SEA LIONS: THE OCEAN’S LOUDEST LANDLORDS

Sea Lion Skull

Sea lions are sleek, intelligent marine predators capable of diving through cold ocean water with astonishing speed and grace. 

They are also large, noisy mammals that gather on beaches, docks and navigation buoys to bark at one another as though someone has violated a complicated parking agreement.

They belong to the family Otariidae, the group known as the eared seals. This family includes both sea lions and fur seals, which means that a fur seal is a sea lion’s closest living relative. 

Their next-nearest pinniped cousins are walruses and the “true,” or earless, seals. All belong to the carnivoran group Pinnipedia, a name meaning “fin-footed.” 

They are not closely related to actual lions, despite the whiskers, impressive males and tendency to occupy prime waterfront property while roaring at the neighbours.

You can usually distinguish a sea lion from a true seal by looking for three things: visible external ear flaps, long front flippers and an ability to rotate the hind flippers beneath the body. 

That rotating hip-and-flipper arrangement allows a sea lion to rise up and walk remarkably well on land. 

True seals cannot bring their hind flippers beneath them and must wriggle or bounce along on their bellies. Both approaches are effective, but only one looks as though the animal has temporarily misplaced its legs.

SEA LIONS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

The deeper history of sea lions begins with the evolution of pinnipeds, whose oldest definitive fossils date from roughly 30.6 to 23 million years ago, during the Oligocene. These early fin-footed carnivores were not modern sea lions, seals or walruses but members of an evolutionary experiment that was gradually transforming land-dwelling hunters into marine specialists.

One famous transitional pinniped is Puijila darwini, an otter-like animal that lived in the Canadian Arctic about 24 million years ago. Puijila had a long tail, muscular limbs and webbed feet rather than full flippers. 

It swam through freshwater lakes using its legs, offering us a glimpse of what an early stage in the move from land to sea may have looked like. Picture a large aquatic mustelid testing the water and unknowingly beginning an evolutionary journey that would eventually produce a thousand-kilogram animal shouting from a rock.

The oldest known members of the sea lion and fur seal family are species of Eotaria, discovered in marine rocks of southern California. Eotaria crypta, known from part of a lower jaw with preserved teeth, lived approximately 17.1 to 15 million years ago during the middle Miocene. 

These early otariids were much smaller than today’s great bull sea lions and retained some primitive features in their teeth. Their fossils help bridge the anatomical gap between earlier pinnipeds and the more specialized eared seals that followed.

By the late Miocene, otariids such as Pithanotaria and Thalassoleon were swimming in the North Pacific. Fossils of these animals have been recovered from California, Mexico and Japan. Pithanotaria was relatively small, while species of Thalassoleon were larger and more robust. 

Together, they document an early radiation of eared seals along the productive coastlines of the North Pacific.

The fossil record suggests that this region was the evolutionary cradle of the family. Sea lions and fur seals remained northern animals for much of their early history before some lineages crossed the equator. Fossil and evolutionary evidence indicates that otariids expanded into the Southern Hemisphere roughly six to seven million years ago, perhaps helped by periods of cooler water and increased marine productivity along the eastern Pacific. 

Once across, they diversified around South America and eventually reached the coasts and islands of Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Ocean.

Recognizable members of the living sea lion genera appear much later, mainly during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. An early fossil identified as the modern Steller sea lion, Eumetopias jubatus, comes from Early Pleistocene deposits in Japan. 

The fossil record of modern sea lions is frustratingly incomplete, however. Marine mammals often die offshore, where their skeletons may be scattered, scavenged, dissolved or buried somewhere inconvenient beneath several million years of ocean sediment. Palaeontology does not always deliver a complete skeleton with a name tag attached.

WHO ARE THEIR CLOSEST RELATIVES?

Sea lions’ nearest living relatives are the fur seals, with which they share the family Otariidae. The familiar division between “sea lion” and “fur seal” is useful but does not form two perfectly separate evolutionary branches. Genetic research shows that some animals called fur seals are more closely related to particular sea lions than they are to other fur seals. Evolution, as usual, has looked at our tidy filing system and scattered the folders across the floor.

Fur seals generally have dense underfur, more pointed faces and somewhat smaller bodies. Sea lions tend to be larger, with shorter, coarser coats and broad snouts. Both have visible ears and can rotate their hind limbs forward.

Beyond the otariid family, sea lions are related to walruses and true seals. Their more distant living relatives on land lie among the musteloid carnivorans, the broader assemblage that includes weasels, otters, badgers, skunks, raccoons and red pandas. So, if you have ever thought that a sea lion resembles an otter that joined a gym, developed a booming voice and acquired beachfront real estate, you are not entirely without evolutionary support.

WHERE SEA LIONS LIVE TODAY

• Living sea lions occur almost entirely around the Pacific Ocean and in the Southern Hemisphere. The six living species are:
• Steller sea lion — Eumetopias jubatus: Found around the North Pacific, from Japan and Russia through Alaska and south along the western coast of North America.
• California sea lion — Zalophus californianus: Inhabits the Pacific coast of North America, particularly California and Mexico, with animals sometimes travelling much farther north.
• Galápagos sea lion — Zalophus wollebaeki: Lives primarily around the Galápagos Islands.
• South American sea lion — Otaria byronia: Occurs along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, from Peru and Brazil southward around Tierra del Fuego.
• Australian sea lion — Neophoca cinerea: Restricted to the southern and western coasts of Australia.
• New Zealand sea lion — Phocarctos hookeri: Found around New Zealand and its subantarctic islands.

A seventh modern species, the Japanese sea lion, Zalophus japonicus, once lived around Japan and neighbouring waters but disappeared during the twentieth century after intense hunting and other human pressures.

Curiously, there are no native sea lions in the North Atlantic. If you encounter a large pinniped lounging on the Canadian Atlantic coast, you are probably looking at a true seal rather than a sea lion. 

On the Pacific coast of British Columbia that I call home, however, Steller and California sea lions are familiar residents and visitors. Steller sea lions are the giants of the family: adult males can exceed 1,000 kilograms, making them roughly the mass of a small car, although considerably more opinionated.

BUILT FOR WATER—AND QUITE CAPABLE ON LAND

Sea lions swim mainly by sweeping their long front flippers through the water like wings. Their flexible bodies and powerful shoulders allow them to pursue fish, squid and other marine prey with impressive agility. They can dive for several minutes, slow their heart rate and direct oxygen toward vital organs while underwater.

Their whiskers, properly called vibrissae, are extraordinarily sensitive. They can detect tiny movements and pressure changes left behind by swimming prey, allowing a sea lion to follow a fish’s underwater trail even when visibility is poor. To us, a fish has vanished. To a sea lion, it has left the aquatic equivalent of a glowing arrow marked LUNCH WENT THIS WAY.

Sea lions are also highly intelligent. They can learn complex behaviours, recognize patterns and retain information for long periods. Studies have shown that they can understand relationships between symbols and apply learned rules to new situations. 

Their trainability explains their long history in aquariums and marine research programs, although it is worth remembering that “trainable” does not mean “domesticated.” A wild sea lion is still a powerful predator with large teeth and firm opinions about personal space.

They are intensely social, gathering at breeding colonies called rookeries and resting sites called haul-outs. Adult males may establish territories and compete loudly for access to females. 

The resulting colony is a dense mixture of barks, growls, grunts, pups calling for their mothers and enormous males arguing over several metres of beach. Imagine a family reunion, a crowded campground and a municipal council meeting occurring simultaneously, but everyone is wearing the same brown coat.

Sea lions are elegant swimmers, successful marine hunters and living representatives of an evolutionary lineage stretching back into the Miocene. Their fossils preserve the story of carnivorous mammals moving into the sea, transforming limbs into flippers and spreading from the North Pacific into southern oceans.

They are, in short, magnificent products of evolution: fast in the water, surprisingly mobile on land, equipped with sensitive whiskers—and absolutely convinced that the entire coastline needs to hear what they have to say.

