*UPDATE* – Animal Review Book

Dear readers:

Against their better judgment, the good people at Bloomsbury USA have offered to make an Animal Review book.

Why they are doing this is anyone’s guess, but somehow they decided to, so there should be a book available sometime next April. The next several months will be eaten up by the process of actually writing said book, so posts will be less frequent for a bit. Just kinda FYI.

Thanks to everyone for reading Animal Review, and a special thanks to Nick Trautwein, formerly of Bloomsbury, for an epic lapse in judgment.

*UPDATE* – Not cool, kangaroos

It was recently reported by the BBC that a man in Australia was forced to wrestle a kangaroo after it broke into his home.  The six-foot marsupial crashed through a window in the middle of the night.

“My initial thought when I was half awake was, ‘it’s a lunatic ninja coming through the window’,” Beat Elltin told reporters.  Sorting out that it was actually not an insane ninja but rather a more common member of Genus Macropus, Mr. Elltin began wrestling the kangaroo, eventually getting it into a headlock and dragging it out the front door.

While this was going on, Mr. Elltin was dressed in his underwear, which were shredded in the brawl, along with much of the skin on his buttocks.

Interestingly enough, there is an old saying among Australia’s aboriginal peoples (for whom kangaroo meat is a mainstay of their diet) that goes: ‘If you find yourself putting a kangaroo in a headlock while wearing only your underpants, there’s a problem.’

Truer words about underwear-clad kangaroo wrestling have rarely been spoken, except, of course, by Mr. Elltin himself, who a long time ago said, ‘I really don’t think I’ll ever have to put a kangaroo in a headlock. But knowing my luck, if it happens, I’ll probably be dressed in only my underpants which will likely be shredded in the process, so maybe I better keep some Bactrin around.’

Porcupine

Science has divided the 27 species of porcupines within the Order Rodentia into two families they call the Old World Porcupines (Family Hystricidae, trans. ‘Hallo, bonjour, ciào, guten tag!’ ) and the New World Porcupines (Family Erethizontidae, trans. ‘USA! USA! USA!’). Other than the geography, the criteria separating the two groups aren’t terribly profound — things like who is arboreal (New World), who has rooted molars (New World) and who wears dirty black-and-white striped shirts and rides bicycles down cobblestone streets with a baguette bouncing around in the basket while somehow still looking fabulous (Old World).

Regardless of taxonomic labels, all porcupines are nocturnal. Most species are strict herbivores, though a few will eat an occasional bug or two (usually after watching an episode of Man vs. Wild). But most important, all of them have adopted a creative, if peculiar, manner of defense.

‘Man, this nocturnal-arboreal thing really takes it out of you.’

The thing is, when you make a species-level decision to go down the herbivore road, you simultaneously choose to broadcast your status as a victim. You are, in essence, putting up a giant billboard in the hunting grounds of carnivorous predators that says in a bold sans-serif font: ‘We eat plants so you don’t have to. Try a herbivore tonight!’ There’s also a 30-second TV spot (with voiceover by Christian Slater) meant to sell you to the omnivore demographic. On top of that, there are endless piles of junk mail touting the health benefits of herbivore meat that flood the post boxes of mammalian carnivores after order Carnivora sold their contact list to a direct marketing firm. And to cap it all off, ecosystem energy levels essentially dictate that only a small number of herbivores can be big and intimidating enough to scare off predators, or at very least, the ecosystem gently nudges them in the direction of smaller, more manageable targets.

‘You don’t want none of this keratin horn.’

So it is that the typical small-ish herbivore finds itself with a big, massive target on its fur. Thus, the first order of business is to hit the old whiteboard and think up a defensive strategy that doesn’t involve trampling. One obvious choice is to hide underground. That works. Another option is armor plating. There’s also flying, speed, camouflage, a baseball bat near your bed, and self-defense classes at the local community college. The problem is that it’s all so done…there are only so many ways to avoid being eaten, and they’re all taken.

Or are they? Just when we thought we’d seen everything from the herbivore’s portfolio, the porcupine comes along with an unexpected defensive sensation¹.

‘I’m just thinking out loud here, but what if we had detachable spikes for hair?’

