The Rise of Humanity and Histories through Cities: Tell es-Sultan, Jericho, and the First Cities, 8,000-7,500 BCE

Throughout this series a particular archaeological site has been cropping up. Located in the West Bank, Palestine this site has the name Tell es-Sultan, but is better known by a biblical name – Jericho. We will be looking at Tell es-Sultan during the first half of the eighth-millennia BCE as this is roughly when archaeologists date its most iconic structure – the Tower of Jericho. With this post we will look at the origins of Jericho, what life was like there, and why they built the staggering walls and tower.

Tell es-Sultan: Setting the Scene

Kathleen Kenyon at Tell es-Sultan

Jericho has been excavated for a very long time with some of the earliest people to look at the site being the early Christian community in Palestine who formed a small community on the Jericho Oasis. The first of what we might consider ‘modern’ excavations took place in 1868 when British army officer and amateur early archaeologist Charles Warren got a commission to excavate in Palestine. He did not initial find anything at the site, writing it off as being of ‘little interest’, and left for Jerusalem. He had a strange career and would later served as commissioner for the Metropolitan Police where he tried, and failed, to catch Jack the Ripper. The next major excavation would be undertaken in the 1950s when Palestine was under Jordanian rule. Heading the excavation was a pioneer in archaeology called Kathleen Kenyon who was an Oxford graduate and had already participated in a monumental archaeological excavation. In the 1920s she joined an all-women team to Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, excavating Great Zimbabwe and categorically proved what local Africans had been saying for years, that the site was made by Africans. For more information on Great Zimbabwe please read our other post here. Kenyon focused on stratigraphy as a way to properly capture the changes to Tell es-Sultan over the millennia, and was keen to hire local displaced Palestinians in the excavation. Tell es-Sultan is located close to the Ein es-Sultan refugee camp which had been formed in 1948 thanks to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. From 1952 to 1957 the excavation provided an economic lifeline for a displaced community. Israel’s invasion of the West Bank in 1967 and Apartheid policies meant no major excavation took place until the Italian-Palestinian Expedition of 1997 to 2017. This joint Italian-Palestinian team gave new insights into the site, and was a key driving force behind UNESCO declaring it a World Heritage Site in 2023.

Tell es-Sultan was in use for over 9,000 years from around 10,000 BCE to around 900 BCE, although it was not consistently occupied for this entire period. Tell es-Sultan is one of the sites often highlighted as having the title of ‘oldest city’ in history, but it was far from the only place where we see the construction of permanent settlements. In this series we have already looked at some of those sites – there were Tell Qaramel and Abu Hureyra in Syria and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. The occupation of Tell es-Sultan, at least in part, coincided with the occupation of these sites with the same culture that occupied Abu Hureyra and Tell Qaramel, the Natufians, also being behind Tell es-Sultan. From 10,000 BCE we see aross west Asia a series of cultures who begin remaining in a single area, ‘sedentarism’, and began the domestication of grains and hoofed animals. This was the early origins of agriculture in west Asia, what pioneering archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe called the ‘Agricultural Revolution’. This came even before the widespread development of pottery – archaeologists refer to this period as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (c.9,600-6,500 BCE). Why this began is still at hotly debated topic, but it seems the changing climate put pressure on communities who found that by ensuring the cultivation of wheat, barley, and einkorn they could have an ample supply of food.

Tell es-Sultan: A Proto-City

Tell es-Sultan has been described as a proto-city which is a settlement that does not show clear signs of an organised form of urban planning. However, Tell es-Sultan does begin to enter the ‘city’ definition based on the evidence of the walls and tower. We will discuss these later and will instead look at what the settlement was like during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN). Class distinctions were not noticeable during this period. Kenyon and successive archaeologists have found evidence of emerging societal hierarchies around the third millennia BCE, but in the PPN these signs are lacking. None of the preserved settlements show signs of being larger, having more goods, or being differently decorated as we see later on, however this does not mean that no hierarchies existed. Hierarchies may have existed through personal relations and social standing, rather than access to goods. Even the construction of the walls and tower may not have been done through the coercion of labour, but could have been done from a sense of communal understanding. The move from hunter-gathering to sedentary agriculture has never been a clean one, and up to the present it is common to see communities use both hunter-gathering and cultivation. The number of gazelle bones indicate that people were still regularly hunting them, but there were scythes preserved in large numbers. Attached to the Tower was a silo that stored grain, and silos existed in homes implying a need for individuals to have their own food supply. During the PPNA, (9,600-7,500 BCE), stone silos for storing water, food, and domestic waste were a common feature of homes.

Tell es-Sultan was well positioned to become a large settlement. The nearby oasis, which still provides water to Palestinian villages today, provided fertile land for growing grains. This provided enough resources so Tell es-Sultan could start growing in size so by the 8000s BCE there were certainly hundreds to perhaps thousands of people living in the settlement. Homes were roughly loaf-shaped, made of mudbrick and were built with no sense of an organised city planning. Some were built to purposefully have courtyards so different dwellings could come together and socialise, whereas others stood alone. As people moved on or died new people would move in, or perhaps tear down old dwellings to build on top of it. This is how, over millennia, the tell, an artificial mound, developed.

Tower and Walls

Around 8,000 BCE the people of Tell es-Sultan constructed what easily would have been the largest structures at that time. Along the west side of the settlement, conspicuously not along the east, was a large wall. It stood 3.6 metres (11.8 feet) high and 1.8 metres (5.9 feet) wide at the base. Inside the wall was a tower that was the tallest manmade structure in history to that time, and it would not be exceeded in height for another four-thousand years. At its base the Tower had a diameter of 9 metres (29.5 feet) and stood 8 metres (26.2 feet) high, and was made of 1,000 tons of stone. From base to summit there were 22 steps made of stone. The Tower was an icon, one that would have inspired awe in anyone who saw it. Again, we do not know how they built the walls and tower; not as in what tools and materials, but as to what social forces were used to build them. As mentioned, we do not know if hierarchies existed to enact some form of social coercion to build the wall and tower, or if the people of Jericho felt a desire to construct it.

Originally, it was believed that the wall and Tower was for defensive measures. We normally build walls to defend things, and the Tower was certainly tall enough to give the defenders an ability to rain down projectiles. Sites in Sudan and Kenya do show that prehistoric warfare was not unheard of and could be brutal, so a defensive origin seems obvious. However, since the 1980s this theory has been debated, and Omar Bar-Yosef highlighted that we do not actually have evidence of warfare among the Natufians. There are no other foritified settlements during the PPN; we have no large amounts of weapons used for offensive means and not simply hunting found; the Tower was inside the wall making it more difficult to defend a wall; and we do not know who could have possibly be the attackers. Bar-Yosef suggested that the wall’s defensive nature was not against other communities, but it was defensive against nature itself. At the end of the Younger Dryas the climate was becoming wetter, and west Asia was seeing more rain. Floods and mudslides posed a threat to the community, so a wall served as a way to protect the community from a natural disaster. That does not mean that the Tower and walls were never used to defend Tell es-Sultan. It was supposed to inspire awe. Ran Barkai and Roy Liran expanded on this theory, arguing that the Tower aligned with the stars and local geographical features making it a spiritually symbolic structure.

History Rhyming – Walls and Roman Frontiers

Walls like those at Jericho can hold multiple functions and meanings. If a state or community wanted to create a visually impressive structure to show its boundary or power a large wall is a significant way to show exactly this. One example of this which springs to mind is Hadrian’s Wall. During the reign of Hadrian the emperor decided that the empire had grown too large which made it ungovernable and vulnerable to attack. He decreed that a wall was to be made demarcating the border between the Roman Empire and the lands of the ‘barbarians’ beyond it. In some areas natural borders like the Atlas Mountains or the Rhine created a border, in others a wall had to be built. You can find traces of the wall all across Northern Africa, west Asia, and Europe, but the most noticeable one lies in northern England as it was primarily made of stone. Obstensibly, Hadrian’s Wall was defensive. Regular checkpoints were positioned along it, and soldiers guarded the wall from all across the empire. However, that was not its main function. It was to control trade. People who wanted to trade were forced into specific gates where they could be taxed, something they could not do before. Like at Jericho this wall was to show how powerful Rome was. Large, impassable, and extending as far as the eye could see the wall was to show whoever came near just how powerful Rome was.

Life and Death in Jericho

People lived in Jericho for millennia. The regular building on top of houses to build new ones ended up meaning that the walls and Tower were abandoned by around 7,800 BCE. Why, we do not know, but it seems that the building of new buildings had made the structures no longer needed. New layers effectively forced Jericho above flood lines rendering the walls not as needed. As the PPNA gave way to the PPNB shortly after the abandoning of the Tower changes came to Jericho. Houses became more cigar-shaped causing buildings to slowly become more and more rectangular. What remained the same with these houses was actually what was under them. In Tell es-Sultan people lived with their dead. Relatives were buried under the house with little goods deposited with them, left for a bit, and then had their heads removed which was reburied somewhere else in the community. Kenyon’s excavation found around 276 burials in people’s homes, and this continued through to the PPNB.

Throughout both the PPNA and PPNB it seemed that only the skulls of adults were removed, with the exception of one area which had five infant skulls. Kenyon believed that this was a specific altar. Of the bodies found in Jericho around 40% were children and infants but it was only those five infants which had been decapitated. For PPNB bodies the living began putting plaster over the skulls and would often place cowrie shells over where the eyes would be in life. It has been theorised that this was an ancestor cult, which would also explain why it was only adults who had this done and not the children. This seems to have been a common feature as plastered skulls, or even the action of severing the heads of the deceased, as part of preparing the dead was common in the region. This even extended far outside of Palestine – to the north in Turkey the site of Çatalhöyük, which was founded at the end of Jericho’s PPNB, also had deceased relatives decapitated. The specific reason for this we do not know, but it shows some fascination with the head as the essence of the being. We see a communal aspect of Jericho’s society with the burial. While the body was buried with the family it was the skull, the body part that it most identifiable, that was buried in a more communal area. Without distinction, everyone was part of this system.

Other Events:

Other events happened in the first half of the eigthth millennium. Here are some of them:

• Around 7560 BCE the Rotoma Caldera, part of the Taupō Volcanic Zone in Aotearoa erupted. It was one of four massive eruptions within a period of 400 years.
• Around this period near Lake Titicaca some of the first potato plants will be domesticated.
• At Howick in Northumberland and Mount Sandel in Ireland some of the oldest evidence of human habitation of Britain and Ireland happens in this part of the millennium.
• At around 7,500 BCE we have the earliest date for the settling of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, a site we will discuss next time.

Bibliography:

• ‘Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan’, UNESCO, (2023), [Accessed 25/08/2026]
• ‘Jericho: An Ancient City Revealed’, Oriental Museum Durham University, [Accessed 19/08/2026]
• Ran Barkai and Roy Liran, ‘Midsummer Sunset at Neolithic Jericho’, Time and Mind, 1:3, (2013), 273-283
• O. Bar-Yosef, ‘The Walls of Jericho: An Alternative Interpretation’, Current Anthropology, 27:2, (1986), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/203413
• Kathleen Kenyon, Digging up Jericho, (London: Ernest Benn, 1957)
• Steve Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC, (London: Orion Books, 2003)
• Lorenzo Nigro, ‘Tell es-Sultan 2015: A Pilot Project for Archaeology in Palestine’, Near Eastern Archaeology, 79:1, (2016), 4-17
• Rachael Thyrza Sparks, Bill Finlayson, Bart Wagemakers and Josef Mario Briffa, (eds.), Digging up Jericho: Past, Present and Future, (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing, 2020)
• Hamdan Taha, ‘Tell es-Sultan, Ancient Jericho’, This Week in Palestine, (2021), 48-51
• A. Douglas Tushingham, ‘The Joint Excavations at Tell es-Sulṭân (Jericho)’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 127, (1952), 5-16
• Trevor Watkins, ‘From Mobile Foragers to Complex Societies in Southwest Asia’, Chris Scarre, (ed.), The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies, Fourth Edition, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2018), 198-229

Zoopedia: Chaco Golden Knee Tarantula

Continuing this month’s theme of looking at wildlife from the Chaco we are focusing on the Chaco golden knee tarantula. These large spiders play a key role in regulating the populations of smaller invertebrates in the Chaco, but a lot more research is needed to see how endagered these tarantulas are.

