Wow! Amazing, huh? Though the bit halfway when the researchers listen to the seals under the ice does have somewhat of the feel of the final scene of a local 8th grade production of Hamlet when everyone “dies”.

In case you don’t know Werner Herzog, he is the director who gave us the documentary “Grizzly Man” about Timothy Treadwell. Remember him? He was the man who lived with bears in Alaska and ended by being consumed by one along with his girlfriend while his video camera recorded audio of the whole thing. I quite recommend the film, if for no other reason than to see a portrait of a man consumed by his passion, however misguided, and of the jaw-droppingly gorgeous beauty of the vast remote region of Alaska he lives in. Would that we all could spend a few months there each summer, simply watching the grass get tossed by the wind or the streams ripple over the rocks. Of course, not so much with the getting eaten by grizzlies part.

Herzog also famously hauled a 320-ton steamship over an isthmus in Peru for the filming of “Fitzcarraldo” (a feat so Cameron-esque someone else made a documentary about it) and has produced a slew of critically-acclaimed but otherwise little known art house feature films and documentaries. “Grizzly Man” did receive some measure of success and fame, and one of his next films — “Rescue Dawn” — was shown widely enough that even my parents saw it.

This clip is from “Encounters at the End of the World”, which apparently came out in 2007, though I was oblivious. As expected, it has sterling marks on Rotten Tomatoes. It has now been added to the Netflix queue.

You can find how seals fit into the mammals here; here’s more on Weddell Seals, the composers of this unearthly music.

According to wikipedia, jerboae are “jumping desert rodents” from North Africa and Asia.  Tasty and bite-sized desert rodents, too, I’d wager. Perfect for kebabs . . .

The jerboa, together with kangaroo rats of North America and hopping mice of Australia, are a great example of convergent evolution. This often happens when organisms from very different lineages evolve to fill similar niches, like whales and fish, or fungi and oomycetes (water molds — an oomycete, for example, caused the Irish Potato Famine).

Two mammal posts in one week! Never thought that would happen. I must be going soft.

So someone rigged up a camera to capture the thief in flagrante. Take a look at this video that came across the National Geographic newswire a few weeks ago:

Wait for it . . .

No, that is not a sawblade attached to an oven mitt. That, mateys, is a sperm whale. And not just any sperm whale. A sperm whale that has learned to rob lures of bait without hurting itself or using fingers, fins or tail. Pretty slick!

Sperm whales are the largest toothed predators on Earth. They dive deep in search of squid and fish, and judging from the sucker scars sometimes found on their skin . . .

. . . they really do get in battles with colossal squid deep underwater. Their heads contain a massive organ filled with a waxy substance called spermaceti. In the 19th century, this, along with oil from the whale’s blubber, was prized for making candles as affordable as tallow but far less smoky, lamp oil, soap, cosmetics, crayons, and a number of other products. The spermaceti’s actual purpose may be buoyancy control (the whale hardening it to dive and liquefying it to rise), echolocation, or both.

Since these whales aren’t afraid of defending themselves by using their head as a battering ram, a few actually did manage to sink some whaling ships in the Pacific, including the Essex in 1820, which inspired Melville to write Moby Dick, and the Ann Alexander in 1851, which was attacked (after, it should be said, first attacking the whales) about the same time that Moby Dick was published, and probably helped to market the book.

What is really extraordinary, when you think about it, is that these behemoths evolved from a small furry, doglike creature that existed 55 million years ago.

An artist's reconstruction of Pakicetus, an ancestor of modern whales. This image by Arthur Weasley is distributed under a Creative Commons-attribution license. Click image for link.

What an amazing world we live in!

In any case, so long as you’re not shooting harpoons at them or swimming around looking tasty at 6,000 feet, sperm whales are probably mostly harmless. Here is a film of a sperm whale calf (who doesn’t seem to have teethed yet) to give you a closer look.

Take a look.

Awwwwwwww . . . . .  but as a female mammal, I must say Thank God the little darlings are born SANS horns. *Shudder*.

The breed is also called Egyptian longhorn, but before I even got to this detail in the article, I was struck by how closely these cattle resemble the cattle Egyptians actually depicted in and on their tombs:

Photo by Gérard Ducher, distributed under a Creative Commons attribution license. Click image for link.

The cow second from left looks a lot like Belle. This model is from an incredible collection found in the the Middle Egyptian tomb of a noble called Meketre who died ca. 2000 B.C. In his tomb in a secret room that tomb robbers missed were found intricate dollhouse-like models of soldiers marching, sailors rowing, brewers brewing, bakers baking, or Meketre himself counting his cattle. Meketre had all these models placed in his tomb so all these things could happen for him in the next world. Together, they form an intimate, detailed snapshot of daily life in ancient Egypt. If you’re ever at the Met in New York City, don’t miss their share of the collection.

Here’s the nobleman Sennedjem with Egyptian cattle as seen on his tomb wall:

The artisan Sennedjem plows heavenly fields on his tomb wall. Ca. reign of Seti I/Ramesses II, 1200s B.C.

I’ve always loved those splotchy cattle with the big horns I see in Egyptian art. It’s nice to know that even though the builders of the pyramids and their culture are long gone, their cattle, at least, live on.

And while we’re on the subject of animals in Egyptian art, I’ve also been struck by the contrast between the formal, stiff poses Egyptian artists used to depict humans, and the Audubon-esque naturalism with which they sometimes precociously depicted animals. They had a keen eye for detail, as you can see in this painting of geese made almost 5,000 years ago during the Old Kingdom.

Geese painted in the tomb of Nefermaat and his wife Atet during the reign of the triple-pyramid building Pharaoh (and Ladies' Man) Snefru, ca. 2600 B.C.

Just for the record, this panel of geese (not all are shown here) may be my favorite work of Egyptian art ever. Its simplicity, attention to detail, balance — and may I say grace? — are timeless. As far as I know, no other culture came close to this level of artistic excellence and realism for several thousand years (though hard to know, since most ancient art has gone way of dodo). This was a first for the world. And, one might also argue, for scientific illustration.

Hope you enjoyed a little art history and Egyptology with your biology. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Jen