Crab-eating Raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus)

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Crab-eating raccoons eat not just crabs, but other crustaceans and plenty of fruit, too: probably just about anything they can get their paws on, really. They live in Central and South America, from Costa Rica to Argentina, and on some Caribbean islands. I think they kind of look like a summertime version of our North American common raccoons, and they are closely related, but with shorter fur for their warmer climate and slightly different coloring.

Here is a blogger's story of an encounter with a tame crab-eating raccoon named Bandit. (She also recounts her first experience with Marmite.)

Greater Grisón (Galictis vittata)

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This relative of the skunks, badgers, weasels, and ferrets lives in Central and South America. It makes its home in burrows when it's not zipping around, spiritedly hunting birds, small mammals, and invertebrates, pausing occasionally for a palate-cleansing piece of fruit. Walker's Mammals of the World says, "Young grisóns tame readily and make affectionate pets," but I feel no urge to test that theory. I am delighted to report that, unlike manny of the mammals we've met, the greater grisón is not only an IUCN species of least concern, but that it "has a wide distribution and there do not appear to be any major threats to the species." Yay! (Later in the IUCN account, we do learn that "in some parts of their range the males are trapped for their body parts." Body parts? Only males? It is disconcerting, isn't it?)

Here you can look at some pictures of a greater grisón's brain.

Mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx)

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Mandrills! The vividly beautiful faces of the males fill me with the same kind of heart-aching longing that I get when looking at pictures of the Paris couture shows. Just perfectly, unreasonably, untouchably beautiful.

In fact mandrills are the most colorful of mammals (sigh…it's all drab from here, folks). They're also the biggest of the monkeys. They live in the African countries of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo, in groups that may number up to 800 individuals.

Here is a very good New York Times article by Natalie Angier (I love her) called "In Mandrill Society, Life is a Girl Thing." (Weird title, but I promise it's a good article. Also, page 4 has only one sentence, so don't be too daunted.)

Desert Shrew (Notiosorex crawfordi)

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Well, haven't I learned something today. I use Walker's Mammals of the World, sixth edition, as a general reference for this project. It's a huge two-volume work, the most comprehensive in existence, and invaluable to me for sorting out taxonomic questions and getting basic information about species' habitats and habits. This edition came out in 1999, and the previous editions came out in 1991, 1983, 1975, 1968, and 1964. Looks like we're about due for a new one, right? And good thing, too! I picked this little shrew out of my Walker's the other day. It was listed as the only member of the genus Notiosorex. First thing I learn online is that now the consensus seems to be that there are actually four Notiosorex species, not one. Okay, that's nothing new around here, I can deal with that.

But then I go to look at the Wikipedia pie chart of the distribution of mammalian orders, remembering—I thought—that members of the order Insectivora constituted the third-largest group. Insectivora is one of the 28 orders in Walker's. It includes shrews, hedgehogs, and moles, shrews being in the family Soricidae. But the Wikipedia pie chart doesn't even list insectivores. Instead, the third-largest group, behind rodents and bats, is Soricomorpha, shrew-bodies.

It turns out that taxonomically-minded people are coming to a consensus that Insectivora, which Wikipedia calls "a scrapbasket," is in fact several separate orders—colugos in one, elephant shrews in another, hedgehogs and gymnures over there, etc., etc. Lord have mercy, but this has exploded my mammal-loving world. It's one of the most interesting things about this project, and biology and actually, I guess, science in general, the way no one even knows how many mammals there are, people can disagree on whether this species is really the same as that species, and it's always changing, but still, I was not expecting to lose a whole order, and one whose name I just learned to pronounce properly (stress on the third syllable).

Seventh edition of Walker's, where are you?

This shrew, a member of Soricomorpha, lives in the southwestern United States (including my home state, New Mexico) and in Mexico. They are way smaller than you'd think: only three or four inches long on average, including their tails. They're so small that they can actually hang out in beehives, entering and leaving through the bees' doors.

