The Ugly Animals E-Book

Simon Watt

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 153

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Mother Nature's more aesthetically challenged children have been neglected for too long. The plight of the panda is known the world over because of its teddy-like good looks, but most species are not so lucky. This book, however, aims to shine a light on some of the many ignored and unloved wonders of the animal kingdom. Their hideousness hides their incredible biology and means that we may not have noticed that they need our help. It is time to celebrate the Ugly Animals.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

The Ugly Animal Preservation Society

Introduction

The Ugly Animals

About the Author

Further Reading

Picture Credits

Copyright

THE UGLY ANIMAL PRESERVATION SOCIETY

THE UGLY ANIMAL Preservation Society is a comedy event with a conservation twist and was the starting point for this very book. The society was founded by biologist, writer and TV presenter Simon Watt and is dedicated to raising the profile of some of Mother Nature’s more aesthetically challenged children. In September 2012 they teamed up with the National Science and Engineering Competition to initiate a worldwide poll that saw the blobfish voted the ugliest animal in the world.

The society performs all over Britain, aiming to share their love of the wild world through the medium of stand up and their line-ups have featured a range of comedians including Paul Foot, Chris Dunford, Helen Arney, Bec Hill, Dean Burnett, Dan Schreiber, Ellie Taylor, Suzi Ruffell, Sarah Bennetto, and Iszi Lawrence.

Their first show was held in London in October 2012 and since then they have performed all over the country, including the Edinburgh Science Festival, Bristol Big Green Week, the Green Man Festival and the Cheltenham Science Festival. Details of their future shows and further information can be found at www.uglyanimalsoc.com.

INTRODUCTION

THE PANDA MADE me do it. It seems a strange excuse, but it is true.

Pandas are wonderful creatures. They exude a monochrome charisma that has made them famous the world over. The poor giant panda has seen its numbers plummet as human settlement and industry has encroached more and more on its habitat. Without breeding programmes and the protection of the bamboo forests where it lives, it could become extinct. Having said that, it may be endangered, but at least it is loved. It has become the poster boy for conservation and its cute and cuddly face can be seen adorning everything, from lunchboxes to Italian cars. Charities have rallied to its aid and it has become a national symbol of China. A large portion of its success has come from its evolutionary good fortune to happen to look like a teddy. The majority of endangered species are not so lucky. Many are incapable of grabbing headlines. In the limelight, many do not have star potential. But the catastrophe befalling the natural world is so much bigger than being a matter of saving the eye-catching species that star in documentaries. We should not pick and choose what survives, based solely on our shallow sense of aesthetics. The problems facing our planet are much bigger than that.

EXTINCTION

Extinction is a natural phenomenon. We can go further and say that extinction is an essential component of evolution: it is fundamental to the survival of the fittest. In order for natural selection to work, some species must succeed while others must die. We would not be here today if it were not for the demise of the dinosaurs. Extinction prunes the tree of life and research suggests that perhaps 99.99 per cent of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct. The average species only hangs around for about 5 or 10 million years. In many ways, we humans are merely filling our time, waiting our turn to disappear. Though extinction is an ongoing process, there have been spikes in its rate, known as the ‘mass extinctions’. We think that there were five particularly dangerous periods when the majority of species went under, the worst of which happened 250 million years ago and is known as ‘the great dying’. No one can be certain what caused it: it may have been an eruption from a super volcano or even a giant asteroid that whacked the earth, but it wiped out 95 per cent of all species and life is lucky to have survived at all.

Extinction may well be a natural phenomenon, but it is currently happening at an alarming rate. We estimate that mankind has accelerated the rate of extinction to between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it should be. Scientists refer to this man-made massacre as ‘the sixth great extinction’. It can be hard to believe that we are as potent a force of extinction as an asteroid strike, but it seems that we are.

THE SPICE OF LIFE

The variety of life is truly awe-inspiring. We estimate that there are around about 8.7 million species, of which less than 2 million have been formally described. We seem to discover about fifty species a day, with the majority of these being insects. A new species of beetle is discovered every few hours. We tend to be mammal-centric and almost narcissistic in our love of nature: we only care about species that remind us of ourselves, or those we consider cute. We favour animals with big eyes and bushy tails. We prefer our animals to have, at the very least, recognisable faces. Insects tend to be viewed as icky, and yet they are the majority. This is one of the reasons why we have to stop being so shallow in our superficial views of eco-systems. If many creatures disappeared without a trace tomorrow, I doubt the world would notice and many species may even prefer it. If a few key invertebrates vanished, it could cause global calamity, or at the very least smash our human society. Flies aren’t pretty, but they pollinate our crops. The lifestyle and jobs of detritivores − species that live on faeces − are unappealing, but without them we would be up to our neck in it. We may well find about fifty species a day, but we estimate that up to 200 species are disappearing daily too.

