From the category archives:

Carnivores

Lions!

by J.R. Atkins on August 19, 2009

in Carnivores, Operations

Did you notice the Daily Mammal has been on a sort of sabbatical? That was for very good reason: my family has expanded! And in honor of that, today we have not one but THREE lion drawings—by me, my son V (age 13), and my daughter C (age 10). Can you believe V has never drawn with this particular technique? And C’s baby lion is adorable, isn’t it? (Click each drawing to see it larger, please!)

My lion

My lion


V's lion

V's lion

C's lion

C's lion

The Daily Mammal will be back to normal (or some semblance thereof) soon. Perhaps with some new mammalogists!

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Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus)

by J.R. Atkins on July 28, 2009

in Carnivores

Gray fox (click image to enlarge)

Gray fox (click image to enlarge)


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The gray fox lives in the southern half of North America, from the southmost edge of Canada down to Colombia and Venezuela, avoiding parts of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains. They prefer foresty areas, mostly, or brushy desert areas. They love to eat cottontails, mice, voles, shrews, and birds, but they also eat a good deal of fruit and vegetables.

A really special thing about gray foxes is that they are one of the only canid species (the other is the raccoon dog) that can climb trees well, thanks to their curved claws that let them get a good grip on the tree bark. Margaret has a couple climbing her apple trees and eating her windfalls, and so this apple-sniffer is for her. (She might find this website’s extensive guide to gray fox tracks and scat useful, too!)

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Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus)

by J.R. Atkins on July 8, 2009

in Carnivores

Iberian lynx (click image to enlarge)

Iberian lynx (click image to enlarge)


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The Iberian lynx is the most endangered cat species in the world. In fact, it’s in imminent danger of being the first cat to become extinct since the saber-toothed tiger. While the cats once lived in both Spain and Portugal, there’s no sign of them in Portugal anymore, and they’re confined to only two small regions in Spain now. Fewer than 150 Iberian lynx live in the wild. Fewer than 150.

The good news is that a captive-breeding program has been fairly successful; it’s preparing to release its first kittens two years ahead of schedule. Scientists have also made an important, if sad, discovery about the Iberian lynx. Most Iberian lynx litters are made up of three kittens. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the kittens to fight to the death when they’re between 30 and 60 days old. In most litters, one kitten doesn’t survive, having been killed by a littermate. With fewer than 150 wild lynx in existence, losing one third of them while they’re still babies is particularly poignant.

Why is the Iberian lynx in so much trouble? One of the biggest reasons is that it eats almost nothing but rabbits, and depending on only one food source is never the best strategy. In the latter half of the 20th century, the rabbit population on the Iberian peninsula declined drastically not only because of deforestation, real estate development, and hunting, but also because one French doctor, in 1952, decided to control the rabbits in his garden by introducing myxomatosis, a rabbit disease. By 1954, myxomatosis had killed 90 percent of French rabbits and had spread throughout Europe, where it eventually killed off a significant portion of the Iberian lynx’s all-you-can-eat-as-long-as-it’s-rabbits food supply. Deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction affect the lynx directly, as well.

El Programa de Conservación Ex-Situ del Lince Ibérico (it’s in Spanish)
SOS Lynx, a Portugal-based organization working to save the Iberian lynx

Tagged as: cat, endangered, threats

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Mammals of Alaska Week: Fisher (Martes pennanti)

by J.R. Atkins on July 7, 2009

in Carnivores, Theme Weeks

Fisher (click image to enlarge)

Fisher (click image to enlarge)


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Fishers live only in North America, and currently only in northern North America, from Alaska and Canada down to the Sierra Nevadas and the Appalachians. At one time, they ranged as far south as Tennessee and North Carolina, but they’ve disappeared from much of their historic range because of excessive trapping and habitat loss from logging.

Fishers don’t get their name because they eat fish. They mainly eat birds, small mammals, and carrion. It’s possible that they’re called fishers because at one point they raided some fisherman’s fish traps, but it’s most likely that the name comes from the Dutch word fitchet, or polecat—an animal the fishers resemble. (Incidentally, fitchet comes from the root visse, which means “nasty.”)

