M A N I C
love
dad
Sunday, June 7, 2026
Saturday, June 6, 2026
Amazon
J A G U A R
Pound for pound the strongest cat bite anywhere;
strong enough to crush a skull, crack open a turtle's
shell and ripe through an alligator's hide. The jaguar
is the true apex predator of the Amazon and all of
South America.
The jaguar is solitary and fiercely possessive of its home
range. Unlike most cats the jaguar is an exceptional
swimmer. Much of its diet comes from the water -
fish, turtle and the Black Caiman - a Florida-like alligator,
only larger and more powerful.
Jaguar vs. Black Caiman.
A cage match to see who's for dinner.
S L O T H
Slow motion living is more than a lifestyle.
It's a science. If you have a lower metabolic rate
than this animal, you're hibernating. The sloth
lives on an exceptionally nutrient poor diet of leaves
that are tough, difficult to breakdown. Their food
requires a complex, multichambered stomach.
Even then, it takes up to a month to fully digest
a single meal. The animal's energy is budgeted
only for necessities, like breathing. Ruthless
economizing is the only way the sloth makes
a living where no other mammal can.
The silver lining in having such sluggish digestion
is that your bathroom break is only once a week.
This requires you to climb down from the safety
of the tree to the forest floor, where predators lurk.
The ground is the worst place for a sloth to be.
There is no scamper in its design. Even a snake
would beat it in a race back to the tree.
If attacked, the sloth becomes as feisty as a
butterball, baked and ready to serve.
A N A C O N D A
The python is slightly longer but the anaconda
weighs twice as much. Imagine trying to fight off
a 550 pound snake. The good news is you are
crushed quickly, sparring you the ordeal of slow
suffocation. The anaconda's coiled grip prevents
any blood from reaching the heart or brain.
It's lights out in mere seconds.
Size is no obstacle. The anaconda's mouth
somehow manages to encompass even the
carcass of a dead deer. The trick is in how
long it takes for you to swallow it. You are
indisposed, vulnerable, during this early digestive
process. Woe be the anaconda discovered by a
jaguar in this manner. How delectable.
Fresh deer in a snake meat wrap.
The risk is worth taking. A meal the size of deer
could last the snake seven months, which happens
to be the anaconda's length of pregnancy.
The female's last meal in this instance, may well
have been the male, once insemination was complete.
He would have been a convenient meal packed with
good things. His proteins would produce healthy,
vibrant young ones of his genetics, all born live
and squiggly. Anacondas don't do eggs in a nest.
That birthing strategy requires reliably dry land
and guaranteed protection from thieving predators.
B L U E P O I S O N D A R T F R O G
This amphibian is not much bigger than a canapé
lifted from a cocktail tray. It's finger food served
up in one gulp. And here this animal is, shouting
its presence in technicolor blue, red or yellow.
Most animals this size are cloaked in camouflage.
The Blue Dart stands in your face, daring
to be eaten.
This is no bluff. These brilliant colors promise
quick paralysis and death to anyone eating
these amphibians. It's caused by neurotoxins
contained in the frog's skin glands. The Blue Dart
doesn't make its own poison. Instead, it accumulates
toxic levels of alkaloid compounds that are contained
in its diet of fire ants, termites and the like.
This dietary anecdote is like a vaccine giving
the frog immunity to predation. Now it
freely hops about doing its socializing
in broad daylight with complete peace of mind.
Any predator ignoring the color warning is dead.
Somehow they didn't get the message
or they were color blind.
C A P Y B A R A
World's largest rodent. A giant guinea pig.
Very pleasant disposition. Birds and assorted
other animals have been known to roost on their
backs and head, undisturbed.
They live in groups of up to twenty individuals
most of the year. They practice communal parenting.
Lactating moms will nurse pups not their own.
Their eyes, ears and nostrils all sit on top of their head.
They spend a good deal of time submerged,
out of the view of predators.
Kicking back.
H A R P Y E A G L E
World's most powerful bird of prey.
It maneuvers through the rainforest canopy
at speeds of up to fifty miles an hour, targeting
sloths, monkeys and parrots for prey.
A Harpy can easily carry off an animal equal
to its own weight. That can be seventeen pounds
or more. Its powerful claws come armed with
talons the size of a grizzly bear's - four to five
inches long. Its viselike grip is powerful enough
to splinter any bone.
The Harpy mates for life.
They breed every two or three years.
The Eagle couple has two eggs.
Two are born. One survives.
Parents largely determine which
of the two is more worthy.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Monday, June 1, 2026
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Arctic
C A R I B O U
Santa's reindeer.
Sleighs powered by caribou is the way to go,
if you live above the Arctic Circle. Caribou live through
-140 degree nights. Horses die. And where's the food?
You might get hay if you're Donner or Blitzen but
everyone else scrapes about to get by. You live
in a vast, snow and ice covered tundra. There
are no tree leaves to nibble on while browsing.
At times there is nothing more to eat than lichen,
growing like moss on the hard face of rock.
It's buried deep in ice and snow. Use your
hoof to break through. Take what you can get
and keep moving. Birthing the next generation
is the one event requiring the migration to stop.
Females are particular about where they raise
their calves. The location chosen needs to have
the right food available while also posing the
least danger from predators. Herds will trek
hundreds of miles to find what they want, or
settle for close enough if time runs out.
A R C T I C F O X
Salmon automatically makes this a special occasion.
Much of the time the food pickings are skimpy, at best.
You'll settle for seaweed, if you can find it.
Here's a tip. It pays to follow a polar bear out onto
the ice flow. Risky, yes, but the seal remains left after
a polar bear has had his fill, is a fitting carnivore
happy ending.