Lead Image: Asset ID 2353933491

HEROES, VILLAINS AND FOSSILS: HORNBY ISLAND HISTORY

Villains, tyrants and heroes alike are immortalized in the scientific literature as researchers don each new species a unique scientific name — and rename geographic sites with a settlers' mindset. 

If you pick through the literature, it is a whose who of monied European explorers literally making a name for themselves, sometimes at great cost to their rivals. 

This truth plays out on British Columbia's West Coast and gulf islands and on Hornby Island, in particular. 

The beautiful island of Hornby is in the traditional territory of the Pentlatch or K’ómoks First Nation, who call it Ja-dai-aich, which means the outer island — a reference to Hornby being on the outside of Denman Island off the east coast of Vancouver Island. 

The island is a mix of beach and meadow, forest and stream. While I often walk the lower beachfront, this island boasts a lovely and very walkable mixed forest that covers its higher ground. 

If you explore here, off the beaten path, you will see a mix of large conifers — Western Hemlock, Grand Fir and Lodgepole Pine on the island. Of these, the Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata, is the most prized by First Nations. It is the Tree of Life that provides bountiful raw materials for creating everything from art to homes to totems and canoes. 

If you explore these forests further, you will also see wonderful examples of the smaller Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia, a wee evergreen that holds a special place in the hearts of First Nations whose carvers use this wood for bows and paddles for canoes.

Many spectacular specimens of arbutus, Arbutus menziesii, grow along the water's edge. These lovely evergreens have a rich orange-red bark that peels away in thin sheets, leaving a greenish, silvery smooth appearance and a satiny sheen. Arbutus, the broadleaf evergreen species is the tree I most strongly associate with Hornby. Hornby has its fair share of broadleaf deciduous trees. Bigleaf maple, red alder, black cottonwood, Pacific flowering dogwood, cascara and several species of willow thrive here.

There are populations of Garry oak, Quercus garryana, with their deeply lobed leaves, on the southern end of the island and at Helliwell Provincial Park on a rocky headland at the northeast end of Hornby. 

Local First Nations fire-managed these stands of Garry oak, burning away shrubs and other woody plants so that the thick-barked oaks and nutritious starch-rich plants like great camas, Camassia leichtlinii, could thrive without any nutrient competitors. 

Only about 260 acres (1.1 km2) of undisturbed stands of older forests have been identified on Hornby. They amount to roughly 3.5% of the island's surface area. There are roughly 1,330 acres (540 ha) of older second-growth stands on the island, roughly 19% of the island.

Most of the trees you see on the island are Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, an evergreen conifer species in the pine family. My Uncle Doug recognized this tree species because of how much the bark looks like bacon — a food he loved. The common name is a nod to the Scottish botanist, David Douglas, who collected and first reported on this large evergreen.

Captain George Vancouver's Commission to Lieutenant

Sadly for Douglas, it is Archibald Menzies, a Scottish physician, botanist, naturalist — and David's arch-rival, whose name is commemorated for science. 

He is also credited with the scientific naming of our lovely arbutus trees. 

Menzies was part of the Vancouver Expedition (1791–1795) a four-and-a-half-year voyage of exploration commanded by Captain George Vancouver of the British Royal Navy.

Their voyage was built on the work of James Cook. Cook was arguably the first ship's captain to ensure his crew remained scurvy free by implementing a practice of nutritious meals — those containing ascorbic acid also known as Vitamin C — and meticulous standards for onboard hygiene. 

Though he did much to lower the mortality rate amongst his crew, he made some terrible decisions that led to his early demise. Cook was the poster child for British colonialism and Valentine's gone horribly wrong. He was attacked and summarily killed on February 14, 1779, during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific. Having foolishly considered the "natives" as specimens and not human beings, he met his end while attempting to kidnap the Island of Hawaii's monarch, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. 

During the four and a half year Vancouver Expedition voyage, the crew and officers bickered amongst themselves, circumnavigated the globe, touching down on five continents. Little did they know, for many of them it would be the last voyage they would ever take. 

The expedition returned to a Britain more interested in its ongoing war than in Pacific explorations. Vancouver was attacked by the politically well-connected Menzies for various slights, then challenged to a duel by Thomas Pitt, the 2nd Baron of Camelford. 

The fellow for whom the fair city of Vancouver is named never did complete his massive cartographical work. With health failing and nerves eroded, he lost the dual and his life. It was Peter Puget, whose name adorns Puget Sound, who completed Vancouver's — and arguably Cook's work on the mapping of our world.

And while it is now called Vancouver the city has many names as it falls within the traditional territory of three Coast Salish peoples — the Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh), Tsleil-waututh and Xwméthkwyiem ("Musqueam"—from masqui "an edible grass that grows in the sea"), and on the southern shores of Vancouver along the Fraser River, the Xwméthkwyiem.

If you would like to explore more of the history of eponymous naming from Linnaeus to Darwin, to Bowie himself, take a boo at a new book from Stephen B. Heard, "Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider. It is fresh off the press and chock full of historical and pop-culture icons.

References: The City of Vancouver Archives has three George Vancouver documents of note:

• The Commission, dated July 10, 1783, appointing him fourth Lieutenant of the HMS Fame (this is the official document confirming a field commission given to him May 7, 1782)
• A letter to James Sykes (a Navy Agent in London) written from the ship Discovery (not the same Discovery used by Cook) while in Nootka Sound near the end of Vancouver’s exploration of the West Coast, October 2, 1794. Vancouver states that they have determined that the Northwest Passage does not exist, which was one of the main goals of his voyage
• A letter to James Sykes written from Vancouver’s home in Petersham, England, after his voyage, October 26, 1797 

TINY DINOSAUR WITH BIG SECRETS: ALNASHETRI

Alnashetri cerropoliciensis

Slip back 90 million years and wander the sun-baked floodplains of Patagonia, where the giants get all the glory—but it’s the tiny, fleet-footed oddballs that hold the real secrets.

Meet Alnashetri cerropoliciensis, a delicate little dinosaur with a big story to tell. We’re talking under two pounds soaking wet—lighter than your average house cat—but armed with clues powerful enough to untangle one of palaeontology’s most puzzling lineages: the alvarezsaurs.

These were no ordinary theropods. Picture a bird-like body, teeth reduced to tiny pegs, and arms so short they seem almost comical—until you notice the business end: a single, oversized claw built for digging. Think ant-eater, but make it a dinosaur.

For decades, alvarezsaurs have been a bit of a head-scratcher. Beautiful fossils from Asia told part of the tale, but their South American cousins? Fragmentary, elusive, maddeningly incomplete. Then along comes Alnashetri—a near-complete skeleton pulled from the fossil-rich beds of La Buitrera—and suddenly the story sharpens into focus.

And what a twist it is.

This wee creature shows us that alvarezsaurs didn’t shrink because they specialized—they were already pint-sized before evolving their quirky, ant-snuffling toolkit. Longer arms, bigger teeth—Alnashetri still carries the echoes of its less specialized ancestors. It’s evolution mid-sentence, frozen in bone.

Even better, it’s fully grown. No baby here. Just a tiny adult navigating a world of much larger predators with speed, stealth, and a very particular taste in snacks.

The real magic? This fossil acts like a Rosetta Stone for the group, giving scientists a reference point to decode those scrappy, half-told specimens tucked away in collections around the world. Suddenly, the family tree starts to make sense.

And the plot thickens.

Rather than evolving in one place and spreading outward, these curious little dinosaurs likely trace their roots back to Pangaea—before the continents tore themselves apart. As the landmasses drifted, so too did their descendants, leaving behind a scattered but connected fossil trail across the globe.

So here we have it: a tiny dinosaur rewriting a very big story. A cheeky wee dino challenging what we thought we knew!

Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10194-3

THE WOOLLY RHINOCEROS: BUILT LIKE A TANK DRESSED FOR WINTER

Woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis

The Woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis, was one of the great lumbering herbivores of Pleistocene Eurasia. 

Its range stretched across northern Asia and Europe, where it occupied the cold, dry grasslands often called the mammoth steppe.