Taxonomy and Evolution

The Chaco golden knee has the scientific name Grammostola pulchripes with it sharing its genus with twenty other species. The most famous member of the genus Grammostola is the Chilean rose tarantula which is incredibly popular in the pet trade for their docile nature. Chaco golden knees are also known for sharing this nature which makes them popular as well, just not as popular as Chilean rose tarantulas. They are true tarantulas, official scientific name being Theraphosidae, which are generally the largest spiders, at least by weight. Some non-tarantula spiders are larger based on how long their legs are, but are not as heavy as the largest tarantulas. Tarantulas first appear in the fossil record during the Cretaceous with some frozen in amber being found in Myanmar.

Biology and Behaviour

Being a tarantula the Chaco golden knee is a large species of spider. They reach between 17.8 and 20.3 cm (7 to 8 inches) in length and reach weights of 56.7 grams, or 2 ounces. Females are larger than males, something which is the norm among spiders. Chaco golden knees are black with golden patches on their legs and the abdomen, something that gives them their name. Another point that Chaco golden knees share with other tarantulas is how hairy they are. These hairs cover the entire body, and there are seven types of hair which the tarantulas use for different purposes. Despite having eight eyes their sense of sight is actually quite small, so they use the hairs, mainly on their legs, as a way to properly detect the world. The hairs are highly sensitive which allows the spiders to detect when other animals are approaching, and even changes in the climate. A different set of hairs on the legs are used for defense. When threatened they can flick these hairs, which are irritating, at predators to scare them off.

Chaco golden knees are ambush predators, waiting in the undergrowth for prey to come near. Those hairs alert the spider to prey passing by, and another set of hairs serve as an adhesive which helps the spider keep hold of the prey. Like other spiders, Chaco golden knees inject their prey which a venom that dissolves them from the inside so the tarantula can effectively drink up the insides of the prey. During the day they may stay in burrows which the tarantulas move into when abandoned by rodents and lizards. These burrows are also essential for reproduction. Male tarantulas will deposit sperm on a special web which he then places in packet on his fangs. When a female is receptive he will effectively bite her to deposit his sperm, but this can be dangerous. She is much larger than he is, and if she gets mad he can be a meal. If fertilised she will create an egg sac in which she lays over 100 eggs. From there her spiderlings can safely hatch, although many will not survive to adulthood. Spiders will molt and develop a new skin to grow, but when molting they are most vulnerable. Males live for five to ten years whereas the larger females can live for over 20 years!

Distribution and Habitat

As their name says, the Chaco golden knee tarantula is found in the Chaco region, specifically being found in the Paraguayan and Argentinian Chaco. While there are humid parts of the Chaco, where the golden knee is found is the dry Chaco. This region is generally warm and dry with seasonal rains. To survive during some of the hottest and driest summers that South America faces the tarantula largely comes out from its burrow or the undergrowth at night.

Diet and Predators

Like all spiders the golden knee is a carnivore. Their diet mostly consists of invertebrates ranging from cockroaches to crickets to even smaller spiders. Some of the larger tarantulas can eat fellow tarantulas, baby rodents, and baby lizards. Spiderlings are more likely to be eaten compared to the adults, although all spiders are at risk as they molt. Tegus, birds, maned wolves, peccaries, and hawks can all eat the spiders with spiderlings being at risk from a wider range of animals. Furthermore, tarantula wasps do target adults for their babies – let’s just say tarantula wasps reproduce the same way as the alien in Alien…

Conservation and Threats

The IUCN Red List, CITES, and other conservation organisations have not evaluated the Chaco golden knee so we do not know how endangered they are. The only member of Grammostola to be evaluated by the IUCN was G. vachoni in 2012 which was assessed as being ‘Vulnerable’. As the Chaco is at risk from climate change and human expansion this could potentially endanger the tarantula. Due to their docile nature they are increasingly common in the pet trade, something that could lead to the capture of wild spiders to sustain demand.

Bibliography:

• ‘Chaco Golden Knee Tarantula’, Oakland Zoo, [Accessed 20/08/2026]
• N.E. Ferretti and G. Pompozzi, ‘Grammostola vachoni‘, IUCN Red List, (16/05/2012), [Accessed 24/08/2026]
• Nelson Ferretti, Gabriel Pompozzi, Alda González and Fernando Pérez-Miles, ‘The genus Grammostola Simon 1892 (Araneae: Theraphosidae): a new species from western Argentina, new synonymy and distributional data’, Journal of Natural History, 47:47-48, (2013), 2961-2977
• Norman Platnick, (ed.), Spiders of the World, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020)
• Tarantula Collective, ‘Chaco Golden Knee Tarantula: Life of the Grammostola pulchripes’, YouTube.com, (19/04/2022), [Accessed 24/08/2026]

The Making of Today: The Māori Encounter Captain Cook, October-December 1769

On Saturday 7 October 1769 the British sailor James Cook wrote in his journal that ‘At 2 p.m. saw land from the Masthead bearing West by North‘. After he had witnessed the transit of Venus in Tahiti earlier in the year, Cook had received a second set of instructions. As a way to compete with the French and Spanish in the Pacific Cook was to find Terra australis incognita, the Southern Unknown Land. If the land was found Cook was instructed ‘with the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King‘. This meant that if Cook found Terra australis he was to ensure it became a British possession. A few days later Cook’s crew on the Endeavour made landfall on the spotted land. This land was Aotearoa, the North Island of New Zealand.

Aotearoa before Cook

Remains of a pā on Maungawhau

Like elsewhere in the Pacific, Aotearoa had long been discovered before Europeans arrived. For the purpose of centring indigenous voices for this post I will be referring to New Zealand by its Māori name, Aotearoa. The Māori of the eighteenth-century would refer to North Island as Aotearoa, and today’s post we will mainly be focusing on North Island. Māori is sort of an anachronism. The term ‘Māori ‘ means ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’ as a way to distinguish themselves from the spirits, but the arrival of Europeans meant that ‘Māori’ came to refer to the indigenous people of Aotearoa to contrast with the Pākehā, the European settlers. Identity was instead based around the iwi, community, which through oral history could sometimes be traced to a specific canoe. Sometime between the 1250s and 1350s Polynesian families began settling and spreading out over Aotearoa. With the exception of those who settled at the very south of South Island many of these communities abandoned sailing, other than for fishing and trade in the local area, becoming settled farmers. Especially on North Island communities called pā emerged which were hillforts designed to show the strength of the iwi.

The Māori iwi becoming farmers that substituted their economy with hunting local wildlife and gathering plants meant that the ocean-based navigation that characterised Polynesian cultures became less important. The remoteness of Aotearoa meant that Māori iwi became increasingly isolated from other Polynesians, but not so much that Māori ideology, religion, and language became too diverged. Like the Tahitians, Māori used the concept of mana in their worldview. This is a spiritual or almost supernatural force that permeates everything where people and objects that acquire mana allows them to exert influence and power. The Māori would adapt mana into mana tangata, mana derived from lineage and connection to the land, and mana huaanga, a mana derived from gift giving and the exertion of power to give gifts. Finally, there were many iwi in Aotearoa wo would trade, marry, and go to war with one another. Warfare was hand-to-hand and guided by a principle called utu – often translated as ‘revenge’ Michael King argued that it is more accurate to describe it as ‘balanced exchange’. This meant warfare could be done to re-establish broken connections between communities, although, in some cases, enslavement and even ritualised cannibalism. However, war was not waged to eradicate another community with many such wars ending in a marriage as to rebuild ties.

Europeans in the Pacific

As we have seen in several recent posts as part of The Making of Today, the French and British, in particular were interested in exploring the Pacific. France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War wiped out their continental American empire, and they saw the Pacific as a potential way to rebuild their imperial prestige. The British, meanwhile, hoped to beat the French to it. Science and colonialism overlapped. The Pacific voyages, including that of Cook, were ostensibly scientific expeditions, but the understanding of the natural world was done to see how it could be exploited. Helen Tilley’s Africa as Living Laboratory provides a useful framework to understand this. In colonial Africa European administrators used Africa as a laboratory where a belief emerged that if the colonisers understood Africa’s people, geography, climate, and natural world then they could better rule and exploit its resources. In Tilley’s words:

Maintaining the British Empire and comprehending its different elements was, these men realized, far more difficult than extending its reach had been. Whether they cared more about Africa or about empire, they agreed that the production and dissemination of knowledge held the key to effective governance. Early in 1929, several of these individuals began to circulate plans for another think tank, based in Oxford and connected with the Rhodes Trust, of which Philip Kerr was now secretary. The proposed “Institute of Government” would undertake a “systematic and scientific study” of the British Empire, “the most interesting experiment in government in the history of the world.” In their view, the empire provided a “unique laboratory” in which to examine problems relating to “democratic states and their international association,” in conjunction with “the good government of the coloured peoples and the harmony of their relations with the white peoples.”

Tilley, Africa as Living Laboratory, 87

Effectively, this meant that African colonial officials looked to Africa as a place to explore new ideas and ‘develop’ the continent to their benefit. This colonial ideology was also present in the Pacific, except this time it was to show the prestige of Empire. The eighteenth-century captains were also following on old ground. A century before Spanish and Dutch sailors, using the Philippines and Indonesia respectively as a jumping off point, had made moves into the south Pacific. In fact, Cook’s party were not the first Europeans that Māori met. In December 1642 Dutch sailor Abel Tasman landed in Aotearoa, and much like Cook just over a century later, got into conflict with the local iwi causing the death of four Dutch sailors and one Māori. The Dutch would leave no lasting impression on the Māori, but Tasman’s navigations would give Europe some idea that there was land in the southern Pacific which the Dutch gave the name ‘New Zeelandia’.

Endeavour and Aotearoa

HMS Endeavour

James Cook started life as the son of a Yorkshire farmer and rose through the ranks of the British navy, rising high thanks to the Seven Years’ War. Of course he was not the only one on the Endeavour, and it was the surgeon’s boy Nicholas Young who would spot Aotearoa. The point where they landed would be named ‘Young Nick’s Head’ in his honour. There was another significant person on board who has largely been overlooked in narratives about European arrival on Aotearoa, one that blurs the line between Māori and Pākehā. This person was Tupaia, sometimes spelt Tupia, who was an arioi, a religious figure similar to a priest, on Ra’iatea in what is now the Society Islands. Tupaia seemed to strike up a friendship with the Endeavour’s botanist Joseph Banks and requested to join the British, hoping to take his young servent Taiata with him. Cook’s attitude to Pacific Islanders has often been portrayed one of mutual trust by older historians, including some pioneering ones of indigenous history like Michael King. It is more complicated and we will get to it later, but Cook’s attitude towards Tupaia was telling. Cook did not want to bring Tupaia on board in case he was accused of enslaving the man and only allowed him to join the Endeavour if it was Banks who would ‘take’ him. This effectively meant in Cook’s eyes Tupaia was a ward despite the fact he was a knowledgeable navigator and advisor. Cook even admitted he was a ‘very intelligent person’. Banks wrote about Tupaia in this way:

This morn Tupia came on board, he had renewed his resolves of going with us to England, a circumstance which gives me much satisfaction. He is certainly a most proper man, well born, cheif Tahowa or preist of this Island, consequently skilld in the mysteries of their religion; but what makes him more than any thing else desireable is his experience in the navigation of these people and knowledge of the Islands in these seas; he has told us the names of above 70, the most of which he has himself been at. The Captn refuses to take him on his own account, in my opinion sensibly enough, the government will never in all human probability take any notice of him; I therefore have resolvd to take him. Thank heaven I have a sufficiency and I do not know why I may not keep him as a curiosity, as well as some of my neighbours do lions and tygers at a larger expence than he will probably ever put me to; the amusement I shall have in his future conversation and the benefit he will be to this ship, as well as what he may be if another should be sent to these seas, will I think fully repay me.

Banks quoted in Smith, ‘Banks, Tupaia, and Mai’, 139

Again, we see the dehumanisation of Tupaia based on him being Polynesian – I doubt Banks would have described a Dutch priest they had picked up as a ‘curiosity’ like a big cat. Why Tupaia wanted to go with the British is not known. He was a well-learned and inquisitve man from accounts, so he may have simply wanted to see what England was like. After all, in our earlier post on Europeans in Tahitians a young man who was the son of a local leader called Ahutoru wanted to go with a French ship as he wanted to see France. Jean-Stephane Massiani has suggested this and a way to escape political ramifications for backing the wrong side of a civil conflict may have influenced Tupaia’s decision. Tupaia became essential for Cook’s navigation from Tahiti. A navigator himself and part of a culture that relied heavily on the sea he knew how to navigate even the giant Endeavour through the shallow waters surrounding islands. Reefs could easily cut through the hull of a ship like scissors through paper, and Tupaia’s knowledge ensured the Endeavour avoided the reef. Vanessa Smith and David Turnbull have suggested that this might have caused Cook to feel envious of Tupaia. In Cook’s journal he suggested there was some intellectual rivalry between Banks and Tupaia, but Banks’s journal goes from describing Tupaia as a curiosity to being in awe of him. Smith suggests that as Tupaia was middle-aged like Cook and was a skilled navigator, making excellent maps to help the sailors, Cook got jealous while the much younger Banks came to see Tupaia as a fellow scientist who, if anything, legitimised Banks’s position on board.