As people (like this Animal Reviewer) who are fond of running around referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point at every possible opportunity would say, the idea for a coat of quills had ‘stickiness.’ The porcupine’s quills are mostly composed of keratin (a durable protein that, along with chitin, is always showing up in the multiple choice sections of biology tests so check your work). Their quills also have little barbs at the end that make extraction a long, laborious and painful ordeal that requires pliers and lots of whiskey. Once removed, the relief is short lived. Because now it’s blood infection time² – everyone’s least favorite time of the year. Meanwhile, the porcupine gets busy regrowing his missing quills. All of a sudden, the question of who is the hunter – and who is the hunted – just got a whole lot murkier.³

Eventually, the quill concept would be eclipsed by the skunk, but for its time, the idea was revolutionary. It immediately and dramatically reduced the numbers of natural predators a porcupine had to worry about. And it is still powerful today. The vast majority of small animals in order Rodentia scurry around in abject terror most of the time, while the porcupine periodically wonders what all the fuss is about. Quills let the porcupine be the porcupine. Unhindered by thoughts of dismemberment that lead most small animals to distraction, the porcupine is free to pursue its myriad porcupine interests.

These interests mostly involve eating wood and looking for salt. New World Porcupines are crazy for the inner bark of coniferous trees. They also seek out clothes, tools and other objects that are coated with the salt from human sweat. In many parts of North America, porcupines have been known to waddle into campgrounds (without paying) for the sole purpose of munching on used canoe paddles because, nutritionally speaking, used canoe paddles are loaded with wood and fairly high in salt.

‘You know what this wood could use is some salt.’

Occasionally, an ambitious mountain lion or a coyote or a particularly stupid domesticated dog (who could just as easily eat from its bowl, but of course that’s too simple) will interrupt the porcupine’s quest for wood and salt. In response, the porcupine will shoot up its infamous quills⁴, turn its bristling rump in the direction of the predator and ask with a mild inflection of rhetorical sarcasm, ‘So. How hungry are you really?’

Most of the time, the aggressor backs down and the porcupine is off to look for more wood and salt, whistling a Top 40 tune and trying to beat his last high score on his Centipede iPhone app. Then it gets run over by a car.

And thus, the moral of the story is that every defensive strategy has its limits. So heads up out there, herbivores.

GRADE: B+

¹ The porcupine immediately found itself entrenched in a copyright infringement battle with the cactus that lasted six years. Eventually, the case of Porcupine v. Plantae was heard by the Supreme Court of North Dakota. The judges ruled 4-3 in favor of the porcupine after the porcupine’s brilliant attorney (David Boies) sought cover for his client under the established legal principle of the ‘idea-expression divide,’ citing Apple Computer Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation and reading directly from the US Supreme Court decision in Mazer v. Stein: ‘Unlike a patent, a copyright gives no exclusive right to the art disclosed; protection is given only to the expression of the idea—not the idea itself.’ At which point the herbivores in the courtroom erupted in cheer and the cacti poured out into the streets to riot and conserve water. The rest is natural history.

² Surprise! The up-to 30,000 quills of the world’s third-largest rodent are not sterile. Who’da thunk it. Hope you like sepsis.

³ It’s still the same, but that sounds really deep, so just nod in agreement.

⁴ Porcupines cannot fire their quills like missiles. That’s a popular misconception that the porcupine makes little effort to correct.

*UPDATE* – Bullet Ant

In reference to the bullet ant review (see below), a vigilant reader points out that the first example is inaccurate, as all eels are in fact fish, though the electric eel is not actually a true eel, as it’s a member of a different class.

Thank you to Nathan for pointing out such an obvious and careless mistake on the part of Animal Review.

Northern Cardinal

The Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis, trans. ‘I’m too tired for this; let’s just throw some letters on the end of it to make it look Latinate, repeat it twice, and go home already.’) is a bird in the Family Cardinalae (lit: ‘Listen, it’s fine – they’re all basically Cardinals, right?  So let’s just get this over with. Please.‘) and can be found in southern Canada, most parts of the eastern half of the United States, parts of California, New Mexico, and Arizona (where it often moves either to retire or to open an auto dealership), as well as Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize (where the Cardinal got its scuba diving certification).

‘Hola. Soy el Cardenal, un pájaro rojo. ¿Te gusta diving de scuba?’

Known for their distinctive black masks and pronounced head crests, Cardinals are most famous for their bright red color, though in fact only the male is red; females are a dull gray-brown-red color.  This type of split in gender appearance is known as sexual dimorphism, and, as with most things male, the male Cardinal’s choices in vibrant coloring – along with the scuba lessons and several other behaviors – ultimately center around trying to meet girls.

