What I’ve Been Doing

by JR Kinyak on October 27, 2011

in Carnivores,Operations

Roll of tigers in progress

I’ve been wanting to write a post about the animals killed near Zanesville, Ohio, last week, but I’m not sure how to say everything I want to say. I did have the idea, though, to draw a tribute to the 49 unfortunate mammals who died, and I’ve been working on it the past several days, which is one reason why there hasn’t been a Daily Mammal for a while.

Tigers in progress

So far, I’ve drawn 14 of the 18 Bengal tigers, though I have yet to color them. I’m not going to color them as elaborately as I do the Daily Mammals, and you can see that I was a lot more general with my line work, too. After the tigers, I’ll draw the 17 lions. Lions are sexually dimorphic and eight of them were lionesses, so they won’t be as monotonous as the tigers. But drawing the tigers has become a bit of a sacred act, in a way, an act of witness and regret.

Tagged as: about drawing, humans, lions, tigers, zanesville

{ 3 comments }

Golden-rumped Elephant Shrew (Rhynchocyon chrysopygus)

by JR Kinyak on October 11, 2011

in Other Orders

Golden-rumped elephant shrew (click image to enlarge)


0398

Here is the golden-rumped elephant shrew, which is also known as a golden-rumped sengi, or a yellow-rumped either one of those. It’s not actually related to the shrews, although it is related to the elephants, distantly. Some things I’ve learned about this fellow:

1. Translating its scientific name at the website of a zoology course at the University of Alberta, I see that this sengi’s official name means snout-dog golden-rump. (Pygos means rump, and is found in the word callipygian, “having well-shaped buttocks,” which is one of those words that middle-schoolers delight in discovering in the dictionary.)

2. The rump is golden for a reason. That pretty blond fur covers a padded area of super-tough skin. The idea seems to be that predators will be attracted to the golden glow and bite there, rather than somewhere that might hurt more.

3. The golden-rumped sengi lives only in a tiny area of coastal Kenya.

4. It’s number 46 on the EDGE list of the top 100 evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered mammals—in other words, this endangered species is particularly irreplaceable.

5. This elephant shrew is monogamous, which is quite rare for a small mammal, or indeed, any mammal.

6. It can be very difficult to distinguish between the members of the Rhynchocyon genus, also known as the giant forest sengis, in the field, but the California Academy of Sciences has a page dedicated to helping you tell them apart.

7. According to the American Society of Mammalogists’ species account of this elephant shrew,

“If mildly disturbed, Rhynchocyon freezes until the danger passes, or, if further disturbed, it walks away while loudly slapping the leaf litter with its tail every 1 to 3 seconds. If pursued, Rhynchocyon takes flight using a swift half-bound gait…hammering the leaf litter loudly with its rear legs, and producing a characteristic “crunch, crunch, crunch” sound as it disappears.”

8. The golden-rumped elephant shrew is diurnal, or active during the day, and spends its nights in a nest it builds on the forest floor. For some reason, it requires a new nest every other day or so. It builds the new nest in the morning, and the construction takes about two hours.

Below is Coco’s golden-rumped elephant shrew. See you tomorrow!

Golden-rumped elephant shrew by Coco, age 12

Tagged as: coco, elephant, endangered, names, words

{ 4 comments }

Random Rodent: Acacia Rat (Thallomys paedulcus)

by JR Kinyak on October 10, 2011

in Operations,Rodents

Acacia rat (click image to enlarge)


0397

I know you’ve heard it before, but the rodents are a problem. They account for some 40 percent of the mammals, and nearly all of them are small beige lumps. Many of them have evaded photographers up to now, so I often have to base my drawing on a related rodent but make changes based on the descriptions I can find. It’s often hard to force myself to draw a one of the little guys when I could be drawing a monkey or a carnivore. So every now and then, I’ll be letting random.org choose a rodent for me to draw to add the element of chance.

Today’s mammal, chosen by random.org from all the rodents I have yet to draw, is the acacia rat, which lives in sub-Saharan Africa in trees, likely acacias, wouldn’t you think? According to the IUCN, “Thallomys paedulcus possibly represents a complex of several similar species. Further studies are needed to clarify the taxonomic status of populations currently allocated to this species,” so there’s another taxonomic quandary for us to ignore for now.

Acacia rats apparently make good pets—as good as our fancy rats Earl Grey and Doctor Who, according to some people.

Tagged as: random, rat, taxonomy

{ 5 comments }

Becoming a Naturalist: Owl Eyes (Athene cunicularia)

by JR Kinyak on October 8, 2011

in Theme Weeks

Burrowing owl (click image to enlarge)

A few years ago, I bought a copy of Mammal Tracks and Sign, which includes a sidebar about the importance of having a basic comfort with and knowledge of the natural world before you can start to track. The book recommended a program called Kamana, an at-your-own-pace naturalist training program. I asked my husband Ted for the program for Christmas and got it, and then I did nothing with it for a couple of years.

