Life, Death, and Taxonomy

“…and today we’re talking about a gecko that just does what it wilsts. But more on that later.”

The 80s spawned a lot of things: Reaganomics, Terminator, Steve Perry. But it also gave rise to the Satanic Panic. And one of the most prominent kinds of Satanists that the decade produced was an evil race of tiny geckos with leaves for tails. These dastardly reptiles can hide in plain sight, and though they don’t worship the beast, they do eat beelzelbugs on the regular. But that’s just how the satanic leaf-tailed gecko operates here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description of the Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko

• The Satanic-Leaf Gecko has a flat tail, large head, and spiky eyebrows. 
• They also have a spinal ridge that runs from the back of their necks and then splits to follow each side of their flat tails. 
• They come in earth-tones, particularly reddish brown and pale yellow.
  • Some are two-toned while others are monochromatic with a single light brown color.
• Their large heads are beset with big red-orange eyes.

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We don’t have a new Measure Up intro!

1. Rhinoceros
2. Gargoyle Gecko
3. Cheetah
4. Rock dove

Length

• 90mm (3.5 inches)
• How many Satanic-Leaf Geckos go into one astronomical unit?
• Hint: An astronomical unit is often used to measure distance within the solar system. It’s equal to the distance between the center of the earth to the center of the sun.
• 1,600,000,000,000 geckos. An AU is 149.6 million kilometers.

Weight

• 10 to 30 grams
• How many Satanic-Leaf Geckos go into the largest mammal on madagascar?
• Hint: The island’s largest mammal is the fossa, a carnivorous cat-like creature. It’s in the family Eupleridae, which includes civets and mongooses. 
• 287 geckos.

Fast Facts about the Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko

They live in Madagascar and prefer highland rainforest biomes, based on the fact that they only live in the eastern highland rainforest of Madagascar.

They’re okay with lower temperatures than your average lizard and do well in their high elevation habitat.

Like other geckos and devils, the Satanic-Leaf Gecko is nocturnal and hunts for insects at night. 

They mate seasonally and lay eggs in piles of dead leaves. 

Despite their name, they’re relatively mild mannered. They sleep through the day. In captivity, they’re kept in two male, one female groups, also known as the YA-novel configuration. This is done to improve genetic diversity, but the rival males rarely ever fight. 

Even though their tales are super cool and it’s an absolute bummer to lose them, they can shed their tails to escape predators. 

Like other geckos, they have sicky scales and curve claws that make them excellent climbers. 

For once, we have a legitimate reason to be upset with the pet trade besides dominating animal SEO. The exotic pet trade is a big fan of these guys and they’re sometimes captured illegally. Though they are still classified as “least concern” there is a decreasing trend in their numbers. 

Major Fact: The Devil’s Disguises

As we mentioned earlier, Aleister looks a lot like a leaf. Its tail even has chunks missing to make it look like parts have rotted or been eaten by bugs.

But just like the spiny leaf insect, it has both passive and active camo – meaning it can turn completely invisible instantly. But the reality is that it looks like a leaf, but it also goes the extra mile to play the part.

It can choose between two major roles to play – it can be the leaf on the wind or the bark with no bite. As a leaf, it can attach its feet to a branch and hang off it like a dead leaf – even going so far as to sway in the breeze. Diurnal predators usually rely heavily on sight, so being still when everything else is moving draws as much attention as the opposite.As bark, Aleister will give the branch a big bear hug and flatten his body, rounding it so that it conforms to the sensual curves of the branch.

The gecko’s coloration allows it to blend into the surrounding bark, but that doesn’t always work for sharp-eyed predators. By flattening out its body, it also extends frills and flaps along its edges that obscure its outline in what is called “pattern disruption” so a predator can’t really tell where the bark ends and the gecko begins.

And, like many lizards and geckos, they can shed their tails and grow a new one.

Ending: So keep a low profile, play your Led Zeppelin vinyl backward, and become a master of disguise like the satanic leaf-tailed gecko here in LDT.

“…we’re talking about a colorful jungle bird that follows his nose for froot… I mean fruit. But more on that later.”