For instance, the male Northern Cardinal is fiercely territorial, and will even attack its own reflection in a mirror.¹ Given that Cardinals rarely venture far from where they were born and are non-migratory, this aggressiveness is probably born in large part from personal insecurity (of course, this suspicion is only increased by their habit of donning the bird equivalent of a sports car).

Watcha bench?

Unlike most northern songbirds, the female cardinal also sings, and since Northern Cardinals learn their songs (and as a result the songs vary by region), there is all the more pressure on the male to come up with something impressive. It is not uncommon to hear the ‘cheer, cheer, cheer’ call of a Cardinal mixed in with the opening chords of Stairway to Heaven during a walk in the woods in the first few days of Spring; nor is it uncommon to see a bright red bird violently attacking its reflection in a mirror for no apparent reason.

‘Anyone wanna hear some Journey?’

To improve their chances, males will often sing duets with female Cardinals, all the while stretching their necks and rocking (both physically and musically). During courtship, the male Cardinal often collects food and feeds it to the female on whom he’s set his sights, even feeding her beak-to-beak as a way of wearing down her defenses. He’s also memorized a couple Robert Frost poems so as soon as he sees an opening he can say, ‘Oh, that reminds me of my favorite poem’ and recite the one that fits best, trying hard to seem like he wasn’t rehearsing this whole routine in the bird bath right before their date.

‘ “…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, and that has made a pretty big difference.”  Sorry, I was just reminded of The Road Less Traveled when you mentioned your new gym membership.’

The male Cardinal will do almost anything to convince the female cardinal to like him, including going to her Pilates class with her, tagging along to museums that he pretends to think are interesting, and encouraging her to work on her children’s book.  And whenever female cardinal comes around, the male cardinal always finds a way to be out in the driveway, working on the house with his shirt off.

‘Oh, hey.  Didn’t see you there. Just cleaning the gutters. Sure is hot out, huh?’

Eventually the female cardinal gives in to his charms and starts liking him.  Of course, the male Cardinal soon regrets everything, though he’s not really sure why.  He starts remembering really important business dinners that he just has to get to.  When the female Cardinal asks him if he has dinner plans, he replies that tonight’s his ‘late day’ at work (regardless of the day) and he probably won’t be leaving the office until midnight.  Then the male Cardinal calls his friend and tells him the whole story.  They hang on the phone for awhile and come to an agreement that this whole thing was a bad idea from the start and that the male Cardinal needs to get out of it somehow.  The two of them will conjure up a plan to that effect, but then the male Cardinal chickens out and agrees to be the female Cardinal’s date to a work party, and soon enough, she thinks they’re dating, and that’s that.

Next thing he knows, the male Cardinal is helping to raise the young and participating in feeding. Since Cardinals are socially monogamous, the male Cardinal will soon find himself buying a minivan and getting a massive mortgage, all the while reminiscing about how great his lost bachelorhood was, even though when he was a bachelor he spent all his free time doing very little of great consequence.  All in all, this is probably just as well, since all of the male Cardinal’s friends are starting families, and he has fewer and fewer buddies with whom to play video games online anyway.

GRADE: B-

¹ This is just sad.

Bullet Ant

Kingdom Animalia is rife with misleading common names. For instance, the electric eel is not an eel but a fish (albeit a high-voltage one). Meanwhile, jellyfish are not fish, nor are they are made of jelly or jam or marmalade or even preserve – sadly, ‘jellyfish’ are mostly tentacles and painful nematocyst stingers, making the majority of species a very poor companion to English muffins. Up on dry land, the lies persist: badgers rarely nag or impose upon the other woodland creatures; the tarantula hawk is neither a predatory bird with eight talons nor a giant flying spider (it’s a wasp); and the Great Dane is, in reality, just pretty good and is actually of German extraction (the accent tends to creep back after it’s had a few too many cocktails).

 

I’m sorry, my napkin ist gefallen. Now vat vere you sayink?

All of this is frustrating, confusing, and enough to make us all want to start smoking again. But what to do? Well all of us could make a collective decision to employ Linnaeus’ clunky Genus–species binomial nomenclature system in everyday conversation. And sure, that would eliminate the problem of misleading animal names. But it almost doubles the number of names to remember. What’s more, the movement would certainly lose steam the first time someone at the beach spotted a large dorsal fin tearing through the water and yelled, ‘Carcharodon carcharias!’ – and then watched in erudite horror as children continued to splash around and their parents avoided eye contact with what they assumed to be a crazy Italian tourist.

