tiny adventures!

[kaberett]

A few weekends ago I visited the NHM with A. We visited the butterflies, which are always good; I particularly enjoyed that they've moved the banana plants that are always covered in caterpillars to the beginning rather than the end of the route, so you get to move through the life cycle rather more -- the readily-identifiable caterpillars are now before the pupation hut, where we saw an actually only halfway hatched butterfly for the first time, and we also got to see several sizes of Pale Owl caterpillar, all of which have delightfully the same face. We met a couple of new butterflies that we totally failed to identify (black! with red stripy lower wings!) in addition to all the excellent iridescent teal nonsense, and as ever the route is juuuuuuuuust short enough that the "hallucinating that there are somehow impossibly butterflies inside my clothes" doesn't start until I'm right at the very end.

We also took a quick spin around the Life in the Dark exhibition, not expecting great things, but were pleasantly surprised! Particularly compared to the exhibition on colours and the one on venom, this was surprisingly well curated -- though it did still suffer from "items in cases and their descriptions are inexplicably numbered in the opposite direction to that of travel". (Also of note is that there is a central section, otherwise very dark, that features flashing but apparently not strobing lighting; this allows the Ceiling Art Installation to give the effect of bats swirling around above your head and does have warning notices posted, but I didn't spot an alternative route through, though I admittedly wasn't looking terribly hard.)

Other, non-bat related, fun curation decisions: the lightshow of a BADGER at the entrance, and the trees-and-shade and section-labels-as-upward-cast-shadows, the deep-sea light show, and presumably (if you're that way inclined) the various smell-a-thing tubes. (Less fun curation decisions: even! the please-touch-these-items exhibits! weren't labelled in Braille! Guides are available in both large print and Braille, but I'm dubious about the utility of the large print given the low light levels throughout.)

FACTS I LEARNED:

• some moths have evolved the finely-tuned ability to yell at bats to make them go away, as part of the ongoing predator-prey arms race. I am about as delighted by this as you would expect.
  
• the Greater Horseshoe Bat doesn't echolocate with sounds produced by its mouth; it uses sounds produced by its eponymous nose.
  
• there are specific cave-ceiling-dwelling snakes with IR sensors in their faces that exist entirely to eat bats. in the dark.
  
• most deep-sea animals use blue-spectrum light, so don't bother with being able to sense red-spectrum light. Inevitably, this means that a small number of species have developed red-spectrum light emitters and sensors, so they can do both intra-species ("hi let's fuck", "whoops there's a predator") and inter-species ("I wanna eat you") signalling.
  
• there are SPECIAL CAVE CROCODILES that are (almost certainly, it's being debated) a distinct species from the surrounding jungle crocodiles! they are SMOL and SOLITARY and what the fuck, crocodiles. what the fuck.

Not last weekend but the weekend before we went on a Group Outing to Woburn, where I think I had probably not been since I were wee. It turns out that they have no wifi and basically no phone signal of any kind, which made coordinating two groups Somewhat Trickier Than We'd Expected for a Major Public Attraction. There were lots of things I enjoyed (the buckets halfway up a tree for the giraffes! the people feeding the giraffes from a jeep! the tiny elephant! the giraffe research student, with attendant ranger crossly telling everyone that yes THIS person was parked counter the flow of traffic with their windows open but that didn't mean YOU got to! the giraffe storage sheds with Very Tall Doors! the capybara! the parents very discreetly telling their children to stop watching the enthusiastically-shagging parrots because They Were Busy and Wanted Some Private Time! the agouti, which are Round and Shaped Like A Friend and have Rubbish Little Tails!), but obviously my favourite was the tortoises.

I Learned Some Facts about the Tortoises! At Woburn they've got five or so Aldabra tortoises (I met four but another couple were? hiding?), nine years old and ranging in size from about 15kg (Flo is tiny and runty and nobody's quite sure why but they're fairly certain she wouldn't have survived in the wild) to about 30kg (... everyone else). This means that they are still just about small enough to deadlift (they are an awkward shape, okay) when it's time to go to bed: they sort of wave their legs in the air with a ponderous indignance, but when deposited at the entrance to their (heated) hut (with browsing material inside) they do all go "ah, yes, maybe this is after all a good idea, you are forgiven," and plod solemnly inside to continue munching.

Apparently they're being target-trained against the day they're too heavy to lift, but they're not quiiiiiiiiiite there yet. Target training consists of giving them a treat (accompanied by a clicker) every time they boop their snoot on a proferred stick, and ignoring them if they ignore it, which Flo (the tiniest) in particular is having difficulty with: it was explained to us that after about fifteen minutes in the enclosure, keepers who are new to it always emerge looking slightly spooked and promptly seek advice from a seasoned veteran.

It is always the same advice.

"Why," they ask plaintively, "is she ineffectually FOLLOWING ME EVERYWHERE, it's kind of creepy." "Ah," say the veteran keepers, "did you give her a pat? Well then."

Because Flo, the tiny useless runty tortoise, really likes cuddles from warm-blooded animals. She will sort of walk up to you and pointedly stick her head aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way out until you give her a scritch; unlike the others, when picked up at bedtime she does not flail plaintively and ineffectually, but sits there very smugly and goes "YES CORRECT it is the Time to Carry Me Around The Adoring Public and Make Them All Render Me Tribute."

... which are facts about specific tortoises, fine, okay, have some more general tortoise facts:

• their shells are about as sensitive as the rest of them! I knew they were all an integrated jobby (i.e. more akin to snails than hermit crabs) (did you know that hermit crabs form orderly queues? hermit crabs form orderly queues), but I hadn't realised that their shells were any more wired up for touch than e.g. our fingernails. But some of them (... Flo) actively like having their shells scritched, and some of them will sort of once again wave their legs indignantly and stomp very slowly away.
  
