Butt tails and rumps E-Book

Mikolaj Golachowski

• Herausgeber: BABARYBA
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Mikolaj Golachowski
BUTTS TAILS AND RUMPS

translated by Jarek Westermark
narrated by Sean Palmer
illustrations by Maria Mroux Bulikowska

Discover the fascinated mysteries of animals’ butts! Is a hippopotamus hiding a helicopter on its rear side? Or a penguin – a cannon? Why is baboon’s ass red, and why does a tapeworm have no ass at all? Why do dogs keep sniffing one another, and why wouldn’t cats ever stop licking their fur? And why does the roe flash its white rump? This book contains thirty exciting and funny stories of butts, tails and rumps narrated by a science promoter and a biologist in one.

Mikołaj Golachowski – PhD in Animal Ecology and Zoology, traveller, translator and polar explorer. When he’s not busy in the midst of Antarctic snow and ice, he lives in Warsaw and writes about animals and protecting the environment. Author of educational and popular science books.

Maria Mroux Bulikowska – illustrator working with children’s and adult books and magazines. Author of two books on Warsaw dialect.

Table of contents:

01 INTRODUCTION
02 THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE
03 THE HIPPO
04 THE HERRING
05 THE POLAR BEAR
06 THE PENGUIN
07 THE WOMBAT
08 THE DOG
09 THE CAT
10 THE PARAMECIUM
11 THE WEAVER
12 THE MAYFLY
13 THE DUCK
14 THE PEACOCK
15 THE ORCA
16 THE LIZARD
17 THE KANGAROO
18 THE WASP
19 THE SPIDER
20 THE SEAHORSE
21 THE FROG
22 THE ROE
23 THE LYNX
24 THE SCORPION
25 THE EARWIG
26 THE TAPEWORM
27 THE SNAKE
28 THE SKUNK
29 THE BABOON
30 THE SPIDER MONKEY
31 THE FIREFLY

Mikołaj Golachowski - Butts, tails and rumps
translated by Jarek Westermark
narrated by Sean Palmer
illustrations by Maria Mroux Bulikowska

ISBN 978-83-67356-19-0 (audiobook)

Wydawnictwo Babaryba
www.babaryba.pl

Leseprobe

Table of contents

INTRO

THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE

THE HIPPO

THE HERRING

THE POLAR BEAR

THE PENGUIN

THE WOMBAT

THE DOG

THE CAT

THE PARAMECIUM

THE WEAVER

Text © Mikołaj Gola­chowski, 2014 Illus­tra­tions © Maria Bulikowska, 2014 This edi­tion © Babaryba, 2023

Con­cept and edit­ing: Marek Wło­darski Fact check­ing: Jakub Urbański Book design: Maria Łep­kowska Proof­read­ing: Katarzyna Sza­jowska & Jamie Watts Trans­lated by: Jarek West­er­mark

Wydawnictwo BABARYBA www.babaryba.pl

ISBN 978-83-67356-18-3 WAR­SAW 2023

The elec­tronic ver­sion was cre­ated by Elibri

For Hania Mikołaj

INTRO

Every ani­mal has at least two ends. Up front: a snout, beak, or che­licera. And in the rear… a butt! And it’s the butt that is often more fas­ci­nat­ing than the crit­ter’s snout. We all have a butt of course, but we some­times for­get to pay it the atten­tion it deserves. Now is the time to change that!

There are more butts in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our phi­los­o­phy. For who could dream up the armoured butt of an Aus­tralian wom­bat? Or the alchem­i­cal work­shop that the bom­bardier bee­tle car­ries in its behind? And if we throw var­i­ous fancy tails into the mix, we’ll see that nature chose the ani­mal butt as a hid­ing place for many fas­ci­nat­ing secrets and phe­nom­ena! So let’s get to know ani­mals… from the bum for­wards.

THE BOMBARDIER BEETLE

THE BOM­BARDIER BEE­TLE

Explo­sive farts

Releas­ing pun­gent gasses from the butt is noth­ing spe­cial – any­one can do it! But some ani­mals have achieved true Olympic great­ness in this field. Among insects, an indis­putable mas­ter is def­i­nitely the bom­bardier bee­tle. Its pol­ish name trans­lates to can­noneer, which is fit­ting, because it uses its butt as a can­non (or bom­bard!) to fire away at its foes.