 

Then, of course, the killing would begin.

 

I strongly support use of the binomial naming system.

 

So like it or not – for good reason or not – we’re stuck with the oft-perplexing common names.

The bullet ant (Paraponera clavata, lit. ‘Anaphylactic shock and awe’) of Central and South America falls into a very specific category of common names that are at first misleading (‘Hmmm, it doesn’t look like a bullet…I wonder if maybe it’s fast like a bullet?’), but which then makes immediate sense when you realize you’ve been absentmindedly standing on its nest this whole entire time (‘Oh…it hurts like a bullet…okay okay…I think I get it now’).

Sorry for the confusion. I wanted to be called The Wicked Sting Pain Machine.

The bullet ant is so named because the long, retractable syringe on its abdomen injects an incredibly painful neurotoxic peptide, poneratoxin, and it is poneratoxin that makes the bullet ant the stuff of legend among entomologists and myrmecologists.¹ Just how painful is a bullet ant’s poneratoxin? Well, in simple layman’s terms, it hurts like [EXPLETIVE DELETED]. More scientifically stated, it tops the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, coming in at 4.0+ on a scale of 1 to 4, which means that the pain of a bullet ant sting is literally off the charts, and makes one wonder if the Schmidt Sting Pain Index could use some revising.² In its present form, the Schmidt Sting Pain Index is the brainchild of Justin Schmidt, an entomologist who subjected himself to the bites and stings of horrible insects in his very favorite taxonomic order, Hymenoptera (mainly wasps, bees and ants), in an effort to classify the pain numerically and get his picture in Pointless Weekly.³ And though it found overnight success among entomologists, the insect pain scale never found a foothold in popular culture, and the great Muhammad Ali is never described as a pugilist who could ‘float like a butterfly and sting like a 2.54 on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.’

 

Schmidt characterized the sting of a single bullet ant as ‘pure, intense, brilliant pain’ and suggested (from self-imposed experience) that it was about 30 times more painful than the sting of a common wasp. And so, the bullet ant holds the title of both world’s most hurtful insect and the world’s most hurtful invertebrate, while Schmidt himself remains ranked as the coolest entomologist in the cafeteria.

 

‘Did I tell you that I let a bumblebee sting the inside of my nose? Because I did.’

It turns out, however, that long before Schmidt and his pain experiments, the Satere-Mawe tribesman of Brazil were well aware of the kind of pain available from the bullet ants. Sure, they lack the science to isolate the poneratoxin and identify its precise effect on nervous tissue, but they do have the good old common sense to collect the ants, drug them with a natural anesthetic and weave them by the hundreds into thatched gloves for their young aspiring warriors to wear for ten minutes (a process repeated up to twenty times over the course of their initiation) rendering their hands into burning, throbbing useless masses of excruciating torture that lasts for hours and hours. The Satere-Mawe still perform this rite of passage to this day, leading the first Satere-Mawe warriors to witness a cowboy-themed Bar Mitzvah in the San Fernando Valley to wonder if their own rite of passage didn’t leave some room for improvement.

Aside from a mind-bending sting, bullet ants are huge (for an ant), with workers reaching up to one inch in length, making them the largest ant in the world. And opposite their abdominal stinger, these predatory/scavenging insects sport oversized mandibles that offer prey such as termites the choice of death by neurotoxic peptide or a giant pair of organic pliers.  Indignant termites will often ridicule this proposition as an ‘either-or fallacy’ or a ‘false dilemma,’ pointing out that they also have the option to escape, though they rarely complete the thought.

 

Suffice it to say, the bullet ant has had little success with online personals.

Given the bullet ant’s small-animal-big-sting persona, Animal Review is willing to overlook its somewhat misleading common name (along with a stern admonition that it could be clearer; might we suggest a simple prefix like ‘Neurotoxic’ or ‘Excruciating’ – or both?).  The fact is, the bullet ant carries the most painful sting of any insect – so painful that simply wearing a glove filled with hundreds of bullet ants twenty times is apparently enough to make you into a warrior (though more than a few Satere-Mawe initiates are said to realize that getting their hands stung by ants doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with winning wars, anyway, and instead opt for vocational school).  The only real issue holding back Paraponera clavata is that, after all is said and done, it is still an ant, and nobody ever gets too excited about ants⁴.

