Aardwolf under blacklight : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Aardwolf under blacklight / Dallas Krentzel
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Aardwolf hyena (Proteles cristata) under a blacklight. The red coloration is likely due to mineral deposits or organic grease under the surface. Under normal lighting, the skull is completely white.You'll notice the area where you'd expect to see molars looks rather sparse. This is normal, as aardwolves are myrmecophagous and feed almost exclusively on termites, thus lack a need for costly flesh-cutting molars found in other carnivores, or the bone-crushing molars of other hyena species. Instead the cheek teeth are highly reduced and remain as little peg-like structures (and also fall out of their sockets rather easily after death, as they lack multiple roots). The canines and incisors are still rather prominent, so they probably serve social and grooming roles (as in, fighting and picking off parasites), as other myrmecophages mammals usually lack canines and insicors and retain reduced and often strangely modified cheeck teeth if they retain any teeth at all (ex: aardvarks, xenarthran anteaters/tamanduas, echidnas, etc). Numbats are also myrmecophagous and also evolved from a radiation of carnivorous mammals, the dasyuromorph marsupials (thylacines, tasmanian devils, marsupial 'rats', quolls) and incidentally they also retain sharp canines, incisors, and some strange cheek teeth. Is there an evolutionary contingency here, where carnivores retain teeth for a particular reason when evolving myrmecophagous lifestyles, or have they simply not been myrmecophagous long enough to lose all their dentition?Compare the aardwolf with the spotted hyena skull: www.flickr.com/photos/31867959@N04/6645885153/in/photostream |
| 撮影日 | 2009-11-21 01:06:36 |
| 撮影者 | Dallas Krentzel |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSLR-A300 , SONY |
| 露出 | f/7.1 |
| 開放F値 | f/7.1 |
| 焦点距離 | 70 mm |