The bee­tle is a real life magi­cian and it houses a secret lab in its butt (or tho­rax, as an insect’s behind is called). This lab con­sists of a cou­ple of cham­bers sep­a­rated by tough walls. Each cham­ber is really tiny, see­ing as our bee­tle is just a cen­time­tre long, and one of them stores two dif­fer­ent liq­uids.

When the bom­bardier is approached by an enemy such as a frog, spi­der, or swarm of ants, the two liq­uids stream to another cham­ber. There they are mixed with a third which acts as an igniter. This sec­ond cham­ber, pro­tected by thick walls, ends with two tubes posi­tioned on both sides of the insect’s bot­tom.

The bee­tle points its tho­rax towards the enemy and unleashes a series of salvoes aimed straight at its nose! The foe gets sprayed with a cor­ro­sive fluid that’s almost as hot as boil­ing water! If he sur­vives this by some mir­a­cle, he will most cer­tainly learn his les­son and never bother the bom­bardier again.

The bee­tle itself – also a preda­tor, we might add – isn’t both­ered at all by its own can­non­ade. Although its butt facil­i­tates an actual explo­sion, the thick walls of the blast cham­ber guar­an­tee its safety. Once the foe is dealt with, it can start look­ing for tiny crea­tures to feed on, enjoy­ing the peace and quiet.

THE HIPPO

THE HIPPO

A butt-heli­copter

Every­one has a butt, but not every­one’s butt has a small fan attached to it! The hippo – con­sid­ered one of Africa’s most dan­ger­ous ani­mals – can boast just that.

This giant denizen of the mother con­ti­nent has a short, chunky tail which can be quickly thrashed around. Though it doesn’t actu­ally spin like a pro­peller, but rather swings from side to side in a pen­du­lar move­ment, the hippo shakes it so rapidly that it looks like it’s about to achieve lift-off.

The hippo always starts wag­ing its tail when it does its busi­ness, scat­ter­ing poo and pee in all direc­tions, mak­ing sure it lands as far as pos­si­ble – up to a cou­ple of metres away. Dis­gust­ing, right? But this is by design!

A hip­popota­mus will aggres­sively defend not only its favourite muddy river­side pond but also its many wives. If it comes face to face with a rival, a long and dan­ger­ous fight might ensue, dur­ing which both sides make use of their over­grown teeth.

That’s why hip­pos spread their stinky “per­fume” so vig­or­ously. When another hippo comes across the host’s smelly pee and poo, it quickly realises the ter­ri­tory is already claimed and that it must skedad­dle to avoid get­ting bit­ten.

For the curi­ous

The word hip­popota­mus means “river horse” in ancient Greek. While the hippo might not have a horse’s good looks, these giant ani­mals do inhabit rivers and lake shores. They spend all day in shal­low waters, snooz­ing, swim­ming and bounc­ing grace­fully on the bot­tom. When sub­merged, the hippo is no longer pon­der­ous and clumsy. Instead, it becomes a reg­u­lar bal­le­rina. And no won­der! Its clos­est rel­a­tive in the ani­mal king­dom is, after all, the whale! Yet hip­pos still go ashore to grab a bite. Every evening they wan­der their favourite graz­ing grounds to stuff them­selves silly with grass.

THE HERRING

THE HER­RING

Tracer farts

A her­ring’s butt is noth­ing fancy. Just a lit­tle hole at the tail-end of a fish. What comes out of it, how­ever, is truly fas­ci­nat­ing! Though fart­ing is frowned upon (and sniffed at!) by humans, her­rings view it very dif­fer­ently.

Dur­ing day­time, when one her­ring notices that other mem­bers of its group swim left or right, speed up or slow down, it imme­di­ately does the same, and the her­rings behind it fol­low suit. That’s why a shoal of fish moves like one giant organ­ism. But at night they com­mu­ni­cate dif­fer­ently.

