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Brush-tailed Phascogale (Phascogale tapoatafa)

by J.R. Atkins on September 13, 2009

in Marsupials

Brush-tailed phascogale (click image to enlarge)

Brush-tailed phascogale (click image to enlarge)


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The brush-tailed phascogale (also called the tuan or the brush-tailed marsupial mouse) is a marsupial that lives in a few scattered regions around the edges of Australia. Brush-tailed phascogales (perhaps I’ll call them BTPs) are arboreal, nocturnal, and solitary—in other words, they scamper around the treetops at night, all alone in the moonlight. They like to eat lizards, birds, insects, and small mammals like mice, and they’re pretty agonistic, a zoological word meaning combative. BTPs can make a few different noises, and I like the way Walker’s describes them:

“When disturbed, P. tapoatafa utters a low, rasping hiss, which apparently is an alarm note. When angered, tuans emit a series of staccato ‘chit-chit’ sounds. Sometimes, when excited, tuans slap the pads of their forefeet down together while holding an alert, rigid pose, thus producing a sharp rapping sound. At times they also make a rapid drumming noise by quick vibrations of the tail.”

That all sounds quite similar to my daughter’s 5th-grade band in their first week together after the teacher told them, “You can make as much noise as you want before you pack up.”

The IUCN classifies the BTP as near threatened. Its numbers have been declining because of habitat loss and alteration and, to a lesser extent, being eaten by foxes and cats.

Tagged as: walker's, words

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Mammals of Alaska Week: Fisher (Martes pennanti)

by J.R. Atkins on July 7, 2009

in Carnivores, Theme Weeks

Fisher (click image to enlarge)

Fisher (click image to enlarge)


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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.

Tagged as: names, threats, words

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Mammals of Alaska Week: Muskox (Ovibos moschatus)

by J.R. Atkins on July 3, 2009

in Theme Weeks, Ungulates

Muskox (click image to enlarge)

Muskox (click image to enlarge)


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To honor (if that’s the word) Sarah Palin’s stepping down as governor as Alaska, let’s meet some of the mammals of the 49th state. (Because yesterday’s beluga whale lives in Alaska, I took the liberty of retroactively including it in this theme week, which I only just thought of.)

The muskox’s scientific name means “musky sheep-cow.” DNA analysis suggests that it’s more closely related to the goat family than to sheep or cows, and it doesn’t have musk, per se, but it does have rather pungent urine that it uses in various intimidating ways.

Muskoxen are native to Alaska, Greenland, and Canada, but they became extinct in Alaska in the 1800s. In the 1930s, 34 muskoxen from Greenland were reintroduced to the then-territory, and now there are some 2,000 living in the state. They’ve been introduced to Svalbard, Russia, and parts of Scandinavia, too.

The muskox has two coats, an outer one called guard hairs and an incredibly warm, downy undercoat called qiviut. And yes, that is an acceptable Scrabble word! Pronounced kiv-ee-yute, qiviut is several times warmer than sheep’s wool and softer than cashmere. As you can imagine, that means it’s very luxurious and expensive. (If anyone wants to send me a qiviut scarf, I won’t complain!)

Qiviut is one of the muskox’s very effective Arctic adaptations; others include short legs and a lot of body fat. Those short legs and fatty bodies mean that muskoxen can’t run very fast for very long, so when they’re threatened, a herd of muskoxen will line up facing their predator, showing their fearsome horns and keeping their calves behind them. If the predators come from multiple directions, the muskoxen form a circle with the babies in the middle.

Tagged as: cow, humans, words

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Bat-eared Fox (Otocyon megalotis)

by J.R. Atkins on May 8, 2009

in Carnivores

bat-eared fox (click image to enlarge)

bat-eared fox (click image to enlarge)


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Well, that’s an apt name! This fox (whose scientific name translates into something like ear-dog big-ear), lives in two separate areas of Africa that are about 1,000 km (621 miles) apart. One is in the eastern part of the continent, ranging from Ethiopia and southern Sudan to Tanzania, and one is in the south, from southern Angola to South Africa. Depending on where they live, bat-eared foxes eat insects, other arthropods, rodents, birds’ eggs, and plants. They’re especially keen on termites and dung beetles.

Besides those extra-large ears (which they use for sending each other visual signals as well as for hearing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they serve a cooling purpose, too, out there in the desert), the bat-eared fox has unusual dentition, which means the arrangement of its teeth. May I throw around some more mammalogist jargon just to impress you? The bat-eared fox has more teeth than any other placental, heterodontal mammal. That means it has a lot of choppers. Okay, specifically, it has the most teeth of all of the non-marsupial mammals that have kinds of teeth that are different from each other. For instance, humans: we’re placental with heterodontal dentition. But our pieholes are not nearly so crowded with the ol’ pearly whites.

Tagged as: dog, fox, words

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Scientific Names Week: Indian Palm Squirrel (Funambulus palmarum)

by J.R. Atkins on May 5, 2009

in Rodents, Theme Weeks

Indian palm squirrel (click image to enlarge

Indian palm squirrel (click image to enlarge)

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The Indian palm squirrel is a funambulist of the palms! Thinking of the words somnambulist or ambulatory, you can almost come close to figuring out what that means: a fun walker! Sort of. A funambulist is a tightrope walker (funis is Latin for rope; the word fun, on the other hand, comes from the Middle English fon, meaning fool, and this squirrel is no fool).