Serval (Felis serval)

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Hello, mammals! Meet the serval, a smallish African wild cat. But not all of it is smallish; in fact, proportionally, the serval has the longest legs and the biggest ears of all the cats. (You can't see the legs here, obviously, but check out the full-body photographs on ARKive. Servals look like they're wearing the wrong heads.) They remind me of hyenas, maned wolves, and other savannah or grassland hunters who need long necks and long legs to see above the plants.

Servals are not in any immediate danger of extinction (IUCN classifies them as a species of least concern) but between habitat loss and being hunted for their hides, some populations and subspecies of the serval have decreased or even vanished.

These golden cats hunt rodents, frogs, lizards, and even insects. They attack with a pounce. They can leap three meters in the air to grab a bird in flight. Serval sounds include growls, spits, shrill cries, and purrs. They're mostly crepuscular (one of my favorite words: active at dusk and dawn) and solitary. Here's some nice nighttime safari footage of a leaping serval.

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Cuvier's Beaked Whale (Ziphius cavirostris)

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Happy Inauguration Day! Today is the last day of our visit to President Obama's (!!) home state. This funny guy is a Cuvier's beaked whale, also called a goose-beaked whale. Even though Cuvier's beaked whales are believed to be quite abundant, and even though they have an impressively large range, very little is known about them. They're difficult to study because they seldom come to the surface. We do know, though, that they can dive deeper than any other air-breathing animal and that they hear through their throats (the sound travels to their ears through "a unique fatty channel").

We also know that beaked whales seem especially susceptible to being harmed by naval sonar experiments and exercises. In 2000, several Cuvier's beaked whales beached in the Bahamas, bleeding around their brains and ears, during naval exercises. Naval sonar has also been linked to mass strandings in the Mediterranean, the Madeira Islands, the Canary Islands, Japan, and the Gulf of California. The bad news for Hawaii's beaked whales, reported last week, is that the U.S. Navy has been given a permit for a year of sonar and bomb training off the coast of Hawaii. The Navy is supposed to try not to harm marine mammals, but since no one knows exactly how sonar hurts the whales, how can we prevent it?

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Rats Two Ways (Norway Rat and Polynesian Rat)

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As I write this, there are only about 11 hours left until Barack Obama assumes the presidency, which means we'll be celebrating his home state for only a little while longer here at the Daily Mammal. The other day, we looked at the small Asian mongoose, which was imported to kill Hawaiian rats. Now, let's meet a couple of the rats in question.

On the left is the Norway or brown rat, Rattus norvegicus. This rat came to Hawaii on European ships in the 19th century. The fellow on the right is a Polynesian or Pacific rat, otherwise known as Rattus exulans. It came centuries earlier in Polynesian canoes. These two species, as well as the black or roof rat, are responsible for the extinction of a number of Hawaiian bird species and the decline of even more, both because they prey on the birds and their nests, and because they compete with birds for food. They also carry a range of diseases and parasites. And they love to destroy sugarcane, pineapple, coffee, macadamia, and banana crops. They don't think of it as destruction, though; to them, it's just lunch.

The mongooses didn't eradicate the rats of Hawaii, as it was hoped they would. Now, poison is the best way to get rid of them, and you can use electric fences to keep them out of places you'd rather they not visit.

We haven't visited with Ivan T. Sanderson, author of Living Mammals of the World, in a while. Here's what he says about one of today's rodents:

"Although Man is undeniably 'top-mammal' in certain ways, and the Elephant may be regarded as the most highly 'evolved,' there is little doubt that some rat, and probably the Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus) is actually the finest—in every sense of the word and especially in efficiency—product that Nature has managed to create on the planet today…Rats preserve a much more practical balance between compassion for and indifference to their own kind than we do. While weaklings or cripples among their numbers may be left alone, 'fools' and 'criminals' seem often to be deliberately eliminated or killed outright. All of this results in much sounder eugenics than we practice. That there are more individual Brown Rats in North America than there are people, is not the result of man's carelessness, indifference, or wasteful and dirty habits; it is the result of the greater stamina and, frankly, commonsense of the rats."

