Monstrosities of Evolution

These bizarre illustrations are from Ulisse Aldrovandi’s 1642 book, History of Monsters (Monstrorum Historia). Although the illustrations are extremely bizarre, they depict Aldrovandi’s vivid imagination and vast education in natural history, science and the diversity of life, including monsters.

Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) is considered the founder of modern Natural History. The Ulisse Aldrovandi Museum is housed in the Museo di Palazzo Poggi di Scienza e Arte and is located in his hometown of Bologna, Italy. His Storia Naturale, a 13 volume printed work, was conceived as the most complete description of the three kingdoms of nature - mineral, vegetable and animal - available at that time.

Aldrovandi was an extremely educated man. Born to a noble family, he obtained degrees in medicine and philosophy, with further interests in botany, zoology and geology. He became the first professor of natural sciences at the University of Bologna. Of the hundred of books and essays he wrote, only a handful were published during his lifetime.

Nearing the time of his death, he proudly stated that his home held a collection of 18,000 “different natural things,” and 7,000 dried plants displayed in fifteen volumes. The seventeen volumes with drawings of animals, plants, minerals and monstrosities are an integral part of the museum. 

source 1, 2, 3

“L’Argala o Grande Gru" (The Hargila, or Greater Stork) - Leptoptilos dubius

The Hargila (Sanskrit for “bone-swallower") is also known as the Greater Adjutant, and is a close relative of the Marabou stork, native to the Indian subcontinent. Its English name comes from its stiff, military-style gait.

Among the largest of the storks, hargilas are true omnivores, and will often seek the easiest food available. They stalk through wetlands and lakes as they dry at the end of the wet season to pick off stranded fish, and are not uncommon around garbage dumps. In the 19th century, when their numbers were more plentiful, the hargilas were often seen along the banks of the Ganges river, eating charred cadavers on ill-tended funeral pyres.

Like the rest of the stork family, the hargila has no vocal chords. Its primary sounds are made by clattering and chattering its bill, and several odd mooing and roaring vocalizations that it makes when it nests.

All of these facts make it abundantly clear that no human in their right mind ought to invite one to a dinner party. They have no manners, nothing to contribute to polite table conversation, and will gobble your entire roast right up. Do not make the mistake this poor gentleman has made.

Il Gabinetto del Giovane Naturalista, Tomo Quinto. Tomasso Smith, 1826.

Leopard Frog - Rana spp. - Internal Anatomy

The internal anatomy of the adult frog is, on a very basic level, quite similar to that of mammals - they have the standard set of vertebrate organs (a heart, some lungs, a nervous system, a stomach, and some other digestive organs), but once you look closer, you can see how different the frog really is.

For one, their skin absorbs oxygen directly through water, and if they dry out, they suffocate - their lungs aren’t nearly large or strong enough to provide the oxygen for their entire body. The frog has no functional ribs or diaphragm, and they must breathe using buccal pumping - moving the floor of their mouth up and down to inflate and deflate the lungs.

Frogs have a single excretory orifice, like birds and reptiles, called the cloaca - all waste and reproductive excretions go through the same hole. Their paired kidneys actually function fairly similarly to mammalian kidneys, but their endocrine system does not conserve water inside the body, like our kidneys and endocrine system do. Because of this, even frogs with strong lungs would die quickly if they had no access to water, due to dehydration.

The hearts of frogs are also somewhat different from mammals. They have only three true chambers. The oxygenated blood from the lungs, and the deoxygenated blood from the tissues enters the heart through separate atria. When the heart beats, it pumps the blood into a common ventricle, which has a partial septum (dividing tissue), to minimize the mixing of the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. The blood then passes through a spiral valve to the appropriate vessels - the aorta for oxygenated blood, and the pulmonary artery for deoxygenated blood.

Brehms Tierleben, Allgemeine Kunde des Tierreichs. Dr. Otto zur Strassen, 1913.

Lepidosiren aimectans [now Lepidosiren paradoxa] - South American lungfish

This curious Amazon-basin fish is one of the few obligate air-breathers in the fish world, meaning it cannot get its oxygen from the water it lives in, and must breathe from the surface. It’s also notable in the ichthyological world for being a hibernator when conditions are poor, much like frogs and toads. It can encase itself in a cocoon of mud, and re-emerge as much as 6 months later, having had no fresh air or water in the mean time.

The first naturalists to encounter these fish in the mid-19th century recognized that when they dissolved these mud-cases underwater, the encased fish would “come back to life”, but they assumed that the mud casing was a very short-term protection capsule for the fish.

When they took the capsules back to Europe and dissolved them, assuming they would get some dead (but preserved) specimens, the lungfish took more than one group of zoologists by surprise when they sprung back to life, even after a 3-month voyage over the Atlantic.

South American lungfish behavior hasn’t been as well-studied as African lungfish behavior, but their hibernation/estivation behaviors are very similar. However, the South American lungfish is not believed to be as capable of crossing land as African lungfish, owing to its smaller “limbs” and its very swampy environment - African lungfish tend to live in ponds with defined shorelines, rather than swampland.

