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See A Naturalist's Way with Words, a new feature that begins today. A Naturalist's Way with Words spotlights both familiar and not-so-familiar terms commonly encoutnered in nature writing, field guides, and day-to-day conversation about wildlife.
Look for it at the bottom of this page.
A Naturalist's Daily Reader Plum Pits Thirteen-lined Ground-Squirrel Creeper Color
Thursday, 18 September 2008
A dozen hollow pits form a debris pile beneath this jutting rock. Their flattened shape makes them plum pits, distinct from the more rounded pits of cherries. And in this foothills ravine they could only be American Plums.
Each pit has been gnawed open just enough for the seed to be licked out and eaten.
Ripe just in the last few weeks, the drupaceous fruits attracted mammals and birds that swallowed them whole then passed the pits.
A Northern Rock-Mouse now scavenges the pits from the droppings and brings them to eat beneath this rocky protrusion, its private dining nook.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
They mark a different dawn and dusk, the Thirteen-lined Ground-Squirrels.
Rousing in early spring, they set to work living. They procreate; they dig; they eat; they get eaten.
Colored like dry steppe soil and patterned like the interplay of grass stalks and their shadows, the little Ground-Squirrels spend their days secretively.
But their days are few. The dawn of their spring awakening to the dusk of their late-summer hibernation spans scarcely more than a hundred days.
Only young Thirteen-liners with growing yet to do will still be awake to greet autumn when it arrives in a few days.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
A scarlet slash streaking down the Narrow-leaved Cottonwood’s trunk makes the great tree appear as if it might be weeping blood, but no wound colors this tree.
Here in the ravine where less sunlight now penetrates during the day and where the nights grow steadily cooler, the plants are adapting to the changing character of night and day.
The scarlet does not trickle down but courses its way upwards. Thicket Creeper, woody cousin of the grapes, climbs this tree; and now, its summer supply of chlorophyll spent, it boasts a brilliant red a Cardinal would envy.
Only summer bleeds away.
A Naturalist's Way with Words
ungulate – noun – a general descriptive name for any mammal that grows a hoof as an enlarged nail that supports the animal’s weight and functions as the primary ground contact for traction in the animal's normal locomotion.
Explanation: A mammalian "nail" is a two-layered outgrowth of the skin. The somewhat hardened and nongrowing outer layer is called the "unguis"; the softer and still-growing under layer is called the "subunguis." The "ungule" is the nonliving hardened portion of the nail that is pushed forward by growth from the base of the subunguis. The subunquis is your fingernail’s "quick" that hurts and bleeds when pierced with a splinter; the ungule is what you clip off when you trim your nails and is what forms the claws in most mammals.
Some mammals grow enlarged ungules that surround or encase the tips of the digits from which they originate. Such an ungule is called a "hoof" when it is large enough to be the sole or primary contact with the ground and therefore provide essential weight-bearing support of the animal. An important detail is to understand one toe, one ungule, one hoof ergo a split hoof means more than one toe. Note that an enlarged nail on a large mammal is not sufficient by itself to qualify as a hoof.
Application: mammalogy; wildlife biology; conservation biology.
(1) Ungulates are the principal prey of large carnivores.
(2) Ungulates are the primary focus of big game management.
(3) Changing land use patterns affect the long-term survival of ungulates.
Derivation: A New Latin construction of the mid 1700s, "Ungulata" was contrived as the classification name for the order to which all the hoof-bearing mammals were assigned. It is derived from unguis meaning "nail" and the suffix -atus meaning to bear or to have. This name endured for nearly 100 years until British anatomist Richard Owen segregated the even-toed hoofed mammals into the order Artiodactyla in 1841 and the odd-toed hoofed mammals into the order Perissodactyla in 1848. This segregation has largely endured for the last 160 years; but ongoing reclassifications of mammals have recently resurrected Ungulata in idiosyncratic variations such as "Ferungulata" and "Panameriungulata" as researchers attempt to reconcile paleontological evidence with molecular evidence.
The term "ungulate" became a generalized adaptive form to indicate any member of the mammalian order Ungulata. Though the classification name "Ungulata" has disappeared from all but the fuzziest arcane applications, "ungulate" endures as a descriptive but nontaxonomic term for any truly hoof-bearing mammal.
