Enough of sullying my blog with lower forms of political life.
Here is something beautiful and unusual and a lot more interesting to look at than some half-wit senator from Arkansas:
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| The maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) |
"The maned wolf is not closely related to any other living canid. It is not a fox, wolf, coyote, dog, or jackal, but a distinct canid. Although based only on morphological similarities, it previously had been placed in Canis and Vulpes genera. Its closest living relative is the bush dog (genus Speothos) and it has a more distant relationship to other South American canines (the short-eared dog, the crab-eating fox, and the 'false foxes' or Pseudalopex)." --Wikipedia
More HERE about this graceful animal.
2 comments:
Thanks, I had never heard of this animal. It's an interesting example of what evolution can do with a species in isolation. One can immediately see that it's related to a dog or a fox, but is not one.
South America has a lot of unusual animals an plants due to its 90-million-year isolation from other land masses, until the isthmus of Panama formed.
He developed thos long legs because of the height of the grasses where he hunts. The taller the chrysocyon, the better able he could see over the grasslands and hunt.
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