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Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra)

by JR Kinyak on March 11, 2011

in Ungulates

Blackbuck (click image to enlarge)

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I do love seeing that mammal counter inching toward 365! Say good afternoon to the blackbuck, an antelope native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan, but now extinct everywhere but India—and Argentina, Australia, and Texas, where it has been introduced. I’ll try to tell you what I’ve learned about the blackbuck roughly in the order of my learning about it:

1. According to the IUCN, there are some 50,000 blackbuck remaining in India, an increase from 22–24,000 in the 1970s. But there are at least 35,000 in Texas. As far as I can tell, those are all on game ranches, for “an exotic hunt would not be complete without a Black Buck Antelope,” according to the website of one of the ranches. I think the blackbuck in Australia are also confined to ranches, but there may be a feral population in Argentina.

2. Blackbuck are protected as endangered species in India, but they are still poached. In fact, Salman Khan, the star of one of my favorite Bollywood movies, was sentenced to five years in prison for poaching blackbuck (in addition to another protected species, the chinkara, I think—some of the news accounts are a little obscure on this) in 2007. IMDB says that Salman Khan is known as “Bollywood’s Bad Boy” and “Controversial Khan.” His court case continues, apparently. An Indian cricket star named Mansoor Ali Khan was also sentenced to prison time, in 2005, for poaching blackbuck.

3. In Living Mammals of the World, Ivan T. Sanderson writes: “Blackbuck have been the target of sportsmen, real and otherwise, since time immemorial and have been hunted with everything from Cheetahs to machine-guns—until this last revolting practice was summarily stopped.” My first reaction to that was “You can hunt with cheetahs?” Sure enough. I found the below video on YouTube. It purports to be from 1939, but it looks more 1950s to me, and the voice sounds quite contemporary, but wherever it’s from, it does show people using cheetahs to hunt blackbuck.

Coco also drew a blackbuck. It’s so hard to draw a straight-on portrait of an antelope because of the foreshortening of the nose and the way the eyes bulge out, but she completely nailed it. Here it is:

Blackbuck by Coco, age 12

Tagged as: antelope, coco, humans, ivan, threats

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Horsfield’s Tarsier (Tarsius bancanus)

by JR Kinyak on March 10, 2011

in Primates

Horsfield's tarsier (click image to enlarge)


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I know we just met the greater slow loris the other day, but here is another fuzzy fellow with huge, unmoving eyes and a neck that swivels 180 degrees. Horsfield’s tarsier lives in Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, where he climbs in the trees and forages on the ground, looking for insects like cicadas, moths, stick bugs, and cockroaches, as well as bats, snakes, and birds to eat. Over the past 20 years, the Horsfield’s tarsier has lost at least 30 percent of its habitat, according to the IUCN, and it’s also a victim of the illegal pet trade.

The name tarsier comes from the tarsus bone, which is in the foot. Tarsiers have elongated ones, which helps them climb.

Tagged as: threats

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Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactrianus)

by JR Kinyak on March 8, 2011

in Ungulates

Bactrian camel (click image to enlarge)


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The Bactrian camel is the one with two humps. The Arabian camel or dromedary has only one hump. You can remember that by imagining the capital initials of their names turned on their side: B for Bactrian has two humps, and D for dromedary has one. (I didn’t come up with that, I read it on Ultimate Ungulate.)

Then again, maybe you don’t think there are two types of camels, not really. As far as I can tell, some scientists agree with you, believing that both the one-humps and the two-humps were originally one species. They can interbreed, but it’s possible that males born as a result are sterile. Then again, you may think that there are two kinds of Bactrian camels: domesticated ones, which you’d call Camelus bactrianus, and wild ones, which you’d call Camelus ferus. That distinction might make a bigger difference than you’d think. There are no Arabian camels/dromedaries in the wild, and fewer than 1,000 Bactrian camels in the wild. The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) categorizes this camel (under the name C. ferus) as Critically Endangered, the last category before Extinct in the Wild, which is followed, of course, by plain old Extinct.

The reasons for their looming extinction in the wild are mostly human-related. Fifty or so are hunted each year for meat, and when there are only 1,000 of something, taking away 50 is a big deal. Much of their habitat—which by the way is in the rocky, sometimes very cold and sometimes very hot Gobi Desert of China and Mongolia—is being taken up by the raising of domesticated animals (including domesticated Bactrian camels). And continuing droughts, which some might call human-related if they’re connected to human-caused climate change, mean that wolves are increasingly preying on the camels. A human-related situation that actually hasn’t seemed to affect the camels is that part of their range was China’s nuclear-testing area for 45 years. It’s nice that that didn’t bother them, I suppose.

Tagged as: endangered, humans, taxonomy, threats

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Mating Week: Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris)

by JR Kinyak on March 2, 2011

in Carnivores,Theme Weeks

northern elephant seal

Northern elephant seal (click image to enlarge)


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There’s so much to say about elephant seals, and yet it’s so distasteful. These guys are rapists and baby-killers. Their necks are discolored by scars incurred during mating or fighting for mates, and one of my books, Wonders of Animal Life from 1928, lists “Sea elephants, frightfulness” in its index. In Living Mammals of the World, Ivan T. Sanderson says that they “present the most grotesque and revolting appearance, especially when they lounge around on shore in great misshapen, heaving masses under a hot sun, moaning, groaning, gurgling, and roaring.” A 1979 article in People about one of the top scientists studying elephant seals includes the sentence, “Says Le Boeuf bluntly, ‘It’s a rape society.’” (The title of the article is “Burney Le Boeuf Finds One Way to Pick Up a Seal of Approval.”)

