Polar Play: Animals Have Fun Too


















A Bee’s Buzz






Leaf-tailed gecko: a master of disguise

leaf tailed gecko camo This amazing creature is a master of disguise, blending in to its surroundings to the point that it is nearly indistinguishable from the litter of the forest floor where it makes its home.  The gecko, which has evolved its elaborate camouflage to escape visual detection by predators, sports leaf-shaped tail and leaf-patterned skin, complete with veins, folds, and insect nibble marks.

Giant leaf-tail gecko / reuzenbladstaartgekko (Uroplatus fimbriatus)

Both crypticity and mimicry deceive the beholder into believing that the animal is something that it is not.  Crypticity typically involves an animal avoiding detection through colors and patterns and can be visual, olfactory, or auditory (Stevens & Merilaita 2009).  Visual crypticity can include camouflage, disruptive coloration, and background-matching, and can be quite striking.  Crypticity is distinguished from a similar phenomenon, masquerading, in that masquerading involves the matching of specific inanimate object like twigs or rocks rather than matching the general background (Gullan & Cranston 2010).


The majority of individuals of the few extant (living) species of leaf-tailed gecko on Earth are endemic to Madagascar and a few surrounding islands and are inextricably linked to the survival of the Madagascan rainforest, meaning that habitat destruction primarily in the form of deforestation poses a potential threat for these cool critters.  There are several protected areas in Madagascar that are therefore crucial for the leaf-tailed gecko’s continued existence.  Some of the species are of “least concern” on the IUCN’s conservation status scale, meaning that the protected areas are doing their job for the most part; however, illegal harvesting of these animals has caused some species’ numbers to drop and vary from “near threatened” to “vulnerable” status.  These little guys are unique and incredible, and offer just another reason to save the earth’s rainforests, without which many interesting species such as this one could not hope to survive!


Gullan, P.J. and P.S. Cranston.  The Insects.  Ed. 4.  Wiley-Blackwell: UK, 2010.

Stevens, M. & S. Merilaita. 2009. Animal camouflage: current issues and new perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364:423-427.

“Uroplatus phantasticus.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uroplatus_phantasticus

“Satanic Leaf-tailed gecko.” http://www.arkive.org/satanic-leaf-tailed-gecko/uroplatus-phantasticus/

“Leaf-tailed gecko.” http://a-z-animals.com/animals/leaf-tailed-gecko/

“Animal of the week: the satanic leaf-tailed gecko.” http://www.bite.ca/bitedaily/2013/03/animal-of-the-week-the-satanic-leaf-tailed-gecko/

Mystery underwater sand circles are actually puffer fish art


crop circles





The artist at work

The artist at work



Discovery: http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/puffer-fish-makes-elaborate-undersea-sand-circles-120925.htm

This is Colossal: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/09/mysterious-underwater-crop-circle-art-discovered-off-the-coast-of-japan/

Dress to impress: bird courtship rituals


Mandarin duck



The bird of paradise is equally stunning:






Mandarin duck:  http://birding.about.com/od/Waterfowl/p/Mandarin-Duck.htm

Marvellous spatuletail hummingbird: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8338000/8338728.stm

White-throated bee-eater:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-throated_Bee-eater


When the cicadapocalypse comes, citizens run from their homes and seek refuge in pretty much any place not overrun by whizzing, clicking, peeing monster swarms of insects.

plain language- simplify

Just kidding, no need to fear.  Although quite a sight to behold, these insects are harmless.  While you may already know that cicadas are unique insects because they hide away underground and emerge as adults every 13 or 17 years, depending on the species, you may not have heard some of the more zany tidbits about them.  Here are some interesting facts about cicadas:

  • Cicadas emerge in cycles of years that are prime numbers because predators won’t as easily guess when they’ll be out in full force.
  • Cicadas employ a strategy called “predator satiation:” by emerging in broods numbering in the millions, cicadas ensure that after predators have eaten a few hundred, they’ll be too stuffed to consume them all!
  • Cicadas are “semelparous:”  they mate, then die.  The adults only live for 2 to 3 weeks when they come out every 17 years.
  • Cicadas are tasty!  Everything out there eats them-squirrels, turkeys, dogs, even fish.  And humans eat them!  Just broil them up and eat them like fried shrimp… or you could always just eat cicada ice cream:

Cicada ice cream

  • If you walk under a forest covered in cicadas, bring an umbrella.  Cicadas eat by sucking up tree fluids, which means that they eventually need to pee it out.  It has even been dubbed “cicada rain.”
  • Every 221 years, 17 and 13 year broods of cicadas co-emerge.  I know that’s a sight I’d certainly like to see, but unfortunately it won’t happen until 2115.

cicadas color

However, the most interesting thing about cicadas may be the way they fight bacteria!  A fairly new scientific field called biomaterials in which humans use the properties of animal’s physical compositions has been growing steadily with advances in technology, and it just so happens that cicadas have a very special mechanism in which they virtually eliminate bacterial infections on their wings.