Joseph Jenner Merrett’s nineteenth-century depiction of a haka

Cook and his animosity to Tupaia could have been the reason why he asked Tupaia not to join the expedition onto Aotearoa. On Monday 9 October 1769 Cook led a party landing near where modern Gisborne is. The fertile soil and good access to fishing thanks to the sea and nearby river meant four separate iwi were established in the area – the Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki. Members of the iwi, meanwhile saw a floating island while others claimed it was a giant bird with great white wings – this was the Endeavour. Unfortunately, a deadly precedence began on that day. Māori of the Ngāti Oneone iwi came to see the crew and did something they would do with any other stranger – they performed a haka. This ceremonial dance can precede a battle, but it portrays your own mana and size the power projection of each other. The British panicked and fired, killing a leader, Te Maro. The next day Cook changed tactic – he brought Tupaia with him. This next encounter did not immediately descend into violence thanks to Tupaia – Māori and Tahitian not being too different which allowed them to communicate. The exchange of gifts, mana huaanga, started and Cook was even greeted with a hongi. Again, a misunderstanding escalated with Cook alleging that the Māori tried to steal the weapons. The British again shot the largely unprepared Māori and chief Te Rakau of the Rongowhakaata was killed. The crew fled back to the Endeavour and the next day when Cook spotted two fishing canoes. Again, Tupaia’s calls were ignored as the crew undertook Cook’s standard policy to begin negotiations – by kidnapping people. Musket fire rained down on the canoes killing three, wounding one, and leading three to jump overboard. The British took captive three young boys, aged between 10 and 20, to act as hostages. On 12 October another negotiation led by Tupaia returned the boys and a ‘parley’ was opened to facilitate trade.

History Rhyming – Tisquantum and Mediators

Local mediators between colonisers and indigenous people have been present throughout the history of colonialism. Notably, Hernan Cortes used an enslaved woman called Malintzin, whom he also sexually abused, to translate and negotiate with local Mesoamerican polities to facilitate the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. However, one example similar to Tupaia and Cook is that of Tisquantum. Called Squanto by English settlers in the early-1600s he had been kidnapped and enslaved by the English, taken to Europe, and managed to escape back to his Patuxet community in what is now Massachusetts. In 1620 the pilgrim ship the Mayflower landed and the settlers almost were wiped out through war, disease, and famine. This is where Tisquantum stepped in. His knowledge of English allowed him to broker peace between the settlers and local indigenous nation, and then proceeded to show them how to plant local foods and trade. This would ensure the pilgrims survived their first few winters, but Tisquantum sadly did not. He caught some form of disease from either the settlers or the vectors that wiped out his community. In November 1622 Tisquantum died of a fever.

Cook, Tupaia, and Māori 

Tupaia’s drawing of Joseph Banks and a Māori bartering over a lobster

After the initial disastrous encounters with the Endeavour the local iwi were cautious about the ship. Each time they had encountered the Endeavour’s crew people had died, and now three people had been kidnapped. The presence of Tupaia was the only thing reassuring them – here was someone who was a stranger and different, but one they could communicate with and understand them. Nicholas Thomas has described this as a new discovery for the Māori, one where they rediscovered Polynesians. It was Joseph Banks, not Cook, who suggested they put Tupaia at the forefront of the party. This meeting would not descend into violence, and this encounter would dramatically shape the history of Aotearoa. In successive European arrivals in the region they would find that Māori villages were growing potatoes, a crop introduced by Cook. Māori had been farming yams for centuries so it was not a large leap to go from farming yams to farming potatoes.

Oral history, and later journals by Cook, also reveal who captured the thoughts of the local iwi. When they spotted Cook’s ship during his Second Voyage a few years later the name the local Māori shouted was ‘Tupaia’. For them, the true head of the ship was Tupaia, not Cook. After all, it was Tupaia who talked between the two groups, was aware of mana, and was a religious figure. It was only natural that Tupaia was seen as the head of the ship and not the man who allowed his men to kill people almost immediately. Sadly, Tupaia died just over a year after he arrived in Aotearoa. When the Endeavour docked in Batavia, modern Jakarta, he and his ward Taiata got ill. Taiata died of the illness and a distraught Tupaia died not too long after on 20 December 1770. Cook’s crew would never shoot on another Māori, but if he had followed Tupaia’s lead then his life may not have ended being stabbed on a beach in Hawai’i.

Noble Savagery and Cook

James Cook can be a puzzling figure to understand in regards his relations with Pacific Islanders. He clearly had some form of respect for Tupaia, he regularly wrote that Tupaia was incredibly intelligent and an expert navigator. Yet, he was reluctant to use Tupaia as a negotiator until his own method of kidnapping was not helping open negotiations with the iwi. In his later voyages he would show respect to Polynesian political leaders, on his Third Voyage he would invite Māori chiefs to dine with him in his cabin, but he would then proceed to try and kidnap a Hawai’ian monarch to get some equipment back. Explaining this is simple – the ‘noble savage’ myth. Originally applied to indigenous Americans it soon was placed onto Pacific Islanders, so much so that Cook referred to Polynesians as ‘Indians’. This idea positioned that indigenous peoples were in a state of savagery – originally for not knowing Christianity, by the time of Cook concepts of private property fed into this – but their connection to the natural world or intelligence made them ‘noble’. Tupaia, for Cook, was a ‘noble savage’. He was an intelligent scholar and navigator, but he came from a culture that had no knowledge of Christ and private property. Tahiti, Aotearoa, Hawai’i, all were presented as Gardens of Eden inhabited by noble ‘savages’ living in bliss. It was this view that encouraged Cook to use kidnapping people to open negotiations – one that you cannot imagine him doing to the French or the Dutch. It was only because Polynesians were cast as the noble savage could he justify this action.

Other Events:

Other events happened in the last quarter of 1769. Here are some of them:

• October 23, French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot would demonstrate a steam-powered tractor which effectively makes him an early pioneer of automobiles.
• November 1, a contingent of Spanish conquistadors arrived in what is now known as San Francisco Bay becoming the first Europeans in the area.
• On November 3, Diane Adélaïde de Mailly-Nesle, the former mistress of Louis XV of France, would die aged 57.
• On November 12 the newly united Nepalese army conquers the last settlements of the Malla dynasty paving the way for the Gorkha dynasty to rule until 2008.
• On December 22 the Chinese and Burmese Konbaung dynasty would sign a peace treaty. Several years earlier China intervened in Burma’s invasion of the Ayutthaya in Thailand, which you can read about here.

Bibliography:

• Early meetings between peoples, URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/early-meetings-between-peoples, (Manatū Taonga — Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 20-Aug-2026
• James Cook, Endeavour: Captain Cook’s Journal During His First Voyage Round the World, Edited by Alan Frost, (Anboco: 2016)
• John Gascoigne, Encountering the Pacific in the Age of the Enlightenment, (Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
• Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand, (Auckland: Penguin: 2006)
• Jean-Stéphane Massiani, ‘Tupaia, an Indigenous Collaborator on Board Captain Cook’s Endeavour‘, Études Anglaises, 72:4, (2019), 387-399
• Toon van Meijl, ‘Maori Socio-Political Organization in Pre- and Proto-History: On the Evolution of Post-Colonial Constructs’, Oceania, 65:4, (1995), 304-322
• Anne Salmond, ‘Their Body is Different, Our Body is Different: European and Tahitian Navigators in the 18th Century’, History and Anthropology, 16:2, (2005), 167-186
• Vanessa Smith, ‘Banks, Tupaia, and Mai: Cross-cultural exchanges and friendship in the Pacific’, Parergon, 26:2, (2009), 139-160
• Alice Te Punga Somerville, ‘Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook’, New Zealand Journal of History, 53:1, (2019), 3-49
• Nicholas Thomas, Islanders: The Pacific in the Age of Empire, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010)
• Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011)
• David Turnbull, ‘(En)-Countering Knowledge Traditions: The Story of Cook and Tupaia’, in Tony Ballantyne, (ed.), Science, Empire and the European Exploration of the Pacific, (Oxon: Routledge, 2004), 225-246
• Stephen Turner, ‘A History Lesson: Captain Cook Finds Himself in the State of Nature’, in Alex Cadder, Jonathan Lamb, and Bridget Orr, (eds.), Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769-1840, (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 89-99

Florapedia: Quebracho Blanco

Keeping with this month’s theme we are heading back down to the Chaco to look at one of the region’s unique trees. Known as the quebracho blanco, white quebracho, this is one of the many trees that have evolved to survive in the dry environments of the Chaco. For centuries the local indigenous people of the Chaco used the quebracho blanco for medicinal purposes – in this tree a wide range of medicines could be extracted.

Taxonomy and Evolution

Quebracho blanco has the scientific name Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco making it one of over sixty species belonging to its genus. Some of the species are large enough to be trees while others are smaller and are more accurately shrubs. ‘Quebracho’ is not a formal taxonomic grouping, but an informal one for typically South American trees with incredibly hard wood. The term ‘quebracho’ is derived from the Spanish ‘quebrar hacha‘ meaning ‘axe-breaker’. Quebracho blanco belongs to an order of plants called Gentianeles whose members also include milkweed and coffee.

Biology

Quebracho blanco are tall trees being able to reach 25 metres (82 feet) in height, although this is only the case in wetter environments. Those in drier habitats reach between 8 and 12 metres, a good half of the height of those in humid environments. They have straight trunks which are a light brown-yellow which is, strangely enough, gives them their name. While not actually ‘white’ the trunk is far lighter than another tree in the area, the quebracho colorado or ‘red quebracho’. The trunk is not particularly thick having a diameter between 0.8 and 1 metres, but the sheer hardiness of the tree means that it can have a narrow trunk without it collapsing. It also means that for its size it is surprisingly heavy. Quebracho blanco trees can also produce a new stem from their roots – this is fairly common with plants which allows the same individual to create several trees, effectively cloning themselves.

Quebracho blanco are flowering plants, so every year they will produce flowers in order to reproduce. These flowers are funnel-shaped and yellow which is an evolutionary feature for two purposes. The funnel helps stop self-pollination, (when a plant accidentally pollinates itself using its own pollen), as the cone prevents pollen from easily being blown by the wind. Self-pollination can happen, but the cone helps reduce this occuring. The yellow colouration is another evolutionary tool. While yellow might seem common or even drab to us, for moths and butterflies it stands out. Moths, in particular, will drink nectar from the flower and in doing so will shake pollen onto its body. It will then fly to another quebracho blanco and spread the pollen. The tree will then produce green fruits 7 to 12 cm long, 4 to 6 cm wide, and 2 to 2.25 cm thick. Inside the fruit are the seeds which are eventually dispersed when the fruit bursts, or if eaten. In the past this job would have been done by giant ground sloths! In the Arid Chaco the seeds often need a ‘nurse plant’ to help keep the saplings covered from the dryness of the environment as they grow.

Quebracho blanco are described as sclerophyllous. This means that their foliage has evolved to be resilient to long periods of heat and dryness. They are evergreen, keeping their leaves throughout the year. The leaves are thin and narrow to reduce water loss during the heat of the day, and the hardiness of the trunk is a response to the heat. That hardiness makes it difficult for animals to break into the trunk to access the water inside. Furthermore, the roots spread out so when it does rain they can cover a wider area to absorb water, something which also allows them to grow new stems.

Distribution and Habitat

Quebracho blanco are only found in South America and predominantly in the Gran Chaco – the dry forests and savannah that covers south Bolivia, north Paraguay, north Argentina, and southwest Brazil. Pockets of these trees are also found in Uruguay and the Argentinian espinal. Most of this region is dry, sometimes not seeing rain for extended periods, which made these trees become so-well adapted to their environment. Parts of the Chaco receive far more rainfall, the Humid Chaco, which is where you will find the larger trees which congregate together forming forests. In the drier savannahs and plains these trees will be in smaller groups surrounded by shrubs.

