All the Creatures

Those of you that have outdoor cats have usually experienced your cat bringing home something less than desirable into your home. Be it a dead mouse or bird, their “gift” to you is not a well received one. Dead animals are not the only items that cats can bring home. Several years ago there was a news item about a cat that brought home diamonds. The cat came in the house limping after being out all night. The cat’s owner looked for the cause of the limp and removed what she thought was a piece of glass from between the cats toes. The same thing happened the next night. It was discovered that those pieces of “glass” were diamonds and it was never discovered where the cat got them.

We also knew a neighbors cat that would steal things. That cat took a watch of mine once and I had to chase the cat for a few 100 feet before she dropped it. The photo above is of Frankie, a “cat burglar” in England. Frankie brings home a kinds of stuffed animals. He never plays with them, according to his owner, just simply collects them.

Dogs also bring home some of the strangest things, including other live animals. My daughter’s dog ran off in our local woods to bring back something in her mouth…..a baby rabbit. Unharmed we managed to return the rabbit to its home within an hour of searching for it. Our dogs have also brought home kittens and other dogs. The dogs eventually returned to their homes but the kittens did stay.

All the Creatures

Did you know that almost all of the mammals that we think of as being native to North America are in reality not? Horses, rhinos, elephants and tigers are in fact native to North America and deer, bison, elk and moose are not. You see about a million years ago, horses, rhinos, mammoths, tigers and giant sloths roamed North America. At the same time deer, moose and elk roamed in Asia.

Roughly 30,000 to 20,000 years ago the area that now has open ocean between Alaska and the USSR was dry land. That allowed not only animals to migrate but humans as well. It is not known why horses, rhinos and the other mammals that were once native to North America disappeared. They were on the North American continent until only 8,000 years ago. There have been fossil finds in Canada and Alaska that put the modern horse in North America just 7,000 years ago. By the same token, why did bison disappear from Asia or did those that stayed behind evolve into yaks?

If you are curious you might want to go to your local book store and learn some more about the subject of ancient mammals. There is one called the Beasts of Eden that is quite good.

Since paleontology is an ever changing science, I do not recommend you buy book on sale that is more than a few years old. A case in point - I have several horse books at home and if they were published before 1978 they blatantly state that the horse developed in Asia, which is not true. Horse fossils were discovered in 1928 in Idaho (that were from horses that lived over 1 million years ago) but the general public was not aware of it until the late 1950’s. Some authors of those books simply took older books and re-wrote the misinformation, without bothering to do their own research on the matter. In the later books the information about the history of the horse had been corrected.

All the Creatures

How many times have you heard people say that the horse is not native to North America? I bet lots of times. Did you know that it is not true? In the past 10 years more and more fossil evidence has proven that the ancestors of the modern horse originated on the North American plate, not in Asia and it was originally thought.

The wild horse that developed in North America was about the size of the modern day Arabian horse when it migrated to other parts of the globe via over the Bering land bridge. During that same time, camels also made the journey from North America to the rest of Asia. Of course the whole herd of horses did not leave North America - they stayed. Evidence of Equus ferus (the ancient wild horse) has been found in Idaho and Canada. There is a large national monument in Idaho that has whole fossilized horses on display. It is called the Hagerman Fossil Beds. They have a website at www.nps.gov/archive/hafo/quarry.htm which has more info on the horse fossils.

If you are really interested in finding out more then I suggest BJ MacFadden’s book, Fossil Horses

The book is written in a typical college textbook style. This is not your coffee table picture book. If you are up for a little research then this book is something to dig into (excuse the pun). I found a copy on sale for only a dollar because no one else bid on it.

What I found intriguing is the fact that the horse disappeared from the North American plate about 7,000 years ago. Humans showed up in the America’s about 4,000 prior to that. Some people have said that horses were hunted into extinction in North America, but if that was the case the horse would have disappeared all over the world and not just from North America. The horse’s disappearance 7,000 years ago from North America still remains a mystery.

All the Creatures