h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I found the bit about incorporating the spiders web and spider into their nests really interesting, Willem. Oh on another topic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18562208


Some good rhino news there.

Hello Elektra, thanks, I'm happy that you found my article interesting! And thanks also for the article about the baby Sumatran rhino, that is wonderful news! I noted in my article how hard it has been to get them to reproduce in captivity. Now that this one is actually born I hope the rest of his life is happy and healthy ... and that there would be more!

There doesn't seem to be a good photo of the calf in the BBC article, unless I couldn't see it, I had some difficulty getting the page to display. But anyways here's another article with a lovely photo at the top:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/25/andatu-becomes-the-fourth-endagered-sumatran-rhinoceros-born-in-captivity/

Now isn't that a weird, fuzzy, ugly-cute little critter!

Definately, thanks for that. It kind of reminds me of a tapir. Are they related distantly?

Yes, Elektra, rhinos and tapirs share an ancestry (along with horses) going back 50 million years ago. They were all very similar at first - lightly built, small, running animals. Tapirs are the most conservative. They attained their characteristic modern shape and size around 40 million years ago and subsequently changed very little. They are the least diverse in the fossil record of the three groups. Horses diversified more, and quite recently included many more species, such as three-toed horses and browsing forest-living species. Rhinos diversified most of all. Early rhinos included some very tapir-like species, that, going by the form of the nasal bones, probably also had those short trunks. But they became bigger than any tapir - the Paraceratherium (also with probably a trunk or lengthened, highly mobile upper lip) got to 5 m at the shoulder (over 16 ft) and a bodyweight of perhaps 20 tons!

Wow, you are improving my morphology! Thanks for sharing your smarts with us. I wish I could help support you but things are rough here too. If I could afford it I'd love to buy your paintings.

Elektra, you and Dmitri, and the other friends I have over here, are already helping me enormously, just by looking at the pictures I share freely here, and reading my articles. The fact that others enjoy what I do is what motivates me to keep working!