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The Anatomical Record Continues to Explore the Menagerie of Extreme Forms in Volume 2 of our Special Issue on the Most Extraordinary of Nature's Species

2019; Wiley; Volume: 303; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/ar.24319

1932-8494

Jeffrey T. Laitman, Kurt H. Albertine,

Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

We write this as the first chill of fall is descending upon the slopes of Utah's magnificent Wasatch Mountains and in the valleys of Manhattan's equally stunning cavernous avenues. While one of us (K.A.) has been burning the midnight oil setting issues of our journal to press (after taking his last moose photos of the season), the more energetic of our duo (J.L.) has been fostering international relations by eating at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris and lecturing in chateaux in Amboise (hey, someone has to do it!). When not sipping cafe au lait along the Seine, J.L. often returns to a favorite refuge from his student-days in Paris, la Menagerie du Jardin des plantes (one of us [K.A.] is compelled to reveal a well-kept secret about his compatriot [J.L.]: the latter's favorite meal at the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution Café, on the first floor of the la Menagerie, is kale salad with avocado toast; a long story, wait for the biography by K.A.!). If you have never been, la Jardin des plantes is an exceptionally beautiful oasis within the City of Lights. The highlight of this gem is the menagerie, the zoo, considered the second oldest continuously operated zoological park in the world after Vienna's famed Tiergarten Schonbrunn. While the botanical garden was founded in 1626, and officially opened to the public in 1635, the menagerie came into existence as a child of the French Revolution in 1793, the year the Museum national d'histoire naturelle (the iconic natural history museum of Paris) was itself founded. Indeed, symbolic of l'Revolution, the first animals in the zoo were brought from the menagerie at Versailles, allowing the citizens of the new republic the opportunity to see what previously could only be enjoyed by the gilded aristocracy of Louis XVI and his wig-wearing courtiers. The people could now see the majesty of nature! (Full disclosure: JL's dad was a “fils du l'Revolution” raised in the working-class neighborhood around the rue des Rosiers on Paris' right bank, not far from the Bastille prison; not a place that was favorable to aristocrats, let along Bourbon kings!) One can only imagine the potency, awe, and fascination that the average Parisian would have had in viewing les exotiques on display in the menagerie. Remember, this was the world before television and movies, let alone the immediacy of Facebook and twitter; a world in which only a few could read, and fewer still had the means to travel. Life was short, usually brutal, and devoid of the exuberance of wonder and fascination. Beyond tales from the bible, or those from fairy tales, the citizenry of Paris would have had little cognizance of the majesty of the animal world. A horse here, a dog or cat there, an occasional barnyard pig or fowl running down a cluttered street were the extent of the animal world for most. All of a sudden, a cataclysmic eruption of government brought down both the privileged world of French aristocracy and delivered nature to the people. Allons! Enfants de la Patrie! Le jour de gloire est arrive!…. And what sights the citizenry of Paris would have been able to behold at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries! Elephants, lions, tigers, and giraffes would have grazed the enclosures of the menagerie. One can imagine the gasps of astonishment and squeals of wide-eyed ragamuffins when their impoverished eyes would light upon creatures that were literally beyond their imagination. How can one explain an elephant to a child that has only seen a dog; a lion to one who only knows a mangy cat? Wonder was introduced to the people! This second volume of our Special Issue on “Extreme Anatomy” is, in essence, about wonder. As scientists in the age of information overload, we have become jaded to appreciating nature's diversity, and these Special issues are a powerful reminder that nature's ability to instill amazement is boundless. This volume, as the first, is Guest Edited by noted comparative anatomist Timothy Smith of Slippery Rock University, with the globetrotting J.L. of Mount Sinai as his partner in presenting these tales of awe. While Volume 1 (Laitman and Albertine, 2020; Smith and Laitman, 2020a, 2020b) focused upon exploring the seminal questions of “What is extreme?” and “Who can fit into this classification?,” this volume extends the exploration of extreme species by focusing upon why certain species have made it while others have gone by the wayside. The two volumes of this Special Issue were based on an Anatomical Record-sponsored symposium entitled “Extreme Anatomy: Living Beyond the Edge” that was held in 2017 in San Diego at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Anatomists (now American Association for Anatomy). As with the volumes