On animals, painting, and nature...: The Cave Goat

A few months ago, I got really interested in dinosaurs (see previous blog posts).

Specifically of interest to me, were all of the things we don't know about them, which, as it turns out, is a lot. The facts of dinosaurs are so vague and debatable especially when compared to how casually willing we are to reproduce the long-necked, scaley, dumb beasts on tv and movies time after time.

For Paleontologists, having a stagnant (regardless how false) dinosaur mascot could be a good marketing move. But, is it that hard for us to accept unknowns? Can't our brains resist categorizing and defining for the sake of accuracy?

Thinking about this lead me to look for species that obstruct our assumptions of how we like to envision animals to be. That's how I stumbled across the Myotragus, or Cave Goat, a mammal, who is, or was, cold blooded. Here's what the internet told me:

The Myotragus lived about 5,000 years ago on the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean. The goat crossed over on a land bridge that later eroded leaving him on a hostile island with little food and no predators. So, it evolved. First, it shrunk, which is a fairly normal for island mammal evolution. Then it grew a huge jaw, two rat-like bottom teeth, forward facing eyes, and a fairly long life-span--some say around 30 years. And finally, somewhere along the way, it also became cold blooded, meaning its' body heat, energy, and growth was totally dependent on the outside temperature. Why? No clue. What effect did it have? Well, it was slow, couldn't jump, couldn't really run, and we don't know how it managed to give birth given its lack of energy.

This. is. bizarre.

Cold blooded and warm blooded are things I've always thought is cut and dry--mammals versus reptiles, egg laying versus live birth, scaly less-human things versus fluffy and more-human things. As it turns out, like with everything else, there is a knotted gray area the dichotomy.

When an assumption is exposed as something porous and malleable, it begs for reflection. If the Cave Goat was a cold-blooded mammal, living only 5,000 years ago, chances are it wasn't the only one. Chances are words like mammal, reptile, cold-blooded, warm-blooded, feathers, fur, and even animal and plant, are not and have never been so excruciatingly separate.

Knowingly or not, we've outlined fairly strict standards for animal biology based on a tiny slice of witnessed history and tireless research. Thank goodness for the Myotragus. Findings like these remind us of the complexities of life, the lightness of evolutionary order, and have us reeling in humility toward the impenetrable secrets of time and biology.

Side note--the woman who discovered the Cave Goat was amazing...Dorothea Bate, check her out. Seriously.