This was not a modern rhinoceros that had simply found a large coat and decided to brave the snow. It was superbly adapted to cold environments. 

Woolly rhinoceroses possessed thick skin, a dense coat of hair, small ears and a compact body that helped conserve heat. 

A substantial fatty hump over the shoulders provided additional energy reserves and supported the powerful muscles needed to carry its enormous head and horns.

The result was an animal roughly comparable in size to a living white rhinoceros, but with the appearance of someone who had dressed for winter and then lost patience with absolutely everyone.

Its skull supported two horns. The front horn was especially long and flattened from side to side. 

Some researchers have suggested that woolly rhinoceroses may have used this horn to sweep snow away from low-growing vegetation, although it was undoubtedly useful for defence and displays as well.

Its scientific name is particularly delightful. Coelodonta means “hollow tooth,” referring to the deep grooves in the animal’s molars. Those teeth were built for grinding tough, abrasive grasses and other low vegetation. 

Woolly rhinoceroses were predominantly grazers, harvesting the mammoth steppe with all the delicacy of a heavily armed lawnmower.

Their wide lips and low head posture were well suited to cropping plants close to the ground. Microscopic wear and chemical evidence preserved in their teeth also help us reconstruct what they ate and the environments in which they lived.

The woolly rhinoceros was so familiar to Palaeolithic people that it appears in prehistoric art. 

Ancient humans painted and engraved these formidable animals on cave walls and pieces of bone. 

One can imagine that a woolly rhinoceros crossing the landscape was not easily overlooked. It was several tonnes of fur, horn and territorial opinion.

The species survived until approximately 14,000 years ago. Recent genetic research suggests its disappearance may have been relatively rapid and closely associated with abrupt climatic warming and the transformation of its cold, dry habitat. 

Rather than declining steadily through a long period of severe inbreeding, some of the final populations may have remained genetically healthy until conditions changed dramatically. 

The disappearance of the mammoth steppe meant the loss of the particular environment upon which this highly specialized grazer depended. 

Being impressively furry, exceptionally large and equipped with a magnificent horn can take you only so far when your entire ecosystem begins changing beneath your feet.

WOOL, SABRES AND BONE-CRUSHERS: AN ICE AGE MEET-AND-GREET

Woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis

Travelling widely is one of the great pleasures of our age. Modern transport makes trips hither and thither much easier than in the past.

You discover new possibilities, see exciting new things and get to see the weird and wacky around the globe. As you know, I love a good museum and greatly enjoy the creativity that goes into making a compelling museum display.

There are museum displays that invite quiet contemplation.

And then there are museum displays that seem to say, “Welcome to the Pleistocene. Please keep your hands, snacks and easily punctured body parts to yourself.”

At the Shanghai Natural History Museum in China, three magnificent mammals stand together in skeletal splendour: the woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis; the sabre-toothed cat, Smilodon fatalis; and the spotted hyena, Crocuta crocuta.

It is an impressive gathering of horn, fang and bone-cracking confidence. But before we imagine the three of them meeting at an Ice Age watering hole and arguing over who had the most intimidating dental plan, there is an important palaeontological detail to address.

They did not all live together.

The woolly rhinoceros and prehistoric populations of spotted hyenas inhabited parts of Eurasia, but Smilodon fatalis lived in the Americas. 

The Shanghai display brings these animals together as representatives of the Pleistocene world, not as a reconstruction of one prehistoric ecosystem. Think of it as an international Ice Age convention—everyone belongs to the same broad geological era, but they arrived from different continents.

And what a convention it is.

Image: Asset id: 2481462139. Shanghai China Jun 11th 2024: the fossil in Shanghai Natural History Museum: Woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), Saber-toothed tiger (Smilodon fatalis) and spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta).

RACCOONS: ADORABLE TINY HANDS AND QUESTIONABLE INTENTIONS

There are few creatures quite as charming—or as suspiciously competent—as the raccoon.

With its black mask, ringed tail and remarkably nimble front paws, the northern raccoon, Procyon lotor, looks rather like a small bear dressed for a burglary. This is misleading. 

Raccoons are not bears, although they belong to the same broad branch of the carnivore family tree. 

Their closest living relations are other members of the family Procyonidae, including coatis, ringtails, cacomistles, olingos and kinkajous.

Together, they form an impressive clan of climbers, fruit thieves, insect hunters and nocturnal specialists, most of which live in the Americas.

The fossil story of raccoons is surprisingly patchy. Small, forest-dwelling omnivores do not always leave us a generous fossil record. 

Their bodies are easily scattered, their habitats are not always ideal for fossilization, and they rarely have the decency to perish in large numbers somewhere convenient for future palaeontologists.

The wider raccoon family appears in the North American fossil record during the Early Miocene, more than 16 million years ago. 

By the Late Miocene, recognizably raccoon-like procyonids were padding through North American forests. Fossils assigned to the genus Procyon—the group containing living raccoons—are known from the Late Miocene and Pliocene. 

A newly described species, Procyon garberi, lived in Florida during the Late Miocene, showing that true raccoons were already experimenting with their familiar body plan millions of years before anyone invented the locking garbage bin. 

By the Pleistocene—the great Ice Age—raccoons were widespread across North America. 

Several fossil raccoons once given separate species names, including Procyon priscus, Procyon simus and the delightfully compact Procyon nanus, were later interpreted as variations of the living northern raccoon, Procyon lotor. 

If that interpretation is correct, modern raccoons were sharing the continent with mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, sabre-toothed cats and dire wolves. 

Those giants disappeared. The raccoon remained.

This probably had much to do with flexibility. Raccoons are spectacularly unfussy omnivores. 

Depending upon where they live and what is in season, they may eat berries, grapes, apples, nuts, acorns, corn, insects, worms, crayfish, frogs, fish, eggs, small animals and carrion. 

They generally consume more invertebrates than vertebrates, but the governing principle appears to be: “Is this edible, and can I get my little hands on it?” 

In towns and cities, the menu may expand to include garden produce, pet food, compost and whatever treasures have been placed inside a container clearly labelled “raccoon enrichment puzzle.” In my garden, they leave the tomato plants alone but eat most everything else.

Their native range stretches from southern Canada through most of the United States and Mexico into Central America. They inhabit deciduous and mixed forests, wetlands, river valleys, coastal areas, farmland, suburbs and cities. 

Woodlands near water are particularly good raccoon country because they provide food, climbing trees and hollows for dens.

Raccoons have also been introduced to parts of Europe and Asia, including Germany and Japan, where some populations have become invasive. Their great adaptability, while admirable from a raccoon’s point of view, can create serious problems for native wildlife. Raccoons raid bird and turtle nests, compete for den sites and may carry diseases and parasites. Cute does not mean ecologically harmless. Nature is under no obligation to keep those two categories separate.

The raccoon’s scientific name, Procyon lotor, roughly means “washing procyon.” This refers to the famous habit of dipping and manipulating food in water. 

Raccoons are not necessarily washing dinner because they have suddenly become concerned about hygiene. 

Their front paws contain an extraordinary concentration of sensory receptors, allowing them to examine objects through touch. Moisture may enhance the sensitivity of the skin, helping them feel and manipulate their food.

In other words, they are not politely washing supper. They are inspecting it with wet fingers.

Each front paw has five long digits. Raccoons do not have opposable thumbs, but they can grasp, pry, turn and open objects with astonishing skill. They can manipulate latches, lift lids and occasionally solve problems that humans believed had already been solved by purchasing a more expensive garbage bin.

I had a midnight explorer who used to come for a visit and search about the place when I lived near a park. I would see signs of mischief but never the burgular.

Now, I have a family living in the tree next door. Mamma takes her kits out early in the morning to forage.

Their hind feet can rotate substantially, allowing them to climb down trees headfirst. This is an excellent adaptation for life in the forest and a deeply unsettling skill to witness at two o’clock in the morning.

Baby raccoons are called kits. They are born with faint masks and tail rings already visible, although their eyes remain closed for the first few weeks. A mother usually raises her kits alone, teaching them where to den, what to eat and, presumably, how to stand perfectly still on a fence while making prolonged eye contact with the homeowner.

