From the category archives:

Marsupials

Mammals of Hawaii: Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata)

by JR Kinyak on January 17, 2009

in Marsupials, Theme Weeks

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Today we continue our celebration of President-Elect Barack Obama and his home state of Hawaii! The brush-tailed rock wallaby, native to Australia, was once common throughout that continent; now it’s confined to tiny parts of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. The Victoria population, in particular, is near extinction. These fuzzy marsupials live on rocky ledges and…Wait, what’s that? Oh, yes, Hawaii!

In 1916, someone brought two adult brush-tailed rock wallabies—a male and a female—and one wallaby joey from Australia to Hawaii for a private zoo. While they waited to move into their new digs, the wallabies were kept in a tent. Well, a pack of local dogs attacked the tent and killed the joey, but the adult breeding pair escaped. Now there’s a feral population of “brushies” in Oahu, all of whom are descended from the 1916 escapees.

This species was introduced to New Zealand, too, and it’s possible that in the future, the Hawaii and New Zealand emigrés could prove helpful in conserving the original Australian populations. Unlike other introduced species, the brush-tailed rock wallabies enjoy a pretty undisturbed Hawaiian life. Since they’re related to the vulnerable Australians, and since they don’t really harm anyone or multiply wildly or compete with anyone, the state government protects them.

Tagged as: humans

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Striped Possum (Dactylopsila trivirgata)

by JR Kinyak on August 5, 2008

in Marsupials

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Nocturnal, arboreal, and marsupial, the striped possum, who lives in Australia and New Guinea, is about the size of a squirrel. This fellow munches and lunches on insects, flowers, leaves, fruit, small invertebrates, and sweet local honey. If you’re out and about in an Australian forest of a summer evening, listen for rustling and crunching sounds overhead, and watch for falling leftovers: you may be in the presence of a striped possum.

Thanks to the striped possum and the BBC, I have just learned a new Britishism: the verb “to winkle,” which means to extract or obtain something with difficulty. Striped possums use their longer fourth fingers to winkle grubs out of rotten wood.

Here’s a nice local news feature on striped possums in the Fort Wayne zoo: Wild on WANE.

Consecutive days of mammals: 4
Record: 16

Tagged as: words

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Eastern Barred Bandicoot (Perameles gunnii)

by JR Kinyak on June 9, 2008

in Marsupials

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The eastern barred bandicoot is a critically endangered Australian marsupial. Animal Diversity Web says there are only about 300–400 of them alive in the wild. They eat mainly insects and worms, along with some berries and grasses and such. They’re noisy and they leap along the ground.

Consecutive days of mammals: 4
Record: 16

Tagged as: endangered, marsupial

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Chilean Shrew Opossum (Rhyncholestes raphanurus)

by JR Kinyak on June 7, 2008

in Marsupials

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The Chilean shrew opossum is an enigmatic little beast. We think it’s solitary. But then again, we think it lives in small family groups. We think it has five or seven or so babies at a time, but who knows? It seems to be nocturnal, since the few that have been captured were captured at night. Nobody knows how long they live. How well they see. Where they live. We think they’re vulnerable to extinction, but we don’t really have a clue how many of them there are. I can tell you two things, though: Chilean shrew opossums like damp forests, and the adjective fossorial means burrowing.

Consecutive days of mammals: 2
Record: 16

Tagged as: endangered

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Southern Marsupial Mole (Notoryctes typhlops)

by JR Kinyak on June 6, 2008

in Marsupials

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The southern marsupial mole is one of two species in the order Notoryctemorphia, one of the remaining mammalian orders that I hadn’t drawn…until now! (After Notoryctemorphia, there are five more orders to cover. They’re all drawn and waiting to meet you!)

Marsupial moles, which live in Australia, aren’t at all related to moles; true moles aren’t marsupials. But what’s remarkable about these guys is how well they demonstrate the idea of convergent evolution, which is the phenomenon of organisms that aren’t related nevertheless evolving very similar adaptations in response to similar environments. Its form is very similar to that of other moles that burrow in sandy soil, but it most resembles the golden mole, which lives in Africa and is also not really a mole!

