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TAVISHI

I cannot deny it anymore. I am an American.

My geography is god awful, and this is me taking accountability for it. RVC has a LOT of international students, and I quickly realized that my European geography knowledge is terrible, despite me having taken AP Euro last year (sorry, Mr. Estes.)

Anyways, I genuinely could not locate Belgium on a map which is frankly, embarassing. In order to fix this, I'm making myself do a European geography Anki. It's still not really sticking well, but animals always help me remember things, so this blog post is just me talking about wildlife from a bunch of countries.

One of my roommates is from Cyprus! Cyprus is a small island just south of Turkey, and its capital city is Nicosia.

For my own brain, I remember Cyprus because it is in the range of the Mediterranean monk seal! The Mediterranean monk seal has been found a little bit in other parts of the North Atlantic, but it is most commonly found near Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. The scientific name for the Mediterranean monk seal is Monachus monachus, and it is one of the most endangered pinniped species, rivaled only by the Hawaiian monk seals. All the monk seals have horrible luck, considering the Caribbean monk seal went extinct in the 20th century :(.

The Mediterranean monk seal is found in Cyprus most in the Akamas peninsula. These seals breed and pup in caves (Polyphemus much?), and some of their most important breeding caves are on the Akamas peninsula, which is in northwestern Cyprus.

Another country which has Mediterranean monk seals is Croatia- Croatia has a much less prevalent population than Cyprus, but prevalent is a word I would scarcely use to describe the Mediterranean monk seal in the first place.

The capital of Croatia is Zagreb, and even though I do know Croatia for its pinnipeds, I know it better for its 2024 Eurovision submission, Rim Tim Tagi Dim by Baby Lasagna. Very good song, kind of like techno-metal, and it mentioned a cat several times.

Ice Skating Society is about to go on a trip to Iceland, which is pretty cool! I'm not sure where exactly they're headed. The capital of Iceland is Reyjkyavik, and its official language is Icelandic.

Iceland has a bunch of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) and gray seals (Halichoerus grypus). These species have pupping sites on Icleand, but other species of pinnipeds can be found around the island, too. I am also now realizing that when I said European wildlife, I really just meant European pinnipeds. Oops.

Iceland is also occasionally visited by other Arctic pinnipeds like the walrus (Odobenus rosmarus), harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus), bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), and hooded seal (Cystophora cristata). These are really cool pinnipeds. Personally, I've never seen any of these, but would love to. A cool one of these species is the bearded seal, which has square foreflippers and a lot of whiskers (hence the name). The first Kradigan post on this website (after the Great Platform Shift of 2024) was about bearded seal vocalizations:

https://www.kradigan.org/post/bearded-seal-vocalizations

I also have a friend from Belgium who will say he's not from Belgium because he doesn't have a Belgian passport but he is still sorta from Belgium. Being from somewhere is a very loose phrase, though. Anyways, the capital of Belgium is Brussels, and it borders France and the Netherlands.

Belgium has a very cool extinct pininped- Callophoca obscura! Uh, pinniped fossils are kinda funky in the sense that there's a lot of discussion over taxonomy and classifications, but I'm not really a paleontologist. I did have a huge dinosaur phase as a child, but I do love extinct pinnipeds still. C. obscura is known for being huge and having sharp teeth that are very effective at ripping prey flesh. The range of C. obscura extends even to the north Atlantic off the east coast of AMERICA!

The Netherlands is a very cool place with a lot of Arctic pinnipeds, with all the same species mentioned with Iceland. The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, but I remember them because of Stichtig Zeehondencentrum Pieterburen, which isn't actually in Pieterburen anymore, but Lauwersoog. This is a really cool seal rehab center, and I love all their patients. Their first pup of the year was named Dropje, and their theme for this seal pup season is Dutch food. Anyways, here's Dropje:

No discussion of European pinnipeds is complete without Russia, because Russia is kind of hoarding all the freshwater seals.

Russia is home to the only exclusively freshwater pinniped species in the world: the Baikal seal, or Pusa sibirica, which is said to have broken off from the ringed seal a million years ago. The Baikal seal lives exclusively in, well, Lake Baikal. The Russian word used to refer to Baikal seals or seals in general is нерпа.

Russia also has the Ladoga ringed seal, Pusa hispida ladogensis, a subspecies of ringed seal found only in Lake Ladoga. These seals are not yet genetically distinct enough from the ringed seal, but they are separated from the main population of ringed seal (Pusa hispida).

Speaking of freshwater seals, there is yet another group of freshwater ringed seal found in Finland. The capital of Finland is Helsinki, and if you get a PhD in Finland, you get a sword. I want a sword.

This ringed seal subspecies is the Saimaa ringed seal, Pusa hispida saimensis, and it's found only in Lake Saimaa. Lake Saimaa (yellow) and Lake Ladoga (pink) are very close together, as you can see on the map below, which indicates that these freshwater ringed seals may have evolved from populations of the other. However, fossil evidence suggests that Saimaa ringed seals are actually a lot older than Ladoga ringed seals, which is really interesting. Pretty much all the big-eyed looking seals near Russia evolved from adaptive radiation-esque mechanisms with the ringed seal as a common ancestor.

There are only this many countries in Europe. Landlocked nations are NOT real. Get that liberal nonsense out of your head!!!

Anyways, fun fact!!! This is the 100th Kradigan post!!!!