It’s been another week of working with the Dead Zoo insect collection for me, so I thought I’d give you one of them to have a go at identifying:
A big bug at around 135mm wingtip to wingtip
I don’t think it’ll be particularly difficult for some of you, so please try to offer cryptic suggestions if you know what is, to keep it challenging for others who aren’t as familiar with these impressive invertebrates.
Have fun!
Last week I gave you this guest mystery object, courtesy of Joseph van Sambeek:
The bony struts reinforcing thin plates of bone show it’s from something that lives in water all the time and which lacks lungs – you can tell this because this structure is what you get when you’re dealing with forces moving in a variety of directions, rather than mainly dealing with the constant force of gravity or compensating for buoyancy that is unavoidable when you live in water, but have lungs.
This means that many of you recognised it as being the neurocranium (that’s the bit of the skull that surrounds the brain) from a fish – more specifically from Sarah Gibson:
The first image is the skull roof, showing the elongated frontals and parietals (front of snout is left in first three images). Second image is a left lateral view, showing the internal parasphenoid that would pass between the two eye sockets. Third image is a ventral view, showing the bottom of the parasphenoid. And obviously last image is posterior view, showing the foramen magnum where the spinal cord would pass through, over the occipital condyle. It just may not look like a skull to some because it’s missing the eye sclera bones, jaws, cheek bones, pretty much anything that is not the skull roof or braincase.
However, as we all know, there are a LOT of different sorts of fish – around 33,600 described species and counting. This can make fish a nightmare to identify. However, there are some great resources out there, like Osteobase which has a very useful identification guide for various elements of a range of fish.
Alas, Osteobase didn’t have anything that fits this mystery specimen, so narrowing down to a species is rather difficult. I had the advantage of knowing that the specimen was collected in Baja California, although that was of little help in trying to get in an approximate area of the fishy family tree based on morphology, and there are still a ridiculous number of fish species is the area.
Sarah Gibson suggested that it may be a Barracuda, and it certainly fits in many aspects, but the shape of the frontals and parietals and details of the point of connection between the parasphenoid (that’s the bottom bar bit you see in the side view) don’t quite fit.
I had almost given up hope, when it occurred to me to concentrate on understanding the unusually large occipital condyle that Allen Hazen noticed, which suggested that it might be a taxon with an extremely extended rostrum (like the paddlefish or swordfish that Jennifer Macaire suggested) but with a weedier body and defined neck region since there would be no need for such a large articulation in a fusiform fish (they’re the muscular type that taper at both ends and have no neck, so don’t move their heads).
With this bizarre sounding fish in mind I was able to fairly rapidly narrow down the possibilities to one of the three species of cornetfish that live in the Pacific. I was delighted to find some great images of the skull of a Red Cornetfish, which matches the morphology very well.
Red Cornetfish Fistularia petimba from the Gulf of Mexico. Image by SEFSC Pascagoula Laboratory; Collection of Brandi Noble, NOAA/NMFS/SEFSC
However, the Red Cornetfish doesn’t really occur in the eastern Pacific, so it’s very unlikely to be that species. The Reef Cornetfish does occur in the eastern Pacific, but has only been reported in Californian coastal waters since November 2015 and this mystery specimen was collected back in January 2000 (which doesn’t make it impossible to be a Reef Cornetfish, just very unlikely). Which leaves us with the most likely identification (although by no means confirmed) of Deepwater Cornetfish Fistularia corneta Gilbert & Starks, 1904.
These long, thin fish can reach up to 2m, but they have tiny mouths that limit them to eating crustaceans, marine worms and smaller fish that they pick up from near the surface of reefs and the sea bed – presumably being harder to spot as a predator thanks to their very small frontal projected area.
I’ve asked Joe to check his specimen against the images of the cornetfish, since there’s nothing better than having a specimen in your hand when attempting an identification.
I hope you enjoyed the challenge!
This week I have a guest mystery object for you, courtesy of Joseph van Sambeek:
Any ideas what it is and which species it might have come from?
You can ask questions and make suggestions in the comments box below – have fun!
Last week I gave you this cheeky chap to have a go at identifying:
There was some lovely wordplay in the answers, with Chris getting in early with this great one:
I thought I had a shrewed idea until I saw the Bilby in the background which could show this isn’t the elephant in the room. Coot is legs be too Bandi?
This rules out elephant shrews and correctly identifies it as some kind of bandicoot, thanks to its marsupial case companion. Then palfreyman1414 dropped an anagram into the mix with:
Mere ale plus Satan?
which is so nice I wish it was correct, but alas this isn’t a Long-nosed bandicoot Perameles nasuta, although it is in the same genus.