Cicada wings have tiny spikes called “nanopillars” on their wings that kill bacterial cells on contact via physical structure alone.  Watch the video below to see how it works:

The exciting thing about structural defenses like these is that they usually aren’t too difficult to construct, given today’s technology and engineering abilities.  If we could engineer this type of material, it would be too small to feel, and thus could be applied to nearly every surface that could conceivably attract and spread bacteria-doorknobs, toilets, countertops, hospital beds, etc.  So if you are lucky enough to experience a cicadapocalpyse, don’t be too frustrated by the loud, peeing, overwhelmingly numerous little buggers.  After all, following their lead on disease fighting may lead to the virtual elimination of bacterial infections in the future.


“Cicadapocalypse 2013: what you need to know.” http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/cicadapocalypse-2013-what-you-need-to-know

“The most interesting 17 year cicada facts.” http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/the-most-interesting-17-year-cicada-facts/

“Cicada.” http://www.thaibugs.com/?page_id=117

“Cicadas’ antibacterial trick may help humans.” http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/cicadas-antibacterial-trick-may-help-humans

Dragon dance

sea dragon

Meet Nessie the sea dragon.  No, she’s not the monster that has popularized a certain Scottish loch, but is in fact a very real animal related to seahorses and pipefish that roams the weedy beds off the coast of Australia.  Like a dragon, Nessie has a plated body to protect herself.  She is one of the masters of camouflage, a method of crypsis many animals use to conceal themselves from predators.

There are two types of sea dragons, the leafy sea dragon and the weedy sea dragon. Nessie is a leafy seadragon, and indeed she looks just like a leaf to blend into her seaweedy surroundings, swaying in the water to heighten the masquerade.


Nessie spends much of her life floating happily in the seaweed beds, sucking up microscopic food out of the water with her long snout.  In fact, sea dragons have been observed to remain in one location for up to 68 hours, just eating.  But when it comes to courting a male, she departs her rather mundane life of plankton-slurping and embarks on an epic romance.  Well, epic for a fish.

When it comes time to find a partner, sea dragons perform a special courtship dance in spring under the fading light of sunset.  In the video below, Nessie and her mate mirror each other’s every movement in this elaborate courtship ritual.

Perhaps you wouldn’t normally think of fish as being hopeless romantics, but it gets even stranger.  After the courtship ritual is complete, the male is “pregnant.”  Like the sea dragon’s cousin, the seahorse, the male protects and provides for the eggs during their development.  You see, the dragon dance is not just a dance.  During the courtship ritual, the female lays 150 to 200 eggs in an area under the male’s tail called a brood patch.  The father’s blood feeds the eggs for two months, then the eggs hatch and fully formed baby sea dragons emerge, ready to brave the world completely without aid from either parent.  Seahorses, sea dragons, and pipefish are the only fish species in which the males carry and raise the young.


These special fish are subject to many threats, but the sea dragon is an example of a conservation success story.  In the early 1990s the Australian government placed a complete protection on sea dragons (the leafy sea dragon is the official marine emblem of the state of South Australia), and since then their numbers have risen so that they are now classified as “near threatened.”  To raise awareness and celebrate these strange yet beautiful animals, a biennial Leafy Sea Dragon Festival is held in South Australia and an animated short film was made in 2006 and distributed to all primary schools in the state.  Weedy sea dragons’ populations are monitored in Australia as well.  Because of their uniqueness and the intrigue they provide for many people, sea dragons could become “flagship” animals, which are animals that humans have an emotional attachment to, such as panda bears and elephants.  Flagship species are often used by conservation efforts in order to encourage more people to join their cause.

Hopefully, with the efforts of Australians and other conservationists, Nessie the sea dragon will enter the hearts of more people around the world.  Perhaps then we can focus more of our attention on preserving unique and special animals like sea dragons than the other, admittedly more enigmatic but fictional loch-dwelling Nessie.


McCall, Gerrie.  Weird and Wonderful Fish.  Nature’s Monsters, Water Creatures Series.  Gareth Stevens, 2005.

Wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafy_sea_dragon

Ghostly “Dance of a Sea Dragon,”  BBC:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8330000/8330705.stm

“Sea Dragon,” National Geographic:  http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/sea-dragon/

“Phyllopteryx,” Wikipedia.org:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllopteryx