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Human
The ones who toughed it out
Homo sapiens is the only extant human species. The name is Latin for "wise man" and was introduced in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (who is himself the lectotype for the species).
Extinct species of the genus Homo include Homo erectus, extant from roughly 1.9 to 0.4 million years ago, and a number of other species (by some authors considered subspecies of either H. sapiens or H. erectus). The age of speciation of H. sapiens out of ancestral H. erectus (or an intermediate species such as Homo antecessor) is estimated to have been roughly 350,000 years ago. Sustained archaic admixture is known to have taken place both in Africa and (following the recent Out-Of-Africa expansion) in Eurasia, between about 100,000 and 30,000 years ago.
The term anatomically modern humans (AMH) is used to distinguish H. sapiens having an anatomy consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from varieties of extinct archaic humans. This is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe.
Western gorilla
Our husky brothers
Gorillas are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Sub-Saharan Africa. The genus Gorilla is divided into two species: the eastern gorillas and the western gorillas (both critically endangered), and either four or five subspecies. They are the largest living primates. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 95 to 99% depending on what is included, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after the chimpanzees and bonobos.
Gorillas' natural habitats cover tropical or subtropical forests in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although their range covers a small percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations. The mountain gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2,200 to 4,300 metres (7,200 to 14,100 ft). Lowland gorillas live in dense forests and lowland swamps and marshes as low as sea level, with western lowland gorillas living in Central West African countries and eastern lowland gorillas living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo near its border with Rwanda.
The western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) is a great ape—the type species as well as the most populous species of the genus Gorilla.
Killer whale
Panda dolphins
The killer whale or orca (Orcinus orca) is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. Killer whales have a diverse diet, although individual populations often specialize in particular types of prey. Some feed exclusively on fish, while others hunt marine mammals such as seals and other species of dolphin. They have been known to attack baleen whale calves, and even adult whales. Killer whales are apex predators, as no animal preys on them. A cosmopolitan species, they can be found in each of the world's oceans in a variety of marine environments, from Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas, absent only from the Baltic and Black seas, and some areas of the Arctic Ocean.
Killer whales are highly social; some populations are composed of matrilineal family groups (pods) which are the most stable of any animal species. Their sophisticated hunting techniques and vocal behaviours, which are often specific to a particular group and passed across generations, have been described as manifestations of animal culture.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature assesses the orca's conservation status as data deficient because of the likelihood that two or more killer whale types are separate species. Some local populations are considered threatened or endangered due to prey depletion, habitat loss, pollution (by PCBs), capture for marine mammal parks, and conflicts with human fisheries. In late 2005, the southern resident killer whales, which swim in British Columbia and Washington state waters, were placed on the U.S. Endangered Species list.
Tiger
The bravest of felines
The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest species among the Felidae and classified in the genus Panthera. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with a lighter underside. It is an apex predator, primarily preying on ungulates such as deer and wild boar. It is territorial and generally a solitary but social predator, requiring large contiguous areas of habitat, which support its requirements for prey and rearing of its offspring. Tiger cubs stay with their mother for about two years, before they become independent and leave their mother's home range to establish their own.
The tiger once ranged widely from the Eastern Anatolia Region in the west to the Amur River basin, and in the south from the foothills of the Himalayas to Bali in the Sunda islands. Since the early 20th century, tiger populations have lost at least 93% of their historic range and have been extirpated in Western and Central Asia, from the islands of Java and Bali, and in large areas of Southeast and South Asia and China. Today's tiger range is fragmented, stretching from Siberian temperate forests to subtropical and tropical forests on the Indian subcontinent and Sumatra. The tiger is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1986. As of 2015, the global wild tiger population was estimated to number between 3,062 and 3,948 mature individuals, down from around 100,000 at the start of the 20th century, with most remaining populations occurring in small pockets isolated from each other. Major reasons for population decline include habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and poaching. This, coupled with the fact that it lives in some of the more densely populated places on Earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans.
The tiger is among the most recognisable and popular of the world's charismatic megafauna. It featured prominently in ancient mythology and folklore and continues to be depicted in modern films and literature, appearing on many flags, coats of arms and as mascots for sporting teams. The tiger is the national animal of India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and South Korea.
Atlantic horseshoe crab
Little marine travellers
Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the family Limulidae, suborder Xiphosurida, and order Xiphosura. Their popular name is a misnomer, for they are not true crabs.
Horseshoe crabs live primarily in and around shallow coastal waters on soft sandy or muddy bottoms. They tend to spawn in the intertidal zone at spring high tides. They are commonly eaten in Asia, and used as fishing bait, in fertilizer and in science (especially Limulus amebocyte lysate). In recent years, population declines have occurred as a consequence of coastal habitat destruction and overharvesting. Tetrodotoxin may be present in one horseshoe crab species, Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda.
Given their origin 450 million years ago, horseshoe crabs are considered living fossils. A 2019 molecular analysis places them as the sister group of Ricinulei within Arachnida.