Raccoons are primarily nocturnal, but I have been seeing them more and more in the day.

A nursing mother, a hungry youngster or an animal disturbed from its den may forage in daylight. As with all wildlife, however, raccoons should be admired from a respectful distance. They can defend themselves vigorously and may carry rabies in some regions.

There is something deeply impressive about an animal that survived the climatic upheavals of the Ice Age and then adapted to highways, suburbs, streetlights and wheelie bins.

The mammoths vanished. The sabre-toothed cats vanished. The giant ground sloths vanished.

The raccoon looked at the changing world, flexed its tiny fingers and said, “Interesting. Does this lid come off?”

WHY DID THE COYOTE SURVIVE? AN ICE AGE STORY FROM THE LA BREA TAR PITS

Coyote, Canis latrans

Dire wolves vanished. Sabre-toothed cats vanished. American lions, western camels, native horses and giant ground sloths disappeared from the region.

Coyotes survived.

They survived the climatic upheaval at the end of the Pleistocene, the collapse of large-animal communities and the loss of many of the predators and prey species that had shared their world. 

Later, they survived persecution, poisoning, trapping, expanding cities, fragmented habitats and the arrival of freeways.

Today, coyotes still move through Los Angeles. They trot along drainage corridors, cross residential streets, shelter in patches of urban vegetation and appear on security cameras looking remarkably composed for animals trespassing beneath a porch at three in the morning.

The city changed beyond recognition. The coyote remained.

Its great advantage was not enormous size, exceptional speed or a mouth filled with theatrical weaponry. It was flexibility. When the menu changed, the coyote changed with it. When habitats shifted, it moved. When competitors disappeared, it expanded. When humans remade the continent, the coyote examined our roads, farms, golf courses and suburbs and appears to have said, “We can work with this.”

THE COYOTES OF LA BREA

Coyotes are among the most common mammals preserved at the La Brea Tar Pits, although they are outnumbered by dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats.

During the Late Pleistocene, natural asphalt seeped to the surface in what is now central Los Angeles. Water, dust and leaves sometimes concealed the sticky deposits. Large herbivores became trapped, and their distress attracted predators and scavengers. Some of those animals stepped onto the same asphalt and joined the deposit themselves.

This predator-trap effect helps explain why carnivore fossils are so abundant at La Brea. A single trapped bison could attract several dire wolves, a sabre-toothed cat and any number of smaller opportunists prepared to investigate the commotion.

Coyotes were excellent candidates. They were hunters, scavengers and attentive observers of everyone else’s business.

The coyote fossils from La Brea are generally associated with the robust Late Pleistocene form traditionally called Canis latrans orcutti. 

These Ice Age coyotes were not identical to the slender animals slipping through modern Los Angeles. They were larger, more powerfully built and equipped with deeper jaws and more strongly developed meat-shearing teeth.

They were, in short, rather more wolfish.

This was an animal living among formidable competitors. Dire wolves hunted large prey, sabre-toothed cats ambushed herbivores and American lions occupied the landscape. The Pleistocene coyote needed to find its place within this heavily armed carnivore guild while avoiding becoming lunch, competition or an accidental asphalt ornament.

A LARGER, TOUGHER ICE AGE COYOTE

Studies comparing Pleistocene coyotes with modern animals have found significant differences in skull and jaw anatomy.

The ancient coyotes had deeper, more robust lower jaws. Their carnassial teeth—the specialized slicing teeth used by carnivorous mammals—provided a relatively long shearing surface, while the grinding portion of the tooth row was less emphasized. This anatomy suggests a diet containing more meat and possibly larger prey than that of many modern coyotes.

The teeth also show evidence of heavy wear and breakage. That may indicate more frequent processing of bone, carcasses and large prey. Ice Age coyotes were not simply modern coyotes wearing heavier winter coats. They occupied a somewhat different ecological role.

Research led by palaeontologist Julie Meachen found that Pleistocene coyotes were larger and more robust than their Holocene descendants. Their reduction in body size occurred around the time of the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, when many of North America’s largest mammals disappeared.

A later study of coyote jaws found a corresponding shift in feeding anatomy. Pleistocene coyotes possessed features associated with greater carnivory and the processing of large prey, while modern animals have more gracile jaws and a greater capacity for grinding a varied diet. 

The earliest Holocene coyotes were intermediate in form, providing a fascinating anatomical bridge between the Ice Age bruiser and the modern omnivorous survivor. The study was published in PLOS ONE.

When the large prey disappeared, the large coyote did not stubbornly insist that mammoth was still on the menu. It became smaller.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE?

The end of the Pleistocene brought sweeping ecological change to North America.

The climate warmed. Rainfall patterns shifted. Vegetation changed. Fire activity increased in some regions. Human populations spread across the continent. Meanwhile, many large mammals—including mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, native horses, camels and ancient bison species—declined and vanished.

Large predators followed them into extinction. Dire wolves, sabre-toothed cats and American lions disappeared.

Coyotes did not.

The loss of megafauna would have removed carcasses and large prey from the landscape. A predator strongly dependent on those resources faced a crisis. For coyotes, however, the ecological transformation became an invitation to change.

Smaller prey remained abundant. Rabbits, hares, rodents, reptiles, birds and insects were still available. Carrion remained useful. Fruits and other plant foods could supplement the diet. A smaller body required fewer calories and made hunting smaller prey more efficient.

Natural selection does not require a species to plan for the future. Individual animals vary. Those whose bodies and behaviours work best under new conditions are more likely to survive and reproduce. Over generations, the population changes.

The modern coyote emerged from this altered world leaner, more lightly built and less dependent on large prey.

It traded specialization for options. The decision has served it exceedingly well.

WHAT DID LA BREA COYOTES EAT?

Pleistocene coyotes were more carnivorous than most modern populations, but they were probably never as specialized as the largest Ice Age predators.

Their robust jaws and enlarged meat-shearing surfaces suggest that they could process substantial quantities of flesh and bone. They may have hunted medium-sized animals, scavenged megafaunal carcasses and fed opportunistically around kills made by larger predators.

Stable-isotope analyses support a distinction between coyotes and the large carnivores at La Brea. Dire wolves, sabre-toothed cats and American lions appear to have relied heavily on large herbivores such as bison and camels. Coyotes show evidence of a broader, more omnivorous diet. They are not picky eaters.

This wider feeding niche may have buffered them when large prey populations collapsed.

A sabre-toothed cat was magnificently equipped to subdue large animals. A coyote was equipped to see what else might be available.

There is great evolutionary value in being willing to eat something no one else considers worth chasing.

WHAT DO COYOTES EAT TODAY?

Almost anything nutritious enough to justify the effort. Just like us, with less Doritos.

Coyotes are classified within the mammalian order Carnivora, but that does not mean they eat meat exclusively. They are opportunistic omnivores whose diets change with location, season and availability.

Their prey can include:

• Mice, voles and rats
• Rabbits and hares
• Ground squirrels
• Gophers
• Birds and eggs
• Snakes and lizards
• Frogs
• Fish
• Insects
• Carrion
• Young or vulnerable deer
• Fruit, berries and other plant material

They may also consume agricultural crops, pet food, compost and discarded human food when those resources are available. This does not mean garbage is their preferred natural diet. It means coyotes are observant and generally unwilling to let edible calories go to waste.

In the Santa Monica Mountains, studies found that coyotes fed primarily on native fruits and small mammals such as rabbits, mice and woodrats. Domestic pets represented less than one per cent of the measured diet. Natural prey and fruits form the majority of their food in this region.

Research in heavily fragmented parts of Los Angeles produced a similar result. Although urban coyotes consumed more human-associated material, their diet still consisted largely of natural prey and fruit. Domestic cats, including feral cats, made up about one per cent of the diet recorded in the most fragmented areas studied. The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County uses these findings to separate the animal’s actual urban ecology from some of its more dramatic reputation.