Conservation and Threats

The IUCN Red List last evaluated the quebracho blanco in 2020 giving them a rating of ‘Least Concern’. This means they are not at immediate risk of becoming endangered. For centuries indigenous peoples had used these trees for a wide range of purposes, with many parts of the tree having medicinal properties. The bark contains alkaloids which are good for treating infections, especially malaria. Some of the alkaloids have been synthesised to produce anti-malaria treatements. These chemicals are also found in the leaves, fruits, and roots which has allowed people to produce remedies for malaria, fever, heart disease, swellings, and asthma. They have also been used to produce contraceptives, abortives, and aphrodisiacs. Despite the hardness of the wood it is malleable making it good for construction and even artisanal purposes. However, as climate change becomes worse and farms expand into the Chaco to fit consumption demands of the Global North, the quebracho blanco could become endangered soon.

Bibliography:

• ‘Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco Schltdl.’, Kew Plants of the World, [Accessed 13/08/2026]
• Noelia E.A. Almiron, Gisela M. Via do Pico, Andrea Cosacov, Esteban N. Paredes, German A. Robledo Dobladez, and Viviana G. Solís Neffa, ‘The geography of Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco vulnerability, an emblematic species of the South American Gran Chaco’, Forest Ecology and Management, 523, (2022), e120503
• Alicia H. Barchuk and Marı́a del Pilar Dı́az, ‘Regeneration and structure of Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco Schl. in the Arid Chaco (Córdoba, Argentina)’, Forest Ecology and Management, 118:1-3, (1999), 31-36
• Alicia H. Barchuk, Maria del Rosario Iglesias and Marta N. Boetto, ‘Spatial association of Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco juveniles with shrubs and conspecific adults in the Arid Chaco, Argentina’, Austral Ecology, 33:6, (2008), 775-783
• H. Rotton, ‘White Quebracho, Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco‘, IUCN Red List, (16/10/2020), [Accessed 13/08/2026]
• Diego A. Sampietro, M. del Huerto Sánchez Matías, Marta A. Vattuone, and César A. N. Catalán, ‘Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco Schltdl.’, in Ákos Máthé and Arnaldo Bandoni, (eds.), Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of South America Vol. 2: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, (Cham: Springer, 2022), 75-83

Paleo Profiles: Mamenchisaurus

This week we are looking at a giant among sauropods, a considerable feet considering just how big sauropods are. This was Mamenchisaurus, a sauropod which had several species in the genus that are in the running for the longest species of sauropod. Often described as a ‘wastebasket taxon’ there are debates about how many species actually belong to the genus. However, the species which are confirmed are some of the largest to ever live!

Discovery and Fossils

Like with many fossil discoveries, the first fossils belonging to Mamenchisaurus were found by accident in a construction site. Construction on the Yitang highway in Sichuan Province in southwest China revealed a fossil site that palaeontologist Yang Zhongjian, who published under the name C.C. Young, analysed. In 1954 he published a paper officially describing the fossil as a large sauropod which he named Mamenchisaurus constructus – ‘Construction Mamenxi Lizard’. A few years several specimens were found further north in Gansu which Yang also placed in M. constructus, but he did not realise that some belonged to a new species. Just north of Chongqing in 1957 locals brought to the attention of authorities of fossils they had found during the Chinese Revolution a decade prior. Despite being weathered the fossils were well preserved with only the forelimbs and skull missing. In 1972 Yang and another palaeontologist called Zhao Xijin realised this was a new species which they named Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis. Since then more and more specimens have been found, however the fragmentary nature of many of them has meant identifying if they are Mamenchisaurus or not very difficult.

Taxonomy and Evolution

As mentioned, the fragmentary nature of many Mamenchisaurus specimens has meant that it is difficult to know whether fossils are individuals of an already known species, individuals in a new species, or individuals of an entirely new genus. Six species of Mamenchisaurus have been declared either a new genus or being invalid leaving us with five valid species and two dubious species. The valid species are M. constructus, M. hochuanensis, M. jinyanensis, the utterly massive M. sinocanadorum, and M. sanjiangensis which was just described in 2025. There are then the two dubious species, M. anyuensis and M. youngi, although the authors of the 2025 paper describing M. sanjiangensis have highlighted that the fragmentary nature of Mamenchisaurus research means that M. sanjiangensis could belong to a different taxa. As mentioned, Mamenchisaurus was a sauropod beloning to a family named after itself – Mamenchosauridae. This family was distinct to a taxa called Neosauropoda which would comprise many of the massive sauropods that we know of, so gigantic sauropods evolved independently several times.

Biology

Mamenchisaurus was a giant dinosaur, one so much that even the smallest species were still titans. One of the smallest species was the first discovered, M. constructus, which reaches around 15 metres (50 feet) in length, effectively one and a half buses in length. Meanwhile, M. jingyanensis could exceed 25 metres (85 feet) in length and M. sinocanadorum could potentially reach a staggering 35 metres (115 feet)! The neck alone for M. sinocanadorum was incredibly long with the upper limits reaching 12 metres – while this is unlikely, if it was this length then the neck of M. sinocanadorum was almost the same length of M. constructus. If accurate, M. sinocanadorum would be one of the longest species of dinosaurs. Regardless of species, one common factor for Mamenchisaurus was the insane length of their necks which may have been the same length as the rest of the body. This has led to other questions, mainly, how did it keep such a long neck held high? For M. youngi one specimen had a neck the same length as 41% of the rest of the body, so mechanically lifting that neck would have been difficult. Mamenchisaurus had lots of cervical ribs which provided the structure to support such a long neck, and a paper published in 2013 found Mamenchisaurus had quite a stiff neck compared to other really long-necked sauropods, like Diplodocus. Sauropods also had air sacs in their bones to help with respiration which actually made them lighter for their size, so these air sacs would have also made their necks easier to lift.

Weight estimates for an animal that we only know from fossils, but palaeontologists have made some estimates. With some of the smaller species estimates of 5 to 7 tonnes, or the same as a large elephant, but the larger species reach around 25 tonnes. If M. sinocanadorum could reach the giant 35 metres in length then these giant Mamenchisaurus could have reached over 70 tonnes! This would have made these large Mamenchisaurus some of the largest land animals ever reaching sizes only reached by the titanosaurs. Alongside their large weight and long necks the Mamenchisaurus had a noticeably long tail. While not nearly as long as the neck, the tail partially acted as a counterbalance to the neck to avoid it being too out of balance. Like with many sauropods these tails were become increasingly thinner and taper out becoming a bit like a whip. Like the neck the tail had ‘ribs’ to give it structure, and notable vertebrae helped strengthen this. The end of the tail in at least one species, M. hochuanensis, seems to have ended in a small tail club. This is not unusual for sauropods as many have evolved a similar structure, but why Mamenchisaurus developed this ‘club’ is not entirely known. The paper which described this club argued that it would not have been used as a weapon, but was instead full of neural canals allowing Mamenchisaurus better detect the world. The length of the dinosaur would make it harder to sense the world far from it, so these ‘clubs’ helped Mamenchisaurus sense the world.

From bones, especially fragmented ones, it can be difficult to know the behaviour of these dinosaurs. Some specimens have been found together so we know that they formed at least small herds, but we do not know how these herds were structured. A young Mamenchisaurus has been found in Mongolia that seemed to stand 1.5 metres at the shoulder and reached 8 metres in length. This dinosaur had signs it was still growing, hence why we know it was a juvenile. Comparing Mamenchisaurus to other sauropods then we know that they reach their large sizes quite quickly – from hatchling to behemoth takes about 20 years.

When and Where

Mamenchisaurus comes from China with most of the fossils coming from Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in southwestern China. They are not exclusively found in these areas with the Junggar Basin in northern Xinjiang being a noted fossil site that specimens of Mamenchisaurus have come from. One specimen has been found in Mongolia, although, as always with this genus, we are not sure if it is for certain a Mamenchisaurus. There are also two specimens, one in Thailand and one in Japan, which have been theorised as belonging to Mamenchisaurus but we are currently not sure. For many years we thought that Mamenchisaurus was a dinosaur found in the middle and late Jurassic, however more recent analysis has found that their fossil sites were younger than previously thought. Mamenchisaurus was found in the Late Jurassic, around 161 million years ago, but survived until the Early Cretaceous, around 114 million years ago! As the 2019 paper said, this new evidence meant that Mamenchisaurus was around 30 million years longer than previously thought.

Habitat

Mamenchisaurus lived in forests, although the larger species probably lived along forest edges simply due to how large they were. They did live alongside other sauropod species, so their neck helped them carve out a niche and reduce competition with these sauropods. Palaeontologists found that Mamenchisaurus could not raise its head particularly high, but it was good at sweeping its head quite low. This means it was a specialist in eating lower growing vegetation instead of high growing plants meaning it did not need to compete with the other sauropods. Adult Mamenchisaurus would have had no predators, but juveniles and hatchlings would have been predated on by carnivores like Sinraptor, Monolophosaurus, and Guanlong. These carnivores would have been crushed by an angry adult Mamenchisaurus, and most likely a large juvenile would have scared them off.

Bibliography:

• Andreas Christian, Guangzhao Peng, Toru Sekiya, Yong Ye, Marco G Wulf, and Thorsten Steuer, ‘Biomechanical Reconstructions and Selective Advantages of Neck Poses and Feeding Strategies of Sauropods with the Example of Mamenchisaurus youngi‘, PLoS ONE, 8:10, (2013), e71172
• Hui Dai, Xu-Feng Hu, Chao Tan, Xin-Xin Ren, Qing-Yu Ma, Guang-Biao Wei and Hai-Lu You, ‘A new mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic of Southwest China reveals new evolutionary evidence from East Asian eusauropods’, Nature Scientific Reports, 15:43308, (2025)
• Benjamin Gutierrez, ‘Mamenchisaurus‘, Prehistoric-wildlife.com, (13/02/2015), [Accessed 09/08/2026]
• Mark Hallett and Mathew Wedel, The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants, (Baltimore, MA: John Hopkins Press, 2016)
• Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi, Dinosaur Facts and Figures: The Sauropods and Sauropodomorphs, Trans. by Joan Donaghey, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020)
• Andrew J. Moore, Paul M. Barrett, Paul Upchurch, Chun-Chi Liao, Yong Ye, Baoqiao Hao and Xing Xu, ‘Re-assessment of the Late Jurassic eusauropod Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum Russell and Zheng, 1993, and the evolution of exceptionally long necks in mamenchisaurids’, Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 21:1, (2023), e2171818
• Gregory S. Paul, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Second Edition, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016)
• Jun Wang, Mark A. Norell, Rui Pei, Yong Ye, and Su-Chin Chang, ‘Surprisingly young age for the mamenchisaurid sauropods in South China’, Cretaceous Research, 104, (2019), e104176
• Lida Xing, Martin G. Lockley, Anthony Romilio, Hendrik Klein, Guangzhao Peng, W. Scott Persons IV, Yong Ye, Shan Jiang and Miaoyan Wang, ‘An historic theropod-dominated track assemblage from the Upper Jurassic of Sichuan, China’, Historical Biology, 33:11, (2021), 2822-2828
• Lida Xing, Yong Ye, Chunkang Shu, Guangzhou Peng and Hailu You, ‘Structure, Orientation and Finite Element Analysis of the Tail Club of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis‘, Acta Geologica Sinica, 83:6, (2009), 1031-1040

Zoopedia: Greater Rhea

This week we are looking at the largest species of terrestrial bird in the Americas, the greater rhea. Called the ñandú by Guarani it is also referred to as an ‘ostrich’ due to how much they resemble ostriches. Despite their similarities to ostriches, rheas like the greater rhea belong to an entirely different order of birds and is a case of ‘convergent evolution’.

Taxonomy and Evolution

There are two species of rhea alive today – the greater and Darwin’s rhea. We are only looking at the greater rhea in today’s post with them having the scientific name Rhea americana. The ancestors of rheas first appear in the fossil record around 40 million years ago from what is now Brazil. We do not have specific dates about when the ratites – the large flightless birds – diverged into the different orders, but DNA analysis has put rheas as being consistently close to ostriches out of all the ratites. The greater rhea is made of five subspecies which are distinguished solely by geography, and it is nearly impossible to identify the subspecies without knowing where they are from.

Biology and Behaviour

Greater rheas, as mentioned in the introduction, are the largest terrestrial birds in the Americas, but they are dwarfed by ostriches. They are still large birds reaching weights between 20 and 40 kilograms (44 to 88 pounds), reach lengths of 1.2 to 1.4 metres (4 to 4.5 feet), and stand between 0.9 and 1.5 metres (3 to 5 feet) tall. They do resemble ostriches having their long necks, long feathers, and long legs, but this is down to convergent evolution. This is when two organisms that are not directly related but live in similar environments so evolve to look like one another. Unlike ostriches, greater rhea are not particularly sexually dimorphic with males only being slightly larger than the females. Rheas are grey-brown in colour, and during the breeding season males develop a black collar which they use to show off. Despite being flightless they have long wings which are used as rudders to help them turn while running. Like the other large grasslands ratites the rhea is a good runner and this serves as their main form of defence.

