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Short-eared Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus caninus)

by JR Kinyak on October 5, 2011

in Marsupials,Operations

Short-eared brushtail possum (click image to enlarge)

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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

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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


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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

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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

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Primorye Week: Siberian Musk Deer (Moschus moschiferus)

by JR Kinyak on September 26, 2011

in Theme Weeks,Ungulates

Siberian musk deer (click image to enlarge)


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I’m reading a book called The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, by John Vaillant. It’s about Siberian tigers and tiger trackers in the far east of Russia, a region called Primorsky Krai, the Maritime Province, or Primorye. It’s a fascinating place, closer geographically to Beijing and even to Australia than to Moscow, and amazingly biologically diverse. Vaillant says that “Primorye is also the meeting place of four distinct bioregions,” the taiga, the steppes, the subtropics, and the far-northern forest:

“Here, timber wolves and reindeer share terrain with spoonbills and poisonous snakes, and twenty-five-pound Eurasian vultures will compete for carrion with saber-beaked jungle crows. Birch, spruce, oak, and fir can grow in the same valley as wild kiwis, giant lotus, and sixty-foot lilacs, while pine trees bearing edible nuts may be hung with wild grapes and magnolia vines. These, in turn, feed and shelter herds of wild boar and families of musk deer whose four-inch fangs give them the appearance of evolutionary outtakes. Nowhere else can a wolverine, brown bear, or moose drink from the same river as a leopard, in a watershed that also hosts cork trees, bamboo, and solitary yews that predate the Orthodox Church. In the midst of this, Himalayan black bears build haphazard platforms in wild cherry trees that seem to fragile for the task, opium poppies nod in the sun, and ginseng keeps its secret in dappled shade.”

Beautiful, isn’t it? And inspiring to an amateur mammalogist like me. This week, we’ll look at some of the mammals of Primorye, like those mentioned above, beginning with today’s fellow, who isn’t Bunnicula, but rather the Siberian musk deer.

Musk deer, as their name suggests, are the traditional source of the musk that we use in perfume. Musk comes from a gland, or musk-pod, in the male musk deer, and generally, someone who wants that musk-pod will kill the deer for it. The musk deer has been so heavily hunted that it is now internationally protected, but still, poachers poach, and our friend’s numbers are declining.

Here is a link to a video from Arkive of the musk deer in action. It has powerful hind legs and weaker front ones, like a rabbit, and it moves through a series of bounds. I also like the sound of the cold wind in this video.
ARKive video - Siberian musk deer - overview

Tagged as: books, deer, humans, threats

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Colorado Chipmunk (Tamias quadrivittatus)

by JR Kinyak on September 23, 2011

in Rodents

Colorado chipmunk (click image to enlarge)


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The day after the kids and I drew this chipmunk (I haven’t scanned their drawings—sorry!), we rode the tram to the top of Sandia Peak here in Albuquerque. At the top, we stood on a deck overlooking the mountainside and the city below, and who should we spy skittering on the rocks in front of us but a handful of Colorado chipmunks! At first we thought we might just have Colorado chipmunks on the brain and that these were likely some other kind, but a look at my dad’s Field Guide to the Sandia Mountains helped confirm our identification of the chipmunks.

My Princeton field guide to the mammals of North America says, “CHIPMUNKS—This group of small, striped squirrels is easy to recognize, but it is very difficult to distinguish between the 22 different species. Easterners have it easy, with only one to choose from,” leaving the other 21 to form a chaotic overlapping mass of chipmunkitude for the westerner to tell apart.

Our family has been working on a fantastic naturalist training course (more on that someday soon), and one of our references for the course, Reader’s Digest North American Wildlife, says, “You should have little problem identifying mammals that you’ve had the luxury of observing out in the open for a long period of time. But if one crosses your path only briefly, try to extract from the encounter a general impression of its shape and color, and also a rough estimate of the size of its ears and the length of its tail. With such information at hand, you’ll have a much easier time giving the creature a name.”

Here’s a video of the Colorado chipmunk to help you identify it next time you meet it in the mountains.

Tagged as: books, chipmunk, naturalist

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Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana)

by JR Kinyak on April 10, 2011

in Primates

Golden snub-nosed monkeys (click image to enlarge)


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Golden snub-nosed monkeys live in central China, with the majority making their homes in the Sichuan province. They roam through mountain forests where snow covers the ground for half the year, eating lichens and other ploants and the occasional insect. They are endangered, and the IUCN tells us that the major threats to their continued existence are habitat loss and tourism-related activities.

I learned from the Eponym Dictionary of Mammals (I need a copy of that book!) that the roxellana part of the monkey’s scientific name comes from Roxelana, a Ukrainian woman who was captured and sold into slavery in the 1500s. She was put in the harem of the sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, where she became his favorite concubine and eventually his second wife. In his poetry, he called her his one and only love. Apparently, she had beautiful golden hair and a turned-up nose, just like these monkeys. But she probably didn’t have a blue face.

Tagged as: books, endangered, humans, names, threats

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Japan Benefit: コウベモグラ (Japanese Mole) (Mogera wogura)

by JR Kinyak on April 1, 2011

in Mammalthons,Other Orders

This week’s Daily Mammal drawings are of mammals of Japan, and they’re for sale, with the entire purchase price going to help people and animals affected by the earthquake and tsunami earlier this month. You can buy a drawing by me or by Coco, we can mat it or not, and no matter what you choose, half the purchase price will go to the American Red Cross and half will go to an animal shelter in Japan called Animal Refuge Kansai. If you don’t want our drawings, we won’t get offended—you can still help out by clicking the Donate button at the very bottom of this post. We’ll add your money to our fund. On to the mole!

Japanese mole (click image to enlarge)

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Researching this mole, I found a short story in the Paris Review by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from the Japanese, called “Mogera Wogura.” It is a fantastic story, in both senses of the word, and it seems to be digging its mole claws into my mind. It’s strange and I suspect it will haunt me a while. Somebody else please read it so we can discuss it!

Japanese mole by Coco, age 12 (click image to enlarge)

Coco’s drawing has sold!

The moles are very common and have no major threats, which is great for the little fellows. I wonder about the origin of the Japanese mole’s scientific name, but I can’t find anything on it. It seems that the common Japanese word for a mole is mogura, which is pretty much a combination of this mole’s generic and specific names. Hmm. There is only so much I can learn, and this shall have to be a mole nomenclature mystery in my life, I imagine.

Tagged as: books, coco, humans, japan, names

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