Binturong (Arctictis binturong)

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

Striped Mammal Week: Banded Mongoose (Mungos mungo)

Coming soon: the second Daily Mammal 24-Hour Mammalthon! Prepare yourself!

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As Striped Mammal Week draws to a close, we encounter the banded mongoose of Africa. Banded mongooses live in most every type of ecosystem except for deserts. They're little nomads, staying in any given den (which they recycle from termite nests) for only a few days at a time, or maybe a few weeks if the den is really, really good. They eat mostly insects and similar invertebrates, but they will eat small vertebrates if the occasion presents itself. Something I'd like to see is the way they open eggs to get at their contents: the description in Walker's Mammals of the World seems to indicate that they hike them between their back legs like footballs, aiming for a hard object that will break the egg's shell.

Striped Mammal Week: Aardwolf (Proteles cristata)

Before long, it will be time for another 24-Hour Mammal Marathon!

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The aardwolf is in the hyena family, and you can see the resemblance. Unlike their hyena cousins, however, aardwolves are insectivores, eating mainly termites along with the larvae of other insects. They keep their dens in underground burrows throughout Africa, often moving into homes that aardvarks have abandoned. They're sometimes killed by people mistakenly believing that they prey on poultry and sheep, but they actually seem to hate eating meat. The biggest problem aardwolves face from humans comes when the aardwolves eat insects that have been sprayed with pesticide.

The Aardwolf on the IUCN Hyaena Specialist Group website

Striped Mammal Week: Okapi (Okapia johnstoni)

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Here's an okapi. I'll write more about okapis tomorrow night. For now, just know that they're related to giraffes and live in the rain forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (I'm also going to find out what the standard shortened form of Democratic Republic of the Congo is tomorrow, I hope.)

Striped Mammal Week: Streaked Tenrec (Hemicentetes semispinosus)

Coming soon: the second-ever 24-hour Mammal Marathon!

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Here's another of those wonderful mammals that exist only in Madagascar. The streaked tenrec is a small insectivore with barbed quills that lives with its family in underground burrows. Tenrecs make a lot of strange little noises, including one that a mother tenrec will produce by vibrating certain of her quills. This sound lets her communicate with and locate her young! According to the IUCN, tenrecs are quite abundant, even in urban areas. I like learning about all the different sorts of urban wildlife in the world. One city might consider urban wildlife limited to pigeons, rats, mice, and insects, while another has a monkey scourge or an abundance of streaked tenrecs. Here, we have coyotes (I saw one at the airport two weeks ago), rabbits, roadrunners, bobcats, and the occasional mountain lion or bear. What interesting animals live in your town?

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

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."

Striped Mammals Week: Numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus)

Coming soon: 24-Hour Mammalthon II! Stay tuned!

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The numbat is a small marsupial that lives in western Australia. Although it's also known as the banded anteater, it eats nothing but termites—about 20,000 a day. Numbats can't break into termite mounds on their own, so they have to adjust their schedules to fit the termites'—sleeping when they sleep and hunting when the termites are out and about. Then it's a termite feast for our mammal friends.

Numbats are currently classified as threatened by the IUCN, but luckily, they're making a comeback. The problem was introduced predators, especially foxes, combined with the usual habitat destruction that is the scourge of mammal species everywhere (except for one). Thanks to fox-trapping and relocation efforts, the numbat population is now growing.

Hello everyone!

Hi mammals of all sizes and shapes,

Please don't abandon the Daily Mammal! I'm in the midst of an unusually busy time at work (for instance: I went on two different business trips this week, and while I don't go anywhere next week, I have two trips the week after that, too), and it's been difficult to keep up with the mammals. But I'm still committed to my project, and your support, comments, and enthusiasm still make my day. Some have suggested that I switch to the Weekly Mammal, but I'm not going to do that just yet. Know that I'll post new mammals as often as I can, with the goal continuing to be daily, and please keep visiting!

love,
JR