The Frigatebird: The Klepto-Cloud Surfing Guido Seabird With a Big Sac





A male frigatebird in flight. Courtesy: Harvey Barrison/Flickr

It's unfortunate that there's so much neatness surrounding the frigatebird because in reality they're assholes; mostly the guido dudes. Let's dig deep into this asshole and discover what it's constructed with first, and then we'll overpower it with an enema of neatness.

 

Frigatebirds are the Jersey Shore douchebags of the tropical seabird family. In order to court a mate these GTL seabirds inflate their red gular throat pouches, vibrate their outstretched wings, produce a drumming sound by vibrating their bills together, and sometimes give a whistling call. They're literally bird guidos who show up to the club, bust their chests out, shimmy, and holla at ya girl. Then, after a female has chosen a mate and they copulate, Paulie D gathers some sticks for a nest and the female constructs it and it's cemented with guano. Both Paulie D and his lady take turns incubating the egg for 41-55 days and take turns feeding the chick for around 3 months. Then after about 3 months Paulie D gets fed up with the responsibilities of raising a kid and leaves his lady to find another birdie to shake his sac at without even paying child support.

A great frigatebird chick wearing a Gucci fur coat that was probably stolen.

Finally, not only does Paulie D frigatebird fly the coop when parenting starts getting real, he also gets his food from through theft (to be fair, the females also engage in larceny). Frigatebirds are known as pelagic kleptoparasites. Pelagic meaning they feed in the open ocean as opposed to around costal areas. And kleptoparsites since they gain a large portion of their diet by harassing other birds and steal their catches. Guess it shows that all frigatebirds are essentially products of broken homes and lack that stable parenting environment with both a mom and dad present.

A female great frigatebird



Now to the neatness. First, frigatebird feathers aren't waterproof so they can't land in the water...sooooo in order to stay aloft for an extended period of time, they intentionally fly into clouds. They hitch rides on the warm air updrafts from the sea surface to the top of a cloud. Recent research documented that some of the birds stayed aloft for nearly 2 months without landing. One bird flew nearly 40 miles without a wing flap. They also have been know to reach altitudes of over 12,000ft above the sea surface, nearly freezing conditions, and unheard of for a tropical bird and probably the highest relative to the surface of any bird. WHOA! Neatness overload. One thing that helps the birds achieve this is that their wingspan can reach up to 7.5ft and they have the largest wing area to body weight ratio of any bird. The size of one's ratio is important for anyone, but REALLY important for these peculating FUBU-wearing throat puffers.

 

Researchers also discovered that winds that form the updrafts in the atmosphere that the frigatebirds ride also disrupt waves at the sea surface. When the waves are disrupted, deeper water tends to rise carrying with it small microscopic plants like phytoplankton that attract small fish. Then bigger fish eat the smaller fish which creates a feeding frenzy that the frigate birds take advantage of to grub out. So not only is Paulie D a degenerate klepto dad, but he also catches free rides on the atmospheric rollercoaster of air currents, getting on and off when he needs a fish sandwich. Tubular! How neat is that?




Frigatebird Range

Oh I come from a land from a far away place...

They have bushy untamed eyebrows, two rows of long eyelashes and long fit legs. They sport a fat backside and large, tough lips.  They have incredible control over their nostrils and fashion a huge moose knuckle. No folks, the neat animal of the week isn't a transvestite BJ hooker who's top half resembles a cocaine invaded Eugene Levy and bottoms like Kim Kardashian wearing nothing but spandex bike shorts exposing her giant smuggled yo-yo.  IT'S A CAMEL!!!

Courtesy wikipedia images

There are 2 kinds of camels in the mundo: Bactrian, or Central/East Asian camels which have 2 humps and dromedaries, which are Arabian camels with one hump which we will primarily focus on as the NAOTW. 

The Black Eyed Peas (a hiphop/pop group for those who lived under a pile of sand in the 2000s) provided a very profound question regarding camels in their smash hit "My Humps":

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk
All that junk inside your trunk

So what do camels DO with all that neat junk inside that trunk hump?  Well, it's actually not water in that hump but fat, sometimes more than 80lbs of it that they can metabolize into energy when they are in the middle of desert really far away from the nearest Arby's.  Since their insulation is concentrated in one location in their hump trunk and not distributed around their whole body they hardly sweat and can travel up to 100 miles in the desert. 