Coyotes can prey on unattended small pets, and sensible precautions are important. But the average urban coyote is not spending every evening developing an elaborate scheme involving someone’s Pomeranian.

It is more likely looking for rodents, fallen fruit and an easy route back into cover.

WHERE DID COYOTES COME FROM?

The coyote, Canis latrans, belongs to the dog family, Canidae. Its deeper evolutionary story began long before the Ice Age.

Canids originated in North America more than 30 million years ago and evolved into a remarkable variety of forms. Some were small and fox-like. Others developed heavy jaws capable of crushing bone. Over time, members of the dog lineage spread into Eurasia, Africa and South America.

Coyote ancestry is associated with a group of increasingly wolf-like canids that appeared in North America during the later Neogene.

An extinct canid called Eucyon davisi lived in North America during the Miocene and Pliocene. It was a medium-sized, coyote-like animal and belonged near the ancestry of the genus Canis, although evolutionary relationships among fossil canids are continually reassessed as new material and genetic evidence become available.

By the Pliocene, a canid called Canis lepophagus—its name means “hare-eating dog”—was widespread across North America. It is frequently discussed as a possible close relative or ancestral form near the line leading toward coyotes and wolves.

Fossils recognizably attributed to Canis latrans appear by the Early Pleistocene, roughly one million years ago, although the precise boundaries between early coyotes and closely related fossil canids are debated. Later Pleistocene coyotes are known from sites across western and southern North America, including California, Idaho, Texas, Mexico and Central America.

Coyotes are therefore not recent arrivals on this continent. They are thoroughly North American animals with roots extending deep into the fossil record.

They did not come to the modern city. We built the modern city in their homeland.

WHO ARE THE COYOTE’S LIVING RELATIVES?

Coyotes are close relatives of wolves and domestic dogs. They share the family Canidae and are traditionally placed with grey wolves, dogs, jackals and several other canids in or near the genus Canis.

Their relationships are complicated because members of the wolf-like canid group diverged relatively recently in evolutionary terms and can sometimes interbreed. Coyotes have produced fertile hybrids with grey wolves and domestic dogs. Genetic exchange has occurred naturally where expanding coyote populations encountered wolves, particularly in eastern North America.

This does not mean every large eastern coyote is simply “half wolf,” nor does it make coyotes a vague mixture rather than a species. Populations have complex histories, and the proportion of wolf or dog ancestry varies geographically.

The relationships among coyotes, grey wolves, red wolves and eastern wolves remain subjects of scientific debate. Fossils, modern anatomy and genomic data do not always arrange themselves into a perfectly tidy family tree. Canid evolution is less a series of cleanly separated branches than a thicket in which some branches have occasionally leaned over and exchanged genes.

Dire wolves, despite their familiar name, were much more distantly related. Genetic research indicates that dire wolves belonged to an ancient American canid lineage that had been separate from the ancestors of living wolves and coyotes for millions of years. They are now commonly placed in the genus Aenocyon as Aenocyon dirus.

The dire wolf was a large grey wolf, and it was not the coyote’s oversized sibling.

It represented another evolutionary experiment—one that ended while the coyote lineage continued.

WHERE DO COYOTES LIVE?

Coyotes were once associated primarily with the grasslands, prairies and deserts of central and western North America. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, they dramatically expanded their range.

They moved north into boreal regions, east through forests and agricultural landscapes, west into coastal habitats and south through Mexico into Central America. Today, coyotes occupy nearly every part of continental North America and extend well into Central America.

A 2018 study mapping their expansion found that the process accelerated around 1900. Forest clearing, agricultural development and the removal of larger predators such as wolves helped open new habitat. Roads, railways and fragmented landscapes also created corridors through which coyotes could travel. 

Coyotes now live in:

• Deserts
• Prairies
• Grasslands
• Mountain valleys
• Shrublands
• Forests
• Coastal environments
• Agricultural regions
• Suburbs
• Major cities

The Smithsonian’s Movement of Life project describes coyotes as having pronounced behavioural, dietary and physical plasticity. Their ability to adjust to changing landscapes has allowed them to spread from the Great Plains into most of Canada and Central America.

The coyote’s preferred habitat appears to be wherever it can find food, cover and a reasonable chance of not being bothered.

That leaves rather a lot of the continent.

HOW DO COYOTES LIVE?

Coyotes are socially flexible as well as dietary generalists.

They may live alone, as mated pairs or in family groups. Their social structure changes according to food supply, habitat and population density. A pair may defend a territory together and raise pups, while older offspring sometimes remain temporarily with their parents.

Coyotes generally breed once each year. Pups are born in dens that may be dug by the coyotes themselves or adapted from burrows made by other animals. Both parents can contribute to feeding and protecting the young.

Their famous vocalizations help maintain social bonds and communicate territorial ownership. A few coyotes can sound like a much larger group because their howls, yips and barks overlap and change in pitch.

The result is known as the beau geste effect: a small number of animals produces the auditory impression of an entire coyote convention taking place just beyond the trees.

Coyotes also adjust their daily schedules. In regions with little human activity, they may be active during daylight. In cities and suburbs, they often become more nocturnal, moving when streets and public spaces are quieter.

They do not need to understand urban planning.

They need only learn when we go inside.

THE COYOTE IN MODERN LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles has changed profoundly since Ice Age coyotes became trapped at La Brea.

Woodlands and open country have been replaced or divided by homes, roads, businesses and freeways. Large native herbivores no longer move through central Los Angeles, and asphalt now covers the ground intentionally.

Coyotes adapted.

They travel along river channels, railway corridors, utility routes, park edges and strips of vegetation. They use culverts and underpasses. They rest in surprisingly small patches of cover and cross developed areas during quieter hours.

Research shows that many urban coyotes continue to prefer natural or semi-natural habitat whenever it is available. They do not necessarily choose dense development. Instead, they learn to navigate through it.

This distinction matters. A coyote seen in a neighbourhood is not automatically dependent on human food or unusually aggressive. It may simply be moving between hunting areas.

The city presents opportunities but also serious risks. Coyotes are struck by vehicles, exposed to rodenticides, injured by fencing and vulnerable to conflict when people intentionally or unintentionally feed them.

Their survival in urban landscapes should not be mistaken for an effortless life. Adaptable does not mean invulnerable.

WHY DIDN’T PEOPLE ELIMINATE THEM?

Coyotes have endured centuries of deliberate control efforts, including trapping, shooting and poisoning.

Yet broad campaigns to eliminate them have repeatedly failed.

Their mobility allows individuals to recolonize vacant territories. Their flexible social structure helps populations reorganize. Food availability and population density can influence reproduction and survival. Remove coyotes from suitable habitat and, if the resources remain, others may eventually move in.

Human changes to the landscape have also favoured them in unexpected ways. The removal of wolves reduced an important competitor and predator. Forest clearing created open habitat supporting rodents and rabbits. Agricultural lands and suburbs supplied new food resources and travel corridors.

The National Park Service notes that the combination of wolf removal, habitat change, a flexible diet and high reproductive capacity allowed coyotes to thrive despite extensive control efforts.

We attempted to remove the coyote while repeatedly redesigning the continent in its favour.

The coyote noticed.

SPECIALISTS, GENERALISTS AND THE ART OF SURVIVAL

The survival of coyotes does not mean specialists are poorly evolved.

A specialist can be superbly adapted to a stable environment. Sabre-toothed cats were powerfully constructed to capture large prey. Dire wolves were highly effective carnivores within Pleistocene ecosystems. Their success lasted for hundreds of thousands of years.

The problem arrives when the environment changes faster than the specialist can respond.

Generalists are not necessarily the strongest, fastest or most efficient animals in any one category. Their advantage lies in having alternatives. If one prey species declines, they can hunt another. If one habitat disappears, they can use a different one. If a familiar food becomes scarce, they can investigate something new.

Coyotes retained that flexibility while also changing physically. As the megafaunal world ended, their descendants became smaller and developed jaws better suited to a broader diet.

Survival was not a matter of simply remaining unchanged.

The coyote survived because it could become a different kind of coyote.