Then we adopted our kids, Theo and Coco, and then we realized that the best bet for them was homeschooling. We homeschooled Theo last year, and this year his sister joined up. I brought out my Kamana book and all four of us started working through it as a major part of our homeschool curriculum.

And it’s amazing! The first book is divided into two “trails.” The first, which we’ve completed, is about becoming more aware of your surroundings. The exercises in it have been so helpful and fun to us. We’ve just started the second trail, which involves learning about the different life forms in our area. (We are stalled on the mammal chapter at the moment, strangely enough.)

In part of the book, you practice using your senses in a new way, and you look to various animals as inspiration. The kids and I drew the animals we were learning from, and I thought I’d share them with you as a special series on the Daily Mammal. (I don’t know where Theo’s drawings are so I haven’t scanned them, but if he gives them to me, maybe you’ll be able to see them in some of these posts. In the meantime, enjoy Coco’s beautiful work.)

The first tool we practiced using was our Owl Eyes. Because of their shape, owls’ eyes are fixed in place: owls move their heads instead of their eyes. When we practiced Owl Eyes, we literally perched, on a wall, a rock, or the couch, and kept our eyes still, relaxing until we could make full use of our peripheral vision, which let us see the sky, the ground, and all around without moving. When we did want to look somewhere else, we moved our head instead of our eyes. You can take in more than you think using just the “corners” of your eyes if you practice. This can be useful out in the field if you catch some movement and don’t want to startle an animal by suddenly turning your head. Owl Eyes was the first step toward broadening our awareness in general: we’re learning to notice not just what’s directly in front of us, but the bigger picture.

Below is Coco’s barn owl. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more beautiful drawing, honestly.

Barn owl by Coco, age 12

Tagged as: coco, naturalist, nonmammal, theo

{ 4 comments }

Short-eared Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus caninus)

by JR Kinyak on October 5, 2011

in Marsupials,Operations

Short-eared brushtail possum (click image to enlarge)

0396

I drew this fellow last week, and just now, sitting down to research him, I ended up tumbling about in my books and online, finding not a lot about the possum—he’s a marsupial who lives in a little-bitty sliver of eastern Australia—but several other bits and pieces somewhat related to the species, which is also known as the bobuck.

For instance, as a spiritual totem, the short-eared brushtail possum could be associated with “mushroom and fungi energy” and both “broadcasting yourself” and “retreating into dark places.” (I don’t mean to sound overly snarky. I’m not into totem animals…at all…well, I don’t know, maybe I am, not in terms of religion or spirituality or trances or deep oneness of the soul, but in terms of affinities and identification, I could get into it. I relate to tree kangaroos and sloths. But I don’t go for the new-agey part of it. Anyway, the woman who runs the above-linked site says she noticed a glut of information about wolves as spirit animals and a lack of attention to marsupial moles, and I love that.) Isn’t the illustration of the possum at that link gorgeous? I quite like it.

Also, I learned that there’s a taxonomic quandary of some kind around this possum. You can read a bit about it at the Australian Museum’s website, but I’m not going to get sucked in. Basically, I just blindly draw the mammals listed in the Smithsonian’s Mammal Species of the World, and that’s that.

Speaking of that list, finding the link to it just now has alerted me that the website has been updated and now has a searchable database. I’ve been working off the spreadsheet they used to have available for download. Now I’ll have to decide whether or not to merge my old list with the new. You think that you can just say, “I know what would be neat—I’m going to draw all the mammals in the world!” But it turns out to be much more complicated than that.

Finally, I picked this possum out of my copy of Furred Animals of Australia, published in the United States in 1947, a book that I’ve referred to often in the past but haven’t thought much about. This time, I decided to Google the author, Ellis Troughton, wondering if he might be a naturalist of the adventurous, tall-tale variety. I don’t think he is, necessarily, but I did learn that he served in World War I in France from 1916 to 1919, and that during World War II he investigated scrub typhus in New Guinea. (I’m not entirely sure what the implications of that fact are.) He was the Australian Mammal Society’s first Honorary Life Member. (Is that a society of mammals? Aren’t they all?) And most perplexing of all, I found a solitary reference, in an interview with a physiologist conducted by the Australian Academy of Science, to Ellis Troughton being nicknamed “Naughty Troughty,” which I guess might rhyme in Australia. Why was he called that? I have no idea. I wish I did, though.

These bits of information inspired me to go through the introductory and…stuff-at-the-end material of Furred Animals of Australia in a quest for more about Mr. Troughton. (What is the word for stuff in the front and back of a book that isn’t the main part of the book? I can’t think of it.) I found, in the back, “Collecting Hints,” in which Mr. Troughton tells us how to preserve the small animals that we may injure in clearing timber or that our cat might bring in. He advises that “every effort should be made to preserve any small mammals accidentally killed about homesteads…The presentation of such specimens to the local museums represents a very material contribution to the knowledge of our unique Australian fauna of mammals.” Even if you’re not in Australia, something to consider, yes?