GRADE: B+

 

¹ Not to mention the occasional cosmetologist who sits down on a tree stump in a Nicaraguan forest to reapply her lipstick.

 

² You first.

 

³ The Schmidt Sting Pain Index is not to be confused with the Schmidt Sting Pain Scale, which Justin Schmidt developed to classify the terrible progression of Gordon Sumner’s complete discography.  Schmidt ranked the October 2006 release ‘Songs from the Labyrinth’ at 3.8, describing it as ‘hot, smoky, searing agony. Even for $6.99.’

⁴ Except myrmecologists.

 

Garden Snail

The garden snail (Helix aspersa, lit. ‘three-dimensional corkscrew-shaped appetizer’) is a terrestrial mollusk that never really figured out how to get positive results from Evolution. In defense of the snail, that’s not an easy task, because Evolution is a manic-depressive genius and famously difficult to work with on anything. Plus the garden snail kept catching Evolution in its ‘experimental’ periods.

When confronted by the same complicated problems, epoch after epoch, Evolution produces a host of different solutions (there are ten unique plans for the eye, each designed when Evolution went off its meds). These tend to range from the breathtaking to the absurd (again, depending on Evolution’s mood at the time). Unfortunately for H. aspersa, Evolution was on what it was certain was a creative (though also quite likely chemically-influenced) high when it decided to make the garden snail’s Big Three – Sensory Organs, Locomotion, and Reproduction – and the result of its three-day all-nighter was somehow all at once both far too much – and yet not nearly enough.

Apparently Evolution just broke up with its girlfriend.

Here’s a tip: when Evolution suddenly gets up, locks itself in the bathroom and turns on the shower so you can’t hear it sobbing in Latin – that’s not the time to get in the Eye Line, at least not if you’re hoping for complex, autofocusing, mammalian eyes with a large dynamic contrast ratio and a nice, roomy, dedicated visual cortex for data processing. However, if you are in the Eye Line at that point, there are at least even odds that you end up with light-sensitive™ eyestalks openly purchased from Wal-Mart as ‘found art’ that Evolution keeps declaring its latest ‘masterpiece.’

‘Say…you didn’t keep the receipt by any chance?’

Complementing its flimsy, cheap, light-sensing ‘eyes’ (assembly required, batteries not included, online .pdf manual impossible to find and poorly translated¹), Evolution then decided to dedicate H. aspersa’s remaining two face-based tentacles to touch and smell, though precisely why is anyone’s guess (just nobody ask). As pleased as Evolution was with this creative choice, the design ended up a case study on the dangers of placing too much faith in one’s genius, as the typical snail just ends up confused as to which of the four tentacles to use in which situation, and it’s not infrequent that these animals stick an eye into a carton of milk to smell if it’s gone bad. To paraphrase the words of Evolution’s former business manager, it’s just too much for no reason at all.

Locomotion in the snail begat another moment of creative turpitude for Evolution. Bored with what it kept lambasting as ‘pedestrian’ modes of transit, such as walking, flying or zipping around via jet propulsion (already ‘played out’ in the snail’s sophisticated mollusc cousin, the squid), Evolution gave snails what seems to be some kind of deeply ironic commentary about some social issue that none of us will ever really understand.² Anyway, whatever Evolution’s bigger point in its work, snails are left to get around town by sliding their single ‘foot’ over a trail of their own mucous, meaning that the garden snail tops out around 23 iph (inches per hour) at full throttle with snot boosters set to max. Suffice it to say, this marked the low-point for Evolution’s career, as even the Arts section of the New York Times offered only measured praise, prompting Evolution to cancel its subscription for two weeks and causing a minor sensation around Manhattan that ended when the newspaper’s ombudsman wrote an apology.

‘Anyone wanna swap for a pair of legs?  Don’t bother answering – I’m also deaf.’

A complete creative nadir was reached with Evolution’s indefensible choices for the garden snail for sexual reproduction. First of all, it made all of them hermaphrodites, but that wasn’t ‘new’ enough, apparently. When two garden snails contemplate reproduction one of them initiates the act by injecting the other with a mystery mucous (of course) using what scientists call a ‘love dart.’ After the unveiling of the ‘love dart’ to a capacity crowd at its gallery, Evolution noticed that most of them were either confusedly staring at said love dart and/or quietly picking at their hors d’œuvres. After a long, uncomfortable pause and some polite clapping, someone had the temerity to ask if the love dart was a metaphor for a collectivized Oedipus Complex. Well, everyone got the answer to that question when Evolution threw its champagne in the questioner’s face and stomped out of the room.

