From the category archives:

Rodents

Two Beautiful Squirrels (Callosciurus prevostii, C. finlaysonii)

by JR Kinyak on March 16, 2011

in Rodents

Prevost's squirrel and Finlayson's squirrel (click image to enlarge)


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Well, mammals, we made it! Mammal Number 365 is here, with his buddy Number 364, ready to meet you and celebrate a year’s worth of Daily Mammals, completed on average once every four days, which doesn’t sound too bad, until you do the math and realize that at that rate, it will take me an additional 52 years to draw all the mammal species. In 52 years, I’ll be 85. Will you still be visiting my website? I hope so! (Will there still be websites?)

Thank you for visiting and meeting my mammals, even if I am a little slow in getting them to you. I appreciate every one of you wonderful viewers and readers, whether you post comments or not, whether you come once or every day, whether you’re related to me or a stranger. Thank you! This project is rewarding on its own, but it’s even better with company. Thank you, especially, for sticking with me through the long hiatuses.

I write today’s post from my bed, where I’m hopped up on oxycodone for my broken calcaneus. I don’t have my mammal books in here, so this entry will be a tad thin on facts. When I called these squirrels beautiful, I wasn’t bragging about my drawing. The Latin name of their genus, Callosciurus, means “beautiful squirrels,” and each species in this genus has striking colors or markings, like these two. Both of these species live in Thailand. Prevost’s squirrel also calls Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia home, while Finlayson’s hangs out in Cambodia, Laos (which is officially called Lao People’s Democratic Republic), Myanmar, and Vietnam.

Florent Prévost, whose name one of these squirrels bears, was a French naturalist and artist, and George Finlayson, namesake of the other squirrel, was a Scottish naturalist and surgeon. I’ve recently started looking up some of these mammals’ names in the Eponym Dictionary of Mammals, or rather its Google Books preview. It’s a new book, out in 2009, and it costs $65, which is not in my budget right now. My public library doesn’t have it, but it does have a copy of my other favorite resource for learning about the names of mammals, A.F. Gotch’s Mammals: Their Latin Names Explained. That one is from 1979 and is out of print. I know I’ve mentioned it several times on this site, and I check it out from the library every now and then.

Tagged as: books, names, squirrel

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Muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus)

by JR Kinyak on March 12, 2011

in Rodents

Muskrat (click image to enlarge)


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I was going to give you an MP3 of “Muskrat Love,” either the Captain & Tennille or the America version, but that song is just so bad that I couldn’t stand to do it. So instead, I will direct you to the Everything Muskrat website, an impressively comprehensive compendium of, indeed, everything muskrat, and to a 2008 article from the Washington Post about beauty queens who skin muskrats in the talent portion of their pageant—which is the Miss Outdoors competition in Dorchester County, Maryland, and which is traditionally held on the same stage as a muskrat-skinning competition.

Tagged as: humans, music

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Sewellel (Aplodontia rufa)

by JR Kinyak on February 27, 2011

in Rodents

Sewellel

Sewellel (click image to enlarge)


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The sewellel, which is also known as the mountain beaver, even though it doesn’t live in the mountains and isn’t much of a beaver, lives along the coasts of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California, in moist, cool, rain forest environments. It is one of the most primitive rodents in existence, meaning that it really isn’t different from its ancient fossilized ancestors, and it doesn’t have any close living relatives. Sewellels (the name comes from a Chinookan word for a cloak made from the sewellel’s fur, according to Wikipedia) live in burrows that include latrine chambers. When they defecate, they take their poop into their mouths and then either eat it, if it’s soft, or toss it into the latrine, if it’s hard.

Tagged as: beaver, names

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Degu (Octodon degus)

by JR Kinyak on February 24, 2011

in Rodents

Two Octodon degus

Degu (click image to enlarge)


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It has been so long since I posted a drawing that I kind of don’t remember how. I hope I haven’t missed anything in this post. I have about ten drawings that I haven’t posted yet, and I’ll be posting them over the next several days. Then I hope to get back to drawing.

The degu is a rodent that lives only in Chile. It’s very particular about its habitat: a little to the north it’s too dry; a little to the south it’s too wet. This means that it’s one of many species threatened by climate change.

After a mating ritual that includes the male wagging his tail, trembling, and urinating on the female; a long-for-a-rodent gestation period; and the birth of a litter of four to five pups, both the male and female degus take care of the babies. Degus are playful and like to snuffle each other. Their genus name, Octodon, comes from the shape of their molars, which resemble figure eights.

Tagged as: degu, threats

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World Cup: Four Swiss Voles

by JR Kinyak on July 10, 2010

in Rodents,Theme Weeks

Four voles of Switzerland (click image to enlarge)

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Our last competitors in the mammalian World Cup are these four fellows from Switzerland. Clockwise from the top right, we have the European water vole (Arvicola aquatica), the European snow vole (Chionomys nivalis), the European pine vole (Microtus subterraneus), and the bank vole (Myodes glareolus). Some good news about these guys: they are all widespread throughout their ranges with no major threats, and IUCN classifies them as Least Concern. Yay for the voles!