Popular History of the Aquarium of Marine and Fresh-Water Animals and Plants. George Brettingham Sowerby, 1857.

Vespertilio spectrum (now Vampyrum spectrum) - The Spectral Bat

Also known as the false vampire bat and Linnaeus’ vampire bat, the spectral bat may not bite humans like the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), but small animals and large insects have much more to fear from this stealthy hunter.

True vampire bats (Desmodus sp.) hunt by opening a small wound in an animal while it sleeps, with razor sharp teeth that don’t even wake the victim. It laps up the blood, and flies away undetected. The fact that the animals are almost always unharmed by this encounter makes true vampire bats the only parasitic mammals.

Spectral bats, on the other hand, are absolute hunters. They do not drink blood like true vampire bats, and often hunt much like owls, stealthily patrolling the edges of forests at night, and swooping down to attack and consume large insects, small mammals, reptiles, and even other bats (whose distress calls can attract many spectral bats from miles around).

The spectral bat is much larger than the true vampire bats, and has large ears and decent sight. It hunts by using its large canine teeth to puncture either the cervical arteries or the brain-case of small vertebrates, or sever the head of insects. Like the true vampires, spectral bats are nocturnal, and live in the Americas. However, they’re not as ubiquitous, being confined mostly to the northwest quadrant of South America, and living almost exclusively in forested regions. 

Images:

Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur.  Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, 1775.

Artistic interpretations of sea life, birds, and reptiles

Between the beginning of the Scientific Revolution (which began in the mid-17th century) and the early-19th Century movement towards dry and clinical accuracy in both anatomical and zoological illustrations, there was a period of extravagance, showiness, and artistic expression in the sciences.

Instead of being solely geared towards other scientists, the artists sought to entice the general public and show off their vast collections, in many of their works. This can be seen in the medical illustrations of Frederick Ruysch, as well as here, in the zoological illustrations of Albertus Seba.

[h/t to Biodiversity Library’s blog for tipping me off to the interesting connections between two collections already in my archive]

Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descripto, tome II & III. Albetus Seba, 1735.

Leopardus pajeros the Pampas cat by BioDivLibrary on Flickr.

Historia fisica y politica de Chile segun documentos adquiridos en esta republica durante doce años de residencia en ella y publicada bajo los auspicios del supremo gobierno. Paris :||Chile, en el Museo de historia natural de Santiago,En casa del autor;1844-71.. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/27990693

Another page from Serpentum et Draconum Historiae, a seventeeth century treatise written by Ulysse Aldrovandi and illustrated by several anonymous artists.  Some of the best fantasy art is created by artists who believe they’re illustrating reality.

Greater Kudu - Tragelaphus strepsiceros

The Greater Kudu is the spiral-horned antelope you’ll find if you travel farther south than the savanna of central Kenya (north of which, the Lesser Kudu reigns). As a browsing ruminant, they can be found in small herds - though their population is declining rapidly - in most dry, warm, southern grasslands of Africa, where browsing material (bushes and shrubs) and a water supply is present.

Though humans have hunted the Greater Kudu (both for their horns and their meat) since antiquity, and still do to an extent that they’re decreasing in population faster than they can reproduce, there is a curious upside to the modern human presence in southern Africa: as humans divert rivers and water sources to irrigate crops and trees, the territory of the Greater Kudu has increased impressively. The increased amount of dry territory with a water source has allowed the species to roam much farther than it ever would have naturally. Whether the spreading out of the still-declining population is a net gain for the species is not yet known.

Wild Life of the World. Richard Lydekker. Volume III. 1916.

Chironectes bifurcatus [now Rhycherus filamentosus] - The Two-pronged Toad-fish [now the Tasseled Anglerfish]

Despite its accepted current name as the “tasseled anglerfish”, this species is a true frogfish, from the family Antennariidae. While frogfish are members of the same order as all anglerfish (Lophiiformes), they are fairly specialized dwellers on the continental shelf, relying on camouflage to capture their prey, while the deep-sea (benthic) anglerfish rely much more upon stealth and the allure of their, er, lure.

In figure 1a, you can see the structure of the teeth of the tasseled anglerfish. While it doesn’t have the big, stabbing, pointy teeth of some of its cousins, the small, sharp, closely-linked teeth function like tiny hooks in its prey, preventing them from escaping while they’re being eaten. This gives us the additional fun fact that most frogfish (including this one) end up eating their prey while it’s still fully alive and conscious (or at least as conscious as a fish can be) - without any gnashing or tearing of the body, the only thing that kills the prey is suffocation and acid within the stomach.

Natural History of Victoria: Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria. Decade VI. Frederick McCoy, 1881.