ENDANGERED BUT NOT UGLY

We have all heard of the plight of the snow leopard, the elephant, the rhino, the mighty lion, the polar bear and the gorilla. It is a tragedy that some of these species could well die out within our lifetime. It is dreadful to think that we could one day have to explain to our children what a tiger was. We call these species the ‘charismatic megafauna’ and they grab the headlines. These are the animals that we all learn about and learn to love from childhood. There have always been people proclaiming that we must save the whale, but until now, no one has shouted, ‘Save the slug’. Even our zoos seem to have a bias, favouring creatures that will draw in the crowds, as opposed to those that make our skin crawl.

UGLY BUT NOT ENDANGERED

There are many amazing species out there that are not as well known as they should be, simply because of their dreadfully unattractive looks. The naked mole rat is a fascinating creature, with a queen and a caste system akin to that of ants and bees. It looks like a sabre-toothed sausage and it is studied the world over because of its long lifespan, inability to feel pain and resilience to cancer. Its appearance makes it a perfect candidate for this book but, fortunately, its population is stable in the wild and its safety is assured, because of the specimens maintained for study in medical research laboratories and zoos the world over. The greater short-horned lizard is a species I find fascinating, because of its highly unusual anti-predator defence technique of shooting blood from its eyes at any assailants. Though its population is declining in some parts of the world, it is sufficiently widespread to mean that limited conservation money would be wiser spent elsewhere. The same goes for the floating cartilaginous head that is the sunfish and the terrifyingly unsightly goblin shark. They are far from pleasing to the eye, but conservationists class them as of least concern. We do not sing the praises of species like these enough, but they are secure and do not need our consideration as badly as others. They are, for now at least, not at risk of going extinct. I want this book to focus on species that need our attention and help as much as the panda does. I wanted to find the ugly ambassadors for all the neglected endangered animals that have been overlooked because of their appearance.

UGLY BUT DATA DEFICIENT

Trying to focus on endangered species has proven to be a more difficult task than I had originally envisaged. This is mainly because the vastness of the natural world poses conservationists with substantial logistical problems. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature is the leading authority on the state of the planet’s wildlife. It is striving to document and determine where each species lives and how its population is faring. This is a gargantuan task and the result is that, for many animals, we have no idea about the size and distribution of their population. Not only does this mean that it is likely that many species are disappearing without us ever having noticed their existence in the first place, but that many species we are aware of may be doing much worse than we know. When we uncover a new species in some of the world’s diversity hot spots, the chances are that it is endangered because of its small and limited range. We can guess that it is rare and in need of protection, even if we have not yet formally recognised its rarity. The long-tailed ninja slug, which fires love darts at its mate, was only recently discovered in the heart of Borneo. Like so many creatures found in this region, it is still awaiting formal classification, but the chances are that it will go straight onto the endangered species list. Scientists are trying to protect these areas, knowing that any damage done could irreparable.

Lack of knowledge is a problem we also have with the animals that live in the depths of the sea. Many of these regions are so unexplored that we know next to nothing about the wildlife that lives down there. For instance, there are so many forms of cephalopods, the family that features squid and octopus, that look hideous enough to be at home in this book. There is Vampyroteuthis infernalis, a deep-sea monstrosity with a biological name that translates as ‘the vampire squid from hell’ and an appropriately horrifying appearance. There is Promachoteuthis sulcus, nicknamed ‘the gob-faced squid’ because of its strangely human-like mouth. Only a single specimen has ever been found, making it so rare that we are unable to assess its rarity. The vast majority of cephalopods are listed as data deficient; we just don’t have the information we need to understand if they need protecting or not. The same goes for the frighteningly fanged denizens of the deep that are the anglerfish: very few of them have had their conservation status determined yet. The Louisiana pancake fish has skin like batter and a flat-as-a-pancake appearance. This bottom-dwelling fish was only discovered in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, shortly before much of the area was ruined by the notorious Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The impact of the oil and dispersants on the region’s deep-sea species is poorly understood, but it seems likely that the batfish and many other strange species could well be under threat without us even knowing.

The focus of this book is on species that are both in some way ugly and in some way endangered. I have aimed for a light and comic tone, because conservation is too important to be above a little satire. Furthermore, the issues raised in conservation can be depressing; it can feel like every time you look up biology in the news, you are only checking what has died today. I think that we must savour the world’s wackiness while we can. We must celebrate our conservation successes when we have them and we must marvel at all of life. Being sensible and austere is not the only means of communicating a conservation message.

I hope this book shows that, like beauty, ugliness is only in the eye of the beholder: that, just because a species is aesthetically challenged, its plight should not be overlooked. Some of the world’s weirdest-looking creatures are marvellous precisely because of their awful anatomy. It is their massive nose, funny face or off-kilter colour pattern that makes them so special.