Allen Hazen wondered “How badly does fur fade in preserved specimens?” and that turned out to be the key question, since everyone shied away from the correct identification, because one of the characteristics of this species’ pelage (that’s mammal-fan speak for ‘fur’) is that it’s supposed to have two stripes on its hindquarters or, more accurately, bars. As it turns out, fur fades quite badly in preserved specimens.
This is in fact a Marl or Western barred bandicoot Perameles bougainville Quoy & Gaimard, 1824 (NMINH:1906.301.1).
These diminutive Australian marsupial insectivores are vulnerable to introduced predators like cats and foxes, so their wild population only remains on some islands after once being widespread across Western Australia.
Even on the islands where they have some protection from placental predators, they face issues with disease, since their population has shrunk by so much it has impacted on their genetic diversity – reducing resistance to disease at the population level. In particular, a virus that causes tumour growth is affecting the animals on some islands, leaving the species increasingly under pressure.
One island does remain free of the virus, so hopefully with proper management the Marls will be able to hang on in there.
This week I’ve got something with a bit of character from the exhibition space at the Dead Zoo:
Any idea what this fuzzball might be?
As usual you can put your questions, thoughts and suggestions in the comments box below.
Last week I gave you this specimen to identify, which came in as an enquiry after being found in someone’s toilet:
There were a variety of great responses, with some fantastic cryptic clues, including an anagram by Claire Miles (great stuff!). Most opted for this being Stegobium paniceum, which is also known by the aliases Drugstore Beetle, Biscuit Beetle or Bread Beetle.
Stegobium paniceum by Sarefo, 2007
However, the mystery critter has a subtly different pronotum (that’s the plate over the thorax that extends over the head).
Another suggestion was woodworm or one of the false powderpost beetles, which covers a range of wood-boring beetles, with Liberty Hightower correctly giving the more taxonomically constrained suggestion, of something from the Tribe Anobiini (which includes Stegobium). However, my colleague Olivier sent me an email with a very definitive identification, informed by a past experience with this particular pest – the Furniture Beetle Anobium punctatum De Geer, 1774.
These beetles have a distinctive pronotum that supposedly looks like a monk’s cowl, with a more distinctive hump and slightly pinched looking back section than the more smoothly curving pronotum of the Stegobium. They fall into the broad category of woodworm because their larvae feed on wood, making tunnels hidden from view and only becoming visible when they emerge from small holes in the wood as adults, leaving a little pile of wood dust as they go.
The presence of these beetles in a toilet isn’t related to the water in the bowl or even wood of the seat – it turns out that there was a window above the toilet and the adult beetles, in an attempt to leave the building after emerging, were attracted to the light from the window and flew into the glass only to bounce off and land in the toilet.
This attraction towards light in the dispersing adult stage of the beetle is a handy behaviour if you want to keep track of these pests. If you’re concerned you may have active woodworm it’s worth checking your windowsills in the summer to see if you have any of these adult beetles lying around. Of course, there are other species that would also be worth checking for, since there are plenty of beetles whose larvae would be considered woodworm. Keep your eyes peeled!
A slightly late mystery object this week, so apologies!
Here’s a critter that was sent in for identification that was fished out of someone’s toilet bowl:
Any idea what it is?
As usual you can put suggestions, ideas and any questions in comments box below.
Have fun!
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been offering up what has been affectionately nicknamed ‘cave snot’ for identification:
The initial goop was a bit too difficult to identify from a photo, so I dug in and pulled out the critter responsible:
This proved much more identifiable, with Chris immediately recognising that it’s the larva of a Caddisfly (not really a fly, but a more moth-like insect in the Order Trichoptera – which means ‘hairy wings’ as palfreyman1414 mentioned). Natalia Maas went one better by alluding to the family – the Philopotamidae or Finger-net Caddis, explaining the goop, which is actually made up of little silk nets shaped like fingers (hence the common name for the family). These nets are used to collect organic detritus and diatoms from flowing water, which the larvae then feed on.
I provided a couple of extra images to help narrow down the identification, since there are only five species in three genera of Finger-net Caddis in Ireland (and England for that matter), which are able to be differentiated from the anterior margin of their frontoclypeus (see the diagram below if you’re not sure what that is).
There’s an excellent website looking at Trichoptera in Ireland, descriptively called TrichopteraIreland, where you can find the details of how to tell the larvae of different genera apart, but the short version is to look at the frontoclypeus and if it has a deep U-shaped notch in it you have a Chimarra marginata, if it has a shallow V-shaped notch in it then you have Philopotamus montanus and if it’s a smooth curve then you have a species in the genus Wormaldia (which could be W. subnigra, W. mediana or W. occipitalis).
