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Black-handed spider monkey (click image to enlarge)
These incredibly agile monkeys live throughout Central America. They’re very social, swinging through the treetops in groups of 20 or 30, munching on fruit, leaves, and flowers. They’re important distributors of fruit seeds, dispersing them through their digestive system. Unfortunately, the black-handed spider monkey is endangered due to habitat loss.
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Cape fur seal (click image to enlarge)
Daily Mammal Now is an occasional Daily Mammal feature in which we meet a topically newsy mammal that I hadn’t previously drawn. Now, let’s meet the Cape fur seal, or more precisely, the Afro-Australian fur seal, of which the Cape fur seal is a subspecies. Afro-Australian seals live, unsurprisingly, off the coasts of Africa and Australia, specifically southwestern Africa and southern Australia. They’re called fur seals because their fur has been used to make coats and such. Baby fur seals have especially prized fur. The genitalia of male seals is sometimes used as an aphrodisiac in traditional medicine.
The largest Cape fur seal colony is on the coast of Namibia. Every year, the Namibian government allows seal hunts. This year the seal season runs from July 1 until November 15. The government is allowing hunters to club 85,000 baby seals and 5,000 adult males. The hunt takes place in relative secrecy so as not to attract attention or scare people.
Namibia is one of only five countries that still allow seal hunts. There is some disagreement among experts about the humaneness of clubbing seals; some maintain that done correctly, it’s more humane than shooting. But because of the perceived cruelty, seal products have long been banned in the United States and other countries, and beginning in 2010, they’ll be illegal in the European Union, too (with the exception of those created by subsistence hunting on the part of native populations).
This year’s Namibian seal hunt has been in the news the past couple of weeks because a South African organization, Seal Alert-SA, has been trying to buy out the only company that deals in Namibian seal pelts. (Coats made by the company supposedly fetch up to US$110,000.) With animal welfare activists claiming that the seal hunt hasn’t started because of the pending deal and the Namibian government saying that it has, it’s unclear what exactly is going on.
The National: “$14m deal to end Namibia’s Seal Cull”
The AP: “Namibian seal hunt to go on, 90,000 to be clubbed”
African Conservation Foundation: “Seal Cull NOT Started, Hang-in There Baby Seals, Help Coming”
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Iberian lynx (click image to enlarge)
The Iberian lynx is the most endangered cat species in the world. In fact, it’s in imminent danger of being the first cat to become extinct since the saber-toothed tiger. While the cats once lived in both Spain and Portugal, there’s no sign of them in Portugal anymore, and they’re confined to only two small regions in Spain now. Fewer than 150 Iberian lynx live in the wild. Fewer than 150.
The good news is that a captive-breeding program has been fairly successful; it’s preparing to release its first kittens two years ahead of schedule. Scientists have also made an important, if sad, discovery about the Iberian lynx. Most Iberian lynx litters are made up of three kittens. It turns out that it’s not uncommon for the kittens to fight to the death when they’re between 30 and 60 days old. In most litters, one kitten doesn’t survive, having been killed by a littermate. With fewer than 150 wild lynx in existence, losing one third of them while they’re still babies is particularly poignant.
Why is the Iberian lynx in so much trouble? One of the biggest reasons is that it eats almost nothing but rabbits, and depending on only one food source is never the best strategy. In the latter half of the 20th century, the rabbit population on the Iberian peninsula declined drastically not only because of deforestation, real estate development, and hunting, but also because one French doctor, in 1952, decided to control the rabbits in his garden by introducing myxomatosis, a rabbit disease. By 1954, myxomatosis had killed 90 percent of French rabbits and had spread throughout Europe, where it eventually killed off a significant portion of the Iberian lynx’s all-you-can-eat-as-long-as-it’s-rabbits food supply. Deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction affect the lynx directly, as well.
El Programa de Conservación Ex-Situ del Lince Ibérico (it’s in Spanish)
SOS Lynx, a Portugal-based organization working to save the Iberian lynx
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Fisher (click image to enlarge)
Fishers live only in North America, and currently only in northern North America, from Alaska and Canada down to the Sierra Nevadas and the Appalachians. At one time, they ranged as far south as Tennessee and North Carolina, but they’ve disappeared from much of their historic range because of excessive trapping and habitat loss from logging.
