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CONTEST! Five Deer Mice: Aztec Mouse, California Mouse, Canyon Mouse, Gleaning Mouse, Hooper’s Deer Mouse

by JR Kinyak on April 7, 2008

in Rodents

April 19: Daily Mammal 24-Hour Mammal Marathon 2! Details later this week.

click image to enlarge

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Those of you who have been following the Daily Mammal from the start know how daunting the rodents are. Nearly half of the 5,000 named mammal species are rodents, and as Ivan T. Sanderson says in Living Mammals of the World, “whole slews of these look almost exactly alike.” Not only are there are thousands and thousands of them, something I had not considered when I decided to begin this project, but there aren’t very good photos of a great many of them. A while back, I drew a set of five sleeping dormice, and found it heartening to check several rodents off the list at once. Here’s another of those multi-mouse drawings. This time we’re tackling five deer mice (major hantavirus carriers), of the Peromyscus genus.

I didn’t have photographs of a single one of these mice. Instead, I had photographs of Peromyscus species that are much more common in the US, and I had very detailed descriptions of these five species from the species accounts in Mammalian Species, which I download in PDF from Virginia Hayssen’s website. Now, let me tell you, I do not as yet speak the language of zoology, but I’m going to learn it. There are standard names for describing animals’ fur, or pelage, as we mammalogists call it: ochre, buffy, tawny, and a wash of brown may all mean tan to you and me, but not to those whose eyes are trained to discern the nuances. Would my biologist readers let me know where I can get a chart or something that shows what those colors really are? I read that Munsell Soil Color Charts are used for describing pelage—is that where these names come from? I’d like to know.

Anyway, in drawing these mice, I had only the scientific descriptions to go on, and only my experience with acrylic paints to help me decipher the meaning of the colors. (Well, that and the fact that I’ve known three cocker spaniels named Buffy.) Here’s where you come in.

CONTEST: I’m going to type, below, some hints from the descriptions of these mice. The first person to identify in a comment to this post which of the five is which wins this drawing, matted and ready for framing. Ted is not eligible. Here we go.

Aztec mouse (P. aztecus):

  • Dorsal coloration is pale ochre mixed with black
  • Sides are reddish
  • Underparts are light buff
  • A black orbital ring is present
  • Size is medium

California mouse (P. californicus):

  • Annulations are not thoroughly concealed
  • Color is generally blackish brown above, sides ochraceous-tawny, venter pale olive gray to buffy brown
  • Largest species of the genus in the United States

Canyon mouse (P. crinitus)

  • Feet white
  • Dorsal pelage silky
  • Dorsal individual hairs lead-gray at base, succeeded by ochraceous to buffy subterminal band, and tipped with brown or back; dark grayish bases of hairs sometimes visible through buffy to pale grayish shade of dorsum
  • Hairs of forehead, nose, and face appearing slightly more grayish than body
  • Venter white
  • Size small to medium for genus

Gleaning mouse (P. spicilegus)

  • Unworn pelage has upperparts rich, tawny approaching ocherous rufous, dusky and dusky-tipped hairs uniformly distributed throughout upperparts
  • Black or nearly black orbital ring extends posteriorly into a grizzled area between the eye and the base of the ear
  • White feet
  • Tail blackish-brown above, white below with coarse annulations
  • Medium in size for the genus

Hooper’s deer mouse (P. hooperi)

  • Upper parts grayish with faint to moderate wash of brown
  • Underparts pale cream
  • Hind feet and lower legs whitish
  • Medium size for genus

Good luck!

Tagged as: about drawing, ivan, mouse, multiples, words

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Binturong (Arctictis binturong)

by JR Kinyak on March 31, 2008

in Carnivores

Get ready for the second-ever Daily Mammal 24-Hour Mammal Marathon!

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Ivan T. Sanderson calls this guy “one of the most astonishing and paradoxical animals known” in Living Mammals. I had never heard of them until Claire e-mailed me to request one, and I’m so glad she did. They’re related to sloths and to civets, and like sloths, they seem to grow algae on their fur that can give them a greenish hue. They’re nocturnal, eat bamboo, other shoots, fruit, tree frogs, and insects, and they live in Asia. Excitingly, Walker’s Mammals of the World says that binturongs make good pets—they’re very affectionate and follow their owners around like dogs! They are also known as bearcats and they have prehensile tails. Please, let’s get one! Or maybe not:

“Snarling porch sitter thought to be a binturong” from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Tagged as: humans, ivan, pets, sleeping

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Striped Mammal Week: Nine-Banded Armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus)

by JR Kinyak on March 25, 2008

in Other Orders,Theme Weeks

The second 24-Hour Mammalthon is coming soon! Get ready!

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When I first planned a Striped Mammal Week, I had the idea to pick mammals whose names contained seven different synonyms of the word “striped.” I had a variegated something, a streaked something, a lined something, and this fellow, the nine-banded armadillo. That idea didn’t pan out (and really, who would have noticed?), but our armadillo friend is here nevertheless.

Once my husband Ted and I were playing 20 Questions. I was guessing, and after a demanding and confusing half hour or so, I had determined that I was looking for a reptile commonly associated with Texas that was about the size of a breadbox and neither a rattlesnake or a horny toad. Well, I started to get a creeping suspicion. “No,” I thought, “it can’t be.” But I asked him: “You do know armadillos are mammals, right?” Poor sheepish Ted!