The Arctic Fox is nomadic. It ranges over hundreds
of miles in search of food. They hunt, even on dark
winter nights, when the sun takes months for it
to finally rise again, and daylight returns.
There is no hibernation in the Arctic zone.
No Time Out. No Free Parking.
There is no surplus fat here for the taking.
The Arctic just isn't that generous.
M U S K O X
This is an ancient mammal that lived among
the woolly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger.
They survived the Ice Age and are with us today.
Layers of hair protect them from extreme cold.
The exotic innermost layer provides eight times
the warmth of sheep's wool while also being softer
than cashmere. What a magnificent beast...
and now he's providing us with Sweaters by Yeti.
A R C T I C W O L F
The carcass of this musk ox has more than enough
meat to satisfy this canine. A wolf can take in as much
as 22 pounds of flesh in one sitting, stocking up for the
possibility of sometimes going weeks before the
next meal.
Wolves stick together, roaming their territory in packs
of up to seven. When it comes time to breed, only
the alpha male and alpha female are allowed to mate.
Consummation is the exclusive privilege of the Prom's
king and queen. It makes for dreadfully successful pups.
P O L A R B E A R
Seal is the best! ...packed with nutrients and plenty
of high energy blubber. There is enough bad cholesterol
here to drop a human in their tracks, seized with congestive
heart failure. The polar bear has biological work arounds
so this result doesn't apply to them. Their survival
depends on a diet filled with fat-rich blubber.
Here's something else about the picture above.
Water is everywhere but nothing there to drink.
You die of thirst if you rely on fresh water here.
The polar bear doesn't drink. It creates water
for itself when it metabolizes the seal's fat.
In a sense, the blubber is like a refreshing
glass of water.
S N O W Y O W L
The thick insulation covering this bird makes it
the heaviest owl on the continent. Its body is no
bigger than other owls but it flies about blanketed
from head to toe with double the down.
Lugging this extra weight about is the price paid
for survival in below zero cold.
Most owls work at night. They are nocturnal.
Snowy owls are diurnal. You work both day and night.
There is no avoiding it. In summer the sun
never sets while during winter the sun
takes months before it rises again.
In any event, the owl does what is needed
to stay alive. Food is often scarce.
Except for the lemmings, small rodent like mice.
Amazing breeders. A gift that keeps on giving.
A typical Snowy Owl could pack away 1,200
lemmings a year, and still have room for dessert.
Many years ago a Disney documentary claimed
lemmings periodically committed mass suicide,
and showed a film clip of thousands of lemmings
running off a cliff, falling onto the wave-battered
rocks below. The scene was apparently staged,
but the myth of the lemming urge for suicide
lives on as biological fake news.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, May 24, 2026
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Creatures
H A M M E R H E A D S H A R K
What advantage is there to extending your eyes
straight out and far away from your skull?
You can see everywhere at once except for
directly in front of your snout. Your one
blind spot is in the direction you are headed.
Your head acts like a rudder, enabling you to
pivot and twist at high speed to capture an
energy meal, like another shark or a ray.
Hammerhead's dive to extreme depths in
order to feast on a favorite, giant squid.
They hold their breath while hunting at
great depths because the icy waters passing
over their gills can dangerously lower the shark's
core body temperature.
R E D - E Y E D T R E E F R O G
What is it about a rain forest that attracts flamboyance?
This frog is easy pickings for a passing hawk or
nearby snake when displaying itself in full regalia.
However, by tucking its limbs under its green body
and masking its red eyes with a membrane, the frog
becomes invisible, lost in the surrounding jungle foliage.
Red-Eyes needing a mate complicates their survival.
Nature has provided a relatively few females with
an abundance of males to chose from. The date night
frenzy begins with a passing rainforest downpour.
Males everywhere hop about to dazzle the ladies.
Being chosen for mating doesn't end the competition.
Matters get ever more ugly as desperate rivals
attempt to pull the male off his bride's back,
even on their honeymoon night.
A L L I G A T O R
Dine with ancient reptiles that preceded the dinosaurs
by a hundred million years. Spend the day among
a thousand alligators lounging pondside in a beautiful
garden setting. What a wonderful destination for a
family picnic. Just twenty-five cents brings you the
Experience of a Lifetime!
The California Alligator Farm opened in 1907,
enduring until 1953. The farm supplemented
its income at the gate by renting alligators to
movie studios in the early days of Hollywood.
H O R S E
Gallop - the fastest of four gaits.
It has four beats to a cycle, one for each hoof
hitting the ground separately. Four thuds and
a silent moment when the horse's legs are
all lifted above the ground.
The Trot has a two clop gait, with two legs
striking the ground at once, then the other two
doing the same.
Cantors, the second fastest, have three clops
to their cycle. The mosey along gait is Walking.
One leg moves at a time. Each when it is
good and ready.
T R I C E R A T O P S
A three-horned dinosaur that makes its appearance
in the fossil record two million years before Earth's
catastrophic collision with an asteroid the size of
Mount Everest. The result is an immediate course
change for life on this planet. Nocturnal mammals,
small and timid, rapidly diversified to fill all the roles
once dominated by the now extinct reptiles.
Chance has given life a new path to follow.
F L Y C A T C H E R
You'll easily go through two sets of flight feathers a year.
Your first set comes just in time for the breeding season,
when you need to be at your sharpest. But as summer
closes out and the family has left the nest it is time to
replace rough, worn-out feathers with shiny and new.
Most birds lose their flight feathers one at a time
on each wing in a symmetrical pattern.
This process provides the least interference with
the bird going about its daily routine.
Waterfowl like geese and ducks, on the other hand,
lose their flight feathers all at once, leaving them
limited to paddling about the pond for the next
two to four weeks, waiting for their new feathers
to arrive.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
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