Beluga whale (click image to enlarge)
I posted a much-inferior drawing of a beluga whale a couple of years ago, but it had a perfectly serviceable write-up, so I won’t say anything more except to tell you to watch this video.
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European otter (click image to enlarge)
0328
Hi, mammals! I think I’ll be on track to finish the Mammals of the World Cup on schedule with the actual World Cup if I post all of Group E today and then get back to once-a-day tomorrow. (Whether I will succeed is still unknown, as life has been pretty stressful around here. But I’m trying!) Also, I’m really not doing my best work lately, so dumping four mammals on you at once might distract you from that fact.
Our first mammal is the European otter (Lutra lutra), who is representing the Netherlands, where its numbers had decreased to almost nothing but it has been reintroduced. The Netherlands beat Slovakia (where the Yak part of my name comes from) in the Round of 16 and will be playing Brazil in the quarterfinals on Friday.
Orca (click image to enlarge)
0329
The orca or killer whale (Orcinus orca) is playing for Denmark tonight. Did you know that orcas in groups have been known to take down blue whales? It’s unlikely, I think, that anyone is going to beat the orca in this World Cup. Denmark, on the other hand, didn’t make it out of the group stage.
Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (click image to enlarge)
0330
From Japan, the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga), which is also known as the momonga! It’s just too cute to be believed, really, and is also represented on one of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, seen below. (I’m very into Yu-Gi-Oh! now. It comes with the 14-year-old son. I have a beast deck. Besides the Nimble Momonga, I also have a Tree Otter, a Sea Koala, a Kangaroo Champ, a Green Baboon Defender of the Forest, and a Rescue Cat.)
A very handy Yu-Gi-Oh! card (click image to enlarge)
Japan made it to the Round of 16 but lost to Paraguay today. After the group stage, they don’t allow ties anymore. First, they have 30 minutes of overtime, and if there’s still a draw, they take turns taking penalty kicks, which are kicks from a spot 12 yards from the goal. Five players from each team try that, and if there’s still a draw after the penalty kicks, they play sudden death. After the 30 minutes of extra time, the Japan-Paraguay game was tied 0-0, and Paraguay won in penalty kicks.
Allen's swamp monkey (click image to enlarge)
0331
This is Allen’s swamp monkey (Allenopithecus nigroviridis), and it’s from Cameroon (as well as Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Its scientific name means “Allen’s ape, black and green,” and it is indeed kind of black-and-green colored. Cameroon didn’t get out of the group stage at the World Cup.
Group E Results
Well, the killer whale is the killer whale, and none of these guys stand a chance against that apex predator. It moves on to the next round, and I think our mustelid friend in this group, the European otter, could do some damage to the swamp monkey, and obviously the momonga is adorable and tiny and hopeless against any of the other three. So the two mammals continuing on to the Round of 16 from Group E are:
Orca (Denmark)
and
European Otter (Netherlands)
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Short-finned pilot whale (click image to enlarge)
0311
The short-finned pilot whale is technically in the dolphin family. It has teeth and lives throughout the middle third of the earth, north and south of the equator. Japanese whalers are allowed to kill it.
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Beluga whale (click image to enlarge)
0264
The beluga whale lives throughout the arctic waters of the world. It’s gray when it’s born and gets lighter until it’s five or six, at which point it’s completely white. Belugas have been called sea canaries because of their elaborate echolocations and vocalizations. Overall, they’re doing pretty well, population-wise, but some subpopulations are threatened, generally by hunting, climate change, habitat loss, or sea traffic.
The melon-like bulge on the top of the beluga whale’s head is called a melon! According to the American Cetacean Society, “The rounded melon on its head contains oil, and the whale can change the shape of the melon. Scientists believe that the melon plays a part in the beluga’s echolocation system.”
You can listen to the beluga whale’s many different sounds at this page on the National Geographic website, and you can listen to Raffi’s wonderful song “Baby Beluga” on his MySpace page (highly recommended!). “Baby beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and you swim so free. Heaven above you and the sea below, and a little white whale on the go…”
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click image to enlarge
0214
Happy Inauguration Day! Today is the last day of our visit to President Obama’s (!!) home state. This funny guy is a Cuvier’s beaked whale, also called a goose-beaked whale. Even though Cuvier’s beaked whales are believed to be quite abundant, and even though they have an impressively large range, very little is known about them. They’re difficult to study because they seldom come to the surface. We do know, though, that they can dive deeper than any other air-breathing animal and that they hear through their throats (the sound travels to their ears through “a unique fatty channel”).