The southern marsupial mole has vestigial eyes, which are little more than dots where you’d expect eyes to be. It has huge front claws for digging, a horny shield over its nose, and neck bones that are fused to stay rigid while it burrows. It leaves a triple track behind it after a rain thanks to its tail, which it swings back and forth, and its pouch opens rearwards to keep sand out.

You should watch this neat video on ARKive that shows a southern marsupial mole digging a burrow. It’s mesmerizing to see how the sand closes up behind it, leaving almost no trace that it was there.

At one time, southern marsupial moles were heavily hunted for their silky blond pelts. Now, they’re considered endangered, but nobody knows much about them, their range, or their population.

Tagged as: endangered, evolution, mole, taxonomy, threats

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Monito del Monte (Dromiciops australis)

by JR Kinyak on May 16, 2008

in Marsupials

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One of my goals as the first year of the Daily Mammal comes to a close was to have drawn every order of mammals by June 3. If my calculations are correct, that’s 10 orders (out of 28 or so, depending on who’s counting; we’ve been leaning heavily on the carnivora, primates, and rodentia orders, I think). This one, Microbiotheria, caught my eye because in that order there’s only one family…one genus…and one species. This guy, the monito del monte (little mountain monkey), is the last of his kind.

Weighing in at about as much as a dollar in quarters, the monito del monte (let’s call him MDM, shall we?) makes his home in part of Chile and a sliver of Argentina. MDMs are marsupials, and in looking for pictures of them, I found notices of a recent scientific discovery. You see, in Australia, they’ve found the 55-million-year-old fossilized remains of a creature called the djarthia, which is Australia’s oldest known marsupial and likely the ancestor of all of the marsupials living in Australia today.

What does that have to do with the MDM? Well, while scientists had long suspected that the MDM was closer kin to the Australian marsupials than to the few living in the Americas, finding these fossils proved it. (This has implications for theories about where and when marsupials evolved and from where and to where they migrated; some scientists believe that marsupials evolved in South America and went to Australia via Antarctica when the three continents were part of Gondwana, and this would indicate that the MDM went back to South America at some point before the continents split up, then got stranded there, basically.)

Anyway, I won’t get into the whole train of investigation that set me on tonight (phylogenetics, cladistics, systematics…). It may be enough to know that the tiny monito del monte is cute, that it’s “secretive,” according to Science Daily, and that, in the colder parts of its range where it hibernates in the winter, it stores up enough fat in the base of its tail to double its weight in a week. Some Chilean Indians call it the colocolo. Finally, here’s a new (to me, and maybe to you) word: scansorial, meaning “adapted to or specialized for climbing.” In a sentence: “Some people think the monito del monte is arboreal, but since it doesn’t really spend all its time in the treetops, it’s probably more accurate to call it scansorial.”

Science Daily: “Primitive Mouse-like Creature May Be Ancestral Mother of Australia’s Unusual Pouched Mammals”

Two weeks straight of mammals! I have a full weekend and a business trip on Monday, so this streak will likely end soon—let’s celebrate it while we can!

Consecutive days of mammals: 14
Previous record: 11

Tagged as: discovery, evolution, words

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Mammalthon 2: Spotted-Tailed Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus)

by JR Kinyak on May 11, 2008

in Mammalthons, Marsupials

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Quolls are one of those wonderful carnivorous marsupials, like my beloved (and extinct) (probably) thylacine. The spotted-tailed quoll used to be called a tiger cat, but that name was so off the mark that it has declined in use. Spotted-tailed quolls live in Australia, naturally, and eat small animals of many kinds. They’ve suffered from habitat loss, trapping, poisoning, and disease, and they are now quite rare on mainland Australia, although they’re doing all right in Tasmania.

This quoll is for my mother (happy Mother’s Day!), who let me pick for her. I actually drew him twice. The first drawing, below, was okay, but it wasn’t too exciting, I didn’t think. So I did a different pose and composition.

Consecutive days of mammals: 9
Previous record: 11

Tagged as: names, threats

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