THE COYOTE REMAINED

The coyotes whose bones lie within the La Brea asphalt lived in a world of mammoths, camels, giant ground sloths, dire wolves and sabre-toothed cats.

They were larger than today’s coyotes, with stronger jaws and teeth adapted for a more carnivorous diet. They scavenged from large carcasses and competed in a landscape ruled by formidable predators.

Then that world came apart.

The large herbivores disappeared. The great predators vanished after them. Vegetation changed, climates shifted and humans transformed the continent.

The coyote grew smaller, broadened its diet and carried on.

Today, its descendants eat rodents beneath fruit trees, travel along concrete drainage channels and cross streets laid over the bones of their Ice Age relatives.

The asphalt seeps at La Brea preserved coyotes from a lost ecosystem. Beyond the park, living coyotes continue to move through the same landscape, altered almost beyond recognition.

Dire wolves vanished. Sabre-toothed cats vanished. American lions, western camels, native horses and giant ground sloths vanished from the region.

The coyote remained—not because it resisted change, but because it was exceptionally good at changing with it.

REFERENCES

Hody, J. W., & Kays, R. (2018). Mapping the expansion of coyotes (Canis latrans) across North and Central America. ZooKeys, 759, 81–97. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.759.15149

Meachen, J. A., Janowicz, A. C., Avery, J. E., & Sadleir, R. W. (2014). Ecological changes in coyotes (Canis latrans) in response to the Ice Age megafaunal extinctions. PLOS ONE, 9(12), e116041. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116041

Meachen, J. A., & Samuels, J. X. (2012). Evolution in coyotes (Canis latrans) in response to the megafaunal extinctions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(11), 4191–4196. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113788109

Sacks, B. N., Mitchell, K. J., Quinn, C. B., Hennelly, L. M., Sinding, M.-H. S., Statham, M. J., Preckler-Quisquater, S., Fain, S. R., Kistler, L., Vanderzwan, S. L., Meachen, J. A., Ostrander, E. A., & Frantz, L. A. F. (2021). Pleistocene origins, western ghost lineages, and the emerging phylogeographic history of the red wolf and coyote. Molecular Ecology, 30(17), 4292–4304. https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16048

Stock, C., & Harris, J. M. (2001). Rancho La Brea: A Record of Pleistocene Life in California (7th ed.). Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Science Series No. 37.

Wang, X., & Tedford, R. H. (2008). Dogs: Their Fossil Relatives and Evolutionary History. Columbia University Press.

Wilson, P. J., Rutledge, L. Y., Wheeldon, T. J., Patterson, B. R., & White, B. N. (2021). Considering Pleistocene North American wolves and coyotes in the eastern Canis origin story. Ecology and Evolution, 11, 9137–9147. Open-access article

La Brea Tar Pits. “Mammal Collections.” Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County. https://tarpits.org/research-collections/tar-pits-collections/mammal-collections

National Park Service. “Coyotes.” Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Updated May 24, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/nature/coyotes.htm

National Park Service. “Carnivores: Coyote.” Mount Rainier National Park. Updated March 11, 2025. https://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/nature/carnivores.htm

Ordeñana, M. “Coyotes of L.A.’s Urban Core: Using Science to Separate Fact from Fiction.” Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. https://nhm.org/stories/coyotes-las-urban-core-using-science-separate-fact-fiction

Smithsonian Institution. “Coyote: Canis latrans.” Movement of Life. https://movementoflife.si.edu/species/coyote/

URSUS CURIOUS: TLA'YI

A young Black Bear cub, Ursus americanus, tip-toes toward a frisky (and very startled) Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis — two wonderfully charismatic neighbours here in southern British Columbia.

Skunks, despite their reputation as the great olfactory villains of the mammal world, are actually closer to Old World stink badgers than to true polecats. 

Their infamous spray comes from paired anal scent glands capable of delivering a sulphur-rich chemical cocktail with uncanny accuracy — up to three metres, cross-wind. 

A single blast contains thiols so potent that predators learn, very quickly, that curiosity is overrated. Well… most predators. This wee bear clearly didn’t get the memo.

Black Bear cubs are, by nature, little bundles of kinetic joy and overwhelming inquisitiveness. Born in mid-winter, blind and tiny (weighing little more than a can of soup), they spend their first months cozied up in the den. 

By spring, though? Trouble. Pure, adorable trouble. Cubs stay with their mothers for about two years, learning every essential skill — how to climb, what to eat, what not to poke — but sometimes a particularly irresistible mystery will lure one a few metres away for a solo investigation.

Skunks, meanwhile, are far more than their signature scent. They’re accomplished insectivores with surprisingly strong forelimbs, adapted for rooting out beetle larvae, grubs, and other soil-dwelling goodies. 

They’re also bold. A skunk will usually stomp its feet, click its teeth, and arch its tail in a dramatic “Don’t make me do it” warning display. 

And yet — miracle of miracles — nobody got skunked. A karmic win for everyone involved.

This charming moment is also a reminder of the rich biodiversity we’re blessed with on the rugged west coast of British Columbia, where coastal rainforests shelter everything from salmon-loving black bears to nocturnal, grub-snuffling skunks.

Bears and skunks also have deep, fascinating roots in the fossil record. The lineage leading to modern skunks (Mephitidae) first appears in the Oligocene, roughly 30–32 million years ago, with early forms like Promephitis showing many of the skeletal hallmarks — and likely the scent-gland superpowers — of their modern cousins. 

Bears (Ursidae), meanwhile, trace their ancestry back even further. Their earliest known relatives emerge in the late Eocene, around 38 million years ago, with small, doglike proto-bears such as Parictis and later the hemicyonids, sometimes called “dog-bears,” bridging the evolutionary steps toward the true bears we know today. 

By the Miocene, both families were well established across North America, sharing ancient forests and floodplains just as their modern descendants do today — though hopefully with just as few skunk-related mishaps.

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, this playful black bear is t̕ła'yi — a name that captures both its spirit and its place within these lands. 

A perfect word for a perfect little explorer with an arguably questionable sense of danger.

EUROPEAN FLAMINGO: STILT WALKERS OF ANTIQUITY

European Flamingo

At dawn along the salt lagoons of the Mediterranean, the European flamingo rises like a soft-feathered sunrise, a sweep of pale rose and ember pink drifting across mirror-still water. 

Their long, reed-thin legs stitch delicate ripples through the shallows, while their downcurved bills — precision tools of evolutionary engineering — sift brine shrimp and algae with gentle, rhythmic sweeps.

But Phoenicopterus roseus, the European flamingo, is more than a creature of luminous wetlands. 

It is the living remnant of a lineage forged in deep time, a story that stretches back more than 30 million years into a world utterly transformed.

For decades, flamingos stood as an evolutionary puzzle — strange in form, stranger still in habit. Their closest relatives were unclear. Then the fossil record began offering clues.

The earliest birds recognizable as flamingo ancestors appear in the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, a period when the world was cooling and vast salt lakes spread across what is now Europe and North America.

The star of this ancient cast is Palaelodus, a long-legged wader known from deposits in France, Germany, and even North America. Often described as an “unfinished flamingo,” Palaelodus stood tall on slender legs but lacked the extreme bill curvature of modern species.

Paleontologists see it as a sister lineage — a bird halfway between the ancestral stock and the unmistakable modern flamingo form.

Their environments tell the same tale: shallow, alkaline waters rich with diatoms, crustaceans, and blue-green algae. The perfect proving ground for a future flamingo.

By the Miocene, true flamingos had fully arrived. Fossil flamingos — many nearly indistinguishable from modern species — appear in the lakebeds of Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Greece.

Some highlights of Europe’s deep flamingo past include:

• Phoenicopterus minutus, an elegant early species known from the Late Miocene of Hungary
• Phoenicopterus gracilis, which stalked ancient Iberian wetlands

Abundant trackways in Miocene lakebeds of Spain, showing flocks wading and foraging as they do today

What’s striking is how little the flamingo body plan has changed. Once their ecological niche crystallized — the brackish shallows, the sieving bill, the social flocking behaviour — evolution held its breath. Flamingos became masters of a lifestyle so successful it needed no further remodeling.

