Episodes
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Animal Education February 2024 Misconceptions Zoology and Biology and Evolution and Behaviour Discussion about Animals including Roadrunner and Coyote Nature and Ecology - Misconceptions about Animal Facts and Behaviours
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Animal Education - 2024 New Year's Special
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Missing episodes?
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Today, I will discuss a creature shown here by what is not a Safari Figure. I know, crazy.
This is the Panther Chameleon. It is a very colorful plush, but the real one is not that far off. Wild Republic does make some great stuffed animals. Anyway, you may have seen other panther chameleons that are not nearly as colorful because they change color to camouflage, right? Well, no, actually, chameleons usually only change color to show emotion. They get bright like this plush when angry, especially males in the breeding seasons. Most chameleons' base colors provide camouflage along with their strange movements. These movements they do resemble leaves and sticks blowing in the breeze. So, the Chameleons do change color, but not to camouflage. Outside of that, most chameleons do follow the "status quo." They have independently moved eyes, which they use to spot predators and the insects they catch with long sticky tongues. They also are usually mainly greenish and live in trees in Madagascar, Africa, and surrounding areas. However, they have been introduced into the United States. This species, in particular, is rampant in Florida. People release their pets into the wild where they shouldn't be. This threatens native wildlife. So basically, please don't get a pet you can't/won't take care of or bring it to a rescue that can take care of it or rehome it. This species is the least concerned, so don't worry too much about people who have them as pets. They are popular pets as they only get to 16-20in. long and are easier to take care of than other chameleons. This is not saying much, though, as chameleons often need the most vet care and get sick much easier than other reptiles.Support the Show.
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Animal Education 23 - Honey Badger
Alright, so I realized that I made a post yesterday, which was Sunday. Usually, I skip Sunday. However, since I am at college, I only planned four posts and am not at home to take pictures. I am going home on Friday, so I may have to skip one day this week. I may have an alternative plan, but I would have to see if I can fit it into the theme—just a heads up.
Anyway, today is about the Honey Badger. Now, why is this creature on today's misconception post? Everyone knows about it, so we should know what's true. However, many popular things get misconstrued, even if based on the truth. For example, Honey Badgers do eat honey and raid Beehives. They don't get guided by the Honey Guide Birds. This is a rumor pushed by most likely staged recordings. Certain species of Honey Guide birds do lead humans to honey, though. That is how they got their name. Anyway, what else is not true about Honey Badgers? The whole scaring off lions' things might not be true. I swear I heard somewhere that this is false, but I can't find it. Anyway, in reality, it's probably more of curious lions finding out honey badgers are very brave creatures, and deciding their investigation is not worth it, especially since honey badgers aren't big kills for a lion. Their name is even kind of a lie. They are badgers that eat honey, but each subspecies is called a Ratel. For example, my model is a Cape Ratel. So, what is true about honey badgers? Well, they can reset snake venom. If they get bit by one, they can "sleep it off." This allows them to hunt snakes. They have thick skin that helps with this, and that also helps with the bee sting mentioned at the beginning. Before we end, here is a quick fact list. They live in Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia and can weigh anywhere from 11lbs to 35lbs depending on region and gender. Besides honey and snakes, they also eat birds and small mammals. I hope you learned a thing or two and got more accurate pictures of the Honey Badger.Support the Show.
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Animal Education 22 - Bald Eagles
Alright first night at college...I am excited and terrified. However, I took some picks ahead of time so I can still make my Facebook posts.
This is the Bald Eagle, America's National Bird. It was going to be the Turkey but that was one of Benjman Franklin's bad ideas. The Bald Eagle lives in North America, eats primarily fish and waterfowl, and is called bald due to its white head. Juveniles don't possess this feature though and are just brown. Adults will pair for life and make huge nest which they will use and expand until it falls down, and then they will make a new one. These eagles specifically up to 13ft. deep and 8.2ft. wide nests as the birds are themselves up to 12lbs. for females. Males only get to 8lbs.