The jungle is a paradise of delectable nectar and fantastic fruit. For those that can reach these delights, the jungle provides everything you need. But it takes some special equipment to take advantage of such decadent prizes. But nature can throw all kinds of challenges your way, so the toucan carries a multitool on the front of its face. It’s a lesson in being prepared for anything, in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description of a Toco Toucan

• This is your quintessential toucan
• It has a passerine-esque body (crow-like) with jet-black feathers on its body
• Its throat and lower half of its face are covered with a super Nintendo controller-shaped patch that’s stark white with a well-defined border, giving it an orca-like coloration.
• It also has a small patch of white feathers on its rump just above the tail feathers with a bright red patch on the flipside underneath the tail
• But here’s where it gets interesting. If you’ve ever heard of the toucan, you know that its most defining characteristic is its…eyes
• Its eyes are black and beady – like a bird’s. But the eyes are ringed with a bright blue circle and the area around the circle is yellowish-orange.
• Ok for real though, the toucan’s bill is the real reason you’re listening to this episode. 
  • Where a normal bird’s forehead and face would be, the toucan has a massive bill jutting out.
  • It’s shaped like a huge crab claw that hooks downward at the tip
  • The bill is bright orange and yellow – like Slash’s signature sunburst les paul. The upper half is a brighter yellow with the lower half being a rich orange
  • There’s a black patch near the end where the top half hooks down like an eagle’s beak and a black ring where the bill meets the toucan’s head – like an o-ring making sure no toucan leaks out from the seams
• Now it’s time for: Know the Difference
  • Joe, do you know the difference between a beak and a bill?
  • According to ornathology.com – a sketchy-looking wordpress site, there is no difference – the two terms are interchangeable. Just people tend to use “beak” as a subset of bills used for killing things.

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We do have a new measure up intro this week from Nora! 

Length

• 55–65 cm (21.5–25.5 in)
• How many toucan lengths would it take to reach the highest restaurant in the world?
• Hint: The restaurant is at the Chacaltaya ski resort in Bolivia. Unfortunately, the resort is barren these days. It was opened in the 1930s and skiers could enjoy snowy slopes all year round atop a 18,000 year old glacier. However, by 2009, the glacier was gone and no tourists were interested in sliding down rocky slopes. You can still get a hot meal there though.
• 8,215 toucans. The restaurant was at 5340m (17,519 ft).

Weight

• Males weigh 723 g (1 lb 9.5 oz)
• How many toucans go into the weight of lions it would take to destroy the sun?
• Hint: A popular meme format includes a simple image of two things with a vs in the middle. One of these memes that was going around the internet was 1 trillion lions versus the sun. A Youtuber called Eklectic found that a trillion lions would be barely visible next to the sun and do nothing at all to hinder it. So he crunched the numbers and calculated how many lions in a great ball of lions it would take to crush into a black hole and swallow the sun (and destroy the solar system).
• 2.13307615 × 10^40  toucans. It took 1.8 x 10^36 lions. 

Fast Facts About the Toco Toucan

• Range: They live in the open plains and woodlands of central South America Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. There are also sparse populations in the Guianas. They are the only members of the Ramphastos genus that don’t live in the jungle.
• Diet: they are omnivorous and eat everything from fruits and berries to lizards, rodents, small birds, and insects.

Major Fact: The Nose Knows

A toucan’s beak is probably it’s most defining feature. It’s big and colorful. But as is often the case in nature, the toucan’s most striking feature may also be its most functional.

The beak’s first function is for foraging. These 8 inch long appendages are usefuling in plucking fruit off of branches in otherwise hard to reach places. In fact, their beaks are also serrated like a steak knife or a saw for ripping appart food.

But the beaks are also used for other purposes, including defense, attracting mates, and in temperature regulation. 

Yes, we have another nose for personal climate control. Toucan beaks are thin and if you look closely, you can see veins running through it. Having such a large, thin surface area for their blood to run through allows them to cool down in the sweltering heat of South America. 

However, at night the temperature can drop. To avoid losing heat at night, they’ll tuck their beaks up along their bodies and sleep with their beak on top of them.

Built Toucan Tough

The beak is both incredibly strong and surprisingly lightweight. The beak makes up a third of the bird’s length and only a 20th of its weight. Despite its weight allowing the bird to maintain its ability to fly, their beaks are also super durable. 

An article in AskNature.org says, “The beak’s solid outer shell sandwiches within it a closed-cell, foam-like structure made of struts which, together with thin protein membranes, enclose variably shaped air spaces. The solid shell layer is built of overlapping, hexagonally-shaped thin plates of keratin protein held together by an organic glue.”

This structure makes their beaks useful for defense, and able to take significant impacts. The article goes on to suggest this structural design could be integrated into cars to make them more crash resistant without sacrificing fuel economy by adding weight. 

