Month / July 2012

by mondaymorgue

Common Palm Civet

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Common Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus)
Buona Vista, 3rd July 2012

This carcass of a Common Palm Civet was retrieved by N. Sivasothi on behalf of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (RMBR), and he shared a photo on Twitter. It’s likely that this was a roadkilled individual, as it was found on a busy road, and the head had been smashed in.

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by mondaymorgue

Lesser Dog-faced Fruit Bat

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Lesser Dog-faced Fruit Bat (Cynopterus brachyotis)
Pulau Ubin, 22nd June 2012

This carcass of a Lesser Dog-faced Fruit Bat (also known as the Common Fruit Bat) was found by Rene Ong, who shared her photos of it on Facebook.

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by mondaymorgue

Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus) (?)
Simei, 2nd June 2012

This photograph of a rat carcass in a carpark was shared by Sankar Ananthanarayanan. A possible roadkill, it had clearly been run over several times by passing motor vehicles.

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Due to the relatively short tail, my guess is that this carcass could belong to the species known as the Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus), also sometimes called the Common or Norway Rat. Despite its name, it is believed to have originated in northeast Asia.

by mondaymorgue

Domestic Dog

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Domestic Dog (Canis lupus familiaris)
Mandai, 31st May 2012

This photograph of a carcass of a domestic dog washed up in the mangroves at Mandai was shared by Dan Friess on Twitter. From the bloating and loss of hair, it had clearly spent some time in the water.

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by mondaymorgue

Discus

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Discus (Symphysodon sp.)
Potong Pasir, 7th March 2012

This dead discus, a South American cichlid native to the Amazon Basin, was seen at the foot of an apartment block by Alvin Lim, who took a photo and shared it on Instagram.

There was no water nearby, and my guess is that this was not an abandoned pet. It’s possible that this was a case of a fish jumping out of a tank placed close to a window, only to end up falling all the way to the foot of the block. Alternatively, the fish could have died in the aquarium, only to be dumped out of the window instead of being tossed into the trash or flushed down the toilet bowl.

It is also possible that this discus fish had been released into a nearby canal or pond, only to get snatched and subsequently dropped by a piscivorous bird like a kingfisher, heron, or raptor. We probably won’t know for sure.

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The vast majority of discus seen in aquariums are captive-bred varieties that have undergone intensive artificial selection for distinctive colours and patterns. The taxonomy of discus in the wild is still unclear, but most traditional references list 2 species; consequently, the nomenclature regarding domestic varieties (some of which might be hybrids between discus belonging to different populations or even species) also requires further clarification.

Most of the Discus seen in the ornamental fish trade originate from one or more of the colour forms typically classified under the Blue Discus (Symphysodon aequifasciatus):