It was a long time before answers could be had, as soon thereafter Evolution stopped giving interviews. But in March of 2006, some researchers at Canada’s famed McGill University in Montreal did an experiment in which they cut off some snails’ love darts³ and proceeded to inject one group with saltwater and the other with the mystery mucous. They found that the mystery mucous delivered by love darts actually doubles a snail’s potential to produce offspring. In short, Evolution wasn’t completely off – just mostly. And in point of fact, it also turns out that snail researchers also double their chances of not mating simply by performing snail research.

‘Darts, huh? You know, this reminds me of my research in snail reproduction. I’ve found that control groups injected with saline sol…Desiree, wait…where are you going?’

Snails are, in short, a mess. They’re tragically underwhelming in their complexity, and they make clear that even the best natural selectors make bad choices. And since nobody else seems willing to say it: Sorry, Evolution – you screwed up on this one.

GRADE: D-

¹ The English version of the garden snail’s online light-sensing eyestalk manual instructs it to ‘Insert Cornea tab A1 into Retina slot B3 and take 16mm screw please include to fassen (sic) to Optic Nerve.’ And then for no clear reason it switches to German. What a mess.

² The DNA blueprints for even the finest snot propulsions systems are so ridiculous that most ribosomes simply refuse to translate them into proteins.

³ It’s cool – they grow back.

Reindeer

Say what you will about reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, trans. ‘No, my nose doesn’t light up, that’s someone else’), there’s no denying that they are the rare mythical creature that actually turns out to be real.¹ They consist of six wild subspecies that can be found in Siberia and Norway, as well as Greenland, Alaska and Canada, where they call themselves caribou (a French version of the Mi’kmaq word qalipu, meaning  ‘snow-shoveler,’ a dismissive reference to the reindeer’s embarrassing habit of pawing through the snow for food). But though reindeer are indeed very, very real, the vast majority do not lead glamorous lives of working one night out of the year and then spending the remaining 364 days relaxing by Santa’s pool while being generally mythologized by an adoring public.  Instead, most reindeer spend their time looking for lichen to eat, migrating constantly, and working catering jobs to make ends meet and pay for their acting and flying classes.

More fruscetta, sir?

Choosing to become a reindeer is to choose a hard life of being prey for wolves, having four stomachs, possessing the second-largest set of antlers after the moose, and being a popular meat in Scandinavian countries. Of all the terrestrial animals, reindeer travel the farthest, making vast, massive migrations over thousands of miles between forest areas in the winter (to look for lichen) and their calving grounds in the spring. Along the way, the average reindeer will take 50 or 60 auditions and land not a single role.

Let me send you my headshot.

So why do it? Because the passion that burns inside these aspiring sleigh-pullers keeps them from just settling into a career in insurance sales. Reindeer are driven to constantly pursue a chance to audition for Santa’s sleigh one day. It’s a long shot, but the rewards are immense. And so reindeer continue having four stomachs, practicing their accents and stage-fighting skills, doing odd bartending jobs and working at coffee shops, chasing a dream.

I only do this job because I heard Mrs. Claus sometimes meets here with her book club.

Competition for a sleigh-pulling job is fierce, with every reindeer going out for the same jobs all the time. Even the females get antlers, which is indicative of the pressure to be the ‘perfect’ reindeer (and to find lichen under snow).

Compounding the fact that pretty much every single reindeer aspires to someday pull Santa’s sleigh is the simple reality that those jobs open up infrequently. The last addition to the Team was in 1939, when Rudolph was added, but that had far more to do with his bizarre genetic condition. Also his uncle made a few calls on his behalf. So most reindeer are left to migrate constantly and eat lichen. They do have a union, but every time it seems like there might actually be a strike, Prancer and Donner take out an ad in Variety accusing the union leadership of being unreasonable, and soon enough they’ll get a whole bunch of reindeer who haven’t done anything other than temp jobs in years to vote against a strike. Eventually many reindeer give up and end up domesticated in Russia, Scandinavia, or Iceland. A few more join petting zoos. Most, it seems, spend a lot of their time trying to guilt you into coming to their one-reindeer shows.

It’s Tuesday at 6:30 pm during rush hour in the middle of downtown. Tickets are $25.  See you there.