Courtesy Britannica

Camels could also be compared to ecstasy obsessed teenagers as they very efficient water drinkers. Yet, camels can drink 30 gallons of water in 13 minutes and they don't die of an electrolyte imbalance and brain swelling.  That's a lot of water, how neat is that!  

Courtesy Google Images

Arabian camels have adapted a number of characteristics that help them survive in the desert: they can close their nostrils so sand doesn't get in their business or they don't get high on cocaine when they hang out with Charlie Sheen. They have really bushy eyebrows, 2 rows of eyelashes and a 3rd clear eyelid all to shied them from the sun and sand.  

Finally, some words about the swollen hatchet wound, the vertical smile or the folded pancake better known as the camel toe. 

Courtesy Google Images

Camels walk on their toes much like a Caitlin Jenner in high heels but instead of a heel, Camels have a ball of fat that forms a soft pad on the bottom of its foot. The pad supports them much like a snowshoe and allows them to walk easily on the sand.  

Finally, some neatness that has recently been discovered about the camel is that camels actually originated in the high arctic forests of North America during the Eocene period around 45 million years ago and dispersed to Asia and west from there via the Bering Isthmus. Camels are AMERICAN!!!  Scientists believe their humps were adapted to get them through cold arctic winters and their broad feet to walk through the snow. Yet this camel was thought to be around 9 feet tall and weigh around a ton.  And instead of smoking 1 cigarette like Joe Camel they smoked at least a dozen at a time.  

Leatherback Turtle

Although the tubular turtles Crush and Squirt in the righteous film Finding Nemo were actually Pacific green turtles, this week's Neat Animal of the Week is in the same superfamily Chelonioidea and is equally as radical and arguably neater in neature.  The leatherback turtle is the "blue whale" of turtles; they are the largest turtle on earth AND one of the largest living reptiles. They'll grow up to 7 feet long and reach nearly 2000 pounds. But ask any man with small hands and they'll tell you: size isn't everything. Lady Leatherbacks will tell you differently. The leatherbacks are lucky that they not only have the size thing going for them, they also have a whole lot of neatness on their side. 

Image: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries

Leatherbacks can dive to depths of 4,200 feet, which is deeper than any other turtle, AND they can stay down for up to 85 minutes. Who knew Franklin the turtle wasn't such a pussy after all.  (Disclaimer: Franklin wasn't actually a leatherback turtle, but more likely a box turtle, which are totally pansy turtles.  It just rolled off the tongue so well.)

Leatherbacks are pelagic, meaning they spend most of their lives in the open ocean. After mating at sea, females come ashore to nest. At night they dig a hole in the sand, lay down around 100 eggs and then leave a large ruffled area to make it difficult for babysnatching terrorist predators to find the nest. They do this several times during nesting season at around 8-12 day intervals. I know what you're saying, "Max, these turtles come ashore and basically download a brownload of eggs in a hole once a week, what's so neat about that?"

I was able to sponsor some baby leatherbacks and release them into the ocean in Guatemala in 2010. The day was filled with fruit, rum and many tears. 

Well you jabroni jerkass, these leatherback mamas travel on average 3,700 miles to the exact beach they were born to bury their offspring after not having been there since they were a wee hatching. Western Pacific leatherbacks engage in a brain melting migration, swimming from nesting beaches in the western Pacific (primarily Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands area) to noshing grounds in the eastern North Pacific (almost 7,000 miles). Holy Jebidiah peach cobbler that is so gee dang neat. See map below. 

Image: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries

Unfortunately because of factors such as eggs taken by humans and other predators, falling victim to fishing lines and nets, or ingesting plastic mistaken for jellyfish, only 1/1000 leatherback hatchlings reach adulthood.  Very not-neat. 

Finally, as to the name. They are called leatherbacks not only because they were super into the show Sons of Anarchy and are honorary members of some West Coast biker gangs but also because they are the only sea turtle that doesn't have a bony shell.  Their top layer is actually 1.5 inch thick leathery, oil-saturated connective tissue overlaying loosely interlocking dermal bones.  