Unfortunately you can’t readily tell Wormaldia species apart when they’re larvae, so unless I’m missing a well-hidden notch in the frontoclypeus, we can’t identify this to anything better than genus level – but that’s still a substantial improvement on simply calling it cave snot.
I’ll be taking the specimen to the previous Entomology curator of the Museum, since his area of specialist interest is Caddis, so I’m sure he’ll be able to confirm the identification and I expect there may be some interest in where it came from.
More mysteries next week!
Last week I gave you this delightful jar of ‘cave snot’ to have a go at identifying:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, nobody came close to identifying what this is. I didn’t have a clue until I dived in and dissected out a small sample:
Notice the little critter on the left of the image? This immediately made it much more obvious what this stuff was – not something living in its own right but something produced by an animal.
Removing the goop reveals what we’re really dealing with:
I think I’ve given you all the images needed to work out what this is, so rather than just tell you, I’m making this part 2 of the mystery object, with quite a lot more to go on than the first post. So, as usual, you can put your questions, thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below. Have fun!
This week I have a real mystery object for you, which came in as an enquiry from the bottom of a mine in Ireland that was flooded to the roof with freshwater. It’s earned itself the delightful name of the ‘Clonkeen snot’ thanks to its appearance and texture:
If you click on the image, it will open a large version so you can have a really good look at the fascinating gunk that was fished from the subterranean dankness.
Any ideas what this might be?
As always you can leave your questions, thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below. Have fun!
Last week I thought it was time for some more bones, so I gave you this specimen from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying:
There was no scale, the photo is far from ideal and the specimen isn’t in the best condition, but the animal is pretty distinctive, so I thought it wouldn’t prove too much of a challenge – and it turns out that I was right.
Palfreyman1414 was the first to identify it to genus level, correctly recognising that it was one of the two Notoryctes species of Marsupial Mole from Australia.
The weird limbs are a pretty good indicator this being a digger, with large muscle attachments and robust forelimbs, but it has couple of large claws rather than the ridiculous giant hands of the Old World Moles and it has a shorter skull.
Double prep of an Old World Mole Talpa europaea from the Horniman Museum & Gardens
The skull is more similar to that of the golden moles of southern Africa, although their rostrum (nosey bits) tends to be more concave while the marsupial moles have a more convex rostrum (and in some cases, weirdly flaring zygomatic arches).
Lateral view of the skull of a Giant Golden Mole Chrysospalax trevelyani from the Grant Museum of Zoology
Now distinguishing between the two species of Marsupial Mole is a bit more tricky, not least because they are quite poorly known animals and there aren’t many specimens available for comparison – this is particularly true of the Northern species, which was first described as recently as 1920.
This is actually quite useful to know, since the mystery specimen came into the collection in 1897 – from Southern Australia – so it’s safe to say it’s the Southern Marsupial Mole Notoryctes typhlops (Stirling, 1889), but that’s not very helpful from a morphological perspective.
So far I’ve not found any useful skeletal features that help differentiate the two species, but apparently their fur colour is a little different, with the Northern species having pinkish or cinnamon fur and the Southern species having yellowish-white to a deep gold. To see what they look like with their fur, here’s the taxidermy partner to the mystery skeleton:
Taxidermy Southern Marsupial Mole Notoryctes typhlops in the National Museum of Ireland – Natural History
As with most moles these subterranean critters have adapted to spending much of their time underground by losing their eyes, investing in some serious digging equipment and tuning in to smells and low frequency sounds.
I hope you enjoyed this little tour around the main moles of the world! More mysteries next week.
The last few weeks have been rather insect-centric mystery objects, but this week I felt a need for the comfort of something I really know – bones:
This skeleton is awesome, although probably a bit too easy for some of you, so cryptic or poetic suggestions are encouraged. Have fun!
There are lies, damn lies and statistics* and then there are inaccurate statements made from assumptions that are based on insufficient knowledge and poor research. Last week I fell into this sort of untruth when I offered up this diminutive mystery object that I said was from Ireland:
My excuse for that untruth is the fact that the specimen was in a part of the collection dealing with native species (which I forgot also includes British taxa, because the collection is old enough to have been split into “native” and “foreign” before Ireland stopped being part of the UK) and I’d quickly checked the distribution with reference to a handy online checklist of British and Irish Hymenoptera, but I then missed the bit under the species that said the range was restricted to England. I assumed based on context and as a result I got it wrong – and we all know that we should never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME*.
