TIL thread

[Infinity Blade]

May 15, 2023 4:14:09 GMT 5 Supercommunist said:

I could see why the average person views 4 out of the 5 as ugly but what's wrong with wildebeest?

I've seen some people refer to the wildebeest as looking like an awkward spare parts animal. Like here:

The wildebeest is a peculiar, awkward looking beast and is described in Africa as the "Spare Parts" animal - The tail of a horse, the horn of a juvenile buffalo, the sloped back of the hyena, the stripes of a zebra, the rump of the Maasai donkey, the beard of a billy goat, the brains of . . . well, a small rock, and the face of a grasshopper. The large head and heavy front end are out of proportion to the slender hindquarters and spindly legs.

www.flickr.com/photos/jillclardy/33522369498

Although to be honest, I think it and the spotted hyena look rather tame.

[Supercommunist]

Apparently cows sometimes need to have methane drained from their bodies.

[Infinity Blade]

TIL that when the Bronx Zoo was creating its Elephant House (now the Zoo Center) in 1907, there was a contest among sculptors to decide who would decorate it. It ended dead-even between Alexander Phimister Proctor and Charles R. Knight. As a result, the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society) assigned Proctor to sculpt the Asian elephant head, while Knight would sculpt the African elephant head (link->).

[Supercommunist]

I didn't actually learn this today but I recently have reading up on animal reflexes and time perception.

Unsurprisingly small and fast animals experience time more slowly than larger slower animals. Aerial and aquatic animals also seem to have a higher HZ vision because it is easier for animals to adjust their positions in the air and water.

thedebrief.org/the-perception-of-time-is-not-universal-even-among-humans/

www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/505824

Comparsion between how we perceive fly movements vs a pied flycatcher with a visual HZ of 146.



thewire.in/environment/perching-birds-see-twice-as-fast-as-we-do

[Infinity Blade]

Last night I learned that there were A LOT more unused segments and creatures for Dinosaur Revolution than I thought. Here are some that I didn't know were supposed to be a thing.

dinosaurrevolution.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_unused_stories_%26_segments

- A segment taking place in a Triassic ocean, and was to feature Mixosaurus, Placodus, and Nothosaurus. A Mixosaurus is seen attacking a Placodus here. I get vibes of 19th century reconstructions of ichthyosaurs attacking other marine reptiles, a concept that actually holds up better than most people think.

- A segment that was supposed to be about iguanodonts getting drunk on fermented fruits plus a predator. There were two versions of this segment, set in Europe and North America, respectively, but neither made it into the final product. Given how similar this sounds to the Shroomosaurus Shunosaurus that did make it into the final product, I'm going to assume that this concept was recycled for that segment. You can tell at this point that Dinosaur Revolution was not originally meant to be a documentary.

- An Ugly Duckling-inspired segment, featuring an albino Triceratops hatchling. It gets rejected by its mother, then wanders around until it is adopted by a mother Pachycephalosaurus.

- A segment featuring a gang war between a flock of Dimorphodon and Dorygnathus. I think this was a missed opportunity. I didn't realize how paleomedia is sorely lacking in pterosaurs being each other's worst enemies until I watched Prehistoric Planet. Both genera also had a respectable, if not downright nasty set of teeth.

- An Elm Street-inspired segment featuring Prenocephale, Therizinosaurus, and Alioramus. From the looks of it, the Therizinosaurus gets burnt by a forest fire and goes on a rampage or something. Yeah...

- A segment where a herd of Stegoceras gang up on a Daspletosaurus attacking one of its members. A Styracosaurus joins the fray too. I don't know why a bunch of 40 kg at most bonehead bois think they can stop a 2-3 tonne tyrannosaur, but it looks like it would've been an entertaining segment for sure.

- Lastly, there were supposed to be some hadrosaur-centric stories, meant to deconstruct the defenseless hadrosaur trope, but these were cut. It really is a shame.

Originally, stories focused on hadrosaurs were originally planned for the show. They were intended to deconstruct the all-too prevalent, and highly flawed, cliché that their sole purpose in life was to be weak and helpless prey items for theropod dinosaurs. However, most of them were ultimately cut from the final production for unknown reasons. It is unknown which species of hadrosaurs would have been featured in this segment, but Edmontosaurus and Lambeosaurus would have been likely contenders.

[Infinity Blade]

TIL that there is a species called the seven-armed octopus which, despite its name, has eight arms like all other octopuses. It's just that it hides its hectocotylus (its eighth arm, specialized for fertilizing eggs) in a sac, which conceals it when not in use and therefore giving the impression it only has seven arms.