So, what's the theme this week and how does the Bald Eagle fit in. Well, this week theme is misconceptions about animals to follow up with last week's dinosaur misconceptions. So how does the Bald Eagle fit in. Well, you know how in movies you hear a screech when a Bald Eagle appears. So here the thing, Bald Eagles actually chirp. Look it up, seriously, Bald Eagle calls sound like songbirds. So, what do actually make those screeches. Red Tailed Hawks. Yeah, Hollywood used the Read Tailed Hawk calls because they wanted the Bald Eagle to be intimidating. From this to Jurassic Park to Jaws. They might be good movies, but they aren't accurate. I will do a post on the Red Tail Hawk in the future. Maybe next week if I can think of a good theme. That one will use a stuffed animal and not a Safari Model. This one is a Safari model, and so will be at least half of this week. Sorry for people tired of Safari, they make good models.Support the Show.
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Today is about Spinosaurus. For most creatures, I construct a post that flows well, not based on anything from the previous story. However, Spinosaurus is such a crazy story that I have to recount it simply. The original fossils were found in 1915. A massive predator with even larger spines. This makes up its famous sail, to the point it names means "Spine Lizard". It is such an old fossil it was believed at first to be quadrupedal like all dinosaurs back then. This is shown in the first picture with the blue specimen. Outside of that, it was nothing special. Eventually, science advanced, and then we got the bipedal version red and blue version seen here. This is all we knew; however, the fossils could teach us more. That was if the fossils were not destroyed during the bombings of Munich in WW2 in 1944. That's fun. We found pictures of the fossils, though, in 2000. That's when a weird thing happens: the original fossils held the famous long crocodile-like jaws. So why are the depictions of it till this point not long-jawed? Some of it could be that some of the original fossils were found to be another species. This is something I can't really figure out why, so maybe this is an excuse for you guys to do research. Anyway, this version would define it as a massive aquatic predator larger than Trex that would feature in Jurassic Park 3. This is featured in the green and tan model. However, in 2014, new fossils were found in Morocco. This made a quadrupedal version accurate again. Yeah, what a weird cycle. This also made it longer than Trex, but not larger. However, 2018 made it bipedal again, but still horizontal. This produced what is depicted in the 2020 Papo model, which is brown and black. However, in 2020, more fossils would reveal the strange, keeled tail. This is shown in the PNSO model, which is the most accurate figure made by far of this species ever. After all of this, we are done, right? It was the long, keeled-tail piscivore from Egypt, Morrocco, and maybe South America (A relative from there might actually be Spinosaurus). It's aquatic, too. This is supported by teeth found in a massive sawfish from 2010. In 2021 a study came out that said its body would support a shoreline lifestyle, but not an aquatic one. Oh yay. Then a 2022 study looked at the bone densities of all spinosaurs and found Spinosaurus could deep dive. Then, another 2022 study said it was unstable on land and lumbered in the deep water, so it lived in inland lakes and rivers instead of the usual coast depictions. If that last part was chaotic, that is because it was. Spinosaurus is a good example of how science changes, and what was right a few years ago can become wrong and then right again and then kind of wrong. Also, war is bad cause cool stuff and people get blown up.
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So, yesterday's post was about when the movies get dinosaurs wrong. What happens when science gets dinosaurs wrong? Now, this happens a lot as what we thought was right gets changed by new discoveries. However, this change is still interesting to talk about. This is Oviraptor, up to 5.2ft. long and 73-88lb. dinosaur from late cretaceous Mongolia. Yes, this creature did live with velociraptors and is related. However, Oviraptor's lineage split off from Velociraptor before birds did. That's the current theory, anyway. So why is Oviraptor called Oviraptor? See, its name means egg thief as this was thought to be its main way of predation. This is due to it being found with nests presumed to be of Protoceratops. Oviraptor was believed to have used its large, toothless beak in completing this endeavor. However, a later specimen of the closely related Citipati revealed that they were actually very good parents as the eggs it was found with had embryos confirming they were actually eggs of the oviraptorid. On top of this, the parent was found sitting on the nest when she died, meaning they most likely stayed there during a sandstorm to protect the eggs, resulting in them getting buried and preserved as a fossil. So yeah, names can be a scam sometimes but they usually have a reason. On a final note, yes, this is another safari model.