So thanks to jennifermacaire and David Notton for pointing out my mistake – it is much appreciated. I should have checked the label for the collection locality, but unfortunately the image was taken as a snap on my phone while bagging the drawer containing this specimen (while I was preparing hundreds of of other such drawers and insect boxes as part of a major collections move) so I didn’t get the chance. This is actually a bit of a problem for digitisation when insects are pinned like this, because the label is invisible from above.
Insect boxes bagged for transport and freezing
If I was more familiar with the insect fauna of Britain and Ireland it would have helped, but as you may be aware, my main area of experience is in bones and the critters that have them, so my knowledge of insects tends to be quite generalised or restricted to particularly important or interesting species that I’ve had reason to research.
The kind of specimen I really understand
This is one of the challenges in my role as curator of Zoology and Entomology at the National Museum of Ireland, where I work with somewhere in the region of 2 million specimens, covering the whole of the animal Kingdom, from all over the world.
Normally museums with collections of this size would have a few specialist curators to focus on the main taxonomic divisions, but for the time being I’m dealing with the lot, so I have a steep learning curve to get up to speed with the whole collection. Of course, it’s well worth it, as there are some incredible specimens in there – either because of what they are, or who they were collected by and how important they are for science and culture.
Wasps collected by Charles Darwin during the Voyage of the Beagle.
Anyway, excuses aside, I expect you’re keen to find out what that small hymenopteran was. Chris very quickly identified it as one of the small, solitary carpenter bees. This is the only one that is “native” – in that it occurs in Southeast England – and even then it’s pretty rare to find it except in downlands in the South, mainly in East Hampshire.
The name is Ceratina cyanea (Kirby, 1802) and the female excavates a burrow in the stem of a dead plant, making tiny cells with walls of sawdust in which she lays eggs – hence the name “carpenter bees” for the group that shows this behaviour.
Another mystery object to come next week – this time it will hopefully be a bit less misleading!
*Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, by Mark Twain
*I’m attributing that to the fictional character Dawn Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer because that’s where I heard it first, but it was coined by Jerry Belson
This week I have another specimen for you that I came across while moving the Dead Zoo’s insect collections:
This one’s pretty small – only around 6-8mm. It was collected in Ireland, so if you’re not sure what it is, you only have around 11,999 species to rule out before you get the right answer 😉
Have fun!
Last week I gave you this beautiful insect to try your hand at identifying:
From the start it was pretty clear it’s a wasp (just look at that characteristic waistline) and palreyman1414 pointed out the key things to look for in making sure it isn’t a fly pretending to be a wasp:
I believe that there are some flies that are camouflaged to look like wasps, but a close look suggests that this thingy has a full complement of four wings, instead of the two plus two halteres (?) that characterises the flies
Now there are a LOT of wasps out there – somewhere in the region of 150,000 species (more than all of the vertebrates put together) so that doesn’t narrow it down much. However, that waist isn’t just pinched-in like your average wasp, it’s petiolate (that’s science-talk for “stalked”), which means it’s one of the Sphecidae.
The large size also helps – most wasps are tiny, so big ones like this are relatively scarce, especially bright metallic green-blue jobs. This distinctive appearance brings to mind for me the Steel-blue Cricket Hunter (see below), but it’s from the wrong part of the world (and it’s more green than blue).
Chlorion aerarium from Maryland, USA, July 2012. Image by USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Laboratory
However, we know there are a lot of wasps, so it’s worth looking at close relatives in the Sphecidae, to see if there is anything from the right part of the world (that’s made reasonably easy by using an appropriate reference with a checklist).
It turns out that we don’t need to look too far, as the mystery specimen looks like it’s in the same genus of Cricket Hunters – Chlorion (as suggested by Ilyas) and checking out the species occurring in India has me leaning towards Chlorion lobatum (Fabricius, 1775), which is what abcdefg200 hinted at.
These active hunters don’t eat Crickets themselves, they actually get their energy from nectar, so they’re helpful pollinators. The Crickets face a more grisly fate than just being killed and eaten – they are paralysed, then buried alive with a wasp egg laid on them, which subsequently hatches and the larvae eat the still-living Cricket. Nightmare fodder.
There are a few subspecies of this particular species of wasp, but I’m not even going to try to work out which this might be, since even carrying out a proper identification to species would require time with a microscope and a lot more experience than I have with this diverse, fascinating and above all nightmarish group of insects.
