Mendalla
Happy headbanging ape!!
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Do you have a favorite wild animal? That is, not a domestic pet or food source, but an animal living free in the wild.
One of my favorite groups of wild animals are cetaceans; whales, porpoises, dolphins, orcas, etc. They represent a fascinating, and very well-documented, evolutionary branch of the mammals. Their earliest ancestors lived on land, becoming first amphibious, then aquatic. Some of them may be the most intelligent non-hominin mammals. Science YouTuber Ben G Thomas has a nice two part overview of cetacean evolution. Part one covers the prehistoric mammals that led to modern cetaceans while part two covers the various families of modern cetaceans. Sadly, we have lost one entire branch of the group just this century, with the presumed extinction of the baiji, a small dolphin relative that lived in the Yangtze River in China and was the only species extant in its family.
One of my favorite groups of wild animals are cetaceans; whales, porpoises, dolphins, orcas, etc. They represent a fascinating, and very well-documented, evolutionary branch of the mammals. Their earliest ancestors lived on land, becoming first amphibious, then aquatic. Some of them may be the most intelligent non-hominin mammals. Science YouTuber Ben G Thomas has a nice two part overview of cetacean evolution. Part one covers the prehistoric mammals that led to modern cetaceans while part two covers the various families of modern cetaceans. Sadly, we have lost one entire branch of the group just this century, with the presumed extinction of the baiji, a small dolphin relative that lived in the Yangtze River in China and was the only species extant in its family.
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