Seven-arm octopuses, also known as blob octopuses or septopuses, are one of the largest octopus species on the planet — capable of reaching a maximum length of around 11 feet (3.4 m). Despite the name, these octopuses do actually have eight arms. But the males are known to hide their hectocotylus — a specialized arm used to fertilize eggs — in a sac beneath their right eye, which is how the name originally came about.

www.livescience.com/animals/octopuses/see-extremely-rare-photos-of-alien-looking-7-arm-octopus-spotted-near-washington-coast?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_content=livescience&fbclid=IwAR0CqbuyBvLbzFRhMU-__7KVf4s3xNXYZtccwVLLdF40MtvOQQQfH8I6Ka0

[Infinity Blade]

So TIL that in 2006, a red fox entered the saiga enclosure of the Cologne Zoo, Germany. The zoo first got the saigas in 1976, and were part of a breeding program there ever since. But when the fox got into the enclosure, it killed all the newborn saigas and the breeding females, ending three decades of husbandry in a single attack. The male survived because it was separated from the females during the attack (the females and newborns refused to enter the stalls for the night) and lived there until dying in 2009.

An overview of the saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) in captivity in Europe and the United States-> (additional source->)


It honestly kind of baffles me. The newborns I can understand, but I don't really understand how a red fox of all things managed to kill multiple (unspecified how many) adult ungulates weighing about 28 kg.

[Infinity Blade]

Not straight up today, but last night I learned that Lystrosaurus maccaigi actually survived the Permian extinction.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7694564/

[Exalt]

This seems like a thread I may be able to make use of...

Yeah, I have no idea how a fox is supposed to kill something that big, and multiple times in a night...

[Exalt]

Today I learned, thanks n part to Infinity Blade, that there is a dinosaur named Dryptosaurus.

[Exalt]

Today I learned that today is National Fossil Day.

[Exalt]

Technically this wasn't today, but the question popped into my head a day or two ago: How do they know that Dilophosaurus could spit venom?

It turns out that those are entirely fictitious elements created for Jurassic Park. Of all of the criticisms of those movies from an accuracy standpoint, I wonder how I never heard this part...

EDIT: Why would you even spit venom to begin with?

[Infinity Blade]

Oct 14, 2023 3:51:55 GMT 5 Exalt said:

Technically this wasn't today, but the question popped into my head a day or two ago: How do they know that Dilophosaurus could spit venom?

It turns out that those are entirely fictitious elements created for Jurassic Park. Of all of the criticisms of those movies from an accuracy standpoint, I wonder how I never heard this part...

EDIT: Why would you even spit venom to begin with?

Spitting venom likely evolved three separate times in snakes. Snakes with this ability will aim their venom directly into the eyes of their attackers, allowing them to effectively cause pain (maybe worth noting at this point that spitting cobra venom doesn't look like the black goo the JP Dilophosaurus shot out).

Dilophosaurus was originally thought to have had jaws and teeth that were weak for hunting, so there were proposals that instead it killed prey with its claws (on both hands and feet), that it was a scavenger, or that it fed on fish (although, that last one was proposed more from the fact that Dilophosaurus supposedly exhibits some piscivorous adaptations in its jaws & teeth). I believe when Crichton was writing the original JP novel, he took some liberties and gave Dilophosaurus that venom-spitting ability as a means to explain how it killed its prey. Now, we now know that this isn't true (Dilophosaurus' skull and teeth were, in fact, formidable enough to kill large contemporaneous prey), but for the longest time this was people's impression of Dilophosaurus.

[Supercommunist]

Birds have their own special way of cooling down called gular fluttering. Apparently it is actually more efficient than panting.

“If you think about a dog panting, their tongue isn’t only allowing evaporation, but is losing a lot of body fluid,” says Erickson. “Birds are much more efficient about water and water loss.”

www.audubon.org/news/how-birds-keep-their-cool

[Exalt]

Oct 14, 2023 4:06:31 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Oct 14, 2023 3:51:55 GMT 5 Exalt said:

Technically this wasn't today, but the question popped into my head a day or two ago: How do they know that Dilophosaurus could spit venom?

It turns out that those are entirely fictitious elements created for Jurassic Park. Of all of the criticisms of those movies from an accuracy standpoint, I wonder how I never heard this part...

EDIT: Why would you even spit venom to begin with?

Spitting venom likely evolved three separate times in snakes. Snakes with this ability will aim their venom directly into the eyes of their attackers, allowing them to effectively cause pain (maybe worth noting at this point that spitting cobra venom doesn't look like the black goo the JP Dilophosaurus shot out).

Dilophosaurus was originally thought to have had jaws and teeth that were weak for hunting, so there were proposals that instead it killed prey with its claws (on both hands and feet), that it was a scavenger, or that it fed on fish (although, that last one was proposed more from the fact that Dilophosaurus supposedly exhibits some piscivorous adaptations in its jaws & teeth). I believe when Crichton was writing the original JP novel, he took some liberties and gave Dilophosaurus that venom-spitting ability as a means to explain how it killed its prey. Now, we now know that this isn't true (Dilophosaurus' skull and teeth were, in fact, formidable enough to kill large contemporaneous prey), but for the longest time this was people's impression of Dilophosaurus.

I forgot about snakes doing it arghhhh I knew I was forgetting something.