Episode 437: Updates 8 and the Nutria

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Episode 437: Updates 8 and the Nutria

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Thanks to Nicholas, Måns, Warblrwatchr, Llewelly, and Emerson this week, in our yearly updates episode! Further reading: An Early Cretaceous Tribosphenic Mammal and Metatherian Evolution Guam's invasive tree snakes loop themselves into lassos to reach their feathered prey Rhythmically trained sea lion returns for an encore -- and performs as well as humans Scientists Solve Mystery of Brown Giant Pandas Elephant turns a hose into a sophisticated showering tool New name for one of the world’s rarest rhinoceroses Antarctica’s only native insect’s unique survival mechanism Komodo dragons have iron-coated teeth to rip apart their prey The nutria has really orange teeth: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This week is our annual updates episode, and we’ll also learn about an animal suggested by Emerson. But first, we have some corrections! Nicholas shared a paper with me that indicates that marsupials actually evolved in what is now Asia, with marsupial ancestors discovered in China. They spread into North America later. So I’ve been getting that wrong over many episodes, over several years. Måns shared a correction from an older episode where I mentioned that humans can’t get pregnant while breastfeeding a baby. I’ve heard this all my life but it turns out it’s not true. It is true that a woman’s fertility cycle is suppressed after giving birth, but it’s not related to breastfeeding. Some women can become pregnant again only a few months after giving birth, while others can’t get pregnant again for a few years. It depends on the individual. That’s important, since the myth is so widespread that many women get pregnant by accident thinking they can’t since they’re still feeding a baby. Warblrwatchr commented on the ultraviolet episode and mentioned that cats can see ultraviolet, which is useful to them because mouse urine glows in UV light. Finally, Llewelly pointed out that in episode 416, I didn’t mention that fire ant venom isn’t delivered when the ant bites someone. The ant bites with its mandibles to hold on, then uses the stinger on its back end to sting repeatedly. Now, let’s dive into some updates about animals we’ve talked about in past episodes. As usual, I don’t try to give an update on every single animal, because we’d be here all week if I did. I just chose interesting studies that caught my eye. In episode 402, we talked about snakes that travel in unusual ways, like sidewinders. Even though I had a note to myself to talk about the brown tree snake in that episode, I completely forgot. The brown tree snake is native to parts of coastal Australia and many islands around Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. It’s not native to Guam, which is an island in the western Pacific, way far away from the brown tree snake’s home. But in the late 1940s, some brown tree snakes made their way to Guam in cargo ships and have become invasive since then. The brown tree snake can grow up to six and a half feet long, or 2 meters, and is nocturnal, aggressive, and venomous. It’s not typically a danger to adults, but its venom can be dangerous to children and pets. The government employs trained dogs to find the snakes so they can be removed, and this has worked so well that brown tree snake population is declining rapidly on the island. But that hasn’t stopped the snake from driving many native animals to extinction in the last 75 years, especially birds. One of the things scientists did in Guam to try and protect the native birds was to place smooth poles around the island so birds could nest on top but snakes couldn’t climb up to eat the eggs and chicks. But before long, the snakes had figured out a way to climb the poles, a method never before documented in any snake. To climb a pole, the snake wraps its body around it, with the head overlapping the tail. Then it sort of scoots itself up the pole with tiny motions of its spine...