The Victorian Obsession with Hummingbirds

The Victorians were - quite literally and without the least exaggeration - absolutely besotted with hummingbirds.  Not only did the number of known species proliferate over the nineteenth century - from 18 in 1758 to over a hundred in 1829 - but each new discovery seemed to shimmer more brightly with all the colours of the rainbow or was even smaller or more perfectly formed than all that had been seen in England before.  “There is not, it may safely be asserted, in all the varied works of nature in her zoological productions,” William Bullock wrote about hummingbirds in 1824, “any family that can bear a comparison, for singularity of form, splendour of colour, or number and variety of species, with this the smallest of the feathered creation.”

Hummingbirds were frequently arranged on branches and displayed in visually intoxicating hoards like the image[s] above, believed to have been created by Bullock in the mid-nineteenth century.  As Judith Pascoe notes, the diminutive size of hummingbirds and their appeal as bijouterie “increased the enthusiasm for and the ease of creating these kinds of conglomerations.”  Hoarding accentuated the shimmer and vibrancy of the plumage and created a sort visual ecstasy for those not lucky enough to see the birds alive in the indigenous habitats.

[Image Sources: 1 : 2 : 3 : 4]

Form and Skull of Sus scrofa moupinensis - North China wild boar

Piggers! The wild boar was domesticated in China at some point between 7000-8000 BCE, after dogs, sheep, and cats, but before cattle, horses, and camels. Wild swine are native to most of Asia, Central Europe, and North Europe, but at this point have formed feral herds throughout every continent but Antarctic. In the wild, most Suidae are very aggressive in protecting themselves and their territory, and uncastrated domestic males (boars) tend to display the same characteristics in many breeds.

As one can tell by the sharp canines and incisors, and broad canines good for grinding food, Suidae are extremely omnivorous, and find food by digging through the dirt with their snouts. In males, the canine teeth grow through their entire life, though at different rates in each genus. In feral boars (Sus scrofa), the canines don’t often reach more than a few inches long, but they are razor-sharp and expertly wielded. In some other species, such as the babirusa, the overgrown canines (tusks) are much longer than those of Sus scrofa, reaching the point of growing so long they curve backwards and into the cranial cavity.

Tusk-brains aside, all Suidae are extremely intelligent when it comes to domestic animals. As omnivores, they’re both hunted and hunters in the wild, and need to have an effective and developed brain to balance both.

Elemens de zoologie. Henri Milne-Edwards, for M. Alphonse Milne Edwards. 1840.

Nudibranchia of the world

Depicted: Okenia elegans, Hermaea bifida, Doto coronata, Facelina auriculata, Ancula gibbosa, Dendronotus frondosus, Tritonia hombergii.

“Nudibranch” literally means “naked-gill”, and among all the colorful and ornate sea slugs out there (the vast majority of which are not nudibranchs), there are very few non-nudibranchia that have these highly-exposed respiratory structures. The rosettes and side-plumes of these naked gills are present in all true nudibranchs, and are soft to the touch.

Many other sea slugs have “exposed” gills outside their body, but they are almost always keratinized into structures called cerata. When you encounter cerata in nudibranchs, however, they are not respiratory organs. They are envenomation structures, which store the nematocysts from food that the nuddies have consumed. When disturbed, they can release these second-hand stingers and inject the same venom found in their prey - which, by the way, often includes highly venomous and paralytic jellyfish and jellyfish relatives.

All images extracted from plate 43 of Kunstformen der Natur. Ernst Haeckel, 1904.

Megatherium americanum - The Giant Ground Sloth

The skeleton of Megatherium set up in the London Natural History Museum, and a depiction of a possibility of Megatherium behavior in life.

Though the population was already decreasing when the first humans arrived in South America, the disappearance of the Giant Sloth was helped along by the new immigrants. Using mammoth-hunting skills, this large and lumbering creature was an ideal kill for a human tribe. It was one of the many Pleistocene megafauna that went extinct during the Quaternary extinctions.

Extinct monsters. H. N. Hutchinson, 1896.

Strigops habroptila - The Kakapo

Kakapos have the smallest relative wing size of any parrot, and are also the heaviest parrots out there. Unlike other ground-dwelling birds, they actually have the ability to store fat for future use, and this has given them a quite rotund shape overall. Even in lean times, the kakapo is a huge bird, and did quite well for itself before humans arrived. Even before European colonists landed on the South Island of New Zealand, the native Maori used kakapo feathers (which are incredibly soft, as they don’t need to sustain flight) and kakapo meat at a rate that was unsustainable for a continuing population. However, the rate of decline during that period was relatively slow - though the kakapo would have eventually been hunted out, it was not in any immediate threat.

Unfortunately for the great owl parrot, their musky smell and lack of defenses made them easy targets for newly introduced predators and hunters, and the population crashed so quickly that the Kakapo was one of the first animals to have a conservation plan put into place to try and stop the decimation of the masses. Though the conservation plans helped keep the birds safe from humans, the introduced dogs, cats, ferrets, and rats, all continued to wreak havoc.

Today, there are only 127 living kakapos, and their continued survival is far from assured. Their evolutionary history and unique physiology and behavior (not to mention their very important cultural position in Ngai Tahu society) make their possible extinction that much more important to try and prevent.

A History of the Birds of New Zealand. W.L. Buller, 1888.