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Ok, I forgot to post yesterday. I don't have an excuse. Not that I need one, but yeah. Anyway, we're going to do a 2 in one to make up for that. Also, this is actually a two-in-a-one, not a scam like with the dome heads. This post will focus on two creatures mutilated by Jurassic Park. This is going to be a long one, so strap in. Mutilated is a harsh word as these popular designs of these dinosaurs are very cool but aren't accurate. These dinosaurs are Velociraptor and Dilophosaurus. I won't go into much detail on their overall biology and save that for a rainy day when I run out of ideas or need a break from cranking out themed content. First up is size. Jurassic Park Velociraptor is huge, with around a 5ft. stature and an overall size just larger than a man. In real life, they were turkey-sized. Dilophosaurus has the opposite problem as in the movie; they are the size of a large dog, but in real life, 23ft. long and could weigh 880 lbs. The reason for these crazy sizes, though, is something I will get to at the end. Next up are distinguishable traits. Velociraptors did have toe claws but, in real life, had feathers and probably did not hunt in packs. The pack thing is still debated, but the feather thing is not. Some bones of Velociraptor had places where feathers would grow out of, and we knew this before the movie was made. Really guys. Next up, Dilophosaurus had the head crest but not the frill or poison. These adaptations would not preserve most fossils and are very unlikely anyway. So early, I mentioned that the sizes and some other traits have a reason, which is the original novel. See, in the novel, Deinonychus was used instead of Velociraptor. Deinonychus is about the size of the movie creature and has the right face shape. Velociraptor had a pointed snout, while Deinonychus had the famous rounded snout of the movies. This may be hard to tell from my dinosaur train toy, but the rest of my toys are featherless thanks to Jurassic Park, so y'all are stuck with this. Anyway, the makers of Jurassic Park said that the name Deinonychus, which means Terrible Claw, was not scary, so they just called these Deinonychus Velociraptor, which means fast...thief... Great job, guys, great job. They weren't completely crazy, though, as they would make the movie one Velociraptor antirrhopus. The real one is Velociraptor mongoliensis, the species from Mongolia. Antirrhopus is the second part of Deinonychus' scientific name, so this new name at least references Deinonychus and makes this move creature a fictional species. However, the advising paleontologists said they needed more accurate, so they changed it back to Velociraptor mongoliensis. So, the paleologists made the movie less accurate by making it "more accurate."
Great job guys. A final note for this craziness: the movie keeps these guys from the Deinonychus location in North America, as seen in Dr. Alan Grant's first scene. Velociraptor MONGOLIENSIS is from NORTH AMERICA in Jurassic Park. Anyway, Dilophosaurus is way less annoying. See, in the novel, the individuals encountered were juveniles. In a later comic, a properly sized adult would appear. However, the movie just never specified, so the juveniles just became adults to keep their appearance consistent for fans, or they just forgot, I don't know. Final notes overall. Both Jurassic Park versions of the dinosaurs are shrink-warped. This is discussed in my Andrewsharchus post. The Dilophosaurus shown here is a good Safari mini. The crest is a bit outdated due to a study in 2020, but besides that, it is good. Finally, if you got this far, thanks for reading.
P.S. I have no idea why you got this is purple.Support the Show.
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Okay, so this week's theme is misconceptions about dinosaurs. So, before we get into that, what is a dinosaur? The exacts are a little complicated, but essentially, they are a clade of reptiles, specifically a type of archosaur, that split off and includes all the creatures that would be considered dinosaurs and birds. So yes, birds are dinosaurs. Crocodilians are archosaurs but separate from the dinosaur clade. Since birds are so different and derived from dinosaurs, they are often called avian dinosaurs, and the "normal" dinosaurs are the non-avian dinosaurs. So, where did this avian and non-avian split occur? Well, since we only have a snapshot of past life, less than 1%, in fossils, we can only guess for now. One species commonly claimed to be this cutoff point is Archaeopteryx, "the oldest bird". This creature lived in Germany from 150.8 to 148.5 million years ago, which back then was an island archipelago. We know after over a century and a half of having fossils of this creature that, it could fly, but in a way different from modern birds but kind of like pheasants with burst flight. We also know the creatures' feathers were primarily matte black, but patterns are unknown. How we know the color from fossils is another day's topic. Quick hint: the fossils of the creature are so good we have its feathers. Anyway, is it a bird? No? New studies show it is in Deinonychosauira, which split off from birds. This clade also holds things like Velociraptors and troodontids. This classification of Archaeopteryx, however, is still up for debate, and many still consider Archaeopteryx to be the first bird, and the people who published the alternative still said it could be the first bird. We will need to find more fossils to see more exactly where birds split off from dinosaurs and if Archaeopteryx is a bird or not. Final note: this is a safari model. Good minus the color as the color from the real specimens only got to the point it is now in 2020, and this model is from 2015, so I can't really blame the toy.