Greater rhea are quite sociable birds with them often forming large flocks that will claim an area around 2.6 square kilometres in size. These flocks will break apart during the breeding season into male, female, and a mixed flock of yearlings. They spend most of the day pecking at the earth looking for food. Rheas are not particularly vocal, although a 2021 paper found that at night rheas in semi-captivity would make low vocal booms. Whether this is also the case for fully wild rhea is currently unknown. Rhea will run to avoid predators, but their powerful legs ending in three toes means a kick can easily scare off a predator.

In early spring the flocks of rhea break apart and the males begin developing their black collars. Here the males become vocal making loud booms to impress mates and deter rivals. Using vocal booms and elaborate displays with their wings the males hope to attract around seven females. He will mate with them and they will move on to mate with another male. Like with ostriches the male rhea will make a nest which several females will lay their eggs in. Sometimes males will share a nest to look after the clutch which can exceed 30 eggs. The males will take care of as many of the chicks as he can, after all he will not know which hatchlings are his and which are not. As the chicks get older the male gets less attentive until they reach six months when they begin leaving the nest for good. They will stay close to dad for another year when the next clutch will replace them. In captivity they have been recorded as living for 13 years.

Distribution and Habitat

Greater rhea are South American birds living in grasslands and around the edges of forests in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. These habitats include the savannahs of Brazil and Uruguay, the Brazilian cerrado, and the great Chaco ecoregion that covers parts of Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina. These birds are adapted for open plains where they can use their heights to look over long grasses, and use their long legs to traverse long distances quickly. Several escape rhea have now formed a permanent population in northern Germany!

Diet and Predators

Greater rhea are omnivorous, but a significant part of their diet is vegetation. In particular, they eat seeds, fruits, and flowers with them largely avoiding grasses. One thing that farmers have found is that greater rhea are fond of avocados. Other farmers can be quite thanful for rheas as they often eat insects which can damage crops, especially flies, grasshoppers, and beetles. They will sometimes also eat very small reptiles. Needing more protein to grow means that juveniles eat more animal matter compared to the adults. Greater rhea do not have many predators with the main predators being cougars, jaguars, humans, and caiman. Eggs and chicks can sometimes be killed by hawks, eagles, tegu, and even armadillos.

Conservation and Threats

The last time that the IUCN Red List evaluated the greater rhea was in 2022 when they gave it the rating of ‘Near Threatened’, and they raised the warning that greater rhea numbers are decreasing. The main reason for this has been human expansion into their environment. Large plantations of soy, avocados, and chard have reduced or biseccted their habitat placing greater pressure on their numbers.

Bibliography:

• ‘Greater Rhea’, Datazone by Birdlife, [Accessed 08/08/2026]
• ‘Greater Rhea’, Smithsonian National Zoo, [Accessed 08/08/2026]
• BirdLife International, ‘Rhea americana, Greater rhea’, IUCN Red List, (12/08/2022), [Accessed 08/08/2026]
• Kelly Hodges, ‘Rhea americana, Greater rhea’, Animal Diversity Web, (16/09/2016), [Accessed 08/08/2026]
• Guy Kirwan, ‘Rheas’, in Gill Pitts, (ed.), Bird, Second Edition, (New York, NY: DK, 2022), 103
• Cristian Pérez-Granados and Karl-L. Schuchmann, ‘Vocalisations of the Greater Rhea (Rhea americana): an allegedly silent ratite’, Bioacoustics, 30:5, (2021), 564-574

The Making of Today: The 1770 Bengal Famine Begins, July-September 1769

In September 1769 Bengali and British officials working for the East India Company (EIC) noted that for the second year in a row the monsoon season had brought little rain. Bengal’s agricultural economy relied heavily on rice, a plant that grows in water, so the ensuing drought prevented the harvest from properly growing for two years. By the end of the year agents were reporting that food was running short with Mohammad Reza Khan, who ran the city of Murshidabad for the EIC, reported that things were so desparate that families were having to ‘sell their children to raise money, much less do they spare their effects and cattle. The plough consequently stands still, and numbers of them desert their homes.’ Going into 1770 the food shortage turned into a full famine. In this post we will look at the causes of the 1770 Bengal Famine, its impact, and how there is no such thing as a natural disaster.

Bengal under British Rule

Hector Munroe, the victor at Buxar

After British victory over Mughal forces at the Battle of Buxar in 1764, which you can read about here, the Mughal emperor had, in official language, ‘gifted’ the diwani to the EIC. The diwani was effectively a license for the EIC to collect tax from Bengal, Orisha, and Bihar, and in return the EIC would send some of the money to the emperor. However, things were different with the EIC compared to the former rulers of Bengal. The EIC was a company so was guided by an emerging capitalist philosophy of the continued growth of profit, and one that had to answer to shareholders all the way back in Britain. While the EIC ruled through the nawab, hereditary governor, who handled the everyday running of Bengal true power resided with the EIC who had the final say on economic and diplomatic matters. The EIC had previously imported huge amounts of gold bullion to Bengal in order to pay for Bengali goods, particularly textiles. Prior to 1765 around 75% of EIC imported goods into Bengal was gold bullion. The granting of the diwani allowed the EIC to use Bengali tax revenue to purchase Bengali spices and textiles. Being granted a monopoly also allowed the EIC to close off markets for artisans and weavers who were forced to sell their products at a much lower value, sometimes 40% less than what they could sell it at a public bazaar. Popular and long-lasting stories emerged of weavers intentionally mutilating themselves to escape from the slave-like conditions imposed by the EIC and still thrive to this day.

The diwani was a boon for the EIC and disastrous for Bengal. For once it actually cut across class lines, although the poorer classes were the ones who suffered the most. The Mughal aristocracy found themselves at a loss when the EIC had their cavalry positions in the army replaced with EIC-hired infantrymen who were hired from the Hindu Rajput and Brahmin communities. With their finances in tatters they stopped commissioning the textile weavers who were already suffering from EIC monopolies and the importation of cheap textiles. Finally, the peasantry were now being increasingly squeezed as a way to increase profit for the EIC with payment being taken in the form of coinage. Between 1757 and 1780 an estimated £38,400,000 being made for the comopany with revenue collection rising from £2.26 million in 1765 to £3.33 million in 1770. Robert Clive, who would be governor again from 1764 to 1767 and would oversee this extractative policy, personally amassed a fortune of £400,000 which he took with him back to England.

(Un)Natural Disasters

At the start I said that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. That is not to say that disasters do not have natural origins – such as an earthquake or, in the case of the 1770 famine, a drought. Instead, a natural event becomes a disaster based on how people, in particular states, react to these events. This way of understanding natural disasters is not new, but it received specific attention following the tragedy of Hurriance Katrina in 2004. Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires in 2006 published an edited volume looking at how class, race, gender, age, and disability in New Orleans made sections of the population more vulnerable to the hurricane, and how specific government policies wrecked relief efforts. Poor upkeep of flood defences caused by years of budget cuts meant that when the levees broke poor black and Latino homes were destroyed, and a disorganised relief, that was organised by private companies, meant that many families were not given aid or were put in dangerous positions. More financial relief came from the UAE than the US government in the immediate aftermath, and the state even blocked Cuban offers to send medical aid. This is what is meant by there being no such thing as a natural disaster. A natural event happened, but it was short and long-term mismanagement that made the event a disaster. This is key to understading the 1770 Bengal Famine.

The Crops Fail and the Famine Begins

Around two-thirds of Bengal’s agriculture was rice production during the 1760s. The yearly monsoon season would keep rice paddies well-stocked which enabled Bengal to flourish, including having a large amount of urbanisation. Bengal normally had three harvests a year: a pulse harvest in the spring, a small rice harvest in the autumn, and the large rice harvest in December. This largest harvest would be watered by the monsoon rains which had failed in both 1768 and 1769. By the end of September 1769 officials were already raising warnings about the crisis that was looming on the horizon. By October papers were reporting of food shortages and Mohammad Reza Khan, quoted in the introduction, sent off his warning about the food shortages in December. By this time it had already progressed from food shortages to a famine. EIC response was aloof and attempts to undertake famine relief was largely undertaken at a local level. Granaries and storehouses were built to ensure the safety of grain, but overall the response was lacking and, if anything, made matters worse.

The EIC was a new system to the Indian subcontinent. It was a company, not a state in the traditional sense of the word, and one whose administrators regularly returned to Britain and did not integrate with local Indians. Scholar Ghulam Hussein Khan described them in this way:

These new rulers pay no regard to the concerns of Hindustanis, and suffered them to be mercilessly plundered, fleeced, oppressed and tormented by those officers of their appointing. The English have a custom of coming for a number of years, and then of going away to pay a visit to their native country, without any of them shewing an inclination to fix themselves in this land. And as they join to that custom another one of theirs, which every one holds as a divine obligation: that of scraping together as much money as they can in this country, and carrying these immense sums to the Kingdom of England; so it should not be surprising that these two customs, blended together, should be ever undermining and ruining this country, and should become an eternal bar to it ever flourishing again.

Quoted in Dalrymple, The Anarchy, 265

Not only did the EIC view their role in Bengal as company managers, they made no attempt to connect to the Bengalis whom they now ruled. As a result, their response to the famine was especially callous. Key centres of power like Chittagong and Murshiadabad had resources diverted to them, and the EIC was keen to make sure its army had food. Following the EIC’s defeat by the Kingdom of Mysore in 1769, and seeing the potential for revolt, the army was to be well-fed to ensure the safety of the EIC. Throughout the famine only marginal relief was handed out – in one area where 20,000 a month were dying the EIC handed out just 150 rupees. Throughout the famine the EIC blocked the importation of grain and refused to stop tax payments, something that the Mughals had previously allowed. EIC officials even wrote back to London assuring investors that despite the famine they were still collecting revenue, if anything revenue rose during the famine.

A granary built by the EIC in 1786 near Patna, Bihar

Those most affected by the famine were the poorest in society. In particular, it was landless peasants, peasants who grew non-edible crops, and urban workers. What little harvest there were was destroyed by wildfires caused by the drought, and the amount of people dying meant that the rotting corpses spread disease among the survivors. Smallpox, in particular, spread among a population whose immune system was already weakened by malnutrition. The famine would last until 1771 when the monsoons of 1770 began rebuilding the water for the harvests. Entire communities had been wiped out as people either starved or fled – many fled to Purnea in Bihar as it was less impacted by the drought. We do not know exact numbers due to poor record keeping. Contemporary British newspapers reported that hundreds of thousands to millions had died, and the EIC found that around a third of the population had perished due to the famine.

History Rhyming – Bengal and the Irish Potato Famine

The 1770 Bengal Famine would not be the only famine caused by British colonial misrule. One of history’s most infamous famines happened in Britain’s oldest colony – Ireland. Much like in Bengal in 1769 in 1845 a natural cause was made worse and was turned into a disaster by the British. Global capital networks spread disease, specifically Phytophthora infestans, to potato crops which the Irish peasantry had come to rely on for food. For the next two years the potato harvest was destroyed by this blight and the famine properly hit Ireland by 1847. Ireland lost two million people through death or fleeing, and its population still has not recovered. British policies turned a crisis into a disaster. For one, Irish peasants were still squeezed for tax with no relief meaning that money that was to be used to buy food was diverted to the pockets of the primarily Anglo-Protestant landlords. The longstanding Corn Laws and an adherence to free market capitalism meant that food could not be imported from mainland Europe at an affordable price, and food was being exported from Ireland! Like the Bengalis seventy years earlier the Irish were left to starve to ensure that profit going to colonial overlords would continue unabated.

Aftermath

Bengal took years to recover from the famine, after all a third of the population had been left to die. Six years after the declaration of the famine’s start the EIC resident in Dhaka reported that the fabric was of a low quality, a trend he had noticed that had lasted for several years. The reason was because a lot of the weavers had died during the famine. When Warren Hastings became governor in 1772 he noted that the loss of so many ‘productive labourers’ had left much of the previously farmed land empty. As Vinita Damodaran has highlighted, this would shift the environment in Bengal as the loss of population allowed for forests to colonise former farm land based on reports from the 1780s. It would take well into the nineteenth-century for Bengal’s population to reach pre-famine levels, and even then it would be hit by two other major famines before the end of British rule in 1947. That is even before we bring into account the other famines and food shortages that would hit India over the next 150 years.