I don't know about you, but I'm okay with our unsound eugenics! The Polynesian rat is called kiore in the Maori language, and it reached New Zealand, as it did Hawaii, in Polynesian canoes. In traditional Maori culture, the kiore plays an important part in ceremonies and mythology. You can read about that here in the Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Pantropical Spotted Dolphin (Stenella attenuata)

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Today we continue our look at the mammals of U.S. President-Elect Obama's home state, Hawaii.

While Hawaii is rather short on native land mammals, it enjoys an abundance of native marine mammals. One of these is the pantropical spotted dolphin, which is found in all of the oceans in the world between 40ºN and 40ºS. As its name broadcasts, it's characterized by its light-on-dark and dark-on-light spots, which increase with age.

You probably remember the public discussions and movements about dolphins and tuna fishing from the 1980s and early 1990s. The pantropical spotted dolphin is the species that was most affected by the tuna industry. You see, these dolphins have a close relationship—a loyalty almost—with yellowfin tuna. Before the 1950s, tuna had to be caught one at a time. Then advances in net technology made it possible to catch them in a big net called a purse seine. The best way to do this was to find their dolphin friends, who have to surface to breathe (unlike tuna, which are fish).

The idea was to catch the dolphins and tuna together, then release the dolphins, but catching the tuna was the priority, not saving the dolphins. The number of dolphins "accidentally" killed by tuna fishing since the 1950s is more than three times the number of whales killed—on purpose—by the commercial whaling industry in all of the 20th century.

Dolphins, the quintessential charismatic megafauna, were able to rally the support of the public, and a series of regulations, organizations, boycotts, and laws have brought the number of dolphins killed way, way down. Despite the Bush administration's efforts to undermine the integrity of the Dolphin-Safe Tuna label, it's now easy, in the U.S. and many other countries, to buy tuna caught without killing dolphins. (If your tuna doesn't say dolphin-safe, it probably isn't, so shop on the safe side.)

Unfortunately, the pantropical spotted dolphin has yet to recover from the years of dolphin-dangerous tuna fishing, and the IUCN calls it conservation-dependent. Here's hoping Barack Obama will help protect his fellow native Hawaiians.

From NOAA: a good, brief primer on the tuna/dolphin issue.

Mammals of Hawaii: Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata)

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Today we continue our celebration of President-Elect Barack Obama and his home state of Hawaii! The brush-tailed rock wallaby, native to Australia, was once common throughout that continent; now it's confined to tiny parts of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. The Victoria population, in particular, is near extinction. These fuzzy marsupials live on rocky ledges and…Wait, what's that? Oh, yes, Hawaii!

In 1916, someone brought two adult brush-tailed rock wallabies—a male and a female—and one wallaby joey from Australia to Hawaii for a private zoo. While they waited to move into their new digs, the wallabies were kept in a tent. Well, a pack of local dogs attacked the tent and killed the joey, but the adult breeding pair escaped. Now there's a feral population of "brushies" in Oahu, all of whom are descended from the 1916 escapees.

This species was introduced to New Zealand, too, and it's possible that in the future, the Hawaii and New Zealand emigrés could prove helpful in conserving the original Australian populations. Unlike other introduced species, the brush-tailed rock wallabies enjoy a pretty undisturbed Hawaiian life. Since they're related to the vulnerable Australians, and since they don't really harm anyone or multiply wildly or compete with anyone, the state government protects them.

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Small Asian Mongoose (Herpestes javanicus)

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Let's continue our celebration of President-Elect Obama's childhood home, shall we? Yesterday I mentioned that today we'd meet the only land mammal native to Hawaii (or as native as a mammal can be to Hawaii, meaning, I suppose, that it was already there when people arrived). Well, this mongoose isn't it. Hawaii's only indigenous land mammal is the Hawaiian hoary bat, a subspecies—endemic to Hawaii—of the regular hoary bat, Lasiurus cinereus. The hoary bat is the most widespread bat in North America, but the Hawaiian variety is endangered. Imagine those lonesome little bats arriving at their island home. Imagine them flying alone through the night, the only bats in Hawaii, their calls echoing back to them unmixed with those of other species. Anyway, I drew it in 2007, so have a look if you want, and now we'll move on to the invasive and introduced species on the islands of Hawaii.

