Scientific Illustration

biomedicalephemera:

Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)

Aww, the sea otter…so cute, so resourceful, so smart. Such adorable bobbing buoys above the Pacific kelp forests. Such…jerks?

Yep, that’s right - just like humans observed decades ago in animals that they considered to be “highly intelligent” (such as dolphins, elephants, and apes), when you get smarter, you get more potential for dickishness. The brain power it takes to use tools and find novel ways to extract food also gives sea otters the mental capacity to understand how to manipulate the behavior of other otters.

To wit: Male sea otters are routine kidnappers. Though otters often raise pups in close proximity to one another, and males occasionally interact with pups in an amicable fashion, one of the most common behaviors of younger males is to kidnap the pup of a sleeping mom and hold it ransom.

The mother goes into a panic and will procure an almost absurd amount of food for the male, just to get her pup back. Older males will engage in kidnapping from time to time, but from what’s been observed thus far, it largely seems to be a behavior of the younger male who hasn’t perfected his hunting skills, and instead of improving his skills, sees an easy way out.

What a jerk.

Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. John James Audubon. Completed and posthumously published by John Woodhouse Audubon, 1858.

biomedicalephemera:

Callorhinchus milii - The Elephant Fish

This unfortunate-looking chap is an elephant fish, from the Antarctic basin. Antarctic elephant fish are smaller and more wrinkled than the variety that New Zealanders might know as elephant shark that comprises much of the “fish” side of fish & chips shops on the Islands. Their standard whitefish-like meat with palatable texture made them popular even before Europeans arrived in the South Pacific, with indigenous Maori populations. Since the fish come very close to shore during breeding season, Maori were able to catch and dry large numbers of them for the rest of the year.

The eponymous elephant-like trunk of the elephant fish is a proboscis, and the fish’s primary mode of food detection. As it weaves along the sea floor, the sensory nerves of the proboscis pick up movement from any buried crustacean life, and guide the fish to its prey. Though not prehensile by any means, most species of elephant fish are thought to use the proboscis to dig out the prey, as well as locate it.

Fishes and Fishing: Artificial Breeding of Fish, Anatomy of their Senses, Their Loves, Passions, and Intellects. W. Wright, Esq., 1858.

biomedicalephemera:

Struthio camelus and Galbula fuscicapilla [now Galbula tombacea tombacea] - The Common Ostrich and White-Chinned Jacamar

The ostrich belongs to the paleognathae, while the jacamar belongs to the neognathae.

There are two superorders (a phylogenetic classification) of the the class Neornithes - the Paleognathae, or “old-jaws”, and the Neognathae, or “new-jaws”. The palates and beak structures of the paleognathae are much more closely related to reptilian jaws, and the superorder evolved significantly before the “new-jaws” came about. The flightless ratites (ostriches, kiwis, elephant birds, cassowaries, etc) and the flying tinamous of South America are all paleognathae.

All of the other extant birds (27 of the 29 orders) belong to the Neognathae. Everything from the birds of prey to the hummingbirds to the finches and sparrows falls under this classification. 

Transactions of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society of London. 1858, 1854.

(via dendroica)

biomedicalephemera:

Beaks, heads, and tails of birds.

Note the large differences between beaks, based on the food type of the bird.

I’ve always found the parrot beak very interesting - though they subsist almost exclusively on nutmeats, they have a beak structure very similar to that of the raptors and other birds of prey. Their tongue, however, is much more tactile and dextrous. Many nuts and seeds are encased in shells or pulps that are poisonous to the birds, so they have to be able to expertly remove every part of the poison before eating.

Zoological Science or Nature in Living Forms. A. M. Redfield, 1858.

victoriasrustyknickers:

‘Common Objects at the Seaside - Generally found upon the Rocks at low Water’ - Victorian ‘Beach Bums’ lampooned in Punch on August 21, 1858

(via my-ear-trumpet)

biomedicalephemera:

Octopi:

1. Octopus Levis

2. Octopus Bermudensis

The Voyage of the HMS Challenger: Report on Cephalopoda Specimens