• a lot of stuff that might look like shell damage in tortoises is actually just variation in growth patterns of the individual scutes -- some of them decide they want to be much more irregular hexagons than others, such that you end up with two in a space that would normally be occupied by one and what looks like (but isn't) a nasty gouge.
  
• tortoises, as you might well imagine, can be a right bugger to get blood samples out of (or to otherwise perform medical examinations on), because they just... retreat... into their skeleton... if they're not feeling cooperative. HOWEVER, it's been (relatively recently?) established that species that have a cheerfully symbiotic relationship with birds -- wherein the birds remove ticks and other parasites from the soft skin where the shell joins the neck and legs -- have developed a reflex response to having the back of their legs brushed (or pecked): they raise themselves up on their legs and extend their necks fully and just sort of go into a trance there, so the birds can do their thing. Exotic vets (and handlers more generally) are finding this really useful.

Comments

[jack]

Awww! I hadn't realised tortoises like shell scritches, although I shouldn't have been surprised.

[brainwane]

Thank you for sharing this experience and I in particular loved learning these facts about tortoise scritching!

[worlds_of_smoke]

The shell skritches thing doesn't surprise me! There's a local pet store that has a store tortoise (who seems to be very well taken care of and well-loved) and he'll occasionally wander the people shopping and playing with the pets and he seems to like getting skritches or pats some days. Other days, he seems to be more of an old man going "all these noisy people in my house. grump, grump". XD They keep a balloon taped to his shell so they can't lose him.

(I expect that we'll be making a trip to that pet store for pet therapy after I get my mammogram. If you'd like me to take pics, I will. :))

[kaberett]

oh nooooooooooo balloon <333

(& I am glad to went to the pet store, and also thank you enormously for the offer of photos.)

[davidgillon]

did you know that hermit crabs form orderly queues? hermit crabs form orderly queues

OMG, they're British ;)

The squee factor in this post is high :)

[kaberett]

:-p

(there ARE good things going on as well as all the Looming Stress and General Burnout!)

[cadenzamuse]

AE has moved to a new daycare room named "Crazy Caterpillars" after The Very Hungry Caterpillar (all the rooms are children's book themed), and I get great glee out of a: how much more interested in the book and in butterflies he now is, and b: how he shouts "CA-KEE-POO! CA-KEE-POO!" every morning to inform me that he doesn't want to go to generic school, he wants to go specifically to caterpillars.

[kaberett]

... please introduce AE to the most useless of all the parrots? It's my fave and it seems relevant. (Or, well, maybe just introduce you? But ROUND GREEN FLIGHTLESS PARROT.)

and yes caterpillars are Good (though apparently we missed a very important caterpillar...)

[killing_rose]

Things I learned about Flo (other than the fact that Flo exists): A teenager stole her and sold her five years ago.

Flo is adorable. As is everything else.

Awful humans are not and I am ignoring them in favor of tortoise photos.

[kaberett]

oh no I had no idea this is kind of hilarious (given that it had the happy ending!)

thank you also for prompting me to look at Woburn's information page -- I hadn't registered that tortoises help make paths!

[alexseanchai]

Flo sounds adorbs!

[kaberett]

SHE REALLY IS.

[vass]

some moths have evolved the finely-tuned ability to yell at bats to make them go away, as part of the ongoing predator-prey arms race. I am about as delighted by this as you would expect.

YES GOOD.

they sort of wave their legs in the air with a ponderous indignance, but when deposited at the entrance to their (heated) hut (with browsing material inside) they do all go "ah, yes, maybe this is after all a good idea, you are forgiven," and plod solemnly inside to continue munching.

This and Flo are very happy-making to read about.

[kaberett]

THEY SHOUT, VASS.

Glad they were cheering. Certainly they cheered me. <3

[kaberett]

anger yell moth

[vass]

them yell! (or cheer. maybe they are cheering!)

[ghoti]

I would like to visit animals with you one day.

[kaberett]

ysssss <3

[sfred]

Hurray for tortoises (and other creatures).

Tangents and Arctiids

[hairyears]

I have an interest in caterpillars, what with my social media icons tending towards hairy, small and venomous.

Meanwhile, I should look up the clicks that moths direct at bats when they detect incoming sonar pulses from the bat.

I've seen sonograms of them and they look like spoofing as well as jamming: 'shaped' and slightly frequency-shifted pulses that look a lot like radar countermeasures that throw off the range-finding information in the 'return' signal.

Re: Tangents and Arctiids

[kaberett]

The NHM website features photographs of this pale green and incredibly spiky specimen, which alas I did not meet in the flesh!

Also oooooooooh, sonograms. I should... go look for that. :D

Re: Tangents and Arctiids

[kaberett]

aHA, it'll be this thing, which allows me to hunt down references for future reading at a point when I'm not spending my weekend in lab :-)

[redsixwing]

moths that shout at bats! Butterflies everywhere! *makes heart eyes*

Tortoises!

I didn't realize their shells were that sensitive. How interesting!
Sounds like Flo might be bribeable with attention rather than food. I've had cats like that.

[kaberett]

yep, she is definitely affection-motivated not food-motivated :-) I think they're trying to train them all to respond to the same set of commands, though, which may or may indeed not be successful...

here's the details on the shouty moth :D

[fyreharper]

but how do the snakes hold onto the ceiling o_o

Thank you

[jesse_the_k]

This was delightful to read. I'm saving it for a day when humans are Too Much.

[forthwritten]

I would very much like to make the acquaintance of Flo.

Leia is moulting and still furiously itchy. Poor little bird.

[khalinche]

This is very lovely, thank you for writing about it.

[divulge]

Thank you so much for this post; it is very happy-making to read <3