Keep on preserving the neatness in the universe and have a great week. 

The Spirit Bear

There is so much freakin' neatness in the NAOTW this week!  The Spirit Bear or the Kermode Bear is literally an inside-out Oreo: black on the inside, white on the outside. The Spirit Bear is like "Free Willy" Michael Jackson not "ABC" Michael Jackson, and minus the creepy kid touching and propofol stuff which is super not neat. By that I mean the Spirit Bear is actually a black bear but presents with white fur. (For the record Michael Jackson is generally not neat.) Kermode bears are NOT albino, their nose, eyes, lips, and paws are dark colored. 

Spirit bears carry a double recessive mutation at the melanocortin gene, the same gene associated with ginger-ism (yes it's a disorder) in humans. To be born white, a bear needs to inherit the mutation from both parents. Both parents can be black but each carry one copy of the recessive gene to create a white baby. In the rainforests of coastal British Columbia spirit bears and regular black bears live in harmony and spirit bears are a great mixture of both white and black bear cultures. That's pretty neat. I bet if a brown bear came to hang out and in coastal BC they'd be like, "Hey you brown bear, you're different from us and you look weird but that's cool, let's go get some smoothies." Someone should inform the Donald of the spirit bear. 

Scientists believe the gene mutation was a result of the last ice age and bears adapting to better camouflage. But why hasn't the trait disappeared in the last 11,000 years? Researchers have recently found that the spirit bear's white fur gives them an advantage when fishing. Although white and black bears tend to have the same success rate after dark during the day spirit bears catch salmon in 1 out of 3 attempts while their black counterparts catch them in 1 out of 4 attempts. 

The spirit bear's ability to catch more salmon, their primary fat and protein source, may account for one reason the recessive gene has prevailed since their able to raise more healthy offspring is increased. In addition, local tribes have also resisted hunting the spirit bear throughout the millennia due to their sacred nature and availability of other sources of fur and meat.  

Geedanggit I want to see a spirit bear! According to Native American folklore, the spirit bear is a reminder of times past and the hardships during the ice age and is a symbol of peace and harmony.  Have a neat week and please channel the neatness of the holy spirit bear.  

The Bearded Vulture

This weeks Neat Animal of the Week is the bearded vulture. Bearded vultures take many forms for example as the dirty hippy woman from Bend, OR that scavenges through the trash and refuses to shave any body hair in protest of Nair's testing on baby endangered black rhinoceros fetuses.  Or in the form of a very clever yet disgusting name a man gives to his au naturel meat popsicle. Regardless of those other manifestations of the bearded vulture, this week we're talking about the bird of prey, the Lammergeier, the neat bearded vulture.  The BV's diet is nearly 90% bone.  They are one of the only animals that will even eat bone, let alone survive on a strictly boner diet. They can digest the bone by having an incredibly caustic gastric acid in their stomach.  Human gastric acid is between 1 and 1.5 on the pH scale. Bearded vultures maintain a gastric acid pH of nearly 0.7, about 6 times as strong as human acid (pH scale is log based). How neat is that super strong stomach acid? 

 

 

When possible the bearded vulture will try and deep-throat the whole bone, and when it can't it usually calls their friend Candice who had a lot of experience with this type of thing in college at ASU for advice.  But seriously the pieces it can't swallow it takes into the air propelled by thermal updrafts and drops onto rocks, shattering them into pieces it can manage to swallow.  Though only between 15-20lbs maximum, these neat animals can pick up an 8lb water buffalo femur and carry it into the air.

Their interesting feather colors are actually manicured. They apply it by rubbing themselves against cliffs and rolling in the mud with high iron oxide content in the soil that stains the feathers. The coloring is a status symbol.  Birds with the most intense and deeply stained feathers demonstrate to mates and competition that they are fit and fed enough to get their hair did all the time (see: Salt N Pepa song "Boom I Got Your Boyfriend") 

These beasts of the bone live in the mountainous regions spanning Europe, Asia and Africa. God and neatness willing, they will make like Prince Akeem of Zamunda and come to America!