From the category archives:

Other Orders

Common Treeshrew (Tupaia glis)

by JR Kinyak on June 7, 2008

in Other Orders

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Common treeshrews live in the rain forests of Thailand, Sumatra, Java, and thereabouts. Their generic name, Tupaia, comes from a Malayan word that means squirrel. They have sharp claws and little ears and they rustle around in the trees, darting about looking for insects and leaves to gobble up. The treeshrews’ place in the tree of life has been controversial; at times they’ve been placed in the Primates order. But the 20 treeshrew species are currently believed to be in their own order, Scandentia, which means we can mark one more order off the list!

Animal Diversity Web has some critical things to say about the common treeshrew’s child-rearing techniques. The male of a monogamous treeshrew couple makes two nests for the family: one master bedroom for the parents and a separate suite for the babies. And the mother treeshrew neglects her offspring as much as she can without their actually dying. She goes to their nest only once every two days and nurses them for only 10 or 15 minutes at a time! In fact, if you add up all the time a mother treeshrew spends with her children while they’re in the nest, it comes to only an hour and a half! It’s so bad that treeshrew parents wouldn’t even be able to identify their own offspring if they didn’t mark their babies with the scents they produce from glands in their sternum and abdomen.

I don’t mean to be judgmental, but maybe someone should call child protective services.

Consecutive days of mammals: 3
Record: 16

Tagged as: shrew, taxonomy

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Philippine Flying Lemur (Colugo) (Cynocephalus volans)

by JR Kinyak on May 19, 2008

in Other Orders

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Here’s another order checked off the list. I think this is a goal we’ll reach, mammals! And what a mammal this one is. Have you ever heard of flying lemurs, also called colugos? There are two species, one that lives in the Philippines and one that lives in Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the like. Both species have this amazing membrane that stretches from their neck…to the tips of their fingers…to the tips of their toes…to the tip of their tail. Compare that to the flying squirrel, who has skin for gliding just between, basically, its wrists and ankles. It’s amazing, this colugo membrane.

Colugos flip their tail up, sort of inside out, when they’re on the go so it doesn’t get “soiled,” according to Walker’s Mammals of the World, or caught on a branch. They’re truly arboreal, and they freak out if they somehow end up on the ground. They can climb in “a series of lurches” and they shuttle along horizontal branches hanging the way sloths do. But their most impressive mode of locomotion is their gliding. In a single glide, they can travel upwards of 100 meters (109 yards)!

These guys eat almost nothing but greenery. Walker’s also says that “the gliding membrane of the mother can be folded into a soft, warm pouch to hold the young,” and “the mother may leave the young in a nest tree or carry it with her while foraging,” as you see this lady colugo doing. And colugos are crepuscular, a lovely word meaning “active at twilight.” I wonder if there’s an equivalent word that means “active at dawn.”

Finally, please click to enlarge this photograph of a colugo in flight, which is from Pennsylvania State University. It’s so amazing!

The Daily Telegraph: ‘Your cousin, the ‘flying lemur’”

Consecutive days of mammals: 16
Previous record: 11

Tagged as: lemur, squirrel, taxonomy

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Aardvark (Orycteropus afer)

by JR Kinyak on May 17, 2008

in Other Orders

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Here’s another order (Tubulidentata) that now contains only one family, one genus, and one species! Aardvarks live pretty much anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa that they can find ants and termites. They hunt the insects by smell, snuffling along the ground with their tongues sticking out. They’re nocturnal and solitary and live in underground burrows. In fact, if you’re an aardvark’s enemy and you’re going after it, it probably will escape you not by running away, but by digging a hole real quick.

In Afrikaans, the word aardvark means “earth pig.” It seems aardvarks are very strong. Here’s an evocative anecdote from Walker’s Mammals of the World:

It is an extremely powerful animal. In one case, a man with a firm grip on the tail of an aardvark in its den was slowly drawn into the burrow as far as his waist and finally had to relinquish his hold, despite the additional leverage afforded by two other persons.

And how about this:

Its eyesight does not appear to be good, since the aardvark frequently crashes into bushes, tree trunks, and other obstructions when running.

