid family, which encompasses ravens, crows, and magpies. Also interesting is the impressive range of the raven: they're found nearly worldwide, a feat only achieved by rats and a few other species. The reason for this, in addition to their opportunistic and adaptable behavior, is their immensely impressive intelligence. They may seem like dumb birds, walking about on the ground, squawking and picking at trash, but under those glossy black feathers lies one of the most intelligent avian minds in the world, even when compared to other intellectual feathered heavyweights like the African Gray Parrot. This is due to their very large brain, as well as the nature of the intelligence they display. You see, unlike many animals, ravens do not learn by "trial and error", wherein they go at a problem repeatedly until they get it right. Instead they are innovators, and are actually able to look at a problem and solve it mentally by thinking about it. For instance, in one experiment, a raven was placed on a table, and a piece of food was hung from the edge of the table on a length of string. The string was too long for the bird to simply reach down and grab it, and too short to reach from the ground. What the raven figured out how to do was thus to grab the string, and pin it with it's foot as it hauled up more string, incrementally pulling the food up onto the table. In Japan, ravens have even learned how to read and utilize stop lights. They often eat nuts that have uncrackable shells, you see, and when they are unable to open these nuts, they will often take them to somewhere like an intersection. There, they will wait for a red light, and then fly down to one of the cars and place the nut under the wheel. They will then wait for the light to cycle from red to green back to red, and then fly down to pick up the smashed nut to eat. And in another test...well, just watch while the british lady narrates:

Awesome, huh? So, the next time you see one of our feathered friends, just remember: they're probably alot smarter than most of the class of 2010...

New Month, New Title Picture

Sure, I haven't been posting very long, but I thought I'd change my title picture every month, just to mix things up. This month is Tyrannosaurus Rex, or at least the silhouette of the fossil of one...what do you think?

Fun Fact of the Day 6/1

Happy June, Everybody! And, to kick off the first month of summer (at least in a couple weeks) correctly, let us again convene to dinosaurs for enlightenment. Specifically, today's fun fact concerns an aspect of the most famous dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus Rex, that many may overlook: it's posture. Take a look at the following picture Now, this is a painting by prehistoric artist (that is, an artist of prehistoric life, not a comment on his age) Charles R. Knight, depicting a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It may seem normal, but in fact, this painting contains a glaring error. The tail of the animal is dragging on the ground, and T-Rex is standing upright. This was the view of many early paleontologists, and it was promoted by early beliefs that dinosaurs were sluggish, slow animals, relying on their tails to prop them up in their muggy forest environment. They were, in short, seen as reptiles, in the strictest sense of the term (indeed "dinosaur" is even latin for "terrible lizard"), poikilotherms who relied on ambient environmental temperature to keep them going. But as the years went by, the view of dinosaur metabolism underwent a shift. Discoveries in the 1960's of small, more predatory looking dinosaurs like Deinonychus began to reveal that man dinosaurs displayed anatomies more like those of birds. Deinonychus, for example, had lethal claws on it's feet and arms which could only be deployed with swift kicks and jabs, and it's stiffened tail was best adapted for balance when running. In short, the view of dinosaurs shifted from tail-needy couch potatoes to swift predators, perhaps even warm-blooded ones (the jury's still out on that one, but it is now agreed by many scientists that dinosaurs were at least partially warm-blooded). And with this change came a change to Tyrannosaurus's posture. Now, this shift came earlier than much of the later revision to dinosaur metabolic ideas, mostly due to analyses of the efficiency of the dinosaur's locomotion, but it was nonetheless tied to how science saw Tyrannosaurus moving in it's prehistoric world. The model arrived upon, and the currently accepted one, instead saw Tyrannosaurus Rex standing like this:

This model instead places The tail of Tyrannosaurus in the air, serving as a counterbalance to the enormous skull. This is a much more efficient way of walking, and would have allowed a great deal more mobilty to the tyrant lizard king as well. So, there you have it. T-Rex walked like that, not with it's til on the ground. So the next time you see one walking about with it's head high and it's tail dragging behind it, raise your voice in protest and say "nay!"