Indian palm squirrels are endemic to India and Sri Lanka. In a Hindu legend, the god Ram was searching for his beloved wife Sita, who had been kidnapped by a demon. At one point in the epic that tells his story, he must build a bridge across a sea, and he is aided by an army of monkeys and bears. But monkeys and bears aren’t the only animals that help him. This is from a version of the story on the India Times website:

The entire army of monkeys promptly got to work, under the supervision of Hanuman and Jamvant. Ram sat under a tree thinking of Sita and the days ahead.

After a while, he noticed something that moved him to tears. A little squirrel, who had been watching the monkeys carry huge boulders and rocks to build the bridge, began to do her bit to help the Lord. She began carrying little pebbles in her mouth and her tiny hands from a little mound near the tree to the site of construction.

A much amused and pleased Ram picked up the squirrel and petted her, running his fingers from her head down to her tail. The squirrel was blessed and forever marked with stripes—the mark of Lord Ram and a trophy of love.

A while back, a commenter suggested that the Daily Mammal could function as a sort of horoscope, where your personality can be compared to characteristics of the mammal I draw on your birthday. So if you, like me, were born on May 4, you resemble an Indian palm squirrel: you’re agile, fearless, hardworking, and willing to wreak minor destruction to get what you want.

Tagged as: humans, names, squirrel, words

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Scientific Names Week: Olive Baboon (Papio anubis)

by J.R. Atkins on April 28, 2009

in Primates, Theme Weeks

Olive Baboon (click image to enlarge)

Olive Baboon (click image to enlarge)

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The olive baboon lives in a wide swath of land across the middle of Africa. It’s one of those rare mammals that not only is safe from extinction, but whose numbers seem to be growing. Let’s all celebrate that ’cause it gets depressing around here, doesn’t it?

Papio in the baboon’s scientific name comes from a French word for baboon (according to A.F. Gotch, whom you may or may not believe). Anubis, of course, is the Egyptian god of the afterlife who has the head of a jackal. I’m guessing that anubis in this monkey’s name is a reference to the way baboons’ snouts resembles those of dogs.

On the other hand, whoever named Papio anubis may have been thinking of the lofty status baboons held in ancient Egypt. They were kept as pets (and possibly fruit pickers or other kinds of workers), depicted in art, and mummified in tombs. Supposedly, the Egyptians used their feces as an ingredient in aphrodisiacs. The Egyptian religion associated baboons with the sun god, perhaps because of the raucous ruckus they make at dawn, as well as with the afterlife. Baboons also represented the god Thoth, who was in charge of writing, wisdom, and judging the dead, as well as Hapy, the god of the Nile. The Egyptian god Babi has the head of a baboon. He’s vicious and bloodthirsty and lives on entrails and souls. Our word baboon may come from his name. Interestingly, it’s not known whether baboons were native to Egypt at that time or they were imported from Nubia.

Although it appears ancient Egyptian baboons were respected in theory, analysis of mummified baboon remains indicates that the monkeys were malnourished and kept in too-small cages.

Here is an ancient Egyptian baboon statue at the British Museum, along with some information about baboons and Egypt, and here’s another at the Metropolitan Museum.

Tagged as: baboon, humans, monkey, names, words

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Scientific Names Week: Black Rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)

by J.R. Atkins on April 24, 2009

in Theme Weeks, Ungulates

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

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Our current system of naming animals and plants is based on the system that Carl Linnaeus published in 1758. While others, including Aristotle, had previously attempted to organize the world’s living things into various arrangements, Linnaeus gave us an important innovation: the binomial system. Each animal (or plant or whatever) is known by a unique pair of names; no other creature has the same name. We’re the only Homo sapiens; the cotton-top tamarin is the only Saguinus oedipus. (Of course, there can be other members of the genus Homo and the genus Saguinus, but they have to have distinctive second, or species, names.)

The organization that keeps track of and codifies the system of naming animals is the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. The rules are quite extensive. My favorite guidelines are those that require namers to make every effort to ensure that their names are euphonious (pleasing to the ear) and that they don’t give offense.

Linnaeus was Swedish, but he wrote in Latin, as did pretty much everyone else writing about scientific matters at the time. The scientific names of animals are often referred to, casually, as their Latin names, and the rules governing naming do require the Latinization of some words. But there’s also a lot of classical Greek in the names, and many names derive from local words for the animals.

Many animals have redundant names (tautonyms, to use the official terminology), like Gorilla gorilla, Dama dama, and Uncia uncia. Usually, this happens when the name of the animal’s genus (the first name in the binomial system) changes, but the species name can’t. I like the black rhinoceros’s name because it’s redundant in two languages: diceros means two horns in Greek and bicornis means two horns in Latin.

The black rhinoceros’s common name is odd, too. The rhino is not black; it’s gray. Apparently, it was named the black rhinoceros to distinguish it from the white rhinoceros, which is also gray, not white. That animal’s common name comes from the Dutch word weit, which means wide, like the rhino’s muzzle. (My source for all this is A.F. Gotch’s book Mammals: Their Latin Names Explained.)

The black rhino is classified as critically endangered, the last step before extinction. It’s so bad, in fact, that the IUCN, which assesses the status of the world’s species, obscures the rhino’s range on its map “for security reasons.” While the black rhino was pretty numerous at the start of the 20th century, poaching caused a 96 percent decrease in the species’ population between 1970 and 1992. Black rhino horns are carved to create decorative handles for weapons and used in traditional medicine. Traditional medicine is going to be the death of a lot of mammal species.

Tagged as: books, endangered, names, taxonomy, threats, traditional medicine, words

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