Robert Clive

Back in Britain the famine caused outrage. The EIC was not particularly popular in Britain, but not for the principled reasons of opposition to colonial exploitation. Men like Robert Clive became incredibly wealthy thanks to Bengal – during the famine a staggering £1,086,255 (around £100 million in 2019 money) made its way to London from Bengal. Politicians and statesmen in Britain viewed this new generation of young, middle-class men as going to India, getting wealthy quickly, and returning to Britain with their riches which they would use to corrupt British politics. Showing their disdain for Indians, figures like John Despit complained of ‘nabobs’, (a corruption of nawab) using their wealth to bring an ‘Asian despotism’ to Britain. Former prime minister William Pitt, whose grandfather had profited from the EIC, is quoted as saying ‘The riches of Asia have been poured in upon us and have brought with them not only Asiatic luxury, but, I fear, Asiatic principles of government‘. EIC ‘nabobs’ like Clive would be ridiculed for corrupting the ‘pure’ British political system, but some attacks even brought in criticisms of colonialism itself. Clive began being charicatured as a vulture feeding on the bones of Indians, and the play The Nabob which portrays an insidious and devious nabob, obviously Clive, admitting to ousting Indians for personal gain. That is not to say that The Nabob is an anti-colonial text – it openly states that Asia ‘caught the Tatars in us’ – but one that positions the wealth made through colonialism as a corrupting force. Finally, the famine inspired Adam Smith in his landmark advocacy of capitalism, Wealth of Nations. Despite what capitalists would argue in the centuries to come Smith would advocate for certain forms of capitalism to be broken, especially monopolies. The Bengal Famine was prime evidence for that with him writing:

The drought in Bengal, a few years ago, might probably have occasioned a very great dearth. Some improper regulations, some injudicious restraints imposed by the servants of the East India Company upon the rice trade, contributed, perhaps, to turn that dearth into a famine. When the government, in order to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth, orders all the dealers to sell their corn at what it supposes a reasonable price, it either hinders them from bringing it to market, which may sometimes produce a famine even in the beginning of the season; or if they bring it thither, it enables the people, and thereby encourages them to consume it so fast as must necessarily produce a famine before the end of the season.

Smith, Wealth of Nations, 406-407

Here Smith, 250 years before Katrina, highlights the ‘no such thing as a natural disaster’ model. In a strange example of Smith running alongside an anti-capitalist critique, it was the EIC’s desire for profit and mismanagement that caused the famine. Where he diverges is that Smith argues that monopolies hinder the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market which he sees as the answer to the famine. Other writers highlight the same. Horace Walpole would write ‘we have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped – nay, what think you of the famine in Bengal, in which three millions perished, being caused by a monopoly of provisions by the servants of the East Indies.’ Clive would become the figurehead for EIC abuse, but he was just part of a larger system that was built on exploitation. When Clive killed himself in 1774 – there is a debate if him slicing his throat was intentional or accidental during a seizure or fit – famed writer Samuel Johnson dryly commented that Clive ‘had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat.’ Sadly, this disregard for life will continue in the history of capitalism and colonialism right to this day.

Other Events:

Other events happened in the third quarter of 1769. Here are some of them:

• July 3, the Industrial Revolution has another breakthrough when Richard Arkwright receives a patent for his spinning frame which can mechanically spin thread.
• In July the Spanish fully get their colonisation of California underway founding a mission close to what is now San Diego. In August a party would be the first Europeans to reach Santa Monica.
• July 20, the people of French Louisiana had been rebelling against the colony being handed over to the Spanish, so the Spanish sends an expeditionary force to ensure Louisiana submits to Spanish rule.
• August 15, on the island of Corsica a somewhat famous figure would be born – Napoleon Bonaparte.
• On August 18 a freak lighning bolt hit the Church of San Nazaro in Bresica, Lombardy. Inside the church was 90,000 kilograms of gunpowder which ignited and took out most of the city.

Bibliography:

Primary Sources

• Berrow’s Worcester Journal, (19/12/1771)
• The Caledonian Mercury, (27/03/1771)
• The Caledonian Mercury, (30/03/1771)
• Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Salvio Marcelo Soares, (Amsterdam: Metalibri, 2007)

Secondary Sources

• Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition and After: A History of Modern India, Second Edition, (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2015)
• Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, All is Well: Catastrophe and the Makings of the Normal State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)
• William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2019)
• Vinita Damodaran, ‘The East India Company, Famine and Ecological Conditions in Eighteenth-Century Bengal’, in Vinita Damodaran, Anna Winterbottom, and Alan Lester, (eds.), The East India Company and the Natural World, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015), 80-101
• Vinita Damodaran, ‘Famine in Bengal: A Comparison of the 1770 Famine in Bengal and the 1897 Famine in Chotanagpur’, The Medieval History Journal, 10: 1&2, (2007), 143-181
• Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, (London: Verso, 2001)
• Nicholas Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006)
• Irfan Habib, ‘The Eighteenth Century in Indian Economic History’, in P.J. Marshall, (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution?, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 100-122
• Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires, (eds.), There is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006)
• Senjuti Mallik, ‘The British East India Company and the Great Bengal Famine of 1770: Towards a Corporate Colonial Biopolitics’, Geographical Review, 114:4, (2024), 464-488
• Radhakumud Mookerji, ‘The Diwani and the Bengal Famine of 1770’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 7, (1944), 482-483
• Nick Robins, The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational, Second Edition, (London: Pluto Press, 2012)

Zoopedia: Red Tegu

This week we are heading to South America to look at one of the most charismatic lizards on the planet: the red tegu. Intelligent and being able to be trained has made red tegus popular as pets, although they are often overshadowed by their close relative the Argentinian black-and-white tegu.

Taxonomy and Evolution

There has been some taxonomic changes among tegus over the last decade as two species of tegu, the yellow and red, were moved from Tupinambis to Salvator. Red tegus have the scientific name Salvator rufescens meaning it belongs to the same genus as the black-and-white and yellow tegus. Tegus are not limited to one family of lizards being split between Teiidae and Gymnophthalmidae, although Salvator belongs to the Teiidae family. While they look like monitor lizards, they are not and belong to a distinct lineage that convergently evolved to fill a similar niche that monitors did in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The earliest fossils of Teiidae lizards come from the Eocene of Europe but then quickly vanish, something strange as Teiidae is not known from Europe. Palaeontologists have suggested that the Eocene European fossils were from populations that managed to migrate from the Americas over ocean currents.

Biology and Behaviour

Red tegus are very large lizards with males being much larger than the females. There is some contest between them and black-and-white tegus of which are bigger, but it seems that on average red tegus just slightly edge out black-and-white tegus. Adult males reach up to 140 cm (4.5 feet) in length and weights of 6.8 kilograms (15 pounds) with the females reaching 91 cm (3 feet). The males are also known for having large jowls which are used to show off before females and intimidate smaller males. As expected from their name, red tegus are red, with males having a more bright colouration compared to the females. Their bodies are also flecked with white spots and stripes across the body. Similar to snakes they have a forked tongue that ends with something called a Jacobson’s organ which, like in snakes, picks up scents that they can use to detect the world. Young tegus do not have a clear red scales as the adults, appearing more brown than red, and lack the sexual dimorphism of adults. There is one way to sex a tegu, and this is a small growth at the base of the tail for males which they retain to adulthood. Juveniles can also drop their tail, but it is not particularly common as tegus do not grow the tail back very well.

Like their other close relatives the red tegu is a relatively unique lizard. For one, they are highly intelligent and can even be trained. One red tegu called MacGyver became an internet celebrity as he was clicker trained and effectively acted as a dog. This has made them quite popular in the exotic pet trade, although MacGuyver had owners who knew what they were doing. Red tegus are intelligent, so need a lot of stimulation, and can be aggressive when they want to be. With sharp claws, a whip-like tail, a powerful bite, and the ability to run on two legs at predators when threatened an unsuspecting owner would be in for a rude shock thinking their tegu will be like MacGuyver. Those sharp claws are good for climbing, although they spend a lot of time on the ground and will use their claws to build burrows. They are diurnal, and will spend a good amount of the day sunning themselves.

When it comes to mating the red tegu does something interesting. Instead of just relying on the sun for heat they change their metabolism so their internal body temperature rises by 10 degrees Celsius which they internally maintain. For a brief moment they become warm-blooded. During winter months they go into a form of hibernation called brumation where their metabolism drops, and when they leave their burrows in the spring reproduction begins. Males will carve out a territory and will impress females with their impressive jowls. They will build a nest to lay their eggs. In areas where red tegus overlap with black-and-white tegus they will hybridise. When they hatch the juveniles grow fast reaching maturity in just a few years. If lucky they can live for 15 years in the wild.

Distribution and Habitat

Red tegus live in the forests and scrublands of Argentina, west Paraguay, and south Bolivia. In particular, they are known from an area known as the Chaco, a large area covering these three countries and a bit of southern Brazil made of savannahs and forests. While not universally hot all year around it is noted for going through periods of humidity to aridity, with red tegus going into brumation during harder periods of aridity. Due to pet owners being unable to handle them red tegus are now invasive in Florida and south Georgia where the year-round warm temperatures allow them to thrive.

Diet and Predators

Red tegus have a wide diet and are omnivorous. They eat a wide range of plant matter such as seeds, fruits, and nuts, but they can eat a wide range of animals including rodents, small birds, smaller lizards, and eggs. Adult tegus effectively do not have predators, but juveniles are hunted. Jaguars, cougars, peccaries, and birds have all eaten young tegus or their eggs. One paper found that red tegus were often eaten by the endangered Chaco eagle due to how many of their remains were found in Chaco eagle nests.

Conservation and Threats

The IUCN last assessed the red tegu in 2019 they have them a rating of ‘Least Concern’ due to their adaptability and how common they were. However, there are some warning signs. Most notably the population in the Chaco could be at risk due to habitat loss and the increasing periods of aridity caused by climate change. The pet trade can also pose risks. Most red tegus on the market are captive bred, but some are taken from the wild which is incredibly risky, leads to many deaths, and reduces the genetic diversity of wild tegus. Similarly, people will get tegus as pets and quickly realise they need intense care needs so will release them into the wild. This can doom the lizards to a quick death, and in areas they can survive they become invasive competing with local animals. If you are planning on getting one as a pet do not go into it lightly and be sure you are capable of actually looking after one.

Bibliography:

• ‘Red Tegu’, Racine Zoo, [Accessed 01/08/2026]
• Richard Bartlett, Monitors, Tegus, and Related Lizards, (Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1996)
• P. Cacciali, S. Carreira, L. Fitzgerald, F. Kacoliris, R. Montero, N. Pelegrin, N. Scott, J. Aparicio, J. Moravec, and L. Gonzales, ‘Red Tegu, Salvator rufescens‘, IUCN Red List, (02/07/2019), [Accessed 01/08/2026]
• Imanol Cabana, Margarita Chiaraviglio, Valeria Di Cola, Antoine Guisan, Olivier Broennimann, Cristina N. Gardenal and Paula C. Rivera, ‘Hybridization and hybrid zone stability between two lizards explained by population genetics and niche quantification’, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 190, (2020), 757-769
• Connecticut Science Center, ‘Meet the Animals: Cheeks the Red Tegu’, YouTube.com, (27/06/2023), [Accessed 02/08/2026]
• Nicolás M. Guardia, Julián Mignino, Agustín Zarco, Horacio Chiavazza, Camila Maccio, and José Manuel López, ‘Non-ingested vertebrate prey remains accumulated by the Chaco eagle (Buteogallus coronatus): neo-taphonomy to evaluate open-air faunal records in central western Argentina’, Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports, 54, (2024), 104437
• Catherine S. Jarnevich, Mark A. Hayes, Lee A. Fitzgerald, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Bryan G. Falk, Michelle A. M. Collier, Lea’ R. Bonewell, Page E. Klug, Sergio Naretto and Robert N. Reed, ‘Modeling the distributions of tegu lizards in native and potential invasive ranges’, Scientific Reports, 8:10193, (2018), DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-28468-w

Crime and Punishment: The Mafia Boss who Faked being Mentally Ill

In the late-1980s in Greenwich Village, Manhattan it was a common sight to see an older man in a shabby bathrobe and pajamas being escorted around the area by a couple people, sometimes by his brother Louis who was a Catholic priest. The man was Vincent Gigante, a former boxer and associate of the Genovese crime family who had been declared too mentally ill to stand trial since 1969. Gigante regularly was in and out of mental institutes, and was known for talking to himself and even peeing in the street. It was all a lie. For over twenty years Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante was not only perfectly sane, but was also one of the most powerful figures in American organised crime.