In the front of the book, Mr. Troughton reprints “A Creed for Nature Lovers” from a 1936 issue of The Australian Museum Magazine, and it’s lovely. It includes “I believe: That we should not harm living things that are harmless to us, as we hope to avoid harmful things ourselves; that even harmful creatures should be controlled with due regard for their zoological heritage and right to survive.” Words to live by, and something I wish I could get my kids to understand when they want to smash every spider that gets into the house.

Speaking of children, in his introduction to the book, Mr. Troughton says:

“Pleading protection’s cause in museum lectures for school children, I have reminded them of Barrie’s Peter Pan, and his friendly fairy kept alive only by the children’s belief in such quaint things. These children will be the grown-ups of to-morrow and both young and old must put their united influence behind any sound movement for the protection of wild life…

“Only by such universal belief in their right to existence can we ensure the survival of most of the fascinating creatures for the delight and instruction of future generations; so that, in the spirit of Kipling’s beautiful ‘L’Envoi’:

Each for the joy of the working,
And each in his separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it,
For the God of things as they are.”

Thanks for joining me while I draw the mammals as I see them.

Tagged as: about drawing, books, possum

{ 4 comments }

Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)

by JR Kinyak on October 5, 2011

in Bats

Mexican free-tailed bat (click image to enlarge)


Mexican free-tailed bat by Theo, age 15


Mexican free-tailed bat by Coco, age 12


0395

The kids and I are reading a book called Hanging with Bats, which starts with a chapter about the Mexican free-tailed bats at Carlsbad Caverns here in New Mexico. We decided to draw the bats, and then my son Theo wrote a poem to post on the Daily Mammal.

I think I may have mentioned, on this site, Thomas Nagel’s famous essay “What is it like to be a bat?” in which he explains that it is difficult (impossible?) for us to even imagine it, using the human-bat disconnection as an example of the inherent shortcomings of subjective experience in understanding objective truth. (I think that’s what it’s about.) As Nagel says, “In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.”

Theo’s poem, though, tries to help our imaginations, and it’s absolutely beautiful.

Through Tiny Eyes

Imagine
Screeches coming back at you, directing you
Imagine
Air flowing through your fur while slicing through air
Imagine
Air holding you airborne
Imagine
Hanging upside down,
huddling in the warmth of thousands of you
Imagine
Using your hands to cover your entire body
Imagine
Making an image of a black tornado
coming out of the black depths of a cave
Imagine
Being a bat

Tagged as: bat, books, coco, people, theo

{ 6 comments }

Primorye Week: Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris)

by JR Kinyak on October 4, 2011

in Carnivores,Theme Weeks

Tiger (click image to enlarge)

Before we leave Primorye at the end of our weekish-long visit, we must pay tribute to the tiger, the animal that inspired the book that inspired this week’s theme. Early in The Tiger, John Vaillant says,

“If Russia is what we think it is, then tigers should not be possible there. After all, how could a creature so closely associated with stealth and grace and heat survive in a country so heavy-handed, damaged, and cold? The nearest jungle is two thousand miles away. For these and other reasons, neither Russia the Idea nor Russia the Place are useful ways of describing the home of the Siberian tiger, which is, itself, a misnomer. This subspecies is known locally—and formally—as the Amur tiger, and it lives, in fact, beyond Siberia.”

A few pages later, he gives us a very vivid description of this most powerful of beasts:

“Of the six surviving subspecies of tiger, the Amur is the only one habituated to arctic conditions. In addition to having a larger skull than other subspecies, it carries more fat and a heavier coat, and these give it a rugged, primitive burliness that is missing from its sleeker tropical cousins…To properly appreciate such an animal, it is most instructive to start at the beginning: picture the grotesquely muscled head of a pit bull and then imagine how it might look if the pit bull weighed a quarter of a ton. Add to this fangs the length of a finger backed up by rows of slicing teeth capable of cutting through the heaviest bone. Consider then the claws: a hybrid of meat hook and stiletto that can attain four inches along the outer curve, a length comparable to the talons on a velociraptor. Now, imagine the vehicle for all of this: nine feet or more from nose to tail, and three and a half feet high at the shoulder. Finally, emblazon this beast with a primordial calligraphy: black brushstrokes on a field of russet and cream, and wonder at our strange fortune to coexist with such a creature.”

I love that “primordial calligraphy” and of course that last idea, that we are fortunate to coexist with tigers. As I’ve said before, one thing that this Daily Mammal project has given me is a huge sense of awe and wonder at the beauty and variety of life here on this planet, and for the miracle of evolution. I am indeed grateful to live in the same world as the tiger, even if, as Vaillant says in his book, “it alone can mete out death at will.”

Tagged as: books, cat, primorye

{ 3 comments }

← Previous Entries