I’ve told that story to maybe three people, and two of them said “Armadillos are mammals??” so maybe Ted shouldn’t feel too bad. Despite their plates of armor (the Spanish word for which gives them their common name), armadillos are indeed mammals. Nocturnal mammals, to be exact, that eat insects and live in South and Central America and in south-central America. Their armor, according to Ivan T. Sanderson in How to Know the American Mammals, is made of “numbers of tiny, checker-like bones formed in the skin and fused solidly together”! I wish, actually, that I could just type out his whole description of the armadillo, because it’s so good. But I’ll just leave you with the fact that this mammal’s Latin name means “nine-girdled hairy-footed one.”

Tagged as: humans, ivan, ted

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North Carolina Week: European Wild Boar (Sus scrofa)

by JR Kinyak on February 1, 2008

in Theme Weeks,Ungulates

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Native to Europe, North Africa, and Asia, the European wild boar came to North Carolina in 1912 when a man working in the Snowbird Mountains had 14 of them shipped over to start a game preserve. By the early 1920s, those 14 had grown into 60–100, and a hunt was held with dogs. Well, the hunters managed to kill only two of them, and many of the rest escaped. They multiplied and thrived, and I suppose that most of the wild boars now common throughout North Carolina are descendants of those first 14. (This is all according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s wild boar section.)

About the European wild boar, our old friend Ivan T. Sanderson has this to say:

They are most competent and single-minded beasts and are intolerant of any interference. Even the babies will put up a determined defense and the males will attack with calculated strategy. Their bite is worse than that of any mammal with the exception of the Killer Whale, and actually much worse than that of the Great Cats though being a ripping rather than a slicing action.

Be careful, North Carolina!

Make an origami wild boar

Tagged as: humans, ivan, pig

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Back Orders: Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)

by JR Kinyak on January 13, 2008

in Carnivores,Mammalthons,Marine Mammals


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Here is a funny fellow for Joanna. Sea otters, which live in the coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea, have the thickest fur of any mammal. That’s because unlike other aquatic mammals, sea otters don’t have blubber and rely on their fur to insulate them. They spend most of their time on their backs. As Ivan T. Sanderson says, “It has the most engaging habits, not least of which is floating on the surface on its back and using its broad flat chest as a lunch counter on which to lay out its food.” They also sleep on their backs, and mother sea otters float on their backs with their babies resting on their chests. At night or when they’re resting, sea otters wrap themselves in seaweed so they won’t drift away.

Tagged as: endangered, ivan

{ 24 comments }

Back Orders: Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)

by JR Kinyak on January 11, 2008

in Mammalthons,Other Orders


About the three-toed sloth, which he insists on calling the three-FINGERED sloth, Sanderson says, “Aggravatingly and quite erroneously, they have been called the two-toed and three-toed, when both have five toes. However, one the Unau, has only two fingers, and the other, the Ai, has three fingers.”

But as far as I can tell, he’s wrong! Animal Diversity Web says all sloths have three toes; some have three fingers and some have two, and darn if all the pictures I’ve seen don’t look like that’s the case. But he is right that it’s more precise to call this guy three-fingered, not -toed.

This sloth was requested by Susan. I think sloths are just about the most gorgeous creatures around. I hope I get to meet one someday.

Tagged as: ivan, sloth

{ 9 comments }

Behind the Scenes: Daily Mammal Process Part 1

by JR Kinyak on January 6, 2008

in Operations

I got a request for a post about my drawing process, and I’ve noticed that people are often surprised when they hear how I make my mammals, so I thought I’d give you a look into how I do what I do. This is part one of a two-part series.

1. Book research

Every daily mammal starts with research. If I’m drawing a request, I start by looking it up in my mammal books. And if I’m not drawing a request, I start by flipping through my mammal books until a mammal catches my eye. The books let me get a very general sense of the mammal’s behavior, distribution, and taxonomy, and they often offer strange and illuminating editorial asides that help me feel I know the mammal.

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’m partial to Mr. Ivan T. Sanderson, author of Living Mammals of the World and, I recently noticed, How to Know the American Mammals. He writes like a guy with a pencil mustache and “one of the largest private zoos in the United States,” which is what he was. My admiration for him only increased when I read on Wikipedia that his father was killed by a rhinoceros. Mr. Sanderson was also a leading cryptozoologist and author of Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life: The Story Of Sub-Humans On Five Continents From The Early Ice Age Until Today.

I have other books, too, though, and some of them are helpful in ways Mr. Sanderson is not. For instance, Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals has incredibly helpful line drawings of bat noses, which were fairly incomprehensible to me until I saw the book. I checked out Mammals: Their Latin Names Explained from the library last summer, and that one was great for, well, explaining their Latin names. There’s a two-volume set called Walker’s Mammals of the World that I really want, but it’s pricey, so I have to wait.

2. Internet research

After I get a general handle on a mammal from the books, I start gathering pictures of it. The best source for this, of course, is the Internet, so I spend some time collecting 12–20 photos, which I save to my computer and then open in Preview, arraying them across my desktop. The idea is to accumulate enough images to let me form an idea of the mammal’s typical pose and attitude. I also use multiple images in order to help stop myself from copying any one photograph. It’s important to me that these drawings are original works.

Next (or sometimes after I’ve finished the drawing), I do a general Google search on the mammal’s name. If I find interesting resources or articles, I like to link to them in my post. For instance, for today’s possum, I found an article about how scientists are collecting possum droppings, dissecting them, removing cells that were shed from the possum’s guts during digestion, analyzing the DNA contained in these cells, and creating a sort of rogue’s gallery lineup of individual possums. Then, they can analyze how often they end up dissecting the poop of a possum they’ve already identified and extrapolate from that to create an estimate of just exactly how many possums there are in any given area. Interesting, right? So I helpfully provided you with a link to it.

The next part of this series will look at how I actually draw the things.

Tagged as: about drawing, ivan

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