But even as we try to figure out how to get out of seeing their plays, and even as you really, really wish that every reindeer you meet would just stop talking about his or her ‘craft’ all the time, you still respect them for hanging in there and going for what they want, even when pretty much any other animal would hang it up and go back to law school.

GRADE: B-

¹ The other is the Grendel.

Swordfish

The swordfish (Xiphias gladius, literally translating to ‘swordfish sword,’ which is confusing but leaves no doubt as to what you need to remember about the swordfish) is one of a small number of animals with swords on their faces.¹ Of these, they are by far the most massive, reaching almost fifteen feet in length (much of it sword) and 1,400 pounds in weight (some of it sword).² They are also the sole member of family Xiphiidae; all the other members of the Xiphiidea family were found dead from sword wounds awhile back, and the police couldn’t make anything stick on their main suspect (the swordfish).

No comment.

A swordfish’s nose sword isn’t for decoration (though it certainly is a lovely nose sword). Instead, the nose sword is an important tool that is useful in a variety of situations, like a Swiss Army Knife that’s always open and has only a blade and no toothpick. The swordfish’s nose sword literally cuts through the water, allowing the swordfish to easily reach speeds of 50 miles per hour (which is especially dangerous since they lack seat belts and they’re waving a pointy sword). This speed, combined with their agility and nose sword, makes them deadly hunters. Contrary to popular belief, swordfish do not ‘spear’ their prey; their hunting technique is to dart through schools of fish, slashing their sword noses around, hacking and/or stunning the confused fish who have never before seen a sword where a nose should be. On a given charge, a swordfish may feast on mackerel, bluefish, hake, herring, squid, giant drumsticks, mead, roast goose, suckling pig, jugs of wine, and sometimes their enemies’ hearts – all the while surrounded by comely serving wenches. Oh, and their eyes and brains are heated (while the rest of them is cold-blooded), improving their vision dramatically and giving them a huge advantage over other fish in the sea. Anyway, the main thing is that eating with a swordfish is a bit of a grab bag, what with all the slashing and hacking.

Did you get my dinner party evite? I’m slashing and hacking something special.

The nose sword-aided speed make swordfish largely invulnerable to predators. Since these fish are huge (and are equipped with huge nose swords), the only animals that might reasonably make a go at them are Killer Whales, a few large sharks, and, to a less-likely extent, Grizzly Bears. The shortfin mako shark is the rare animal fast enough to catch it, but even if it does, it must still contend with Sir Sword Nose. Head-to-head, a mako probably has only a slightly better chance of biting a swordfish with its mouthful of long, curved teeth before the swordfish runs it through the belly or gills, making Mako vs. Swordfish (Quarrel In The Coral) the pay-per-view event of the year.³

What say we leave the massive super fast fish with the sword on its face alone and go check out Magic Mountain?

In sum, the swordfish is a really impressive animal.  Why?  Because it is a giant, fast fish that, in lieu of a nose, has a sword coming off its face.

Q.E.D.

GRADE: A-

¹ Thankfully, the last swordcheetah was killed by former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 while on safari with his son Kermit.

² They are often confused with sailfish, which also have swords for noses, but if anyone ever tells you that they caught a sailfish, you should inform them that sailfish rarely top the scales at more than 200 pounds and ten feet in length, and, you know, if they really wanted to go after something with a sword for a nose, they would have gone after a swordfish, but apparently they were too scared. (WARNING: They will probably then ask you to leave their daughter’s Quinceañera.)

³ This is one reason why it’s good to be human. We simply point at the leather-bound menu and the waiter says, ‘Le swordfish soup avec saffron rouille.’ And we nod and that’s all there is to it.

Hummingbird

The hummingbird (Family Trochilidae, lit. ‘Chill, dude’) is a flapping fiasco whose continued existence is a credit to the tenacity of life, once alive, to continue living, even if it is only for a short three-to-four year lifespan. Overreacted squeals of excitement over a hummingbird showing up at our hummingbird feeders notwithstanding, the truth is that, in all likelihood, the hummingbird suffers from a host of ailments, among them malnourishment, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), hypertension, a drug addiction, and a pretty gnarly case of jock itch.

Hey guys, the bird that shouldn’t be alive is back!