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Animal Podcast 17 - American Cheetah
Today, I will follow up on my Pronghorn post with the American Cheetah Miracinonyx. Before we begin, I would like to note that this model is not very good. It is a small model from some random ice age creatures set. I served its purpose as a kid's toy well, but for this, imagine a large cheetah instead.
Anyway, Miracinonyx was one of the many megafaunas of the Pleistocene of North America. This megafauna status is showcased by its estimated max size of 209 lbs with a standard individual weight of 150 lbs. This may sound light, but realize a normal cheetah's weight, at max, is 159 lbs. The largest modern Cheetahs barely outweigh the average Miracinonyx. Despite this size, the American Cheetah probably hunted Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Goats, and Pronghorn. This brings up a good point. Many of North America's current residences were also around in the Pleistocene, yet the megafauna went extinct. This could have been for many reasons. The most popular proposed are climate change and human hunting. We may never know the true reason, though. This doesn't exactly explain why Miracinonyx, in particular, went extinct since its prey is still around. What probably happened is that it was out-competed by the more adaptable Cougars, which now live across the whole of the Americas. Competition probably explains other extinction as well. Dire Wolves, which were more closely related to Jackels, most likely got out-competed by Grey Wolves, and Megalodon was most likely out-competed by Livyatan. (Yes, this replaces what I proposed in the Megalodon post, but I was using an outdated theory. Then again, this could change literally as I post this, so it is really neither here nor there.) Overall, life is a mystery, and so is death. Also, extinct things tend to be bigger and cooler than what we have now. Emphasis on tending.Support the Show.
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Animal Podcast 16 - Deinosuchus
Today, we follow up my second post with the giant predator of Deinosuchus. I discussed that it probably hunted the 5-ton Parasaurolophus, which is terrifying to think about something that large getting dragged underwater by an even larger predator. This fact alone is crazy: 9-ton crocodilian hunting massive dinosaurs. (We have evidence of this as some hadrosaur tail vertebrae were found with Deniosuchus tooth marks. This shows Deinosuchus ate hadrosaurs sometimes, even if not always.) That sentence reveals another thing, though. Deinosuchus is a crocodilian. Another super croc, Sarcosuchus, is not a crocodilian but a close relative. Deinosuchus is a crocodilian in the vein of crocodiles and alligators, and the largest one. Maybe size is hard to tell from fossils, and many other extinct species may have gotten that big or larger.
Deinosuchus probably lived like today's largest crocodilian, the saltwater crocodile, patrolling rivers, and the coast of the inland American sea. See, the land now known as the United States was split down the middle by a great inland sea. This made the states this creature was found in, all ten of them, coastal states. These states were Utah, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, New Jersey, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and North Carolina. Now, a few of these, like New Jersey and North Carolina, did not border the actually inland sea but were still coastal areas. The world was so different back then, not to mention these 9-ton crocodilians.Support the Show.
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Animal Podcast 15 - DracoRex ["Not as They Seem" Week]
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Animal Podcast 14 - Wrapping up Shark Week
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Animal Podcast 13 - Ninja Lantern Shark
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Animal Podcast 12 - Basking Shark
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Animal Podcast 11 - Megalodon
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Animal Podcast 10 - Great Hammerhead (and some AZA info)
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Animal Podcast 9 - Japanese Saw Shark
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Animal Podcast 8 - Sand Tiger Shark
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