We also know that beaked whales seem especially susceptible to being harmed by naval sonar experiments and exercises. In 2000, several Cuvier’s beaked whales beached in the Bahamas, bleeding around their brains and ears, during naval exercises. Naval sonar has also been linked to mass strandings in the Mediterranean, the Madeira Islands, the Canary Islands, Japan, and the Gulf of California. The bad news for Hawaii’s beaked whales, reported last week, is that the U.S. Navy has been given a permit for a year of sonar and bomb training off the coast of Hawaii. The Navy is supposed to try not to harm marine mammals, but since no one knows exactly how sonar hurts the whales, how can we prevent it?
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Well, I was going to post a new mammal drawing today, which would have brought us to six consecutive days! But alas, I decided to pick tonight to try out a new paper (I was going to try to find a more archival replacement for my usual tracing paper) and, well, it’s just not working out for me. So instead, here’s an installment of the Mammal News Roundup.
May 28, 2008, The Guardian: Jane Goodall, a hero to mammals including me and my friend Tynan, is proposing that the Nobel Prize committee add a new prize, “for advancing medical knowledge without experimentation on animals.” I absolutely agree that, at the very least, we could drastically cut back on how often we experiment on animals now that we have amazing scientific technology and that we should actively recognize and reward new ways of doing science that don’t involve harming animals, but a Nobel Prize for such a niche seems like it would not quite fit in with the others.
June 23, 2008, CNN.com: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case regarding whether or not it’s okay for the Navy to disregard the welfare of whales when it’s performing sonar tests. Despite evidence showing, apparently, that whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals can be injured or killed by military sonar, President Bush tried to create an exemption that would allow the tests to be conducted without an environmental impact assessment. Courts up to the Supreme Court have sided with the whales.
On the other hand, the court isn’t going to hear a case about the proposed fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, meaning that the law that gives “the secretary of homeland security the power to bypass laws or regulations prohibiting the fence’s construction” stands. A law that gives someone the power to break the law is an interesting law indeed. This is an issue I feel very strongly about, but I’m not going to start ranting about it right now.
June 24, 2008, NewScientist.com: A study suggests that piglets—being raised for their meat—who get to listen to music and play in their own rec room are less stressed. The piglets in the study listened to music by Bach and Elgar, chosen for its resemblance to porcine grunts! Less stress for pigs means better pork for humans.
June 20, 2008, The Guardian: The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea was once farmland. Now that it’s been left to its own devices, endangered animals have been quite successfully making their homes there. But the DMZ isn’t likely to stay natural and wild for long, since development and industry are encroaching, so a group wants to have the zone declared an official nature reserve: the most dangerous nature reserve in the world, according to this article. The article is accompanied by a slide show about the wildlife of Korea’s DMZ.
Photograph by Scott Bauer, United States Department of Agriculture
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click image to enlarge
0113
It’s North Carolina Week at the Daily Mammal, and in fact, next time you’re in Raleigh, you really should visit the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, where, in the Coastal Carolina area, you can see gigantic gorgeous skeletons of several whale species, including this one.
The humpback whale’s Latin name means giant wing of New England. Isn’t that beautiful? The “giant wing” part refers to the whale’s pectoral fins, which are huge. Everything about the humpback whale is huge, actually. They get to about 50 feet long and weigh around 50 tons. They’re known for the beauty and mystery of their songs, which researchers have recently discovered have a complexity we didn’t understand before. In fact, the whales’ vocalizations share some basic elements with human languages. One neat thing is that whales in different parts of the world have completely different songs, and the songs in a given area develop and evolve collaboratively.
At one time, we had hunted humpbacks almost to extinction. In the ’60s, the world adopted an international whaling ban that brought them back from the edge. Now, some countries have begun whaling again, and it was only because of the critical outcry of dismay that Japan last month postponed its plans to kill dozens of humpback whales for “research.”
Take this mammal home with you!
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