The Fives Families

Before we specifically discuss Gigante we have to discuss the infamous Five Families. The iconic coalition of organized crime families emerged from the Sicilian migrants communities that dotted around the large cities of the United States where poverty and discrimination forced many into crime. A potentially centuries old form of social organization called the mafia that had organized peasants during the wars of the nineteenth-century were taken over to the US with Sicilian men. Between 1890 and 1920 an estimated 4 million Italians arrived on American shores of which many were Sicilian – the rural and impoverished island meant a lot of young men left to the US to send money back home. Organized crime would get a dramatic boost in profitability from 1919 when the US Congress voted in favour of the Eighteenth Amendment which criminalised the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Thirsty Americans still demanded booze and criminal groups took advantage of this demand. Not only Sicilian but other Italian groups as well as Irish, Jewish, and African-Americans began profiting from controlling access to booze. The Italians, but especially the Sicilians, in the 1920s received a sudden influx of young men as Mussolini’s fascist state tried to eliminate organized crime groups, their existence created rival centres of power that Mussolini hoped to eliminate. The power of the mafia in Sicily meant a disproportionate amount of Sicilians fled, filling the ranks of specifically Sicilian gangs.

Profits soon grew and with that conflict. The Castellammarese War broke out in 1930 between the factions of two bosses – Giuseppe ‘Joe’ Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. The old school Sicilian mafia bosses refused to submit to one another, something which the younger, often American-born mafioso chaffed under. Within a year both Masseria and Maranzano were dead. Masseria, ‘Joe the Boss’ as he called himself, had alienated many younger mafisio for demanding $10,000 as a payment and a sign of submission which swung many behind Maranzano. Masseria was assassinated, but Maranzano took this as a sign that he should be capo di tutti capi, ‘the boss of bosses’. Before Maranzano could move on the other mafioso he was killed – assassins disguised as IRS agents arrested and then executed him on September 10, 1931. At a meeting in Chicago the heads of seven mafia families met forming a ‘board of directors’ for the mafia that would control the Sicilian-American organized crime families. They were Al Capone of Chicago, Buffalo’s Stefano Magaddino, and the new five families of New York: Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano (easily the most powerful of the New York mafia), Vincent Mangano, Joe Profaci, Joseph Bonnano, and Tommy Gagliano. The Castellammarese War was bloody and brought unwanted attention to the mafia, so the Commission was set up to negotiate and organise criminal activites to avoid another conflict.

Alongside creating the Commission and the New York Five Families this Chicago meeting also set up the structure of the mafia that lasts to this day. For one, the word ‘mafia’ was not to be used. Instead, when they needed to refer to the criminal underworld they had to say La Cosa Nostra or even just LCN, ‘Our thing’. When the FBI eventually began investigating the mafia they were so confused by this that they referred to it as ‘the LCN’ or ‘the La Cosa Nostra‘, ‘la‘ obviously meaning ‘the’ in Italian. Luciano and the new Commission continued some traits of the older Sicilian mafia – the head was the don, there would be an underboss second-in-command called a sattocapo, and being part of the family would be limited to Sicilians. However, there would be changes. Alongside the underboss there would be an advisor and diplomat called a consigliere. Below the underboss and consigliere were the capos – effectively captains who would oversee ‘made men’. Membership of the family was opened up for people of Sicilian or Italian descent, but family members were no longer barred from working with non-Sicilians. In fact, one of the most important ally of Lucky Luciano was as ‘associate’ called Meyer Lansky who was Polish-Jewish. Finally, there was omertà, a code of silence which prohibited made men from working with the police or ratting. Violation of omertà would be punished by death.

Vincent Gigante and the Genovese

Gigante during his boxing years

Vincent Gigante was part of a generation of mafioso that were born in the US, one that would replace the generation that were born in Sicily. Vincent was born on March 28, 1928 to Napolitan migrants Yolanda and Salvatore who had migrated to the US in 1920. On a family trip back to Naples in 1925 their infant son Vincent died from horrific burns caused by a falling pot of pasta, so when their fourth son was born Salvatore and Yolanda named this new son after their lost one. As a result, Yolanda nicknamed the child ‘Chenzino’ from the name ‘Vincenzino’, ‘Little Vincent’. It was this nickname that he got his later nickname, ‘Chin’. Growing up in Greenwich Village the Gigante’s were surrounded by a thriving Italian community with Yolanda raising all her children to be Catholics, the youngest Louis would eventually become a priest. However, like with many students from migrant working-class families, underfunding of schools meant Gigante would start skipping class despite having average grades, eventually dropping out of his sophomore year of high school. He would return back to education in a trade school, possibly following his father’s footsteps, but he would formally leave education at the age of 16.

Upon leaving education the listless Gigante would fall in with two things that would shape the rest of his life. The first, boxing. Gyms were, and still are, perfect third spaces for people to find themselves, and the six foot tall Gigante easily fit the build for a light heavyweight. Using the birth certificate of his deceased older brother Vincent got a boxing license while underage and began his short but successful boxing career. From 1944 to 1947 he fought 25 matches, winning 21 of those (including one by KO), and even fought at Madison Square Gardens. His brother, Ralph, would also follow him into the ring. During his boxing career he encountered the other thing that would shape his life – organized crime. Greenwich Village was not as wealthy as it would become years later, so many people resorted to crime of which gambling was one of the quickest ways to get rich. In the words of Father Louis, Vincent’s brother, ‘What did he do as a kid, sixteen years old? He was running crap games. A sin? Maybe, in the eyes of some jerks back then. Las Vegas—the whole world was gambling. This whole neighborhood was full of gamblers.‘ Running floating crap games meant he also had to kick some of his profits up the hierarchy of the local crime scene bringing him to the attention of a capo of the Luciano crime family.

Like many of the first generation of capos of the Five Families Vito Genovese had been born in Italy and rose through the ranks under Lucky Luciano. Under Luciano the Five Families had diversified its industries away from just alcohol to labour racketeering, prostitution, gambling, and drugs. Genovese would be an integral connection between European narcotics networks and the American market in New York. In 1936 Luciano was incarcerated and while Luciano would still be don the on-the-ground running of the family would be contested between Genovese and Frank Costello. Luckily for Costello the penchant for violence that Genovese had came back to bite him and in 1937 he fled to Italy to escape murder charges. Genovese would return to Greenwich Village in 1945 as Chin Gigante’s boxing career was underway. The boxer’s success with craps encouraged Genovese to bring Chin under his wing, and Gigante’s juvenile rap sheet now began to include bookmaking and car theft. It was long enough by his eighteenth birthday that he was seen as too ‘delinquent’ to be conscripted for Korea.

Early Rise to Prominence

The 1950s and 1960s would be a time of great change for the mafia. For a long time the FBI had no interest in investigating organized crime, the arch-reactionary J. Edgar Hoover hamstrung attempts by agents to look into the mafia to instead chase after communists and civil rights activists. In 1950 Senator Estes Kefauver chaired the new Special Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in the United States, aka the Kefauver Committee, whose filmed interviews with crime bosses, and even Frank Sinatra, brought public awareness of organized crime. It was the first time the public would learn of iconic terms like don, omertà, and capo di tutti capi. Kefauver would famously state that ‘There is a sinister criminal organization known as the Mafia operating throughout the country with ties in other nations in the opinion of the committee‘. One of those made to testify was Luciano boss Frank Costello. While uncomfortable with the limelight Costello had other worries, namely that of Vito Genovese who resented Costello’s rise at his expense. Since Lucky Luciano was deported to Italy in 1946 Costello had been don, but Genovese’s influence was certainly threatening. He was proven right. On the evening of May 2, 1957 Costello walked into the lobby of the building where his luxury apartment was, and as he reached the elevator he heard behind him, ‘This is for you, Frank’. Turning around he heard the sound of a ‘firecracker’ and then felt a burning sensation over his face which led him tumbling to the ground. He had been shot in the face. Costello survived and three months later his would-be assassin was arrested – Vincent Gigante.

Gigante’s resourcefulness had made him a valuable asset to Genovese. By the age of 29 he was one of Genovese’s right-hand men, was married to Olympia Grippa with several kids, and also had a mistress (confusingly also called Olympia). With the two Olympias he would father eight children. It was clear that Gigante had been ordered to kill Costello, and in the court trial Costello kept to omertà by insisting he never saw anything. Unable to convict Gigante was found not guilty, supposedly on his way out of the courthouse Gigante said to Costello, ‘Thanks a lot, Frank’. Costello soon after resigned and handed all power to Genovese. Cementing his power the Luciano Family was now called the Genovese Family. His new reign was short. In 1959 Genovese and Gigante were put on trial for selling heroin and found guilty. Gigante would have had a much longer sentence than his seven years if the court had not been deluged with letters from Greenwich Village residents attesting to Gigante’s good character and charity work. That charity work never happened. By this time Gigante’s brothers, except for Louis, were made men and likely orchestrated a campaign. Gigante was paroled within five years, although Genovese would remain behind bars. A little thing like prison would not stop a mafia boss who continued to rule the family, even organising hits. Gigante would even be promoted, becoming a capo shortly after his release.

Insanity and the Don

In September 1963 a Genovese soldier Joseph Valachi appeared before a senate subcommittee where he revealed the history of the Cosa Nostra. Valachi had been incarcerated for selling heroin and became paranoid that Genovese would send a hitman after him. Valachi ended up beating a man to death who he thought was a Genovese hitman only to find out they were a bystander. Desperate to avoid the death penalty Valachi turned witness hoping he would get a lighter sentence. It is no coincidence that around this time Vincent Gigante had his first trip to a mental institute. It was the first of many trips to asylums and institutes that would be used by Gigante to show that he was mentally ill. Some of the ways he tried to prove that he was ill were ridiculous – accepting a subpoena while visiting Yolanda officers found him standing in the shower while holding an umbrella. It somehow worked. Psychologists regularly confirmed his inability to stand trial, and when given a subpoena in 1969 he was legally classified as being unable to stand trial. Despite it all, Gigante was now legally unfit for trial.

In 1969 Vito Genovese died and he was succeeded by Philip Lombardo. The new don confirmed something that started under Genovese that Gigante would perfect – having a false front. Lombardo would use trusted associates to be a front, sometimes even representing him at Commission meetings, so authorities would hunt for the wrong boss. Meanwhile, Gigante’s front of being mentally ill was working well. He had his brother Father Louis on his arm escorting him across Greenwich Village, being particularly good at monopolising gambling. He got rich from it, taking 50% of the profits from gambling. With two families at the same time he was a busy man. In 1976 Sammy Gravano, later John Gotti’s right-hand, met with Gigante to discuss business where he found out that Gigante was no longer a capo, he was consigliere. The Genovese were notoriously secretive to even other Families, so it was not unusual that Gravano was so shocked to find out Gigante was a consigliere. At a mini-Commission meeting in the mid-1970s Gravano recalled that Gigante turned up in a suit, complaining that these meetings were at risk of being bugged and gatherings should be about life-and-death issues. Apparently, he said ‘I’ve put a lot of time into this crazy act, and I don’t want to get caught in any of these meetings or picked up or bugged‘.

Chin the Boss

Vincent and Louis

In 1981 Philip Lombardo resigned as boss due to ill health, and Gigante was promoted to boss. One of America’s most powerful gangsters pretended to shuffle in his pajamas by day, and organised a ruthless capitalist organization at night. Specifically at night – he believed the FBI clocked off at midnight so he held meetings at midnight. As his front he appointed ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno. Gigante oversaw a vast empire comprising of gambling, heroin trafficking, extortion, labour racketeering, payoffs from merchants at the Fulton Fish Market, and old fashioned fraud. A joint venture with the other Five Families the mob owned a series of garbage collection companies which competed with each other due to New York’s privatised refuse collection system. They would carve out areas, get bids, and foot the bill to the government. On top of that they would do bid rigging for government construction projects. Again, using mob-affiliated companies, they would decide which company would be awarded a contract beforehand, and that family would receive the profits. If a project was meant to cost $10 million then these bids would inflate it to $15 million allowing the mob to take in the excess $5 million, capitalism at its finest. If a non-mob company tried to put a bid in, their control over unions, especially the carpentry union, would force said company to back out. Over the 1980s prosecutors estimated the mob took in $150 million through this venture.

