We’re long due for fuzzy animals. But it’s me so. You should probably still be sitting down.
Today’s Moment of Science… Hey, did you know? (Mostly) adorable baby animals edition.
Horsefeathers! Foals typically slide out of the uterus with feet that don’t look quite like we expect. Rather, the bottom of the hooves are covered by something referred to as ‘fairy fingers,’ soft tissue that creates a patch of twisted fleshy protrusions (my band name). This functions to protect the mother from the four pack of hooves she’s incubating, and they begin to fall off when the newborn starts walking around.
Baby elephants are three feet tall and weigh about 260lbs. Tell that to your Mother next time she gives you shit for how difficult labor was.
Sea turtles have a rough start to life. First, their Mom digs a hole in which to abandon them as eggs. After two months, a few hundred siblings do the belly crawl from their nest to the ocean before a predator notices these slow moving cronchy snacks. About 8% don’t survive the trek to the water, and it’s estimated that only 1 in 1000 survives to adulthood.
Baby harp seals are devastatingly, impossibly cute, but also a tad useless. At birth their coats are stained yellow from amniotic fluid. In a day or two they morph into the fluffy white Arctic sea puppy. About twelve days and sixty pounds of weight gain later, they start to develop grey spots. A waterproof coat and more self-sufficiency follows in a week or two, but they’ll always have those two weeks of being indescribably fuck you adorable.
I just want that kind of freedom and/or ability to gain sixty pounds in twelve days, lucky spotted bastards.
Pangolins may be the oddest of the dog and cat cousins with a full coat of built-in armor. They give birth live, like other placental mammals. Baby pangolins are born with the beginnings of that armor too. Which raises the question, ouch-nope-yikes? Fortunately, they’re pink and soft at birth, and their plate armor is visible but it doesn’t harden until a few days after birth.
The surinam toad, a hopping trypophobia trigger, incubates eggs in honeycomb chambers on its back. They stay incubating past the tadpole stage, emerging as toadlets, leaving their mother with so, so many new holes in her backside. I’m sorry or you’re welcome.
And I was going to go on a spell about baby axolotls, but given their extended adolescence, that seems like it deserves a full article. Which the adorable little buggers are getting tomorrow.
This has been your Moment of Science, already regretting that so many of y’all are gonna google ‘fairy fingers.’
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