A her­ring peeks out of the water to swal­low air which fills its swim blad­der and is then released through an open­ing next to the anus. Though the ensu­ing bub­bles aren’t actu­ally farts, as the gas doesn’t pass through any intestines, they show up close enough to the her­ring’s butt for us to call them that. When a her­ring releases bub­bles, all of its friends pay close atten­tion, as if they were receiv­ing an impor­tant mes­sage. It’s a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The release of highly pres­surised air is accom­pa­nied by high-pitched sounds. Her­rings and their related species (such as sar­dines) hear much bet­ter than most other fish. That’s why the sounds they make don’t attract the atten­tion of preda­tors. How­ever, dol­phins and whales, who con­sider her­rings a del­i­cacy, can pick up on all the fart­ing and con­se­quently munch on the shoal with gusto.

THE POLAR BEAR

THE POLAR BEAR

The emperor’s plump but

Ani­mals don’t wear warm cloth­ing, so to pro­tect them­selves from the cold they need either thick furs or a thick layer of fat. Or bet­ter yet: both. The Arc­tic, a huge region sur­round­ing the North Pole, is one of the cold­est places on Earth. There­fore it should come as no sur­prise that one of the fat­test butts on the planet belongs to the king of the Arc­tic: the polar bear.

This biggest and most preda­tory of all bears can have a sub­cu­ta­neous fat layer as thick as ten cen­time­tres. It’s also clad in a fur so dense that he stays warm even in the mid­dle of arc­tic win­ter. It will some­times lie down on the ice just to cool him­self! Although its behind is the biggest and round­est of all bear butts, the tail that adorns it is actu­ally the short­est.

The polar bear might look like an over­grown teddy bear, but it’s a true ath­lete of the ani­mal king­dom. It’s the biggest and strongest of all land preda­tors. A full-grown male can mea­sure even three meters in length and weigh up to 700 kilo­grams. Polar bears run much faster than humans and are excel­lent swim­mers. They can swim as far as 100 kilo­me­tres in one go!

For the curi­ous

Amid the ice and snow of the Arc­tic the polar bear hunts any­thing that moves. Seals are its pray of choice, but it can also over­power a wal­rus or even a small whale. The polar bears’ favourite food is the lard of their vic­tims. It gives them loads of energy to grow ever fat­ter them­selves.

Polar bears do not hunt pen­guins, although they are often depicted together. This is because pen­guins live on the other side of the world – way down south in the Antarc­tic. Never has a polar bear crossed paths with a pen­guin out­side of a zoo.

THE PENGUIN

THE PEN­GUIN

Can­non in the bum

An oth­er­wise unas­sum­ing butt can hold secrets undreamed of by philoso­phers. Mon­u­men­tal forces might lie behind a seem­ingly reg­u­lar but­t­hole! Case in point: the pen­guin.

The pen­guin is a curi­ous crea­ture. It is a flight­less bird, like the ostrich or kiwi. It wad­dles about but wears an ele­gant black tail­coat while doing so. It can cover great dis­tances and is an excel­lent climber. When sub­merged, it feels like a fish in water – or, rather, it feels bet­ter than fish do, as it eas­ily catches and swal­lows them whole.

Even such a sharply dressed dandy has to poop some­times. But how do you do it, if you can’t leave the nest for fear of your eggs or nestlings freez­ing to death or get­ting eaten? In the pen­guins’ home down in the Antarc­tic there are spe­cial ways to solve this prob­lem. Enter the mag­i­cal tal­ents of a pen­guin’s rump. To avoid soil­ing their own nest (who’d want to live in a home filled with poo?), pen­guins approach its edge, raise their tails and fire away with tremen­dous force. Their drop­pings can sail through the air for half a metre before hit­ting the ground… mak­ing the pen­guin the only bird to be out­flown by its own fae­ces

The pen­guin chooses a dif­fer­ent spot at the edge of the nest each time, so after a while the traces of its fly­ing drop­pings reach out in all direc­tions like rays of sun­light. Depend­ing on its last meal, a pen­guin’s poop can be either white (after it eats fish) or pink (if it munches on krill – small ani­mals sim­i­lar to shrimp). Against a back­drop of dark rocks, such a colour­ful poop-star looks truly strik­ing!

