Crabfish - Sandra Yagi

Have you heard of the Poisonous Fiddlerfrog, whose tadpoles grow up into crabs? Or the Hummingshrew, who eats flies as well as nectar?

These animals aren't real, so you'd only know about them if you've seen Voyage Through a Hidden World. This collaboration between artist Sandra Yagi and writer Julie Benbow is currently on display at The Bone Room Presents in Berkeley. Yagi's hybrid creatures are paired with Benbow's journal entries, written from the perspective of fictional 18th century explorer Lady Lavinia.

Rhinobeetle - Sandra Yagi

Many members of the beautiful bestiary are puns incarnate. Real rhino beetles are large and oddly shaped, but Yagi's Rhinobeetle has the head of a literal rhinoceros. Leafy seadragons in our world are marine fish; the ones on Yagi's canvas crawl on reptilian limbs.

Yagi has always been fascinated by science. "I'd go to Body Worlds and take my sketchbook," she says. "I collect anatomy books." The artist is also lucky to have a personal fact-checker: "My partner works in medicine, so she'll tell me if I get anything wrong."

But aren't all hybrids "getting it wrong" in a spectacular way? In "Zonkeys are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal" (July 31, 2007 Outside), Jon Cohen points out that hybrids "strain credulity–even when they're staring you in the face." They flout the organized structure we've set up to understand nature. And yet real hybrids are more common, and possibly more important to evolution, than most of us realize. Have you ever heard of blynxes? Pizzlies? Humanzees?

But real-world hybrids are always produced by crosses between similar species. Remember the classification scheme you probably had to memorize in high school biology, with humans as an example:

Hummingshrew - Sandra Yagi

Kingdom (Animalia)
Phylum (Chordata)
Class (Mammalia)
Order (Primate)
Family (Hominidae)
Genus (Homo)
Species (sapiens)

A bobcat (Lynx rufus) and a lynx (Lynx lynx) belong to the same genus, and they can make a baby blynx. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and grizzlies (Ursus arctos) are also congeners, and can join forces to create a pizzly.

Hummingbirds and shrews, by contrast, belong to entirely separate classes, and frogs and crabs to separate phyla. Anatomical and chemical differences between these pairs are too extreme to allow hybridization.

So fiddlerfrogs and hummingshrews remain confined to our imaginations. Disappointment, or relief? Your choice!

Brian Fisher collecting ants in the Madagascar canopy

Entomologist Brian Fisher is no stranger to QUEST fans. His work at the California Academy of Sciences collecting and cataloging ant species from all around the world has been featured in a QUEST Radio story, a QUEST TV show, an interactive map called “Ants of the Bay Area”, and a QUEST Educator Guide for science teachers. We’ve also had Brian participate on several outreach and publicity events with QUEST. Frankly, I think he’s probably getting a little tired of us.

But we’re not done with him yet! Like the ants that he so passionately studies, we here at QUEST are great recyclers. Back in June 2010, when I produced the TV story about Brian, he let us use some great video footage that he shot during his field work in Madagascar earlier in the year.

A few months ago, I had the idea to use more of that footage to pilot a new type of segment for QUEST TV called “Field Notes” in which we’ll cut together raw video footage shot by scientists in the field to document their work along with an audio interview with the scientist explaining what they're doing. As with much of QUEST this season, it’s a grand experiment. But I think this first Field Notes segment with Brian Fisher successfully proves the concept.

Brian Fisher collecting ants in Trinidad

The thing that first inspired the idea for Field Notes was reading Brian’s New York Times blog “Scientist at Work”. He’s blogging for the New York Times from Madagascar! How’s that for bringing science to life for the everyday science geek? One memorable post was when he dropped his backpack from a helicopter with all of his ant specimens, notes, money and car keys. Other posts include tales of flash floods, coup attempts and all kinds of crazy insects.

Some of the other scientific activities that Fisher's been involved with recently include his continuing study of the origin of ants of Madagascar by visiting islands in the Mozambique Channel. In April 2011, he took a ship from Reunion to visit the islands Europa, Bassas da India, Juan de Nova and Mayotte.

In addition, he started a green energy project in Madagascar which includes converting the Biodiversity Center that he built there to a green building and taking green energy experts to visit a village in the southwest of Madagascar to, in his words, "study how Bay Area know-how can help reduce deforestation, which is really just energy extraction – the cutting of trees for making charcoal."

Here are a couple of recent blogs about the project:

Matter Network
Green Tech Media

As science journalists, we’d be hard pressed to find a scientist who is a better ambassador for the excitement and adventure of the scientific process. I guess that’s why we here on QUEST keep “bugging” entomologist Brian Fisher.

Watch the QUEST TV story: Field Notes: Brian Fisher in Madagascar

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newly discovered Rhynchocyon udzungwensis
the grey-faced sengi

Sengis are commonly known as elephant-shrews. They were first associated with elephants because of their long flexible snouts that resemble that of an elephant's trunk. Moreover, recent molecular research has shown that sengis have more in common with elephants that the shrews they were originally associated with. Their closest relatives include elephants, sea cows, and the aardvark. Until now only 15 species of sengis were known to science. In 2005, the new sengi was first caught on film. Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Science had been setting up camera traps inside the remote Ndundulu Forest in Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains in order to survey the region's forest mammals. When the camera recorded the unfamiliar sengi, he sent the photos to Rathbun for identification. Rathbun was sought after for his expertise – he has studied the ecology, social structure, and evolution of sengis for more than 30 years. Rathbun believed the sengi to be a new species and embarked on a two week expedition with a team of colleagues in March 2006 to confirm his belief.

There were a few setbacks confirming the new sengi species. Rathbun had planned their trip for the dry season but the rains came early making the shrew harder to spot. The size of the sengi also posed a problem as the traps that were brought proved too small for the giant sengi. The grey-faced sengis weigh close to 1.5 pounds which is 25 percent larger than any other documented sengi. Therefore, more traditional twine snares had to be built to contain the giant sengi. Victory prevailed and the team was able to catch 4 animals and make 40 observations thus confirming the new species. "This is one of the most exciting discoveries of my career," Rathbun says. "It is the first new species of giant elephant-shrew to be discovered in more that 126 years. From the moment I first lifted one of the animals into our photography tent, I knew it must be a new species – not just because of its distinct coloring, but because it was so heavy!" More information about this expedition and other Academy expeditions can be found at http://www.calacademy.org/academy/expeditions/.

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.