Mammals of Iraq: Finless Porpoise (Neophocaena phocaenoides)

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This littlest of the cetaceans lives in the seas of Asia and the East Indies, including the Persian Gulf. So named because it lacks the dorsal fin that other porpoises have, the finless porpoise is a slow-moving fellow who frequently finds himself, an innocent byswimmer, killed by errant fishing methods. Sometimes he's hunted for his meat, his skin, or his oil, too. Female finless porpoises have a neat child-rearing adaptation: there's a rough spot on their backs that serves as a saddle where their babies can ride without slipping off.

Porpoises and dolphins are related, but they're in different families.* There are a few characteristics you can use to tell them apart. Generally, dolphins have beaks while porpoises don't, and porpoises have small, round heads. Porpoises, other than this species, anyway, have triangular dorsal fins, while dolphins' dorsal fins are hooked. Also, porpoises have stockier bodies than the slender dolphins do.

Speaking of dolphins and the Persian Gulf, the US military has used dolphins, sea lions, and other marine mammals for reconnaissance and mine-finding missions for more than four decades, including in the Persian Gulf since at least the late 1980s. More recently, 152 dolphins mysteriously washed up dead on the shores of Iran: "Suicide or murder? Iran blames US after 152 dolphins die," says the Guardian.

*Of course, this is controversial. Some scientists think dolphins and porpoises are members of the same family (the dolphin one, to be precise). As regular Daily Mammal readers know, we usually come down on the side of More Mammals! Also, here's a helpful mnemonic device: Kids Pour Coke On Fat Green Snakes. What does it help me remember nearly every day?

Consecutive days of mammals: 1
Record: 16

Mammals of Iraq: European Hare (Lepus europaeus)

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Mammals of Iraq: Fallow Deer (Dama dama)

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Mammals of Iraq: Caucasian Squirrel (Sciurus anomalus)

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Sigh. It was so long ago that I started the Mammals of Iraq series. Then I decided to draw a jerboa…and it was really difficult…and I started putting it off…and forever passed. I decided to skip that particular jerboa species for now and just get on with it already. This squirrel, also known as the Persian squirrel, was the result. I wish his two eyes didn't look like they belonged to two different squirrels, but oh well. One thing I really need to work on with the Daily Mammal is perfectionism. I don't mean in the sense that I do everything perfectly, but almost the opposite: I do nothing perfectly, and I beat myself up about it, and I give up, and I spend way too much time. When your goal is to draw all 5,000 mammal species, though, perfect is the enemy of the good, as someone says. (Voltaire, actually. One interesting thing is that business writers have flipped that around to "the good is the enemy of the great," which is the opposite meaning.)

Anyway, here are three interesting Caucasian-squirrel-related links.

"Almost 300 languages and their word for squirrel": According to this site, there are two Kurdish words for the Persian squirrel, sihoreek and simolak.

Listen to a Persian squirrel's chirps. When I first played this recording on my computer just now, my dog Minnie ran over to cock her head back and forth at the speakers. But she either figured it out or lost interest pretty quickly, and now she ignores it.

"My friend Fındık," a delightful Flickr set of photographs of a pet Caucasian squirrel who lives in Turkey. Check out Fındık's relaxed poses: you never see squirrels lounging about like that in the wild.

Edit: I shouldn't have said you "never" see squirrels lounging about like that in the wild. I just found a new Flickr group called Squirrel Pancakes, full of photos of secure squirrels in parks and backyards.

Consecutive days of mammals: 1
Record: 16

Mammals of Iraq: Smooth-coated Otter (Lutrogale perspicillata)

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To celebrate my boss Ramona's successful trip to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, as well as because we're still at war there, I'm going to be spotlighting some of the mammals of Iraq this week. These two fine fellows are smooth-coated otters, who live in Iraq's Mesopotamian marshlands, as well as in other parts of Asia. The otters have a way of forming a semicircle with the rest of their family and sort of herding fish in front of them. In India, people who noticed this have had some success in training smooth-coated otters to herd fish right into their nets!

Smooth-coated otters are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). One famous subspecies, known only to live in Iraq, may be extinct now. This variety was called Maxwell's otter after an author named Gavin Maxwell. Maxwell found an otter in Iraq and took it back home with him, where he raised it in the Scottish highlands. The lovable otter, Mij, became the star of a best-selling novel, Ring of Bright Water, that was adapted into a popular movie in 1969.

Now, I had never heard of this book and movie, which is both a surprise, as I was an animal-book freak as a kid, and a relief, as it has, apparently, a heartbreaking ending. I'm telling you this without a spoiler alert because I've been reading horror stories of children and adults alike being traumatized by the sudden tragedy in what was a playful romp of a movie. If you have kids and you want to read a great book about a pet otter with no tears, I recommend the currently out-of-print Picaro by Dorothy Wisbeski, which was one of my and my dad's favorites when I was little. It has really beautiful illustrations including, if I recall correctly, one of Picaro splashing in the toilet.

When Saddam Hussein's Baath regime was in power in Iraq, they almost destroyed Iraq's marshlands in an attempt to eradicate the Marsh Arabs, a society that had lived there for millennia. The regime drained the marshes, burned villages, and destroyed livestock and crops. In addition to displacing and destroying the livelihoods of thousands and thousands of Marsh Arabs, this likely led to the extinction of the Maxwell's subspecies of smooth-coated otter. USAID runs a program to restore and reflood Iraq's marshes and help develop the communities around them. Learn more about the Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program here.

Consecutive days of mammals: 1
Record: 16