A bag of organs writhing on the ocean floor
The descendants of our literal ancestors
A tunicate is a marine invertebrate animal, a member of the subphylum Tunicata. It is part of the Chordata, a phylum which includes all animals with dorsal nerve cords and notochords. The subphylum was at one time called Urochordata, and the term urochordates is still sometimes used for these animals. They are the only chordates that have lost their myomeric segmentation, with the possible exception of the seriation of the gill slits.
Some tunicates live as solitary individuals, but others replicate by budding and become colonies, each unit being known as a zooid. They are marine filter feeders with a water-filled, sac-like body structure and two tubular openings, known as siphons, through which they draw in and expel water. During their respiration and feeding, they take in water through the incurrent (or inhalant) siphon and expel the filtered water through the excurrent (or exhalant) siphon. Most adult tunicates are sessile, immobile and permanently attached to rocks or other hard surfaces on the ocean floor; others, such as salps, doliolids and pyrosomes, swim in the pelagic zone of the sea as adults.
The earliest probable species of tunicate appears in the fossil record in the early Cambrian period. Despite their simple appearance and very different adult form, their close relationship to the vertebrates is evidenced by the fact that during their mobile larval stage, they possess a notochord or stiffening rod and resemble a tadpole. Their name derives from their unique outer covering or "tunic", which is formed from proteins and carbohydrates, and acts as an exoskeleton. In some species, it is thin, translucent, and gelatinous, while in others it is thick, tough, and stiff.
Horsetail
The living fossil
Equisetum telmateia, the great horsetail or northern giant horsetail, is a species of Equisetum (puzzlegrass) with an unusual distribution, with one subspecies native to Europe, western Asia and northwest Africa, and a second subspecies native to western North America. The North American subspecies is often simply but ambiguously called "giant horsetail", but that name may just as well refer to the Latin American Equisetum giganteum and Equisetum myriochaetum.
Equisetum is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire class Equisetopsida, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests. Some Equisetopsida were large trees reaching to 30 meters tall. The genus Calamites of the family Calamitaceae, for example, is abundant in coal deposits from the Carboniferous period. The pattern of spacing of nodes in horsetails, wherein those toward the apex of the shoot are increasingly close together, inspired John Napier to invent logarithms.
A superficially similar but entirely unrelated flowering plant genus, mare's tail (Hippuris), is occasionally referred to as "horsetail", and adding to confusion, the name mare's tail is sometimes applied to Equisetum.
Scale tree
Earth's first forests
Lepidodendron – also known as the scale trees – is an extinct genus of primitive, vascular, tree-like plants related to the isoetes (quillworts) and lycopsids (club mosses). They were part of the coal forest flora. They sometimes reached heights of over 30 metres (100 ft), and the trunks were often over 1 m (3.3 ft) in diameter. They thrived during the Carboniferous Period (about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya (million years ago) and were found until the Late Triassic, about 205 Ma) before going extinct. Sometimes erroneously called "giant club mosses", the genus was actually more closely related to modern quillworts than to modern club mosses.
Lepidodendron species were comparable in size to modern trees. The plants had tapering trunks as wide as 2 m (6 ft 7 in) at their base that rose to about 100 ft (30 m), arising from an underground system of horizontally spreading branches that were covered with many rootlets. Though the height of the trees make the plants similar to modern trees, the constant dichotomy of branches created a habit that contrasts with that of modern trees. At the ends of branches were oval-shaped cones that had a similar shape to modern cones of a spruce or fir.
By the Mesozoic era, the giant lycopsids had died out and were replaced by conifers as well as smaller quillworts. This may have been the result of competition from the emerging woody gymnosperms. Lepidodendron is one of the more common plant fossils found in Pennsylvanian (Late Carboniferous) age rocks. They are closely related to other extinct lycopsid genera, Sigillaria and Lepidendropsis.
Willdenow's spikemoss
This one saved my diversity of plants final
Selaginella, a genus of approximately 700 species of moss-like plants, is similar in appearance to the clubmosses (e.g., Lycopodium). However, the two groups differ as the tiny leaves of spikemosses have a scale-like flap (ligule) at the base of their lower surface and they produce two types of spores.
Common names can be misleading. Spikemosses are not mosses, which lack a vascular system, but are true vascular plants. This means they have a well-developed system of specialised cells for moving water and photosynthates around the plant, enabling them to grow upright and much taller than mosses and their relatives. Although traditionally grouped with other spore-producing plants such as whisk ferns, horsetails and ferns, we now know spikemosses and clubmosses are not closely related to other spore producers.
Spikemosses and clubmosses are often referred to as 'living fossils', as they look very similar to their fossil relatives that lived 370-400 million years ago. However, present-day species differ dramatically in size from fossil species. Present-day 'living fossils' are usually less than one metre tall, whereas their ancestors reached forty metres or more in height. These giants are now extinct; only the smaller sorts survive.