Exotic Animals

I was in a pet shop the other day, and saw a neat looking lizard.  It wasn’t one I’d seen before, although I’d heard of them, and I found it interesting.  It was a leopard gecko.

Leopard gecko’s are native to the deser regions of northwestern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.  That region’s been in the news lately, but that’s not why these lizards are popular among herpetology fans.  They are popular because they have near-perfect pet lizard attributes.

To start with, they are small.  Adults get to be about 5 inches long.  This makes them manageable, especially when compard with constrictor snakes or monitor lizards.  In addition to their small size, they are also very tough little critters, able to tolerate cool temperatures or changes in humidity better than many other small reptiles.  Both of these factors make them excellent choices for beginner reptile keepers.

Even more important, though, from the keepers’ perspective, is that these little geckos are not the kind of gecko that can walk up walls.  Their toes end in small claws, rather than the clingy pads of house-geckos.  Leopard geckos are terrestrial, which means that they will stay in a glass terrarium.

Their environmental requirements are modest: a grainy sustrate, a wide, shallow water dish, and a place to hide will cover the basics, and a heat lamp and heat pad will help keep a constant temperature near 80 F.  For food, these lizards will require live insects.  They are insect predators in their natural environment, and enjoy the hunt.  Crickets, meal worms, and wax worms will suffice for a diet.  They’ll even go after, and sometimes catch, the moths that wax worms mature into.

I got most of this info from the proprietor at the pet shop.  Honestly, I wouldn’t take a reptile pet, myself.  Even the easy lizards, like leopard geckos, require some specialized care and handling, I don’t recommend that anyone take on a pet that they aren’t prepared to provide the absolute best possible situation.

This animal’s no longer with us, but strange things are still happening to it, anyway.

I am always on the lookout for interesting stories about animals, as you know, but I am also on the lookout for just plain strange news articles, too.  This time, I have managed to find both at once…

I found this article on Yahoo News.  Here’s the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070826/sc_afp/egyptarchaeology_070826175713

European diplomats in four-wheel drive cars have caused millions of dollars worth of damage to a fossilised whale lying for millions of years in the Egyptian desert, a security source said on Sunday….

Two cars drove into the protected area on Friday and then refused to stop when asked to do so by wardens who nevertheless got the vehicles’ registration numbers which the source said were from “a European country….”

The site, known as Wadi Hitan (Whale Valley), was home to whales around 40 million years ago when the area was ocean. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to hundreds of of whale fossils.

Now, I am all for protecting nature, and maintaining the integrity of a scientific find, so I have some questions about this incident: 

First, why are these fossils still in the ground?  If they are so valuable, and so accessible, why hasn’t Egypt arranged or allowed an expedition to excavate the fossils?  After all, the value of a fossil is scientific, and that value is nil while the fossils are in the ground, where they cannot be examined or studied.

Second, why, as the article said, was the damage more than 10 million dollars?  How can there be 10 million dollars worth of damage to a fossil that has yet to be studied?

Value comes from two sources: what people will pay for an object, and what people want for an object.  What we’re seeing here is only one of those values, because clearly, the paleontological establishment (for whom these fossils are especially valuable) is not willing to pay Egypt’s price for them.  Somehow, I think that the number “10 million dollars” is more for politics than anything else.

In any case, it is intersting to note that Egypt’s whale fossils are an amazing look at the early history of the whale lineage.  Fossil evidence has shown that whales returned to the sea (their ancestors were terrestrial predators called mesonochids) on the southern coast of what’s now Pakistan, some 50 to 60 million years ago, before India collided with Asia.

The Egyptian fossils are close to this in both time and space, and therefore give a good look at the earliest, fully marine, whales.

I would say that gives the fossils value, but only if they gotten out of the ground.