Photo of the Week, September 6: The Honey Badger

With all the talk about Honey Badgers recently, I felt it fitting that a blog post be made about them. 

This is the honey badger.  Although slightly resembling the build of the wolverine found in North America, the honey badger, or ratel as they are also known as, are actually closely related to the weasel or polecat.  It is the only member of the genus Mellivora, and so it has no extremely close relatives. 

The honey badger's skin is very loose, allowing the animal to twist and turn freely within it.  They have short and sturdy legs, with five toes on each foot.  They stand between nine and eleven inches tall at the shoulder and are about 70 cm long.  The honey badger weighs 25-30 lbs. 

The honey badger is a largely solitary animal, though it may hunt in pairs during the May breeding season.  Little is known about the gestation of the honey badger, but it is thought that cubs are carried for 6 months and are born in pairs.  The lifespan of the animal is unknown in the wild, but they have been known to live up to 24 years in captivity. 

In unsettled areas, honey badgers hunt during all times of the day.  However, in the presence of humans, the animals turn nocturnal.  They are primarily carnivores, and eat such things as insects, eggs, tortoises, frogs, lizards, birds, small rodents, scorpions, and carrion.  In certain cases, the honey badger has been known to dig ground squirrels and gerbils out of their dens to eat them.  In India, honey badgers have been known to dig up human corpses.  They devour all parts of their prey, including flesh, bone, hair, feathers, and skin. 

Longest Polar Bear Swim On Record--426 Miles Straight

This is the record-breaking bear who swam for nine days straight, a total of 426 miles without stopping.  Because of the lack of ice in the arctic, mother bears are being forced to swim greater distances to reach land.  The heartbreaking edge of this story is that this mother bear had a cub that began the journey with her, but the cub died somewhere along the way.  This is occurring more and more frequently, because the cubs are not yet ready to swim such massive distances.  Ice levels in the far north are continuing to drop, and it looks like it will only get worse in years to come.  We can only hope that the polar bear somehow learns a method of survival unknown to it today.

Newly Found "Supermouse" Immune To Poison

Mice have been a common problem for people for hundreds of years.  They are especially a problem when speaking on the topic of food, and its production.  It is a sad fact that this threat of disease is usually controlled by killing the mouse or mice responsible, and that poison is usually the method of choice.  Until now, this has been a useful method of getting rid of the problem.  Now, we have this little friend.

Meet the so-called "Supermouse".  The problem was brought to the attention of researchers by a German baker.  The baker had trouble with mice, and so he called in a pest control man to kill the creatures.  Obviously, you don't want mice in a place that sells food.  The pest control man treated the area with a particularly strong variant of warfarin (a common poison used to kill mice) called bromadiolone.  However, instead of dying, the mice continued to live.  This is where researchers stepped in.  So far, no European house mouse has been resistant to the poison.  The only mouse resistant to the poison lives in Algeria.  Through research, scientists found that the two varieties of mouse had interbred, causing the European mouse to be resistant to warfarin.  Interestingly enough, the same genetic coding that makes the mice resistant to the warfarin causes humans to have osteoporosis and arterial calcification.  It is not known yet whether or not these "Supermice" will suffer from these issues. 

Watch out for your cheese, Supermouse is on the prowl!

Photo from news.discovery.com

Tortoise Loses Leg, Gains Wheel

Meet Gamera, an amputee tortoise who has recently received a different kind of appendage to aid in his maneuvers.

That's right.  His front left leg is now a wheel.  A wheel that is found more often affixed to an office chair than to a tortoise.  Gamera was brought to the vets at Washington State University by his owner due to horrific wounds on his front left leg.  The cause of the injury is unknown, but it was potentially life threatening, and the leg had to be amputated.  After this was done, the veterinarians attached a wheel in the leg's place with an epoxy adhesive.  Gamera is now thriving, as he has gained 3 pounds since his artificial limb was installed.  For those of you wondering, Gamera is named after the Japanese movie monster of the same name.  The monster was created in the 1960's to rival Godzilla.  Gamera was a giant flying turtle.

Surprisingly enough, I found that this is not the first time this procedure has been done.

This tortoise from Brazil had basically the same procedure done in March of this year.  The only difference is that in this case, an extra wheel was added for extra balance.

In the end, I am impressed beyond words at the strength and adaptation of these now bionic tortoises, and at the ingenious methods used by the veterinarians.

Photos from time.com and thestar.com

Photo Of The Week: July 24, Okapi

This is the Okapi.  Although it may resemble a deer, or more obviously a zebra, the animal is most closely related to the giraffe.  The okapi lives on the continent of Africa, and is mainly found in the dense rainforest.  Because there is much rain in this habitat, the okapi's coat of fur is oily and water-resistant.  The animal is a herbivore, commonly feeding on grass, ferns, fruit, fungi, and tree leaves and buds.  Much of the food that the okapi eats is poisonous to humans.  The remarkable striping of the okapi's legs has two purposes.  The first is camouflage.  When traveling through thick grasses, the stripes merely appear as other blades of the grass.  The second reason is to help young okapis follow their mothers through the forest.  The striping is an obvious target that is easier to follow than a solid color.  There are currently between 10,000 and 20,000 okapis in the wild, and there are 154 okapis in zoos worldwide.  

Tooth Grown In Mouse's Kidney

Japanese scientists have concluded an experiment in which a tooth was grown in the kidney of a mouse.  The fact that a tooth was "grown" is not a new one.  The scientists have been developing the teeth in a lab for awhile now.  The new part is growing the tooth inside of the mouse itself.  The new method is also quicker, shaving 10 days off of the previous method's time!  The tooth was grown by combining all of the necessary cells to make a tooth, wrapping the cells in plastic, and placing them in the mouse's kidney.  After the tooth was grown inside the first mouse, it was transplanted to another mouse's gums.  The transplantation seems to be a successful one, and the tooth is functioning in the same manner as a naturally grown tooth.  Scientists believe that this could be the first major step in learning how to replace faulty organs.  The method is not perfected enough to try on humans yet, and I would think that it will be some time before it is.  This is a great step forward, though, and gives hope that perhaps one day, we will be able to live past a decaying lung, kidney, or other vital organ. 

Photo from news.discovery.com

Snakes' Evolving Venom

 This is the Cottonmouth, also known as the Water Moccasin.

This is the Southern Pacific Rattlesnake.

Both of these snakes belong to the family known as pit vipers.  And it just so happens that the pit vipers' venom is rapidly evolving.  For years, those studying snakes thought that venom's primary use was killing prey for the snakes to feed on.  However now, it seems that the snakes' venom is evolving to fight off a predator.  Meet the opossum.

This creature is a marsupial, and is found in North America, the same place as the pit vipers.  Interestingly enough, this furry mammal feeds on the snakes.  The proof that the snakes' venom is evolving as a defensive mechanism, and not as a predatory tool, is found in opossums.  

When it was discovered that the venom of the pit vipers was evolving, and becoming more potent, research was put into place to study the animals that the snakes hunt.  The venom of the pit viper works by shutting down a particular protein of the prey animal.  Therefore, in order to counter the evolving snake venom, scientists were looking for the protein of the prey animals to evolve into a more resilient variation.  Instead, the research team found this resilience in the snakes' predators, the opossums.  This shows that the pit vipers' evolution of venom is in response to its predators, and not its prey.  

Whether you are on the side of the reptile or the mammal, a constant race has started, a race of evolution, between venom and resilience.  A war between the pit vipers and the opossums.

Snake photos from http://www.reptileknowledge.com/squamata/pit-vipers.php

As always, comments are more than welcome!  Also, please email me at realmoftheconscious@gmail.com