(Found with a complete skeleton, clean and gleaming white in a dark wet North Coast forest. Possums only live one to two years in the wild; even in captivity you're lucky to get 3 to 4 years out of one. Thus they give birth to ichthyoid numbers of young, which results in large populations of adults, which in turn leads to carcasses scattered across the landscape.
What got this one I can't say, but it wasn't a predator, since the skeleton was intact. The skull was a few feet away, however, so a [very restrained] scavenger happened by at some point.)
(The dogs found this up on the summit above the beaver ponds. It's impressive; larger than a man's fist, with industrial entheses, and those big yellow incisors are 3 inches long. So I guess this proves what was already evident: that the forest here is ideal cougar habitat.)
(This is a tree on the edge of my camp during ango. As I've mentioned twice before, humans like to hang skulls in conspicuous places. I'm no different.)
(Cow skull found in pasture and hung on barn wall. A visceral human response I've commented on before.)
I found this in the surf last week. It's a porpoise skull.
And yes, it's all there. They really look like that, under the grin. I can't think of any other animals, apart fellow cetaceans, whose eye sockets are actually below their teeth. It's like a life form designed by Picasso.
As if that weren't alien enough, there's also that bulbous cranium bulging up aft, like the superstructure on a bowpicker.
The reason for both is the same: this porpoise negotiated its environment not by sight or smell, but by sound. Hence any high-riding eyes would just have been show, and a waste of critical bone; this skull is built to amplify the echoes of tiny, high-pitched squeaks made by its owner, and secondarily those of podmates.
Thus, much of that beetling brow roll is a resonator, meant to detect vibrations and gauge their intensity and direction.
Dolphins and porpoises are also highly sophisticated animals whose behaviour is largely unfathomable to humans. They have consistently demonstrated extremely advanced cognition, extending possibly even to altruism, morality, sexuality, language, and existential autonomy.
So here it is, at long last: reason to hope that there may be intelligent life on this planet.
