Yes, I did just update a few hours ago but the wonder of the clock makes it now a totally new day.

I have spent the night in a state of wonderment and learning.I have learned about the aye-aye lemur, Komodo Island, the kakopo parrot, and the Yangtze River Dolphin. Watch the video (1.5 hours long but worth every minute) or continue reading for a summer of what I learned:


The aye-aye lemur is a very rare species of lemur that lives on an island off of madagascar. It has not been seen in years, it is nocturnal, and it is rather odd-looking. One peculiarity of the aye-aye lemur is its very long and very thin middle finger, which it does not use to flip off angry drivers on the highway. There is only one other species of mammals with this anatomical feature and it is the long-fingered possum. Both of these animals have only one evolutionary specific fact in common - both the aye-aye lemur and the long-fingered possum live in a habitat without woodpeckers. This simple fact allowed both species to develop a way to extract nutrients from underneath tree bark. Life, and evolution, is opportunistic you see. The aye-aye lemur had the opportunity and it took it.


Komodo Island is home to the very rare Komodo Dragon. The Komodo Dragon is the real-life basis for Chinese dragon myths. It is a huge, scaly, man-eating lizard and while it does not breathe fire, the Komodo Dragon does in fact have one of the most pungent breath of any creature on Earth. But the dragon is not the only thing dangeous about Komodo Island, and there are 1500 of the killer dragons on the island. Komodo Island also just happens to be home to more poisonous snakes per square mile of land than anywhere else on Earth. And so if you visit Komodo, DON'T GET BITTEN (by a dragon with poisonous saliva or a snake with poisonous venom) because if you are bitten by something deadly, you will die.


The kakopo parrot is an endangered species that lives in New Zealand. Tonight I learned that New Zealand is really just a piece of land that emerged from the sea. And so for millions of years, before man made boats and traveled to the island and ruined everying, the only creatures on New Zealand were bird and some bats. It was also a completely predator-less habitat. And because there were no predators in the air or on the ground the kakopo parrot realized that it was easy to take to life on the ground and over many generations it forgot to fly. Another result of the predator-less environment was its complete trust. The kakopo parrot did not know how to worry. It had never had to worry for its life before and so it never developed a distrust of anything. When there are no predators, it is not necessary to reproduce quickly because that would just result in overpopulation and competition for resources. And so the kakopo parrot also developed a very slow, complicated, and mainly ineffective mating ritual. The male parrot produces a very low, rather unpleasant bass mating call. Base soundwaves can travel over great distances but it is impossible to tell where the call is coming from. On the off chance that a female parrot hears the call and likes the sound of it, it is nearly impossible for her to locate the male. But in the slim chance that she does locate him she will then only consent to mate if a certain fruit tree is in season. Completely ridiculous. All of these traits that evolved as a result of having no predators in the habitat, helped aid in the massive population drop that occurred when man introduced predators into New Zealand. The kakopo parrot were incapable of worrying or distrusting anyone and so the newly introduced predators could just walk right up to it and it wouldn't even run away. And when the population suddenly dropped the parrot did not have time to gradually evolve its mating habits and so it was impossible to repopulate with its ineffective mating ritual. It had existed successfully in a world defined by one fact - no predators. When that one fact changed, it's whole life changed.


The Yangtze River Dolphin is almost completely blind. It wasn't always so. Thousands of years of agriculture on the banks of the river caused massive amounts of mud and silt to wash into the river and so the river because turbid, impossible to see in. The dolphins adapted to this change by enhancing their sonar ability over several generations so that they had intense hearing that allowed them to navigate the river. Then, man introduced the deisel engine and suddenly the whole river was filled with sound. Once again the dolphin was incapable of navigating in its home. It is extinct now because of this and because China build a dam in the river. But the Yantze River Dolphin gives us an interesting truth to consider. Because of evolutionary history, different species have developed different ways of perceiving this world. Humans and the dolphins inhabited the same physical world but we perceived a completely different one. If it is true that you create your own universe by how you perceive it, then those dolphins and I lived in vastly different universes.




Well, I had a lot of fun learning at 1 AM. This is very convenient that I felt the urge to blog just now because I have a feeling today is going to be very busy and I probably would not have had any time to blog anyway.