As I’ve mentioned before, for the last few months I’ve been feverishly moving objects for a gallery lighting project.
That’s pretty much done now (and looking great) so now I’m feverishly moving the Dead Zoo’s collection of over a million insects out to a new home in the National Museum of Ireland’s Collections Resource Centre.
So this week I have an insect for you to identity, which should provide a bit of a colourful change from the usual vertebrate bones:
For some of you this may be way too easy, for others, way too hard. It help to know that this was collected in India and it’s around 25-30mm long.
I hope you have fun identifying it!
Last week I gave you this specimen from the Irish Room of the Dead Zoo to try your hand at identifying:
Now it’s not a particularly difficult species to identify for a keen birder, so I asked for cryptic clues to the identity, and I was not disappointed. Some suggestions were so cryptic I still haven’t managed to work them out!
First in was Jennifer Mccaire who quoted a brief line of poetry:
“…Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.”
This is a section of a poem published in 1770 by John Logan – the title being “Ode to the Cuckoo“. Now, it seems likely that Scottish born Logan wrote this about the Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus Linnaeus, 1758 that breeds in Europe and which looks like this:
Common Cuckoo. Image by Chris Romeiks, 2011
Clearly it’s a different bird (one which mimics the appearance of a female Sparrowhawk) and it’s not quite the same as the mystery object – although there are similarities. However, we must keep in mind that Jennifer is of the North American persuasion, so her thoughts on Cuckoos will probably veer towards the Black-billed Cuckoo or Yellow-billed Cuckoo (or maybe the Mangrove Cuckoo, but that’s not as widespread as the other two).
If you don’t know the difference between these two North American Cuckoos, here’s a handy illustration to help differentiate:
Black-billed Cuckoo (left), Yellow-billed Cuckoo (right). Watercolour by Louis Agassiz Fuertes between 1910 and 1914.
The last few months have been particularly busy for me as I’ve been working on a lighting project in the Irish Room of the Dead Zoo in Dublin, so I’ve not had much opportunity to dig out mystery objects and get good images for you to identify.
However, I have moved pretty much every specimen in the gallery and if you want to see how much stuff that entails there’s a 3D interactive map of the space available here (if you want to have a virtual tour of the whole museum check this out). All this moving means I’ve seen a lot of specimens, so here’s one of them for you to have a go at identifying:
For a some of you this will be way too easy, so let’s have your best cryptic clues, hints and riddles as to what this is.
Have fun!
Last week I gave you this interesting skull to identify:
Specimen LDUCZ-Z1058 from the Grant Museum of Zoology
I didn’t mention that top of the cranium had been removed, probably as part of a postmortem, which is quite common for zoo specimens. Of course, this made the identification a bit more tricky.
That absent skullcap led to several suggestions of Tasmanian Devil, since they do have a very similar looking facial region to this specimen, with a short and blunt muzzle, robust zygomatic arch and even the same toothcount in the upper jaw. However, the Devils have an angular process of the mandible that projects medially (towards the midline) rather than backwards in a hook, so you wouldn’t see it in a side view.
The correct answer was first tenuously suggested by palfreyman1414 in a pleasingly cryptic manner:
I’d have sworn this was a commie go-between for Cressida and Troilus
Which hints at “Red” and “Pandarus” giving us the Red Panda Ailurus fulgens F. Cuvier, 1825.
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Red Panda image by Mathias Appel, 2016
These charismatic critters are another example of an arboreal carnivore that is adapted to feed on a highly vegetarian diet, but unlike the previous mystery object (a Kinkajou) these cuddlesome floofballs eat mainly bamboo rather than fruit – rather like their very distant relative the Giant Panda (despite the similarity in diet and common name, the Red Panda is actually more closely related to the Kinkajou than it is the Giant Panda).
Red Pandas are a bit less highly specialised for feeding on bamboo than the Giant Pandas, probably because they have a more varied diet that also includes fruit, eggs, birds and small mammals. The poor nutritional quality of bamboo does mean that they spend a lot of time sleeping and they tend to move fairly slowly in order to conserve energy, although they can be very playful, especially in captivity where they can access higher quality foods.
Sadly, this playfulness and supreme floofyness is a bit of a problem for the wild Red Panda population. There is demand for wild caught Red Pandas in the pet trade and they are hunted for their thick fur right across their range through the foothills of the Himalayas, despite being protected by legislation in every country.
This Friday I have an interesting mystery skull for you to identify:
This may be a bit easy for some of you (although if like me you were up late last night to watch the election that may not be the case), so cryptic suggestions are encouraged.
I hope you have fun with it!
Zygoma 