“Happy Dreams”: A Sleeping Crocodile

Nile Crocodile - Crocodylus niloticus

Nile crocodiles are the largest crocodilian (and reptile) in Africa, and are second in size only to saltwater crocodiles (Steve Irwin’s salties!), which are native to Australia and its surrounding seas.

However, saltwater crocodiles, while aggressive, don’t have the tendency to turn out “man hunters” like the Nile crocodiles do. This is largely because the Australian coastline is protected enough that native prey is still available at a level where predatory animals can survive. Nile crocodiles, however, do not have this advantage; the majority of the Nile crocodile range (aside from central Africa) has a high degree of overfishing and pollution of the freshwater rivers, to the point that some Nile crocs have turned to humans as a source of food.

One of these “man-eaters” is named Gustave - believed to be between 40 to 60 years old, he weighs about one ton (2000 lbs or ~900 kg), and is known to have eaten at least 300 humans in his lifetime. If sources with uncertain credibility are taken into account, he may have eaten upwards of 800 humans, including over 200 able-bodied adult males. Gustave’s home range is a section of the Ruzizi river near the border of Burundi and Rwanda, where several other “man-eating” crocodiles are known to live. Due to the ongoing civil wars that have been taking place in that region, people have been driven to the rivers as a sole source of food (as crop farms were frequently raided and/or burned), and the local terrestrial fauna has also been greatly reduced. Gustave’s attacks are only known to have begun around 30 years ago, though he would have been large enough to easily kill a human around 4-5 years of age. This puts his consumption of people as a direct result of the changing dietary habits of civilians, during the times of civil unrest.

The Uganda Protectorate. Sir Harry Johnston, 1902.

biomedicalephemera:

Look carefully at this fish. It may bring you good fortune!

No, no, coelacanths aren’t the fish of Yeh-Shen, but they were referred to as the “Wish Fish” in many telegrams between JLB Smith and his colleagues in Grahamstown and back in England - though there had been reports of a “foul-tasting, oily, hideous fish” going around for decades, it seemed that since the first specimen was recovered intact, all of the reports evaporated like magic. No one heard of any new “uglyfish” caught by locals, no one caught any in the tedious trawling missions sent out by Rhodes University, nothing.

The first report of a new intact Coelacanth that had been caught by a local who had seen a reward poster happened at a most inopportune time: two days before Christmas Eve! Oh, it may seem like the perfect Christmas gift to Smith, looking back, but at the time it was a disaster. The fish had been caught out on the Cape, the other side of the country! And to make things worse, the next day was a Sunday, followed by Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing Day. There would be no way Smith could get to the fish in time to preserve it for science, because, as one visiting Portuguese friend once noted to him:

You may talk of Russia and the Iron Curtain, but it is nothing to South Africa on a Sunday or a holiday. That is an Iron Curtain. It shuts down, boom, boom, everything like that, and everything is dead!

A Sunday followed by three Bank Holidays was the worst possible outcome, especially since the trawler that the fish had come in on had to ship out again the day after Boxing Day.

Through an agonizing maze of run-arounds and unreachable telegraph lines, Smith and his team did eventually manage to stall the trawler one day, and alert the Prime Minister on Boxing Day that they (the Grahamstown team) had secured a coelacanth. Though by many he was considered an antagonist to the sciences, and doubly so to an extremely English center such as existed in Grahamstown, he saw the magnitude of this news, and saw what a boon it would be to South Africa to be able to announce it as soon as possible. With direct orders from the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense procured a light airplane that could take Smith where he needed to go to retrieve the fish, and Smith’s team made preparations to announce everything on 27 December.

The Search Beneath the Sea: The Story of the Coelacanth. J. L. B. Smith, 1956.

Hero or Armored Shrew (Scutisorex somireni)

This curious creature is very cool, and not nearly well-known enough! Its unique characteristics make it almost as fascinating as the tuatara, but I have seen so very few articles or papers published regarding the species - though the fact that it only lives in central Africa in the deep jungle, in a land of rebel fighters and landmines, probably doesn’t make it very conducive to making researchers desire to go out there and find out more about them.

From what we already know, the armored shrew is unique among mammals, as it has an incredibly strong interlocking spinal column. Early vertebrates had a spine that was interlocking, and today the trait is carried on in many reptiles, amphibians, and the gar fish. However, mammals lost the interlocking spine when they no longer had to carry a disproportionate amount of weight in their thorax and abdomen, and the armored shrew is a callback to the days when we were first differentiating from lizards. From what we know about mole and shrew evolution, it’s presumed that the interlocking spine re-emerged in this species, after millenia of having “normal”, non-interlocking bones for the spinal column.

Thanks to their incredibly strong spine, they are able to withstand incredible weights compared to other similarly-sized mammals. A paper written in 1917 regarding the strength of the interlocking spine noted that “the column can withstand the weight of a 160 lb human without harm”. I really have to wonder about how they found that out - a 160 lb human is different than 160 lbs of pressure, due to weight distribution. I have to assume there was, at least at some point, a researcher literally standing on top of their shrew.

The Congo Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History. Published Aug 1, 1919.

[p.s. Thanks to octoberwaffle for bringing this slice of awesome to my attention - it’s been a long time since I was completely clueless about the existence of such a cool creature!]

Greater Kudu - Tragelaphus strepsiceros

The Greater Kudu is the spiral-horned antelope you’ll find if you travel farther south than the savanna of central Kenya (north of which, the Lesser Kudu reigns). As a browsing ruminant, they can be found in small herds - though their population is declining rapidly - in most dry, warm, southern grasslands of Africa, where browsing material (bushes and shrubs) and a water supply is present.