Gigante was ruthless. On top of having a fake don with Fat Tony Salerno he implemented a ban on saying his name. When someone was to say his name they had to point to their chin or make a ‘c’ with their hand. Those who violated this rule could be killed, or at least beaten. He had organised the killings of several high ranking members of the Philadelphia mob, including the boss Angelo Bruno, which put a Genovese loyalist in power. Not only did this make Philadelphia’s family subservient to Gigante, but it also brought the Philadelphia family’s extensive gambling interests in Atlantic City under Genovese control. Gigante also came close to killing another don. In 1985 Gambino boss Paul Castellano, also a personal friend of Gigante, was murdered and his position was quickly filled by John Gotti. Gigante was furious. Only the Commission could plan the death of a Five Families don, and Gotti had done so behind their backs. Working with the Lucchese Family a bomb was planted to take out Gotti, but a change in Gotti’s plans meant the bomb killed Gotti’s underboss, Frank DeCicco. Despite his ruthlessness, Gigante was well respected. Gigante was making so much from scamming the government and taking cuts from the docks that he never pressed his underlings for a bigger cut, and his insights impressed the other dons.

In 1983 the new US Attorney in New York City Rudy Giuliani, long before his disgrace, wanted to smash the mob. In 1970 the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was made to smash organized crime, and Giuliani aimed to use it against the Five Families. This culiminated in the 1985 Mafia Commission Trial which saw twelve bosses, underbosses, consiglieres, and capos put on trial. The state thought they were putting on trial the bosses of each family, although Paul Castellano would be murdered during the trial, but they put on trial Fat Tony Salerno. The fake don never spoke, and Gigante’s ploy worked. This is despite the fact that people had been recorded mentioning Gigante, including Salerno. Not caught at the time, but one tape caught Salerno talking about a list of men who were shortlisted to become made men. Salerno said ‘I’ll leave this to the boss’. Something overlooked in 1986 would become important years later.

From Boss of Bosses to Prison

Gigante survived the Mafia Commission Trial unscathed. By the early-1990s he was effectively capo di tutti capi. The Bonnano family were part of the Commission but had been unable to vote since the 1970s when the level of their infiltration by the police had been revealed; the Colombo had descended into a civil war; the Lucchese bosses had been arrested; and John Gotti’s ego had painted a target on the Gambinos ending with his prosecution in 1992. This led the Genovese to be the undisputed most powerful family. However, Gigante’s power was coming to an end. On top of heart issues which meant he had to go into surgery in 1986 a Genovese soldier broke omertà. Vincent Cafaro was facing RICO charges, and had been close to Fat Tony so he used the information that he had to turn witness for a lighter sentence. Around the same time, a drug raid caught Bobby Faranga with $20,000 worth of coke who quickly ratted on one of Gigante’s close aids Pete Savino. Like Cafaro, he did not want to spend the rest of his life in prison so also turned. In 1990 charges were put against Gigante based on these witness testimonies and the finding of references to him in other tape recordings.

The trial of Gigante would stretch over seven years. The main reason was that it took a long time for Gigante to be seen as being mentally well enough to stand trial. In one of the first court appearances he commented ‘what a beautiful wedding’. Psychiatrists went back and forth declaring him to be unwell and declaring him fit to stand trial. The New York tabloids loved this and Gigante got the nickname ‘The Oddfather’. Meanwhile, his brother Louis would organise a campaign to keep Gigante classified as being mentally unwell. By the 1990s Gigante was genuinely sick, already having one heart surgery. The defence hoped that dragging out the trial would show to juries that Gigante’s health was failing and would prove that Gigante was indeed unwell. However, this backfired. As the 1990s wore on more and more high-ranking mafioso turned and broke omertà, including Gotti’s right-hand Sammy Gravano, who also confirmed that Gigante was faking his illness. In 1996, the same year he had a second heart surgery, Gigante was declared fit to stand trial and was found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy the following year. However, it took until 2003 for him to admit he faked his illness. His son, Andrew, was accused of helping his father run the Genovese Family from prison, so Vincent confessed to save his son.

With that Vincent Gigante’s long ploy came to an end. He on December 19, 2005 at the age of 77. His other brothers faced prison times for their position in the Family, and Louis would also face charges in 2021 for even worse crimes. He was accused of touching children in the 1960s and 1970s but died before the trial could get underway. With that, the strangest case in American organized crime history came to an end.

Bibliography:

Primary Sources

• ‘COSTELLO CASE LEAD; Local Gambler Is Wanted for Questioning in Shooting’, New York Times, (17/07/1957)
• ‘Gigante Pleads Not Guilty’, New York Times, (30/08/1957)
• ‘Mob “Oddfather” Vincent Gigante Found Guilty’, Star-Gazette, (26/07/1997), 3
• Ralph Blumenthal, ‘Verdict is Termed a Blow to the Mafia’, New York Times, (20/11/1986)
• Alexander Feinberg, ‘Genovese Is Given 15 Years in Prison In Narcotics Case; Genovese and 14 Others Given Stiff Terms in Narcotics Case’, New York Times, (18/04/1959)
• Patricia Hurtado, ‘Takes It on the Chin’, Newsday, (26/07/1997), 3
• Selwyn Raab, ‘Strange Old Man on Sullivan St.: New Mob Power’, New York Times, (03/02/1988)
• Selwyn Raab, ‘Family Asks Judge to Find Mafia Boss Ill’, New York Times, (29/12/1989)

Secondary Sources

• ‘America’s Crazy Mob Boss: Vincent “Chin” Gigante’, The Underworld Podcast, (20/01/2026)
• Jay Albanese, ‘The Italian-American Mafia’, in Letizia Paoli, (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 142-158
• James Jacobs and Elizabeth Dondlinger Wyman, ‘Organized Crime Control in the United States of America’, in Letizia Paoli, (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 529-544
• Larry McShane, Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mafia Boss Vincent Gigante, (New York, NY: Kensington Publishing, 2016)
• Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2005)

Zoopedia: Bull Shark

As I am writing this post it is Shark Week 2026 so to mark the occasion we will be looking at one of the best known species of shark – the bull shark. Also known as the cub shark, Lake Nicaragua shark, the Zambezi shark, and the ground shark they are incredibly unique among sharks for being able to live for extended periods of time in freshwater. This has allowed them to inhabit a large range of habitats that sharks normally cannot go into, ranging from the swamps of the Everglades to the roaring Ganges to the Zambezi.

Taxonomy and Evolution

Bull sharks have the scientific name Carcharhinus leucas sharing their genus with a wide range of other sharks. Their relatives include blacktip reef sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks, and sandbar sharks. We have a rich fossil history for the genus Carcharhinus which has allowed palaeontologists to trace their evolutionary back a staggering 42 million years to the early Miocene epoch making this genus a particularly old one. They belong to a family of sharks called Carcharhinidae, the requiem sharks, which are known for their sleek, torpedo-shaped bodies. This family is even older than the genus dating back to the Cretaceous.

Biology and Behaviour

While bull sharks are dwarfed by some of the largest species of shark, like great whites and tigers, they are still large sharks. Like with many sharks the females are large reaching between 1.8 and 2.3 metres to the 1.57 to 2.26 metres of the males. They are heavy sharks reaching up to 111 kilograms, almost twice my weight. Bull sharks are one of the sharks that have the stereotyical ‘shark-shape’: torpedo bodies, a triangular dorsal fin, large fins, and a grey body. Their teeth are quasi-triangular and are constantly replaced, and at one time bull sharks have about 60 teeth. For its size bull sharks have one of the most powerful bite forces of all sharks, having a bite force exceeding 5,900 Newtons! Bull sharks have quite small eyes, but they instead rely on their superb sense of smell and hearing. With them often moving into freshwater, which is often murkier than saltwater making it harder to see, the sense of smell and hearing is far more valuable than sight. However, this also means bull sharks also detect the world by biting…

Bull sharks have a very unique biology for sharks. Almost all sharks, with the exception of one genus, are marine, but bull sharks can freely move from saltwater into freshwater. Most of the time when humans encounter bull sharks it is when they are in freshwater. In New Jersey in 1916 a series of shark attacks happened around the coast and brakish water which has been theorised as being due to a bull shark attacking swimmers. Bull sharks have several specialised organs which helps regulate salt and sodium levels in their body which allows them to live for extended periods of time in freshwater. They can live for years in freshwater, so much so that bull sharks found in Lake Nicaragua were once thought to belong to their own species.

During breeding seasons, normally in summer and autumn, the sharks move to bays and estuaries. A paper published just this year found that bull sharks in Fiji would return to the same sites year after year with many being born at those sites. Courtship is a dangerous game. When a female shark is receptive she begins swimming slowly to allow the males to mate, but to mate males often have to bite onto females. Many female bull sharks have scars from previous mating seasons caused by too eager partners. Gestation lasts for 10 to 12 months and will give birth to live young, but these young develop in a yolk-sac placenta. Litters of pups vary in size from just one pup to thirteen, who are born around 50 cm in length. The pups will either swim into freshwater or will stay in the estuary where larger predators cannot reach them. They grow quickly, within the first five years they grow 5 to 10 centimetres a year until they reach maturity by age 15. If lucky they can live for 30 years.

Distribution and Habitat

Bull sharks are found in warm waters preferring waters that reach 26 degrees Celsius at a minimum. They are capable of migrating, and those on the eastcoast of the US will migrate south in the autumn as the more northern waters get colder. Bull sharks are not deepwater sharks preferring to stay near coasts where they do not need to compete with larger sharks, like tiger sharks and great whites. They are found across the Caribbean, South America, eastcoast of the US, Africa, Indian Ocean, and south Pacific. Due to their ability to live in freshwater they are found in rivers across the world including the Amazon, Zambezi, Ganges, Mississippi, and even the Tigris. Some have been known to swim very far upstream with one in 1924 swimming up the Tigris so far that it reached Baghdad! Hurricanes and storms have also left some bull sharks stranded in lakes with a few Australian golf courses having issues of shark infested lakes.

Diet and Predators

Bull shark diet is a simple one to explain: they eat everything. A few aquariums do have them, but they are not popular as they are liable to eat their tank mates. If it is edible and they can fit it in their jaws they will eat it. Most of their diet consists of fish, but they will also eat smaller sharks (including bull sharks), birds, turtles, sea mammals, sea urchins, starfish, and even cattle. Cows and sheep swimming in the Ganges, Mississippi and Rio Bravo have been attacked by bull sharks. As bull sharks live in freshwater and coastal areas this also means they disproportionally interact with humans making them one of the three shark species that attack humans the most – the others being tiger sharks and great whites. Bull sharks do have predators, mainly bigger sharks and orcas. Baby bull sharks can also be attacked by crocodiles, alligators, and large fish.

Conservation and Threats

In 2020 the IUCN Red List assessed bull sharks and declared them to be ‘Vulnerable’ with a decreasing population. This means in the near future we could see bull sharks becoming an incredibly endangered animal. Hunting and being caught as bycatch has devastated bull shark numbers, especially as they live so close to where humans normally live. Climate change is also impacting bull shark numbers as changing ocean currents impact their migration routes, and also the routes their prey take. Finally, human pollution and development, especially around coasts, also impacts bull shark populations. Some of their habitats are protected, such as around Fiji and Cuba, but more need to be done to protect bull sharks.

Bibliography:

• Kristi Cascio, ‘Carcharhinus leucas, Cub Shark’, Animal Diversity Web, (02/05/2017), [Accessed 20/07/2026]
• David A. Ebert, Marc Dando and Sarah Fowler, Sharks of the World, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013)
• Kerstin Glaus, Laura Benestan, Juerg Brunnschweiler, Floriaan Devloo-Delva, Sharon A. Appleyard and Ciro Rico, ‘Female site fidelity and repeated pairings across years in bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) inhabiting Fiji waters’, Royal Society Open Science, 13:6, 252115
• Philip Matich, Jeffrey D. Plumlee, Walter Bubley, Tobey H. Curtis, J. Marcus Drymon, Lindsay L. Mullins, Oliver N. Shipley, Thomas C. TinHan, and Mark R. Fisher, ‘Long-term effects of climate change on juvenile bull shark migratory patterns’, Journal of Animal Ecology, 93:10, (2024), 1407-1605
• C.L. Rigby, M. Espinoza, D. Derrick, N. Pacoureau, and M. Dicken, ‘Bull Shark, Carcharhinus leucas‘, IUCN Red List, (24/11/2020), [Accessed 22/07/2026]
• Amy F. Smoothey, Yuri Niella, Craig Brand, Victor M. Peddemors, and Paul A. Butcher, ‘Bull Shark (Carcharhinus leucas) Occurrence along Beaches of South-Eastern Australia: Understanding Where, When and Why’, Biology, 12:1189, (2023)