Hippo's Wild World of Animals - Random Animal Facts

OK, bear with me, but haysoos, can you talk a little about deforestation for the paper industry? I thought that these days, paper companies had some sort of environmental stewardship regulations to ensure that supplies of soft wood for paper are sustainable and they don't need to destroy habitats. Or is the issue that the paper forests take up too much land that would otherwise support wildlife in 'old growth' forests?

I used to work for USDA, so I'm not insensitive to the plight of ranchers and subsistence farmers, but I have to agree that environmental policy is largely formed to advance the interests of agro-business and motivated by greed. 

Here's some owls:

 

They warm the cockles.

These prairie dogs seem more tolerant than friendly toward these birds, though.

I must admit I'm not as familiar with the impact of the paper industry on wildlife.  In Alberta, that cause was largely lost about 20 years ago, when giant pulp mills were injected all over northern Alberta and the terms of reference for the environmental impact of those mills was deliberately limited to only the effect of the pulp mill site and its effluents.  Any impact on the forest at large was "out of scope" and did not affect approvals for the mills.

I do know that the moves to increase Post Consumer Waste recycling in most paper products has had a big influence on limiting the environmental and ecological damage from the paper industry.  In these parts, most of the pulp is produced from quick-growing poplars, and so regenerative growing of sustainable forest plots is feasible.  However, it has resulted in huge areas of similarly-aged, monoculture orchards, rather than real forests.  These tracts are more prone to huge pest outbreaks, like forest tent caterpillar, but poplars are tough and even complete defoliation by caterpillars just reduces their growth a bit.  The big threat has been to our pine forests harvested for lumber, which have been devastated by mountain pine beetle for most of the last decade.  Again, 80 years of overly aggressive fire-fighting and planting monoculture reforestation stands have exacerbated the problem.

Hah, the fennnec is adorable, true. I'm doing red pandas this week, they're super cute so at least there'll be that. I'm covering general foxes in around three to four weeks so I'll definitely get some facts in for them.

This week is all about the red panda, as requested by Lord Lucan and yeah, these intros are getting shorter, soon I'll be down to "Red panda, Lord Lucan ".

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Red pandas are divided into two subspecies, the Western red panda which live in Nepal and the Himalayas and Styan's red panda which lives in southern China. The red bear-cat is arboreal, usually living at height and are endangered mostly due to habitat loss, poaching for their pretty pretty fur and inbreeding due to shrinking gene pools.


The red panda is kinda unique, though you'd think the namesake would imply a relation to bears, it really doesn't. Off as part as the Ailuridae family of which it is the only extant member, it is part of the mustelidae superfamily laying someplace between skunks, weasels and raccoons.


They are small creatures, around 50-60cm in length, 3-6kg in weight and being tree-dwellers, mostly run on bamboo and are mostly active at night. Lifespans are short for the red panda, living around 8-10 years and sometimes longer.


The reason for red pandas being called pandas at all is fairly simple, they had the name "panda" first but for whatever reason they were said to be related to the giant panda back in 1911. This caused the name to stick to the giant panda due to the relative unknownness of the red panda and now "panda" usually means mid-size black and white bear, not small non-bearlike red cat-fox-raccoon thing. Though it had first naming rights, it is now occasionally (and disparagingly) called Lesser Panda for its trouble.


Due to the hinky nature of the red panda's genetics, it is considered a living fossil due to many remains of an extinct species very similar to that of the red panda being found as far as North America and the British Isles (haysoos can give you more on that).


Could you domesticate a red panda? You potentially could but being a rather hidden and crepuscular species and of course endangered, it'd be less than smart to try unless you keep to a night schedule and don't mind harbouring an endangered species as a pet.


The actual count of red pandas alive are based on limited estimates, numbers suggest anyplace between 2,500 and 10,000 members make up the red panda population globally and falling due to limited reproduction rates for their numbers and a high mortality rate.

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Like its namesake, the red panda is a very pretty animal so ever more pics and gifs of them eating sushi!!

The familial relationships and evolution of the pandas has long been a confounding mystery. The giant panda and red panda were put together based on a variety of shared characteristics: they both eat bamboo almost exclusively, they have distinctive highly contrasting markings (especially around the eyes), related to their diet they both have low, rounded (bunodont) molars instead of the shearing blades common to their more carnivorous ancestors, they're both found in the bamboo forests of Asia, and (what was considered most important) they have extended wrist bones that provide an opposable nubbin that improves their grip. The giant panda uses their "thumb" to hold bamboo stalks, and the red panda to improve their grip while climbing (or hanging from dinner trays). Together, these seemingly unique shared characteristics seemed to provide an obvious phylogenetic relationship.

Starting in the 80s, evidence from genetic analysis as well as more careful cladistic analysis of other characteristics threw doubt on that relationship. Genetics in particular showed that the giant panda was more closely related to bears, and the red panda to raccoons and weasels. This could potentially happen if the red pandas were the ancestors of all raccoons and weasels, while the giant pandas were the ancestors of all bears - but there was considerable evidence from other areas that this was not the case.

Eventually, it was pieced together that there were two separate stories - one of a bear that started specializing in eating bamboo, and another of a smaller, cat-like arboreal critter that also started eating bamboo. The dental characteristics are convergent characters that occur because of this dietary shift. The overlapping range of the extant species is another remnant of where the available bamboo happened to be. And the extended wrist bones turns out to be another convergent character - the sesamoids (little loose concretions of tendon and cartilage that become ossified) that form the extensions are actually from different clusters of tendons - and are also convergent. The contrasting markings seem to just be coincidence (and aren't really that unique, as the raccoon relatives of the red panda show).

Back in the Miocene, another Ailurid known as Simocyon ranged across Europe and parts of Asia (the best fossils are from Spain). This critter had the extended wrist grip, and was probably a good climber, but had really carnivorous teeth. It was probably a powerful biter, and may have even been able to break open bones. It was originally considered a type of wolverine. But it was actually a giant, predatory red panda - about the size of a mountain lion.

So the giant panda is really just a pretentious vegan bear, while the red panda is the true panda, and the last living representative of a really cool fossil family. One of the other names for the red panda is the firefox, and this plays no small part in why I use Firefox as my default browser.

A few years ago, I got called to the zoo to check out some elms that they were pruning and found what appeared to be a beetle infestation. So I went in and started checking out the branches they had cut and laid in the enclosure. While checking the branches, I felt a tugging on my pant leg, turned around and found an incredibly cute red panda making puppy dog eyes at me. I had assumed they had taken the animals out of the enclosure while doing work in there, but apparently not. I felt so bad that I didn't have any kind of treat to give him. Even though I probably shouldn't have, I reached down and pet his head. He waited a few moments, and then wandered away. That was one of my best days ever.

Is "nubbin" a real word? Because if so, it is my new favorite word (along with "fleecy"). 

And I was wondering about that - I see lots of pics of animals gripping things with with what appear to be five fingers and there is evidence of animals using tools. So is the 'opposable thumb' really that big a deal?

I'm trademarking for the web series! Nubbin & Fleecy: Companionship is divine.

I'm doing raccoon dogs!! After next week which is ostriches!


They're like monotone red pandas... but dogs.

I once had a chat with one of these fluffy guys in a zoo. One escaped from their enclosure, climbed a small tree and I saw him and tried to get him to come to me. He wouldn't budge though, just looked at me through sleepy, annoyed eyes. He was so adorable.

I think these two would have a lot of fun together.

Sanziana  The more the merr . . . wait, Maru?  NO MAURUS ALLOWED. 

*Red panda and other cat build a palisade and start lobbing snowballs at Maru*