of this Special Issue, the Symposium was organized and led by Smith and Laitman. As noted, this volume explores in detail some of the strangest-looking (to us, not their mothers) animals and/or those that inhabit the most extreme and harshest of environments, and raises the questions of why some have flourished (or snuck by?) and their relatives not. While this Special Issue on “Extreme Anatomy” is our first to focus on the question of what it means to be extreme, The Anatomical Record has long had a not-so-secret fascination with those on the fringe (hence employing both K.A. and J.L.!). Indeed, if one peers into our vaults you will find research, even Special Issues, that have relished exposing and advancing studies into species living on the edge. Without going too far back in time, we can, for example, find the work of face-expert Anne Burrows of Duquesne University, with the above Tim Smith, exploring the subtleties of facial muscles in those odd little prosimians (the group of Primates that also includes lemurs) known as galagos or bushbabies (Burrows and Smith, 2003; Smith also provided the outstanding artwork for the issue's cover, Smith, 2003). These little, mostly nocturnal, species are our close relatives being primates (see Laitman, 2004; Laitman and Albertine, 2010) yet certainly do not get the press or love thrown at apes, monkeys, or even lemurs (lemurs got their own movies in The Madagascar series; nothing for bushbabies!). Burrows and Smith, however, have always liked the underdog (btw, see her group's recent research on dog facial muscles, Kaminski et al., 2019) and so have explored, and uncovered, evolutionary trajectories, by looking at those relatives not always invited to holiday dinner. Studies on extreme species, both living and extinct, have crept (or swam) into a number of our Special and Thematic Paper Issues. For example, our Special Issue on the “Anatomical Adaptations of Aquatic Mammals,” Guest Edited by one of our favorite whale aficionado, Joy Reidenberg of Mount Sinai, has taken us on explorations of odd dugongs, pygmy hippos, and rare beaked whales, among others (Laitman, 2007; Laitman and Albertine, 2007; Reidenberg, 2007). Still splashing around our vault, we can find some remarkably “extreme” anatomy brought forward in our Thematic Papers Issue on the majestic California Gray whale, Guest Edited by Erik Ekdale of San Diego State University (Berta et al., 2015; Laitman, 2015; Laitman and Albertine, 2015). Most recently in our aquarium of watery friends, we can find oddities and peculiarities in abundance in our recent Thematic Papers Issue, also Guest Edited by Joy Reidenberg, exploring the great whales and their relatives (Laitman and Albertine, 2019; Reidenberg, 2019). In this issue, K.A. and J.L. even teamed up with nose experts to explore the extraordinary anatomy of the moose (Marquez et al., 2019), as extreme an animal in some ways as its gets (K.A.'s wildlife photography is proudly displayed in this paper as he is not allowed to hang them at his home; another long story, wait for the autobiography!). Drying off from the water, we find extreme anatomy peering at us even from our special issues of past life. Notable in this vein are a number of papers in the majestic special issue, “Uncovering the Anatomy of Dinosaurs,” Guest Edited by world-renowned paleontologist/anatomist Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania (Dodson, 2009; Laitman, 2009; Laitman and Albertine, 2009). Almost by definition, dinosaurs can be defined as extreme, and that special issue presented new findings on the extreme, often autapomorphic, biology of many species. These ranged from Dodson's beloved ceroptopsians (those are the dudes with horns; Peter Dodson is their king, hence the issue's iconic cover that had a triceratops sauntering away after it had made short work of a tyrannosaur; the T-rex lobby was not happy!), to new insights on dinosaur jaws, aspects of the always fascinating (and mega-extreme) hadrosaurs with their bizarre cranial crests, to claw structure of dromeosaurids (read: velociraptors and their scary ilk). Simply put, the anatomy of dinosaurs is as extreme, and often as mysterious, as the wondrous creatures themselves. We could go on about the fascination The Anatomical Record has had with bringing attention to the remarkable anatomy of groups on the edge, but believe the above will provide evidence of our determination to shine light on species often ignored, or at least peripheralized. One of the reasons we have so enjoyed reporting on those species is that—as the Menagerie du jardin des plantes did for the newly liberated people of France—we wish to make sure that wonder is always part of our world. Indeed, science is more than a compilation of facts, an accretion of data points, it is also a commitment to appreciate that that there is awe and wonder in nature's world. And to make sure that such fascination and joy in its discovery is communicated loudly and often. By focusing on uncovering the extreme species of nature, we at The Anatomical Record remind both ourselves and our colleagues that wonder is still alive and well, and always worth pursuing.