THE WOMBAT

THE WOM­BAT

Tough­est bum in the world

Wom­bats are said to be cheer­ful, happy and pleased with life… at least until some­one reminds them of how fat their butts are. And yet a wom­bat’s butt is some­thing to be envied, for it is truly excep­tional. In fact, it’s the tough­est butt in the world! A bona fide skin-shield, a hyper resis­tant piece of armour able to with­stand not only a preda­tor’s teeth and claws, but even fire.

When a wom­bat is attacked, it quickly escapes into its bur­row and plugs up the entrance with its bum. It calmly shrugs off any preda­tor’s bites, ensur­ing the safety of its fam­ily.

A wom­bat’s bot­tom is also an effec­tive weapon! The wom­bat can pur­pose­fully make room for the attacker and wait until it sticks its head deeper into the den. Then it quickly stretches out its strong hind legs to stran­gle him or even crush his skull against the bur­row’s ceil­ing.

A wom­bat’s poop is the dri­est in the ani­mal king­dom, as these Aus­tralian mar­su­pi­als eat only plants and digest them very slowly. A plant’s remains can be excreted even up to four­teen days after its con­sump­tion! Dur­ing this time the wom­bat’s body sucks it dry of not only nutri­ents but also mois­ture. This is cru­cial in the dry Aus­tralian cli­mate.

Wom­bat fae­ces break into small boxy lumps inside its body. The result is cube-shaped poos. This can make poop­ing awk­ward and painful. The wom­bat’s really lucky that its butt is as tough and resilient as it is!

For the curi­ous

Wom­bats are mar­su­pi­als of sunny Aus­tralia. They are often called nature’s bull­doz­ers. Their mus­cu­lar thick­set bod­ies are per­fectly adapted for dig­ging bur­rows. Even the wom­bat’s pouch – unlike in other mar­su­pi­als – faces back­wards, so that dirt doesn’t get inside it dur­ing tight squeezes in under­ground tun­nels. And this is why lit­tle wom­bats must get past their mom’s bum to enter the pouch.

THE DOG

THE DOG

A smil­ing but

What does a butt do? The answer seems pretty obvi­ous! It houses the hole, through which every­thing we’ve eaten – and no longer need – even­tu­ally comes out in the form of poo. But for many ani­mals their rear end also plays an impor­tant part dur­ing every­day encoun­ters. When two peo­ple meet, they shake hands. For dogs, an equiv­a­lent of that ges­ture is sniff­ing each other’s butts! Imag­ine if peo­ple tried greet­ing their friends that way …

The aroma of a dog’s behind is packed with infor­ma­tion about that dog. A sen­si­tive nose can gauge its sex, health and the last meal it had. Just the fact that a dog lets some­one smell its butt denotes a pos­i­tive atti­tude. But you don’t need to stick your nose under a dog’s tail to find out its mood. If the tail is raised high, its owner feels glad and con­fi­dent. But con­fi­dent doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean friendly – the dog might be excited because it’s plan­ning to bite some­one, for instance, or maybe it just wants to show every­one who’s in charge.

When a dog is afraid of some­thing, its tail dis­ap­pears between its legs, cov­er­ing the butt to block out any smells so that (hope­fully) no-one notices the dog at all!

Dogs also use their tails to smile. If a tail is barely twitch­ing, that’s an uncer­tain lit­tle smirk. But when it’s wag­ging wildly from side to side… now that is a grin from ear to ear! Each wag fills the air with purest canine joy

THE CAT

THE CAT

A gleam­ing but

Every­body knows that the bum should be kept clean. Some take this more seri­ously than oth­ers how­ever. In the field of butt-clean­ing, few can rival the cats, as they’re famous for wash­ing their behinds basi­cally all the time.

As far as cats are con­cerned, the world can stick its prob­lems where the sun don’t shine and they’re all too happy to show every­one where that is. All they care about is hygiene.

Just like dogs, cats have an excel­lent sense of smell. An unwashed butt allows them to glean a lot of infor­ma­tion about its owner. Infor­ma­tion which said owner would usu­ally rather not share.