Though humans have hunted the Greater Kudu (both for their horns and their meat) since antiquity, and still do to an extent that they’re decreasing in population faster than they can reproduce, there is a curious upside to the modern human presence in southern Africa: as humans divert rivers and water sources to irrigate crops and trees, the territory of the Greater Kudu has increased impressively. The increased amount of dry territory with a water source has allowed the species to roam much farther than it ever would have naturally. Whether the spreading out of the still-declining population is a net gain for the species is not yet known.

Wild Life of the World. Richard Lydekker. Volume III. 1916.

External Myiasis

Myiasis is the term used for any infestation by parasitic insect (generally fly) larvae in a vertebrate, and is most commonly encountered as “flystrike” in the livestock industry. In some parts of the world, flies like the tumbu fly (Cordylobia anthropophagus) and human botfly (Dermatobia hominis) cause problems in people, especially when proper precautions are not taken to avoid contact with larvae.

This particular case was caused by the tumbu fly, and surprisingly, is both a fairly typical presentation of a severe subcutaneous infestation of the larvae - and it  rarely causes long-term complications or serious problems. The weeping boils occasionally become infected after the larvae mature leave the body, but while the maggots are still growing, they eat the dead skin and infected skin around the wounds they cause, leading to minimal or no scarring, and a clean surface for the body to heal.

Still, can you imagine having an infestation that bad and being told “It’ll be better in a few weeks?” I would sooner rub mercury over the affected skin than “wait it out”…well, maybe not. That was actually one of the early attempted cures for myiasis in all animals. The problem is, it causes the larvae to die underneath the skin, and if they’re not promptly removed (which involves cutting open the wounds in a pretty serious way), they begin to decompose, and will quickly cause severe infection and sepsis.

Luckily for this guy, by the 1900s, doctors had both Vaseline, and knowledge that suffocating the larvae would draw them out - a far less dangerous, and far more effective, way to get the unwelcome guests to leave. In fact, applying Vaseline to the site and using manual extraction once the larvae emerge is still the preferred way to treat myiasis.

Diseases of the Skin. John Macleod, 1920.

Red Locust (Nomadacris septemfasciata)

The red locust is a sub-Saharan grasshopper in its gregarious phase. Unlike desert locusts, red locusts have not caused any devastating crop destruction since the 1940s. However, the last mass gregarious infestation lasted from 1930-1944 in Chad, the Sahel, and almost all of southern Africa, and was as devastating as the Rocky Mountain locust was in the United States in the 19th century.

Fabre’s Book of Insects. Illsutrated by E. J. Detmold, 1921.

Okapia johnstoni - The Okapi

Though it has the same general body shape of the giraffe, okapis have much shorter necks, and their type body evolved long before the giraffes. However, their significantly striped necks and legs did not evolve to what we know today until the species split off into forest-dwelling and grassland types.

Like the giraffe, the okapi has a very long, blue, muscular tongue. It uses this part of its body to groom itself more thoroughly than would otherwise be possible, and to strip the leaves off of bush branches. It also has the cloven hooves and digestive tract of the giraffidae family.

Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 1902.

Abyssinian Wolf - Canis simensis

Despite appearing more coyote or fox-like, and previously being thought to be anything from jackal to domestic dog mutation, molecular genetics now place the “Abyssinian wolf” (now commonly known as the Ethiopian Wolf) much closer to grey wolves than any other canid. They are the most critically endangered canine species that is still extant in the wild. 

In addition to being incredibly rare, Abyssinian wolves have a fairly distinct lineage from the grey wolves, and are highly specialized for their niche in the Ethiopian ecosystem. Their teeth are spaced significantly farther apart than other canids, to more effectively catch and eat small-to-medium-sized rodents. Each individual hunts by itself during the day, but they still retain the pack dynamic that many other carnivores have, at least while resting.

Interestingly, though once widespread, no known tribes use the Abyssinian wolf within their folklore, though Ethiopia now views the species as a national pride. This is in sharp contrast to the grey wolf, which is widely used in Native American and First Nations folklore, and many other sacred canid species.

Abyssinian Birds and Mammals, from paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, 1926.

Children leading adults blinded by onchorcerciasis

In some parts of West Africa, river blindness (caused by Onchocerca volvus) had blinded almost 40% of the adult males in villages, and was the leading cause of blindness for most areas. Transmitted by the black fly (genus Simulium) and one of the subcutaneous filariasis agents, O. volvus doesn’t directly cause river blindness, but introduces the bacterium Wolbachia to parts of the body, causing persistent inflammation and eosinophilia, permanently damaging tissues.

The complete destruction of sight can take decades, but without treatment, the filarial worms are not attacked by the immune system in a way that eliminates them from the body, so degradation continues to the point of debility.

[Photo: Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health & Medicine, ca. 1905]

Balearica regulorum - Grey Crowned Crane

This flashy bird is the most primitive of the living Gruidae, the family of cranes. Its direct ancestors existed as far back as the Eocene (56-34 mya). Though at least eleven species of crowned crane once existed throughout Europe and North America, they are not a cold-hardy genus, and went extinct over several ice ages. Notable, though, is the fact that the primitive crowned crane was not particularly cold-sensitive, though it possessed a largely identical body form. We know this because the fossils have been found on both sides of the Eocene “Icehouse” event (as well as both sides of the E-O extinction event, though that mostly impacted aquatic fauna), and they clearly survived the Oligocene to have developed into the forms that went extinct during the Neogene Period of the Cenozoic Era.

These days, the Grey Crowned Crane can be found in South Africa and throughout the Serengeti.

Wild Life of the World, a Descriptive Survey of the Geographical Distribution of Animals. Richard Lydekker, 1915.

ofpaperandponies:

kathleensart:

1897 Antique Engraving

Aardwolf

You’ve got some some bitchin’ fur, aardwolf.