Fishers don’t get their name because they eat fish. They mainly eat birds, small mammals, and carrion. It’s possible that they’re called fishers because at one point they raided some fisherman’s fish traps, but it’s most likely that the name comes from the Dutch word fitchet, or polecat—an animal the fishers resemble. (Incidentally, fitchet comes from the root visse, which means “nasty.”)
The fisher is one of the only animals that can kill a porcupine. It sounds quite horrific, really. The fisher will circle the porcupine, taking every opportunity to bite the porcupine’s face, where it doesn’t have quills. The porcupine circles, too, trying to keep its back to the fisher. Sometimes the porcupine will seek protection by pressing its face against a tree; the fisher might climb the tree and attack from above, forcing the porcupine away. When the porcupine has sustained enough injuries to the face to wear it out and stop it from protecting itself, it dies, often from shock, blood loss, or injuries to the top of the head! Then the fisher starts eating, beginning with the heart, liver, and lungs, and leaving behind only the feet, skin, and bones of the porcupine.
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Beluga whale (click image to enlarge)
The beluga whale lives throughout the arctic waters of the world. It’s gray when it’s born and gets lighter until it’s five or six, at which point it’s completely white. Belugas have been called sea canaries because of their elaborate echolocations and vocalizations. Overall, they’re doing pretty well, population-wise, but some subpopulations are threatened, generally by hunting, climate change, habitat loss, or sea traffic.
The melon-like bulge on the top of the beluga whale’s head is called a melon! According to the American Cetacean Society, “The rounded melon on its head contains oil, and the whale can change the shape of the melon. Scientists believe that the melon plays a part in the beluga’s echolocation system.”
You can listen to the beluga whale’s many different sounds at this page on the National Geographic website, and you can listen to Raffi’s wonderful song “Baby Beluga” on his MySpace page (highly recommended!). “Baby beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and you swim so free. Heaven above you and the sea below, and a little white whale on the go…”
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Tasmanian devil (click image to enlarge)
Tasmanian devils are feisty, aggressive guys, with a screech that’s invariably described as bloodcurdling or bone-chilling. They dine on carrion, and they especially love to eat dead wallabies and opossums. They get into scuffles over their food, during which they nip at each other’s faces, and their complicated, violent mating rituals also involve rival males biting each other’s faces. Tasmanian devils have extremely strong jaws, which let them crunch on bones. Their genus name, Sarcophilus, means “flesh lover.” Listen to their screams in this video:
But Tasmanian devils are in big trouble: over the past 13 years, the wild devil population has fallen by 70 percent.
The devils are falling victim to a vicious, communicable cancer called devil facial tumor disease. Their face-biting just helps the cancer spread. The Australian government declared the devils endangered last week, and frantic efforts to save the species include captive breeding programs on the Australian mainland, the quarantine of non-affected populations with devil-proof fences, and the release of breeding pairs on isolated islands, in addition to a search for a vaccine for their cancer. If these attempts don’t work, the Tasmanian devil could be extinct within a decade or two.
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Guadalupe fur seal (click image to enlarge)
Between yesterday’s squirrel and this seal today, I’m thinking about just going ahead and declaring this Interesting Ears Week.
The Guadalupe fur seal, as a species, has a dramatic story, full of hope and heartbreak. Once numerous from the Revillagigedo Islands of Mexico to the Farallones off of San Francisco, the seals were hunted so relentlessly in the 19th century that they were thought to be extinct from 1895 to 1926. Then, some fishermen “discovered” a group of them on Guadalupe Island, off Baja California. What did these fishermen do with these invaluable seals, thought lost forever? Why, killed them, of course.
Everyone thought they were gone for good again, but in 1949, one bull was spotted, and in 1954, people found a group on Guadalupe Island. In the half-century since then, and thanks to legal protection in both Mexico and the United States, the seals have made it back up to the Farallones once more, and their population is increasing.
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