Until recently, the flamingo’s closest living relatives were uncertain. For years, hypotheses bounced between storks, herons, waders, and even waterfowl. Then genetics reshaped the field.

Flamingos are now grouped with grebes in a clade called Mirandornithes.

It’s a pairing that initially seems improbable — one bird is a pink desert ballerina, the other a compact diver of northern lakes. Yet the fossil record supports it: early grebe-like birds and Palaelodus share key skeletal traits, hinting at a common aquatic ancestor before their lineages diverged.

Today the European flamingo thrives in the wetlands of:

• The Camargue, France
• Doñana, Spain
• Sardinia and Sicily
• The salt pans of Turkey
• Coastal lagoons of North Africa

Their pink colour, borrowed from carotenoid pigments in their prey, is a living reminder of their deep bond with saline waters. Their massive colonial nests, sculpted from mud into miniature towers, echo the behaviour of flamingos preserved in Miocene fossil beds.

Each bird, elegant and improbable, embodies a lineage honed by climate shifts, vanished lakes, and ancient ancestors who once stepped cautiously through Europe’s long-lost wetlands.

From the lithified sediments of the Oligocene to the shimmering pink flocks drifting across the Mediterranean today, flamingos stand as one of the great evolutionary constants: birds whose story is etched into stone, water, and sunlight.

SAXMAN TOTEM PARK AND TLINGIT HISTORY

In the hard-edged years of the Great Depression, when darkness settled across the American economy and hope felt threadbare, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched an unprecedented experiment. 

His New Deal programs sent electricity into rural Tennessee, built schools and dams across the nation, and—far to the northwest in the dripping rainforests of Southeast Alaska—sparked a cultural resurgence few federal planners could have imagined.

Between 1938 and 1942, more than two hundred Tlingit and Haida artists were hired through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). 

Their charge was to carve monumental cedar poles and restore others standing in the mossy remains of unoccupied villages. 

Officials imagined the creation of “totem parks” that would lure American tourists northward. Perhaps not in the short term, as the recession raged across the nation and the world, but eventually, these parks would bring new visitors and their welcome dollars to the north.

Instead, the project became something far more profound: a revitalization of cultural memory, clan identity, and sovereignty, expressed through carving, paint, story, and the spirits of crest beings older than the United States itself.

Historian Emily L. Moore explores this unlikely convergence in her landmark book Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska’s New Deal Totem Parks. 

Her research reveals the New Deal not as a moment of cultural salvage, but as one of Indigenous resurgence—an era when Tlingit families reclaimed their visual histories and reaffirmed their relationships to ancestral land.

 
Crests: Living Ancestors, Sacred Property

To understand the poles of Saxman Totem Park, one must understand the Crests depicted upon them. Among the Tlingit, a Crest is not a symbol in the Western sense. 

It is a living being—an animal person, a supernatural entity, or a powerful natural force—encountered by clan ancestors in the ancient past. 

 Dogfish Memorial Pole for Chief Ebbits 

These encounters, often world-changing and sometimes life-threatening, established the unique identity, character, and territorial rights of each clan.

The right to depict a Crest is sacred. In many histories, the ownership of a crest was acquired as kaa naawuweidi'—a payment for the life of an ancestor who survived or was lost during the clan's originating event—a death for a crest. 

That payment bestowed upon the clan not only the right to portray the being, but stewardship over its spirit, the land where the encounter occurred, and all material expressions of that relationship. 

These include carved house screens, frontlets and headdresses, Chilkat robes (naaxein), Chilkat tunics (naaxein k'oodás') spruce root hats, carved cedar war canoes, grave posts, weapons, ceremonial objects, stories, songs, mourning calls at ku.éex’, personal names, and place names.

Crests are held in perpetuity as at.óow—sacred clan property regarded as very much alive. Their spirits dwell within the objects and narratives that represent them. 

Seen in this way, you begin to understand that a totem pole is a monument, a being, a lineage, a territorial claim, and a continuation of the moment when a human ancestor first encountered a powerful other-than-human life.

 
The Lincoln Pole: A Crest, a Claim, a Lineage

One of the most discussed poles brought into Saxman Totem Park during the CCC era was the Lincoln Pole, relocated in 1938. 

The Lincoln Pole

At its summit, a familiar face gazes outward—a stylized representation of Abraham Lincoln. Many visitors assume the figure references American politics, but Tlingit Elders have long taught that the image originally referred to the first white man seen in Tlingit territory in the 1700s.

By the 1880s, members of the Gaanax.ádi Raven clan of the Tongass Tlingit—my ancestors—commissioned this pole to commemorate the event. Carvers selected Lincoln’s likeness simply because it was widely recognizable. 

As with many Crests, the visual representation is less important than the lineage of the encounter and the rights it affirms. This particular pole claims Gaanax.ádi presence and sovereignty long before American expansion reached Alaska.

When CCC carvers restored the pole in the 1940s, they revived more than cedar. They revived the voice of a clan asserting its ancient rights—rights transmitted through at.óow, through story, and through carved beings whose spirits continue to watch over their homeland.
The Dogfish Pole: Honour for a Chief, Story of a Life

Not far from the Lincoln Pole stands another monument filled with ancestral power: the Dogfish Pole, carved for Chief Ebbits Andáa of the Teikweidi, Valley House. Raised in Old Tongass Village in 1892, the pole memorializes the Head Chief of the Tongass Tlingit, whose crest relationships, titles, and life story are carved into its cedar body.

At birth, he was Neokoots. In adulthood, he inherited the title of Chief Sheiks from his father—Chief of Chiefs among the Tlingit of the region. Tlingit names are tides, earned and bestowed throughout a lifetime. 

Yet the transition from Sheiks to Ebbits was unusual. In the late nineteenth century, while trading with Americans aboard one of John Jacob Astor’s vessels, the Chief formed a deep friendship with a fur trader named Ebbits. In a rare ceremony, the two exchanged names. Their act created a bond that echoed through generations.

Chief Ebbits married Aanseet, Chief-of-All-Women of Drifted Ashore House. Their children—Anisalaga Mary Ebbits Hunt, Gaachnéin, Abbie (Atk'géigee), Keenanúk, Kéilsháawat, and the son Yaashút’, who died tragically in 1876—became ancestors to hundreds of descendants across British Columbia and Alaska. Anisalaga, renowned for her Chilkat weaving, carried many names, as is the way among Tlingit and Kwaguʼł families. 

Seattle Pole in Pioneer Square raised for Aanseet

Her artistry and lineage unite today’s Cadwallader, Spencer, Lyons, Hunt, Henderson, and many families of the Pacific Northwest.

Aanseet drowned on the Nass River in 1870. Two memorial poles, Princess-Shining-on-Copper, were raised in her honour: one in Alaska, and one in Tsaxis (Fort Rupert), raised by her daughter Anisalaga. 

The pole that stands in Pioneer Square in Seattle is a replica of the original pole stolen from Tongass Island back in 1899. The theft was undertaken by a group of Seattle businessmen on an expedition to the north. They moored near the village of Old Tongass and went ashore to cut down the pole. It was later presented to the city of Seattle and erected in Pioneer Square. 

In 1938, it was heavily damaged by arson and a new pole, a replica, was made. Once the families found out where their pole had gone, a court case ensued. A federal grand jury indicated eight men, but the case was dismissed. 

The Dogfish Pole weathered to a silvery grey by the early twentieth century, its paint long stripped by wind and time now stands restored in Saxman Totem Park. 

CCC artists restored it in 1938. In 2022, a new restoration stabilized its cedar and freshened its paint so that coming generations might continue to read its stories and honour its spirit.
Letters Across Time

Chief Abbits to Anisalaga

Not all history is carved. Some is fragile as paper. 

Among our family records is a letter from Chief Ebbits—signed “Abbits”—written in 1876 to his daughter Anisalaga, informing her of her brother’s death. 

