Hybrids like us

 

OK, the dog-fox hybrids are strange. Sure of that one? And why would conservationists "condemn" big cat hybrids? I mean, I assumed everyone loves ligers! Note also that polar bears are moving further south and hybridize with grizzlies as they go along. Are these hybrids fertile? If so, it seems the polar bear doesn´t need "saving", after all. Life will find a way. Finally, what´s up with those strange fish accidentally "created" by some crazy scientists in Hungary (I mean, where else)?   

10 of the strangest hybrid animals

Scientists accidentally create "impossible" hybrid fish

Fire, ice and ugly bovids

Who´s calling me ugly, boy?
Credit: Charles J Sharp

"Wild Scandinavia (Fire and Ice)" is a 2023 BBC documentary about wildlife in Norway, Iceland and Svalbard. The two latter aren´t part of Scandinavia as the term is usually understood...at least in Scandinavia! In Swedish, the docu has been titled "Det arktiska Skandinavien" but that too is wrong, since Dovrefjell in Norway isn´t Arctic...

But sure, the wildlife shown is so cool that casual viewers probably don´t care about the geographical naming conventions (or even locations). 

Muskoxen (the bovids at Dovrefjell), arctic foxes and polar bears are featured. So are peculiar birds such as ruffs and little auks. We also get to meet a wolf spider which hunts flies at the outskrits of a hot spring on Iceland! I admit that the muskoxen were my favorites - these large beasts are even uglier than I expected, LOL. For some reason, they don´t show killer whales.

Could be of some interest if you are a nature documentary aficionado, but don´t expect any deeper philosophical insights... 

Dog days

 

Credit: Sage Ross

“Dogs in the Wild: Meet the Family” is a 2022 BBC nature documentary. Everyone knows about the domestic dog, but here we are indeed invited to meet its “family”. I admit that the diversity of the Canidae is pretty staggering. Some live in unexpected places: the Tibetan fox in the Himalayas, the Arctic wolf at the Queen Elizabeth Islands and the diminutive fennec fox in the Sahara desert. And yes, many red foxes live in London!

Some canids are embroiled in intricate near-symbiotic relationships with other organisms. The dingoes at Fraser Island survive in part by eating eggs of sea turtles, but they inadvertently also protect hatched turtles from further predation, since no other predators dares to approach the beaches if the dingoes roam there. The Fraser Island dingo population is also considered important since these specimens are supposedly very “pure”, genetically speaking, while dingoes in other parts of Australia have interbred with domestic dogs. To stop further racial mixing, domestics have been banned from the island (sure wonder why humanity meddles into the love lives of feral canids, but there you go).

Meanwhile in South America, the wolf apple is the preferred diet of the maned wolf, a bizarre canid that looks like a fox on stilts. The maned wolf´s bad eating habits help spread the wolf apple, with some assistance from leaf-cutter ants! The canid literally shits out the seeds of the wolf apples it consumes, and the seeds are then saved from the scorching sun by ants, which takes them to shaded and moist places around their nests (the ants are interested in remaining fruit fragments attached to the seeds). There, the seeds sprout and a new wolf apple plant can wet the appetite of the maned wolf…

I don´t think “Dogs in the Wild” has any deeper purpose or meaning. The point is to show the viewer some interesting animals, and perhaps to show off the technological prowess of the BBC. But sure, I admit that “the family” was pretty wild!

Come and meet the ospreys

"Osprey: Sea Raptor" is a British documentary about - you might just have guessed it - ospreys. It´s made by Love Nature, which has also produced a huge number of other nature documentaries. While ospreys do exist in Europe (including Sweden), "Osprey: Sea Raptor" is taped in the United States. The ospreys have a breeding colony at the Connecticut side of the Long Island Sound. As the bird flies (pun intended), it´s not *that* far away from New York City!

The osprey is a large raptor (diurnal bird of prey) specialized in diving for fish, which it catches with the help of its long claws. It´s sufficiently different from other raptors to be placed in a family all its own. The documentary follows an osprey couple (these birds usually bond for life) as it returns to the Long Island Sound from South America, where it migrates during the winter. Ospreys often reuse the same nests or nesting sites year after year. 