Bless their hearts!

Consecutive days of mammals: 15
Previous record: 11

Tagged as: names, taxonomy

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Long-eared Desert Hedgehog (Hemiechinus auritus)

by JR Kinyak on May 15, 2008

in Other Orders

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This prickly—but not too prickly, all things considered—little fellow is a member of one of two species of long-eared desert hedgehogs. This one lives in the steppes of Ukraine and Mongolia and Libya, Pakistan, and Cyprus, and the similar terrain between those areas. In some places, these hedgehogs hang out in people’s gardens and backyards—another interesting example of everyday urban wildlife that seems exotic if you’re from somewhere else.

Categorized as insectivores, long-eared desert hedgehogs eat not only insects, but other invertebrates, some small vertebrates, eggs, fruit, seeds, and carrion. I can just see a hedgehog smorgasbord laid out for their enjoyment, can’t you?

Consecutive days of mammals: 13
Previous record: 11

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Mammalthon 2: Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus)

by JR Kinyak on May 6, 2008

in Mammalthons,Other Orders

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Here is a cottontail for Sonja. It’s the same kind as the ones in her backyard.

Tagged as: rabbit

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Mammals of New Mexico Week: American Pika (Ochotona princeps)

by JR Kinyak on April 13, 2008

in Other Orders,Theme Weeks

Just a few more days until Mammalthon 2, which is this Saturday, April 19! Look over there to the right to learn all about it. See you then!

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To gear up for this weekend’s 24 Mammals in 24 Hours drawing marathon, I’m featuring the mammals of New Mexico this week! The Wildlife Center, a wildlife hospital in northern New Mexico, will be receiving all the proceeds from the mammalthon, so what better way to honor their work than by meeting a few of New Mexico’s mammals?

This is an American pika. It’s related to rabbits, and it does kind of look like a short-eared rabbit. It’s tiny, though, the size of a tennis ball, or so I read. It makes a great little noise that sounds like it’s saying “Eep!” It lives in the mountains of western North America, in piles of talus, which is the rubbly rock that you can find on mountain peaks.

You probably noticed that this particular pika has a mouthful of greenery. Pikas don’t hibernate. Instead, they spend the summer gathering grass, which they pile up and dry to create stacks of hay! All winter long, they eat the hay they made and huddle under the snow, which insulates them from cold temperatures.

That’s part of the problem now facing pika populations. In addition to needing insulation from extreme cold, pikas have such thick coats—which they don’t shed—that they die in temperatures higher than the mid-70s Fahrenheit. Therefore, they’re confined to high elevations. But we’re undergoing something known as global warming these days, and that has two implications for pikas. First of all, they have to go higher and higher to find temperatures cool enough for them to survive. Second, the higher temperatures also mean less snow cover, and the pikas don’t have any insulation from freezing.

Scientists are finding many empty colonies where they expected to find lively pika populations. In some of them, there are hay piles left half eaten.

ABC News: “Route to Extinction Goes Up Mountains, Scientists Say”

Tagged as: threats

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Striped Mammal Week: Streaked Tenrec (Hemicentetes semispinosus)

by JR Kinyak on March 27, 2008

in Other Orders,Theme Weeks

Coming soon: the second-ever 24-hour Mammal Marathon!

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Here’s another of those wonderful mammals that exist only in Madagascar. The streaked tenrec is a small insectivore with barbed quills that lives with its family in underground burrows. Tenrecs make a lot of strange little noises, including one that a mother tenrec will produce by vibrating certain of her quills. This sound lets her communicate with and locate her young! According to the IUCN, tenrecs are quite abundant, even in urban areas. I like learning about all the different sorts of urban wildlife in the world. One city might consider urban wildlife limited to pigeons, rats, mice, and insects, while another has a monkey scourge or an abundance of streaked tenrecs. Here, we have coyotes (I saw one at the airport two weeks ago), rabbits, roadrunners, bobcats, and the occasional mountain lion or bear. What interesting animals live in your town?

Tagged as: humans

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