Pandas Are Less Over

“THE GIANT PANDA IS NOW VULNERABLE WE CAN’T PICK ON PANDAS ANYMORE”

— franzanth

2008 IUCN assessment (”Endangered”)* 

• estimated the population at 1000-2000 individuals, definitely <2500

• protected habitat minimal, extremely fragmented populations

• <250 mature adults in each isolated population

• “Until recently there has been a general population decline, although there is hope that this has been reversed by general habitat improvements — nevertheless, this remains an uncertainty.”

2016 IUCN assessment (”Vulnerable”)

• estimated total population at 2060 individuals, ~1040 mature adults

• protected habitat much larger, populations less fragmented, but still several large, distinct, disconnected areas

• <1000 mature adults in each isolated population (now that many of the 2008 subpopulations have merged)

• “it is widely believed that the population has stabilized and has begun to increase in many parts of the range”

• “Although the population is currently increasing, climate change is predicted to eliminate >35% of the Panda’s bamboo habitat in the next 80 years, and thus the Panda population is projected to decline”

• “The Giant Panda will remain a conservation-dependent species for the foreseeable future.”

Summary: I’ll give up my panda-conservation-hate when you pry it from my COLD, DEAD HANDS.

Real talk: as I see it, this assessment will either a) result in a “WE DID IT, WE’RE DONE HERE” mentality that will ultimately lead to their extinction, or b) change nothing, and pandas will continue to be the face of a conservation standard that absorbs ludicrous amounts of money for painfully incremental progress like some kind of demonic portal to the charismatic megafaunal void realm

*2008 IUCN assessment can be downloaded from the 2016 assessment page

Milk Sweat Since 110MYA

“Q: could you explain a bit of the what-the-fuckery that is monotremes? how did they evolve, and how have they survived for so long? they separated from the rest of mammals so long ago, and everything else that separated there is extinct, but not monotremes. is there a reason for that, some kind of adaptation?”

— Anonymous

ALRIGHT MY FRIENDS hold on to your egg-laying horses because this will be a convoluted and likely uncomfortable ride.

Photo from Pinterest

Monotremes, represented these days by platypuses and echidnas, are super goddamn weird mammals. They’re an ungodly patchwork of highly specialized, definitively mammalian traits mixed with some equally primitive reptilian-esque ones, which result in a hot mess that gives me a headache.

For example, monotremes:

• Lay eggs, but produce milk from mammary glands to feed their young. Not in a normal way, but in a “leaking out of your pores” kind of way.

• Their X chromosomes resemble those of birds more than they do ours, and they have a cloaca. Why

• Have tribosphenic molars and inner ear bones incorporated into the skull, both incontrovertible traits of therian mammals. Finally, proof that they are-

• JUST KIDDING it turns out both of those things could have convergently evolved!! haha! HILARIOUS

• Their gait is closer to the sprawling synapsid gait than the erect therian one, I can only assume because they are going for a cool and retro look

• Though platypus venom is derived from proteins also found in the immune systems of therian mammals, guess who else uses those proteins in venom?

• REPTILES.

• AUGH

Photo from Understanding Evolution

To add insult to injury here, the fossil record for monotremes is fairly garbage, with the absolute earliest examples (Teinolophus and Steropodon - shown below) already being recognizably similar to extant monotremes. These two species are dated to the Early Cretaceous, but based on genetic and molecular data it is thought that monotremes diverged from all other mammals at the very least in the Early Jurassic, and potentially as early as the Late Triassic.

Photo from Australian Museum

Of course, it is almost impossible that we’ll ever stumble across the fossil remains of an actual direct ancestor to extant taxa, due to the rarity of fossilization in general. The fossil monotremes that we do have are from a period of highly successful radiation - not only have they been found in several locales across Australia and New Guinea, but a single ancestral platypus tooth was found in South America, proving that monotremes were once fairly widespread across the Gondwana supercontinent. 

So, we have no proof of how and when monotremes came to be, and a lot of their evolutionary history is just straight up missing. The ones that have made it this far likely did so because they managed to grab a hyper-specific niche that live-bearing mammals couldn’t steal from them. Until more fossils are found, the rest is just conjecture.

tl;dr: monotremes are the ultimate wannabe-Triassic mammalian hipsters and nobody knows why we still put up with them

---

SOURCES YO

The evidence lines up in early mammal evolution (2011)

Molecules, morphology, and ecology indicate a recent, amphibious ancestry for echidnas (2009)

Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution (2008)

The Platypus Is in Its Place: Nuclear Genes and Indels Confirm the Sister Group Relation of Monotremes and Therians (2005)

Independent Origins of Middle Ear Bones in Monotremes and Therians (2005)

Review of the monotreme fossil record and comparison of palaeontological and molecular data (2003)

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/monotremefr.html