Ending: So use your bill to keep you chill, expand your diet, and always follow your nose like the Toco toucan Sam here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

“…and today we’re talking about the tibetan fox of antelopes. By that I mean it looks like a child’s drawing of the antelope that isn’t quite right. But more on that later.”

On the steppes of the stans in Central Asia, a goofy-looking antelope grazes around the countryside, using its odd snout to sniff the ground as it walks. But having such a problematic proboscis can be more trouble than it’s worth, as a silent killer stalks these nefarious noses. But having a slinky snout is just how the Saiga antelope stays cool here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description

• The saiga antelope has a stocky deer-like body with thin legs. It doesn’t look as thin and lithe as an impala or springbok. 
• Females are hornless and males have horns that go straight up with a twist. 
• They have an almost uniform tan color except for a dark to light gradient for countershading. The color changes to be reddish in the summer and grey-brown in the winter. 
• It has a large head with a nose that makes it look like it drinks at the Mos Eisley Cantina. 

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We don’t have a New Measure up intro this week. 

1. Common Eland
2. Texas Longhorn
3. Whitetail Buck
4. Siberian Musk Deer

Height at the shoulder

• 61–81 cm (24–32 in)
• How many saiga antelopes go into the flagpole in National Flag Square in Baku, Azerbaijan?
• Hint: The pole once held the record for the longest flag pole but it was surpassed by poles in Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia. 
• 199.3 antelopes. The flagpole was 162 meters (531.4 feet).

Weight

• 26–69 kg (57–152 lb)
• How many saiga antelopes go into the combined weight of horses in the largest horse rider parade in the world, assuming they were all the average weight of mongol horses?
• Hint: A mongol horse is a small but stocky breed of horses that is said to be unchanged since the time of Genghis Khan. The parade took place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and the oldest rider was 90 and the youngest was under three years old.
• 40,254 antelopes. The horses are around 550 lbs on average and there were 11,125 of them making them weigh 6,118,750 pounds together. 

Fast Facts

Saiga Antelope live on the Eurasian Steppe, but they used to have a larger range spanning all the way across the bering strait to Alaska and Canada. 

They eat grass and shrubs. Their diet is so versatile that they can eat some plants that are poisonous to other animals. 

Males fight for mates and victorious bucks can control groups of up to 50 females. The females exclusively mate with the male that controls their group. They often give birth to two fawns at a time. 

Like other bovids, antelope newborns are able to walk and run shortly after they’re born. This gives them an edge against the Eurasian predators that would love to make a meal out of them, including foxes, wolves, dogs, and eagles.

The antelopes are able to live in plains that can reach very high and very low temperatures. And they have anatomical protections against the elements.

Major Fact: The Nose Knows

• Because they live under the blazing suns of the spicy stans (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan), overheating is a serious issue for mammals.
• While they’re still not completely sure what the odd-looking noses do, it seems like their primary purpose is to help cool the saiga’s face since there are lots of blood vessels close to the skin and cools the blood as air flows over it.
• Its shape and downward direction help to filter out dust that could be kicked up by the herd.
• However, it turns out this nose has a serious downside
• The saiga has recently plummeted in numbers over the last few years. 
  • While many point to hunting since saiga horn is used in superstitious remedies
  • In fact, from 1955 to 1985, hunters killed over 5 million of them 
  • But the fatal blow was struck back in the spring 2015 when a massive epidemic wiped out a full half of their population
  • After a long period of gob-smackedness, researchers found a special bacteria that grew in the blood vessels of the saiga’s noses called pasteurella multocida
  • This causes blood poisoning, which has a herd mortality rate of 100%
  • They used to live as far as the UK and even in Canada, but now they just live in Russia and the Stans.

Ending: So sharpen your horns and fluff your snout cause this sad antelope’s got reason to pout here in LDT

“…and today we’re talking about an owl with an eye for allies. But more on that later.”

Small things slithering across the woodlands know to watch the skies. A killer approaches silently as it glides from high perches. For most small mammals and invertebrates that meet this aerial doom, it’s time to say goodbye to this mortal coil. But when a particular snake comes face-to-beak with the eastern screech owl, they have one more chance to prove their worth. But sometimes, combating deadly predators is a matter of being worth more alive than dead in Life, Death, and Taxonomy. 

“…and today we’re talking about the sloooowest mammal in the world. But more on that later.”