I have a reprint of an 1874 book called The Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America that includes a graphic account of the brutal way elephant seals were hunted for their blubber. Trust me, you probably don’t want to know, yet it’s not much worse than what the seals do to each other—except the blubber-hunters nearly drove the seals to extinction. Now they’re pretty healthily back in business in their habitat along the Pacific coast of North America.

And what is that business? Well, a dominant male controls a harem of females and can mate with them whenever he pleases. If a female objects, he holds her down with his massive body weight—up to three tons, and two or three times as much as the female weighs—and forces himself on her. Females have light-colored necks from all the scars they get when the males bite them during mating.

If a non-dominant male tries to mate with one of the females, the female starts screaming, which attracts the dominant male to defend his territory. At that point, he’ll get in a fight with the non-dominant male—a big, bloody fight, as any fight between two creatures that weight two tons would be. They beat each other with their noses and thrash around, sometimes suffocating other elephant seals in the process, especially babies. From Courtship in the Animal Kingdom by Mark Jerome Walters (1988):

Every spring along certain California beaches, bulls engage in bloody competition for female seals. The fight begins as a gruff shouting match with two males exchanging deep-throated roars. If one doesn’t retreat, then the shouting match escalates into combat…[T]hey slam their bludgeonlike noses into each other while trying to sink their large teeth into the neck of their opponent. Newborns are the most frequent victims as males throw their weight around, and the beaches resound with the shrill cries of crushed infants. Nearly half of the pups’ deaths in a single season are caused by battling males.

Walters goes on to say that sex is one of the major reasons for conflict among animals. “Spring is also the season when life’s astounding variety comes clearly into view—a richness that owes much of its existence to sex. And to which the world owes much of its woe.”

It certainly sounds like elephant seals lead woeful lives, and I’m glad that we humans have stopped contributing so murderously to their travails. But we are messing things up for them in another way, and that’s climate change. It seems that in warmer years, females give birth to more male babies. This is apparently because males and females have different feeding grounds. When it’s warmer, the food resources are more diffuse, and the females have to go further to find something to eat. If they have male babies, they won’t create competition for themselves the way they would if they had female young. So they’ve adapted to give birth to males when the weather is warm. Global warming could cause the proportion of male elephant seals to increase, which would mean more competition and more of the violence I discussed above. It could also mean that females have a harder time finding food, which would mean they’re undernourished and less likely to survive.

Tagged as: climate change, humans, ivan, mating, seal, threats

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Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)

by JR Kinyak on February 25, 2011

in Carnivores

Red fox

Red fox (click image to enlarge)


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Red foxes live pretty much everywhere in the entire northern hemisphere. Not around here, though. Oh, well. They are not threatened by much, other than fancy-fur-coat-wearing ladies, and the IUCN lists them as a species of “least concern.” They thrive in urban and suburban areas, and the more humans encroach on their habitats, the happier they seem to be.

Tagged as: fox, humans, threats

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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: Chilean Pudú (Pudu puda)

by JR Kinyak on July 8, 2010

in Theme Weeks,Ungulates

Pudú (click image to enlarge)


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The Mammals of the World Cup series is almost finished! Just two more countries after today’s representative from Chile, the Chilean or southern pudú, which is the second smallest deer in the world, the first being the northern pudú, this guy’s cousin. The Chilean pudú is less than a foot and a half tall and is vulnerable to becoming endangered because of habitat loss (join the club, little pudú) in its forest home, poaching, and domestic dogs.

There’s a Chilean metal band called Power of the Pudú, and they have a song called “Oda al Pudú,” or “Ode to the Pudú.” Check out the video below, which has translated subtitles (seemingly translated by a computer). It’s pretty good!

As for Chile’s soccer team, they have a long and sometimes disgraceful World Cup history. They’ve made it to the big tournament eight times, earning third place in 1962, when they hosted, and making it to the Round of 16 this year. But in 1990, the team was banned from that year’s tournament and the next one, too (1994), because of something that happened at a 1989 qualifying game against Brazil. Chile was behind 1–0 when a Brazilian fan threw a firework onto the pitch. The goalie, Roberto Rojas (nicknamed Cóndor) fell to the ground, his head bleeding, and the team doctor came out to have a look at him. They took him off on a stretcher, and then the Chilean team captain came out and said the team would not be returning to the game because conditions were unsafe.

Well, it turned out that the firework did not hit Rojas, but that he had cut himself deliberately in order to stop the game. It also came out that the team doctor had submitted a “fraudulent medical certificate” and that the coach had ordered Rojas and the doctor, by walkie-talkie, to stay on the ground. In the end, Rojas, the doctor, and the coach were all banned from soccer for life, the team captain who kept the team from returning to play was banned for five years, and the team was banned from the following two World Cups. In 2001, FIFA lifted the ban against Rojas.

YouTube has several videos about the incident, but they’re all in Spanish or Portuguese. Here’s one, marking the game’s 20th anniversary. You may or may not be able to understand the words, but the footage of the firework and the injury say a lot on their own.

Tagged as: deer, endangered, humans, threats, World Cup

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