Any nutritionist can plainly see that the hummingbird is anorexic, but nutritionists make up only a small percentage of bird watchers, and the hummingbird has almost everyone else fooled. Friends and relatives jokingly ascribe its tiny size to that fact that it ‘eats like a bird,’ but still, when asked about its appearance in interviews, a hummingbird will insist that it eats all the time and then make a big show of eating a donut while the interviewer’s still in the room. But facts don’t lie. Proof of an eating disorder epidemic among hummingbirds lies at the extremes of the hummingbird weight spectrum. On one end, at 1.8 grams and only 2 inches in length, the Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) is the smallest bird on the planet. And the largest hummingbird, the so-called Giant Hummingbird (Patagona gigas) of the Andes Mountains, weighs in at a mere eighteen grams. It goes without saying that any BMIs derived from these figures would be great causes of concern for a physician. Yet we find their delicate, fragile appearance just completely wonderful, not really ever hearing what we’re saying when we say things like ‘It’s so tiny!’ and ‘Wow, it looks great!’ and ‘Have you been working out?’

Yet despite being only hours away from starvation at any given moment, the hummingbird cannot calm down and focus. While its teachers describe it as ‘boisterous,’ the truth is that it suffers from a pretty severe case of ADD, and being the only bird in the entire world that can fly backwards, sideways, directly up, directly down, and hover doesn’t help things, either. Its homework is a disaster. Thus, although it’s endemic to the Americas – North, South and Cental – the hummingbird is unable to point out any of these places on a map.

Meanwhile, while the anorexia and ADD go undiagnosed, the hummingbird stands most precariously on the edge of a heart attack. Some hummingbirds, during flight, can get their heart rates up to 1260 beats per minute¹. Furthermore, some species take about 250 breaths a minute and flap their wings up to 80 times per second. You’d think someone would notice. But no, we find its acute tachycardia cute.

Oh look! His heart is gonna explode!

The common thread in all this is the hummingbird’s addiction to its drug of choice, floral nectar. Easy to make and disturbingly easy to find, floral nectar is a chemical compound consisting primarily of fructose (a 6-carbon polyhydroxyketone – available over the counter) and sucrose (technically: α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1↔2)-β-D-fructofuranoside – found in packets at any Starbucks). Like opium, it’s made by flowers — all the plants have to do is combine the two saccharide components (usually in the bathtub of a rented house).

There’s also a man-made version. Colored bright red to court its hopelessly addicted patrons, this artificial nectar is known on the street by a variety of hummingbird slang terms including: N-train, Sangria del Diablo, Beak Candy, Crimson Tweaker, Beijing Sugar, Kool Aid, Burmese Disco, Potpourri, Big Red, Skrump, Skrimp, Weasel, Cooler, Slurp, The Scarlet Letter, El Capitan, Fraggle Rock, Aqua Roja del Fresno, Sweet Ruby Slipper, and Juice. Yet despite the prevalence, we turn a blind eye, pretending not to see the damage we’re causing.

As expected, this nectar addiction further compounds the hummingbird’s already myriad issues. It has no teeth. It has no friends (hummingbirds and robins used to be tight… until the DVD player suddenly disappeared). And really, it has no self control. While all of the hundreds of species of hummingbirds would make excellent subjects for D.A.R.E. posters, the hummingbird constantly promises that it’s going to quit nectar tomorrow, but it never does. And what do we do this whole time? We leave their fix in our backyards.

The most impressive fact about hummingbirds may be that they are functional addicts. After all their personal problems and self-destructive behavior (that we encourage), they still somehow manage to hold down their part-time gigs of pollinating plants, eating insects (their rare source of protein) and working the counter at your local adult book store. Oh, and their nests are immaculate. But whatever self-esteem they might have ever had has long ago been replaced by deep, nectar-induced paranoia.

‘Shhhh. Did you hear that? Shut the blinds, man.’

But functional or not, we all know how this story ends. Cornered in his nest by a paramilitary army of nectar-running thugs, the hummingbird loads his grenade launcher, blasts through the door and stands at the top of the staircase, screaming over the gunfire (and his 1260-beats-per-minute heart rate). Then he encourages everyone to ‘say hello to my little friend,’ but the accent isn’t quite right and comes off as more Italian than Cuban, and it’s punctuated with awkward silence and a couple half-hearted smiles.

Then he gets shot like four hundred times.

GRADE: C-

1 The average resting human heart rate is 72 bpm. Maybe, after a few Red Bulls (or a liter of floral nectar), and a half hour of wind sprints, you could get it up to 230. But call an ambulance first.