I have nothing against the panda, but it already has its champions. The animals in this book don’t. Every species alive is an ongoing evolutionary experiment and is in some way interesting. We simply have to look more closely.

IN SOME PARTSofMadagascar, the local people harbour a fearful dread of the aye-aye and so kill it on sight. They regard glimpsing it as, at best, a sign of bad luck, at worst, an omen of death. Such superstition-inspired violence, combined with the destruction of its forest habitat, has resulted in this remarkable species becoming endangered. Perhaps that is why this highly distinctive and unusual lemur is constantly and rudely flipping everyone the bird: its most noticeable feature is a distinctively long and skinny middle finger.

The aye-aye is a nocturnal tree-dweller found in a range of habitats, from primary rainforest to dry, deciduous forest, on the island of Madagascar. It spends its daylight hours sleeping in an elaborate nest of intertwined twigs and dead leaves, located high up in the crown of tall trees. These nests are far from ramshackle affairs and can take up to twenty-four hours to construct. As individuals move from place to place, they either build new nests or squat in those vacated by other aye-ayes.

It is the largest nocturnal primate and the most evolutionarily distinct of all the lemurs, being the only living representative of the Daubentoniidae family of primates. During much of the nineteenth century, it was misclassified as a rodent because of its continuously growing incisors, thick coat of coarse, black hair peppered with longer, white guard hairs, and a sumptuous bushy tail that more than doubles the length of the body. To help see in the dark of night it has large, yellowish, almost startled-looking eyes.

The aye-aye has evolved to fill the niche that is occupied in other parts of the world by species of woodpeckers and squirrels, but which are absent in Madagascar. As such, it has developed some fascinating morphological adaptations. Each of its long and narrow fingers brandishes a curved, claw-like nail. Its third finger is the most impressive in its arsenal, being yet longer and thinner, almost skeletal in appearance. It knocks and taps on tree trunks to see if there are any insect larvae inside. Then, cocking its enormous, bat-like, leathery ears forward, it listens for reverberations within the wood and the tell-tale signs of food squirming around beneath the bark. If it hears anything, it uses its sharp gnashers to gash a hole in the tree and its freaky long finger to probe for prey. Unlike our fingers, which only have hinge joints, the highly dexterous middle finger of the aye-aye has a ball and socket joint, allowing it to swivel nimbly while probing for its fodder. It also uses these amazing anatomical tools to extract flesh from hard fruits such as coconuts and ramy nuts, looking almost like someone using a long spoon to reach the good bits at the bottom of an ice-cream sundae.

‘… highly dexterous middle finger …’

IF NIGHTMARES HADwings, then they would look like the Greater Adjutant. With plumage like dead umbrellas and a beak like a scabbed ice pick, this stork from southern Asia looks like a gangly, balding Goth. Its long, wrinkly neck is adorned with a low-hanging, wizened pouch and surrounded by a messy, almost Elizabethan, ruff. Though it has much darker wings, its body is a miserable, rain-cloud grey and it has a wingspan of well over 2m.

‘Their local Indian name … translates as “bone-swallower” …’

The adults stand to attention at nearly 1.5m tall and when they walk, they seem to march. Their species name, adjutant, is a military rank. Their local Indian name, Hargila, translates as ‘bone-swallower’ and is apt for such a large-mouthed scavenger. They swallow bones whole and feast on rotting flesh, and are so revered as scavengers that they were once part of the logo of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. There are reports from the nineteenth century of them feeding on the partly burnt human corpses disposed of along the funeral Ghats of the Ganges River. Nowadays, they are frequent visitors to city refuse dumps, where finding leftover decaying food is easy. If the opportunity arises, they will take the initiative and kill food of their own. They have been known to attack large insects, frogs, rodents, snakes and small reptiles. Witnesses even attest to them swallowing wild ducks whole.

Like other storks, they lack well-developed vocal muscles and so generally communicate by grunting and clacking their beak. In winter, they congregate to breed in compact colonies that include other species of birds. Males fight for position, seeking the best trees in which to build their large nests. There, the female lays a clutch of three or four eggs, which she and the male take turns to tend. The parents lovingly care for their young, using their expansive wings to shade them from the sun. The adult birds have a more innovative, and disgusting, technique for keeping cool: they poo all over their own bare legs so that the moisture acts like a putrid, cooling balm.

The endangered Greater Adjutant is only found in two small, separate breeding populations in India and Cambodia. It has lost much of its nesting habitat and feeding sites, as suitable wetland habitats have been cleared, drained and polluted with pesticides. In some places they are even hunted, as some still believe an old superstition that the bird carries within its skull a mystical ‘snake-stone’ that will relieve snake-bites and cure leprosy.

‘… the moisture acts like a putrid, cooling balm.’

THE PROBOSCIS ANOLEis