While ospreys are pretty large, they can be challenged by both bald-headed eagles, cormorants and the great black-backed gull. In the documentary, the osprey punishes the cormorants by swooping down on their colony, and also manages to fend off the eagles, while the gull (which is of enormous size) turns out to be more of a problem! On land, foxes can sneak into osprey nests that aren´t elevated enough, and simply eat the eggs. Interestingly, humans living near the marshes help the ospreys by building nesting platforms. 

I never seen an osprey IRL, and probably wouldn´t want to live too close to one of their colonies, but I admit that "Osprey: Sea Raptor" is well-produced and even somewhat fascinating. 

Realm of Mother Volga

"Realm of the Volga" is a two-part German nature documentary, produced by Altay Films. It takes the viewer on a journey from the taiga of northern European Russia all the way down to the steppes surrounding the Caspian Sea. Most of the time, the documentary follows the Volga, the largest river in Europe. With the exception of Astrakhan close to the delta, the cities in the Volga basin are mostly not shown, the most notorious of these being Volgograd (Stalingrad). Instead, we get to see the Russian wilds (and a few Orthodox churches) in mostly pristine condition. 

Many of the animals shown are instantly familiar to a Swedish viewer like myself: moose, beaver, red fox, boar, capercaillie, mallard, tawny owl, black woodpecker, great tit... I even recognized the wisents, since we have them at the Skansen zoo in Stockholm! 

Further south, the fauna becomes more exotic. Large flocks of saiga antelopes roam the desolate landscape and drink the brackish water, while trying to stay clear of the steppe wolfe. Meanwhile, steppe eagles build their nests on the ground, and demoiselle cranes carry out their mating rituals. Corsac foxes, rosy starlings and hoopoes are other characteristic species found around Volga´s southern portions. In the Caspian Sea, cormorants and white-tailed eagles live onboard eerie abandoned ships, while enormous colonies of seals gather at the islands of this peculiar inland sea. And yet, even this feels familiar somehow, obviously because all these animals are included in field guides to European mammals or birds, the geographical border of "Europe" being situated even further east than the Volga river.

It´s a fascinating trip, to be sure, almost aesthetical. And yet, by not showing the great cities, the oil industry and the environmental degradation, I still get the impression that perhaps somehow we are being served the wrong picture here! I can´t help thinking that perhaps Mother Volga has fallen on hard times...   

Oh no, Lysenko was right!

I always assumed that Russia had more than its fair share of mad scientists, and it seems the concept has been successfully exported to the Western side of the Neo-Cold War (or is it Neo-Lamarckian) divide. Yes, comrades, come and see…the domesticated foxes!!!

Steller´s sea cow

“Mammals of the Soviet Union” is an apparently unfinished encyclopedia (at least in its English version), the original purpose of which was to describe all species of mammals found on the vast territory of the USSR. This volume, known as “Volume II, Part 1a”, is dated 1998. It's based on part of a Russian-language volume published in Moscow already in 1967. Why an old work like this is still of interest to zoologists is an interesting question – perhaps no other information on Soviet mammals (or are they ex-Soviet) is readily available?

This volume covers Sirenia and some of Carnivora. It's of interest due to the fact that it contains a translation of most of Georg Wilhelm Steller's original description of Steller's sea cow, a peculiar marine mammal known as Kapustnik in Russian. The type specimen was secured by Steller during the Bering expedition to the Commander Islands in 1742. The scientific description is dated 1751/1753. By 1768, Steller's sea cow had been hunted to extinction! Why this would be a problem for zoologists who understand the creative power of natural selection is, of course, another interesting question…

The rest of this volume covers more “regular” mammals, such as the Jackal, Gray Wolf, Arctic Fox, Red Fox, Brown Bear and Polar Bear. The whole book is 733 pages, despite only dealing with 12 species, thereby telling us something of the enormous amount of facts it contains…

“Mammals of the Soviet Union” is a reference work, and hence contain relatively few pictures, but if you are a budding mammalogist with a penchant for the Eurasian theatre, this might be the just the treat you're looking for.