The shifting spelling of names in these documents reflects not inconsistency, but the complexity of translating Tlingit sounds into English—a multilingual echo of a time when Indigenous and Euro-American worlds were learning to speak across profound differences.

 
A Legacy of Sovereignty

Today, visitors strolling through Saxman Totem Park near Ketchikan see more than restored poles—they see a forest of living beings, each carrying the spirits of crest ancestors. 

Ironically, a program designed to reshape Indigenous lives helped strengthen them. CCC carvers, many of them young Tlingit and Haida men, used federal wages to carve their clan stories back into visibility.

It also put carving tools back into the hands of artists to use their skills and refine them in the refurbishing of poles that would have (rightly) decayed into the moss and sands of these windswept shores.  

The Tlingit, along with other Northwest Coast peoples, hold the belief that totem poles should be allowed to decay naturally and return to the earth as part of the life cycle of these crests 

Photographer Jeff Whyte, whose work captures the saturated greens and mist-washed cedar of the Pacific Northwest, shared images with me from Saxman. 

His lens reveals what Tlingit communities have always known: the poles are alive, watching over their descendants as steadfastly as the spruce and hemlock rising behind them.

For those seeking deeper understanding, The Wolf and the Raven by anthropologist Viola Garfield and architect Linn Forrest—another talented member of our extended family—remains essential reading.
Cedar Memory

Saxman Totem Park

Alaska’s totem parks do not exist soley because a federal program sought to ease unemployment. That was the action that set them in motion but to carry out the work takes skill honed over many years. 

These parks exist because Tlingit clans chose to pick up their adzes, reclaim their Crests, restore their at.óow, and reassert their sovereignty in a rapidly changing world.

What stands at Saxman today is a story-forest, a lineage made visible, a gathering of ancestral beings raised toward the sky and carried into the future by those who continue to speak their names.

Visiting Saxman Totem Park

Saxman Totem Park is a public park located just south of Ketchikan in the Tlingit community of Saxman, Alaska. Established during the New Deal as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps’ ambitious totem restoration project, the park today houses one of the world’s most significant collections of Tlingit and Haida poles.

Many poles were relocated from unoccupied villages including Old Tongass, Cat Island, Village Island, Pennock Island, and Fox Village. Others were re-carved by master Tlingit artists hired through the CCC in the 1930s, and then again later as the poles once more weathered to show their age. 

Among the cultural treasures recovered from abandoned sites was a marble statue of a grizzly bear—an exceptional example of Indigenous stone carving.

Notable Poles and House Posts

• Sun and Raven
• Raven and Frog
• Tired-Wolf House Posts
• The Beaver Posts
• The Blackfish Pole
• Klawak Blackfish Fin
• The Frog Tree
• Grizzly Bear Monument
• Kats and his Bear Wife
• The Lincoln Totem
• Secretary of State Pole
• Raven Pole
• The Grizzly Bear Post
• The Loon Tree
• Owl Memorial
• Pointing Figure
• Giant Rock Oyster Pole
• Memorials of Eagle Tail House
• Dogfish Totem

Photo Credit: Saxman Totem Park poles courtesy of Jeff Whyte of  www.jeffwhytephotography.com.

SEALS OF THE NORTH PACIFIC: FOSSILS AND LIVING STORIES OF THE KWAKIUTL

Along the storm-polished shores of northern Vancouver Island, where cedar-dark forests lean out over the Salt Chuck and the tide breathes in long, tidal sighs, the seal has long held a place of honour—not only as a keystone species of the coast, but as a cultural relative, teacher, and provider to the First Nations of northern Vancouver Island. 

Long before marine biologists began tagging pinnipeds or calculating biomass, Kwakwaka'wakw families, my family, understood the rhythms, migrations, and behaviours of ts’áxwi (harbour seals) intimately. 

Seals were never merely animals of the sea; they were participants in the community of beings, woven through stories, ceremony, and the practical technologies that allowed coastal life to flourish.

This deep relationship is reflected vividly in one of the most important annual institutions of Kwakiutl society: the Seal Society.

The Seal Society (Tsawadi): Winter Dances, Identity, and the First Step Into Knowledge

During the winter tseka—the great ceremonial season—First Nation communities transformed their bighouses into worlds between worlds. Flames swayed across cedar-planked walls. Dancers and masked performers embodied supernatural beings, ancestors, and the animal nations with whom the Kwakiutl share their homelands.

Among these dramatic and spiritually potent societies, the Seal Society (Tsawadi) held special significance.

For younger initiates, it was often the first step on a lifelong path into deeper ceremonial knowledge. Through dance, drama, and story, they learned to see the seal not only as a source of subsistence but as a teacher of adaptability, cooperation, and ocean wisdom.

The performances were more than representations—they were conversations across species, reaffirming relationships renewed each winter.

The Most Useful Animal of the Salt Chuck

Kwakiutl oral historians often remark that no other sea animal has been more consistently useful than the seal. Before the arrival of Europeans, seals provided:

• Meat and fat — rich, nutritious, and vital for winter survival
• Skin and fur — warm, water-resistant, stitched into clothing, blankets, and waterproof gear
• Intestines and sinew — fashioned into floats, fishing nets, and line
• Oil — for lamps, waterproofing, and trade

Because the seal was gentle and could be quietly approached on rocky islets and river-mouth sandbars, it became an essential part of coastal subsistence rounds.

Even feasts—the great ceremonial showcases of wealth, generosity, and status—featured seal meat as a prestige dish. The most tender portions were reserved for honoured guests. Thus, the seal became a motif in carved feast bowls, cooking vessels, and serving dishes, often inlaid with glistening abalone shell. I have a beautiful carved seal bowl that holds a place of honour in my house.

To eat seal at a potlatch was not simply to partake of food; it was to acknowledge relationship, territory, and gratitude.

The Thunder Bird and the Cedar Stump: A Kwakiutl Legend of Hunger and Humility

Stories, like tides, reveal deeper truths beneath the surface. Among the Kwakiutl, one legend tells of Tootooch, the Thunder Bird—a being of immense power and appetite—whose hunger leads to a moment of both humour and humility.

One day, Thunder Bird descended near the mouth of a river where a herd of seals slept on the rocks.

Using a rough club, he struck them down, piled them into a great roast, and consumed the lot.

But even after the feast, he remained ravenous—a reminder that supernatural hunger is never easily satisfied.

Borrowing a man’s canoe and seal spear, he hunted four more seals and placed them atop fire-heated rocks to cook. Needing skunk cabbage leaves to wrap the meat, he left his feast unattended beside a great cedar stump.

Before leaving he teased the stump:

“Don’t you wish you had some?”

But cedar stumps are not as passive as they appear.

While Thunder Bird was away, the stump crept over—quiet as old growth moss—and sat directly on the roasting seals, flattening and spoiling the meal. When Thunder Bird returned, he wept and cursed, fearing the long hunger ahead before he could find more seals.

To the Kwakiutl, the story is a reminder of humility before the natural world—and a playful nudge toward respecting even those beings we think rooted and still. Kwakiutl stories and practices align strikingly with ecological realities that scientists are only now fully appreciating.

Harbour Seals (Phoca vitulina richardsi) 

Common along the BC coast, they haul out on beaches, rocks, and estuaries—the very places described in oral traditions. Genetic studies show strong site fidelity: seals return to the same haul-outs generation after generation, much as families return to ancestral fishing grounds.

Elephant Seals (Mirounga angustirostris)

Once hunted nearly to extinction, they are now returning to Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii and all the waters of the Pacific Northwest—something First Nation Guardians and researchers alike have noted with fascination.

Today, we Kwakwaka'wakw continue to honour seals through art, stories, and cultural practice. This knowledge offers a vital human perspective to modern marine conservation—our ecosystems are not only ecological networks, but relationships of reciprocity, story, and responsibility.

And in every tale—from scientific surveys to Thunder Bird’s misadventures—one truth remains:

The seal is not merely an animal of the sea. It is a relative, a resource, a teacher, and a partner in the great living web of the Northwest Coast.