Cats are very dis­crete and usu­ally think that the less every­one knows about them, the bet­ter. That’s why they scrub their butts even when they’re already clean as a whis­tle. They also do it when some­thing unex­pected hap­pens and they’re not quite sure how to react.

Peo­ple liv­ing with cats often sus­pect that their pets wash their butts so as to not appear silly or scared. It’s like they’re say­ing: “I was most cer­tainly not afraid of that loud bang, I jumped up sim­ply because I sud­denly remem­bered that my behind needs clean­ing!”

For the curi­ous For the curi­ous

Unlike dogs, when cats “wag” their tails, it does not sig­nify a friendly atti­tude. It’s usu­ally a sign that the ani­mal is feel­ing con­flicted.

Sub­tle move­ments of the tail tip can sug­gest extreme ten­sion. Often seen when a cat is stalk­ing its pray and is unsure if it should pounce now or in a moment. Rapid bang­ing of the tail against a cat’s sides is usu­ally a sign of anger and a hes­i­ta­tion between attack and escape.

You can imag­ine that when a dog sees these tail move­ments as an invi­ta­tion to play, things might get ugly real quick. The leg­endary ani­mos­ity between cats and dogs often comes down to a sim­ple mis­un­der­stand­ing

THE PARAMECIUM

THE PARA­ME­CIUM

How to live… sans butt?

The butt, the bum, the rump, the back­side… how­ever you call it, we’ve all got one. You’d have to be a real sim­ple­ton not to use it. And yet there live in this world just such organ­isms – sim­ple and primeval… or rather pro­to­zoan. Pro­to­zoans are very old crea­tures, not quite plants and not quite ani­mals.

Pro­to­zoans inhabit their own king­dom, which spans our entire world. Although they’re pretty much every­where, we only see them under the micro­scope.

One of the most famous pro­to­zoans is the para­me­cium. Its pol­ish name (“pantofelek” which means “slip­per”) stems from the fact that it is shaped some­what like a shoe, albeit a really, really small one, as para­me­cia are only one third of a mil­lime­tre long.

The para­me­cium, like all pro­to­zoans, con­sists of only one cell, which must per­form all the func­tions for which a human body requires sev­eral hun­dred mil­lion! Its favourite dish are bac­te­ria. After a meal, undi­gested left­overs make their way to the para­me­cium’s butt, called the cytopyge. Well… it’s not really a butt, but the clos­est thing the para­me­cium has to one.

The cytopyge is sur­rounded by tiny cilia just like the rest of the para­me­cium’s cell. An inter­est­ing ques­tion: do you think that when para­me­cia fight, they tell one another “Scram, or I’ll kick you in the cytopyge”?

For the curi­ous

A para­me­cium doesn’t ever die of old age. It just splits into two new para­me­cia, which in time split again and so on. That means that – while it con­stantly changes – the very first para­me­cium never actu­ally per­ished.

Though it’s older than the dinosaurs, we shouldn’t really con­sider it sim­ple. Far from it. It’s just that the para­me­cium already found a ter­rific way of life mil­lions of years ago. While other ani­mals con­tinue to evolve, it stays the same – and is still going strong. Who’s the sim­pleton now, eh?

THE WEAVER

THE WEAVER

Entan­gled in courtship

A bird’s butt, includ­ing the tail and cloaca (or bird but­t­hole) is called a rump. Though the word itself might not sound pretty, many rumps them­selves are very dig­ni­fied. Roost­ers come to mind, as well as pheas­ants or pea­cocks, but some species are even more orna­mented.

There are birds liv­ing in Africa that weave excep­tion­ally beau­ti­ful nests out of grass and twigs. That’s where they get their name from – weavers. They aren’t par­tic­u­larly large, but the biggest of their fam­ily is called the long­tailed wid­ow­bird.

As the name sug­gests, the bird itself isn’t all that huge (it’s a tad smaller than a pigeon, actu­ally), but it has a truly impres­sive tail!

The females of the species are grey and incon­spic­u­ous, whereas their male coun­ter­parts look all dark and shiny and have exquis­ite, impres­sive tail feath­ers up to half a metre long. When they want to impress the females, they fly slowly just over the grass­lands and spread their tails wide like ele­gant black over­coats.

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