The Amazon jungle is home to a wide variety of animals both fast and slow, with one of the slowest being the brown-throated sloth. But with so many fierce predators on the jungle floor, it helps to spend all your time hanging out in the trees. The only problem is, there aren’t a lot of good things to eat way high up in the trees. So to stay healthy, and stay slow, the sloth has some unorthodox ways of getting his vitamins here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

“…and today we’re talking about the plume in the room. But more on that later.”

At the bottom of the deepest oceanic trench, you’ll find an animal that’s worth writing home about. The sea pen is a feathery friend with multiple personalities and penchant for puffing itself up when the coast is clear. But when slow-moving danger is around every corner, you have to be ready to retreat here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description

• The sea pen is so named because it sort of looks like a feather pen. 
• The feathers are actually tentacle-like appendages
• A smooth bulb anchors the sea pen in the sediment and a stock rises and curls like a fancy quill.
• Branches from the quill have tentacles that give the organism a feathery appearance. 
• They come in a variety of light colors from a cream color to pink. 

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We do have a Measure Up intro this week from our friend Calvin. 

Length at Sexual Maturity

• 55 and 90 mm
• How many sea pens go into the length of the longest feather ever recorded?
• Hint: According to Guinness, the longest feather ever recorded was documented in 1972 in Kochi, Shikoku, Japan. The feather belonged to a phoenix fowl, also called a yokohama chicken.
• 117.7 sea pens. The feather was 10.6 m (34 ft 9.5 in). 

Living depth

• 6,100 m (3.7 miles)
• How many sea pen living depths would go into the length of RNA needed to vaccinate the entire world?
• Hint: This came from the subreddit r/theydidthemath, which I found because we’re mentioned in the comments for our measurement-based assault on mathematics. Thanks to listener Jessica for emailing to let me know that were mentioned on at least one corner of Reddit.
• 49,709,695,400,000 depths. It would take 296 trillion km (31 light years) of RNA.

Fast Facts

Though sea pens look like plants, they live down where no plants can survive because of a lack of sunlight. They can live in shallow reef areas to deep intertidal abysses. 

They like all kinds of regions but prefer tropical and temperate water.

The entire order pennatulacea are called sea pens but only members of subselliflorae really look like feather pens. Other orders can be found in a variety of fanciful shapes from feather dusters to peacock plumage.

The fully unfurled plume is actually full of water and it can deflate like a broken arm flailing inflatable tube man. When there’s danger around, the pen will expel water to shrink down into the sand.

This particular genus has several bioluminescent species.

Some species of sea pens can use barbed nematocysts to sting and harpoon prey. 

Also, sea pens could possibly live for more than a century. Their tentacles also have stingers. They can get up to almost 6.6 ft.

Major Fact: We are Legion

I was going to talk about the fact that the sea pen is the only non-extinct animal with glide reflection symmetry, but it turns out that it involves Euclidean geometry so it’s tough to explain. Basically, it means that the pen is symmetrical, but slightly askew so it’s not symmetrical at all.

Instead, let’s talk about polyps. You may have noticed that the sub class was “octocorallia”, which is octocorals. 

So the sea pen has more in common with coral than anything else. 

Each polyp is basically a tiny jellyfish octopus – a cnidarian with eight tentacles that all come together to form a single animal. 

The first polyp will lose its tentacles and turn into the tree trunk of the pen with a large root at the bottom (otherwise known as the peduncle) and anchoring itself in the sea floor.

Then other polyps bud from it and each one specializes in a different function. Like pluripotent cells.

Some polyps become gills, others become rudimentary stomachs, and others become reproductive organs. Like a more advanced version of three kids wearing a big trenchcoat to get into a PG-13 rated movie. 

When you see a sea pen in its full glory, it’s actually mostly filled with water. If it’s threatened, it can expel that water and deflate, disappearing into the sand. This process can take up to 4 hours, but when your primary predators are sea slugs and star fish, you have time.

Ending: So anchor yourself, work on your Euclidean reflection geometry, and remember that the pen is mightier than the swordfish here in LDT.

“And today we’re talking about one of the fastest ungulates west of the Mississippi. But more on that later.”

North America has a few big animals, but it’s mostly dominated by smaller fauna that have learned to thrive in the amber waves of grain. However, America was once a continent like Africa, home to great beasts that made the bison look like a midsized megafauna. It also used to have predators like lions, hyenas, and cheetahs. But there’s one relic of epochs long gone that still follows the old ways of the Pleistocene era. The pronghorn may be a product of its time but sometimes the good old-fashioned lessons still hold up in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.