The fisher is one of the only animals that can kill a porcupine. It sounds quite horrific, really. The fisher will circle the porcupine, taking every opportunity to bite the porcupine’s face, where it doesn’t have quills. The porcupine circles, too, trying to keep its back to the fisher. Sometimes the porcupine will seek protection by pressing its face against a tree; the fisher might climb the tree and attack from above, forcing the porcupine away. When the porcupine has sustained enough injuries to the face to wear it out and stop it from protecting itself, it dies, often from shock, blood loss, or injuries to the top of the head! Then the fisher starts eating, beginning with the heart, liver, and lungs, and leaving behind only the feet, skin, and bones of the porcupine.

Tagged as: names, threats, words

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Black-backed Jackal (Canis mesomelas)

by J.R. Atkins on July 1, 2009

in Carnivores

canis_mesomelas_72

Black-backed jackal (click image to enlarge)

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Hello, mammals, and thanks for your patience through the long hiatus I seem to have taken from drawing and posting! We’re back in the swing of things now with this black-backed jackal, who lives in two separate parts of Africa, one in the east and one in the south. There is some controversy about who’s a jackal and who isn’t, but my copy of Walker’s indicates that there are four jackal species. This is the second featured on the Daily Mammal. (Here’s the golden jackal, which I drew a while back.) We’re halfway through with the jackals!

The black-backed jackal is both a scavenger and a predator. It will eat nearly anything: other mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, plants, whatever. It can band with other jackals to bring down a gazelle or antelope, or it can follow lions around and eat their leftovers. Black-backed jackals have been known to work cooperatively with cheetahs to bring down a tasty dinner. Ivan T. Sanderson, in Living Mammals of the World, says, “Their name has come to be applied to all forms of unpleasant hangers-on—a result of their habit of following the large cats, making a special noise when doing so, and then eating up most of the feast as soon as the cat’s back is turned.” I say it’s the cats’ own fault: if someone’s following you and making a special noise that indicates he wants your food, don’t turn your back!

Black-backed jackals live in groups of up to eight or so, at the core of which is a mated pair. A pair may stay together for several years. Adolescent jackals stick around to help their parents raise new babies. In some desert parts of their habitat, black-backed jackals can apparently go up to nine months without drinking water.

Tagged as: dog, ivan, taxonomy

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Bat-eared Fox (Otocyon megalotis)

by J.R. Atkins on May 8, 2009

in Carnivores

bat-eared fox (click image to enlarge)

bat-eared fox (click image to enlarge)


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Well, that’s an apt name! This fox (whose scientific name translates into something like ear-dog big-ear), lives in two separate areas of Africa that are about 1,000 km (621 miles) apart. One is in the eastern part of the continent, ranging from Ethiopia and southern Sudan to Tanzania, and one is in the south, from southern Angola to South Africa. Depending on where they live, bat-eared foxes eat insects, other arthropods, rodents, birds’ eggs, and plants. They’re especially keen on termites and dung beetles.

Besides those extra-large ears (which they use for sending each other visual signals as well as for hearing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they serve a cooling purpose, too, out there in the desert), the bat-eared fox has unusual dentition, which means the arrangement of its teeth. May I throw around some more mammalogist jargon just to impress you? The bat-eared fox has more teeth than any other placental, heterodontal mammal. That means it has a lot of choppers. Okay, specifically, it has the most teeth of all of the non-marsupial mammals that have kinds of teeth that are different from each other. For instance, humans: we’re placental with heterodontal dentition. But our pieholes are not nearly so crowded with the ol’ pearly whites.

Tagged as: dog, fox, words

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Zorilla (Ictonyx striatus)

by J.R. Atkins on April 12, 2009

in Carnivores

ictonyx_striatus_72click image to enlarge

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The animal above looks like a skunk, but he isn’t. His name is a dimunitive form of the word zorro, Spanish for fox, but he’s not Spanish or a fox. Like his skunk doppelgangers, he’s in the polecat family, and he lives throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Besides their striking good looks, zorillas and skunks share something else: a nasty compulsion to spray foul-smelling juices from their anal glands whenever they feel threatened. The zorilla follows that up with another trick: he plays dead until the threat has passed, sometimes for as long as half an hour. Although that seems strange—wouldn’t playing dead just make it easier for a predator to have its way with the limp, unmoving zorilla?—scientists theorize that it gives predators a chance to taste the presumably non-delicious anal-gland juice that has settled on the zorilla’s fur and decide to get dinner somewhere else.

Tagged as: polecat, skunk

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