Switzerland’s soccer team has made it to the World Cup several times, reaching the quarterfinals twice in the 1930s and again in 1954. In 2006, the Swiss team set two World Cup records: they were the first team to be bumped out of the competition without anyone ever scoring a goal against them, and they were the first team to not make a single penalty kick in a shootout. (Ukraine made three against them in the Round of 16, which is how Switzerland was eliminated.) This year, they didn’t make it out of the group stage, although they did shock everyone by beating favorites Spain in their first game of the tournament.

Tomorrow is the final match of the World Cup, and I may miss it because I’ll be traveling, but I won’t miss giving you the results of the Mammals of the World Cup competition! First, we need to wrap up the group results.

Group H Results

Group H was the tayra from Honduras, the pudú from Chile, the Spanish ibex, and today’s four voles (that seems unfair, now that I think about it). The voles might run around underfoot, but they’ll hardly pose a threat. The pudú is tiny. The tayra is the closest thing we have to a carnivore in this group, and the ibex has some mighty horns. So the two mammals continuing on to the Round of 16 from this group are:

Tayra (Honduras)
and
Spanish Ibex (Spain)

Tagged as: multiples, vole, World Cup

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World Cup: Group E

by JR Kinyak on June 29, 2010

in Carnivores,Marine Mammals,Primates,Rodents,Theme Weeks

European otter (click image to enlarge)

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Hi, mammals! I think I’ll be on track to finish the Mammals of the World Cup on schedule with the actual World Cup if I post all of Group E today and then get back to once-a-day tomorrow. (Whether I will succeed is still unknown, as life has been pretty stressful around here. But I’m trying!) Also, I’m really not doing my best work lately, so dumping four mammals on you at once might distract you from that fact.

Our first mammal is the European otter (Lutra lutra), who is representing the Netherlands, where its numbers had decreased to almost nothing but it has been reintroduced. The Netherlands beat Slovakia (where the Yak part of my name comes from) in the Round of 16 and will be playing Brazil in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Orca (click image to enlarge)

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The orca or killer whale (Orcinus orca) is playing for Denmark tonight. Did you know that orcas in groups have been known to take down blue whales? It’s unlikely, I think, that anyone is going to beat the orca in this World Cup. Denmark, on the other hand, didn’t make it out of the group stage.

Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (click image to enlarge)

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From Japan, the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga), which is also known as the momonga! It’s just too cute to be believed, really, and is also represented on one of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, seen below. (I’m very into Yu-Gi-Oh! now. It comes with the 14-year-old son. I have a beast deck. Besides the Nimble Momonga, I also have a Tree Otter, a Sea Koala, a Kangaroo Champ, a Green Baboon Defender of the Forest, and a Rescue Cat.)

A very handy Yu-Gi-Oh! card (click image to enlarge)

Japan made it to the Round of 16 but lost to Paraguay today. After the group stage, they don’t allow ties anymore. First, they have 30 minutes of overtime, and if there’s still a draw, they take turns taking penalty kicks, which are kicks from a spot 12 yards from the goal. Five players from each team try that, and if there’s still a draw after the penalty kicks, they play sudden death. After the 30 minutes of extra time, the Japan-Paraguay game was tied 0-0, and Paraguay won in penalty kicks.

Allen's swamp monkey (click image to enlarge)

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This is Allen’s swamp monkey (Allenopithecus nigroviridis), and it’s from Cameroon (as well as Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Its scientific name means “Allen’s ape, black and green,” and it is indeed kind of black-and-green colored. Cameroon didn’t get out of the group stage at the World Cup.

Group E Results

Well, the killer whale is the killer whale, and none of these guys stand a chance against that apex predator. It moves on to the next round, and I think our mustelid friend in this group, the European otter, could do some damage to the swamp monkey, and obviously the momonga is adorable and tiny and hopeless against any of the other three. So the two mammals continuing on to the Round of 16 from Group E are:

Orca (Denmark)
and
European Otter (Netherlands)

Tagged as: monkey, otter, squirrel, whale, World Cup

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World Cup: England’s European Beaver (Castor fiber)

by JR Kinyak on June 21, 2010

in Rodents,Theme Weeks

European beaver (click image to enlarge)


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So I somehow picked a mammal for England that’s been extinct in England for, oh, about 400 years or so. Yep. The European beaver was hunted nearly to extinction by the 20th century, and no longer existed in most countries of Europe. Now it’s being reintroduced, and it has successfully regained a place in a couple dozen European countries, such as Denmark and France. They’ve been reintroduced in an ongoing five-year trial in Scotland, but don’t worry, I read enough British mysteries to know that Scotland is not England. In England, it seems there have been one or two semi-unsuccessful reintroduction attempts, and one that’s going pretty well at my new home, Lower Mill Estate, a “residential nature reserve” of “luxury second homes” where “the kids can pound the bike and walking trails round our seven private lakes; dad can contemplate life over a pint in one of the local country pubs; mum can relax and have treatments in the award-winning Spa.” Yes, I use the quotes because I am envious. Lower Mill Estate has European beavers living in a 15-acre enclosure. Perhaps success there will mean more beavers in England in the near future.

As for England’s soccer team, I haven’t much to say except that I’m surprised that they’ve only won one World Cup, which was in 1966, when England hosted the tournament. Now they’re tied for second in Group C, which is surprisingly led by Slovenia, with the USA, and they still have a decent shot at continuing to the Round of 16, even though they’ve been fairly lackluster and were even booed by their own fans after their match against Algeria ended in a draw.

Tagged as: World Cup

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