Here's the deal with islands. They're hard to get to and hard to get off of. The species that make it to islands are usually those that can swim or fly. They often don't evolve any adaptations to predators because they don't have any; they just cruise around their island paradises quite content. Then people show up in boats, and on those boats are stow-away rats—they can't swim or fly but they're good at hitching rides. Rats start causing general havoc, to both the agricultural operations the people set up and the native ecosystems. Then everybody freaks out and needs to get rid of the rats.

In 1872, Bancroft Espeut, a sugar-cane plantation owner in Jamaica, had what seemed like a good idea at the time. Mongooses will eat just about anything, he reckoned, so why not let them get a taste of Jamaican rats? Espeut imported nine mongooses from India and set them loose on his land. They were a hit and quickly multiplied, spreading throughout Jamaica. What happened next? This is from Nature's October 21, 1897, issue:

"Ten years later it was estimated that the saving to the colony through the work of this animal amounted to £100,000 annually. Then came a sudden change in the aspect of affairs. It was found that the mongoose destroyed all ground-nesting birds, and that the poultry as well as the insectivorous reptiles and batrachians of the island were being exterminated by it. Injurious insects increased in consequence a thousand-fold; the temporary benefits of the introduction were speedily wiped away, and the mongoose became a pest. Domestic animals, including young pigs, kids, lambs, newly-dropped calves, puppies, and kittens, were destroyed by it, while it also ate ripe bananas, pine-apples, young corn, avocado pears, sweet potatoes, cocoas, yams, peas, sugar-cane, meat and salt provisions, and fish. Now, we are told, nature has made another effort to restore the balance. With the increase of insects, due to the destruction by the mongoose of their destroyers, has come an increase of ticks, which are destroying the mongoose, and all Jamaicans rejoice."

Well. If only Hawaii had waited until 1897 to start thinking about importing its own group of mongooses! But no. In 1883, Hawaii brought 72 of them over from Jamaica; descendents of this group eventually made their way to all of the Hawaiian islands but Kauai. (Not Kauai? Well, kind of.)

The rat population was unaffected, perhaps because mongooses are diurnal and rats are nocturnal, and so, like two ships passing at dusk (or dawn), they don't really come into much contact. But lots and lots of other creatures fell prey to the mongooses' appetites, and the little beasts have been responsible for a number of extinctions, almost including that of the Hawaiian nene, a goose who will be familiar to all crossword-puzzle lovers. (The nene itself is actually Canadian, but that's another story, and not a mammalian one.)

So here's a drawing of one of Hawaii's mongooses (all of whom are descended from the 9 that Bancroft Espeut brought from India to Jamaica). Through no fault of their own, they are a major scourge of the islands, and all the while, they're just trying to do what mongooses do. No one's come up with a really great idea for getting rid of them—poison seems the most promising, and they may as well skip the prairie dog vacuum—but at least they stand as a lesson about the dangers of tampering with the balance of ecosystems.

(Note that this is another of those taxonomically controversial species. Are the mongooses from Jamaica and Hawaii small Asian mongooses, or are they a different species, the small Indian mongoose (H. auropunctatus)? Is the small Indian mongoose a different species in the first place, or just a subspecies of the small Asian one? Or is it not a even a subspecies? Perhaps one day we'll all agree.)

Mammals of Hawaii Week: Hawaiian Monk Seal (Monachus schauinslandi)

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To celebrate the inauguration of President Barack Obama in a week, let's meet some mammals of Hawaii, where Obama grew up.

Hawaii's status as a volcanic island chain means any species there—of fish, lizards, trees, whatever—had to arrive there from somewhere else at some point. As far as I can ascertain, only one land mammal can call itself a native Hawaiian, and we'll meet it tomorrow. Today, say hello to the Hawaiian monk seal, one of two mammals found on Hawaii and nowhere else.

The monk seal gets its name because of its solitary nature. The Hawaiian monk seal is now confined almost exclusively to the Leeward Islands, where the Polynesians never really settled. This endangered mammal just doesn't do well with encroaching humans—who does, right? When a pregnant Hawaiian monk seal is annoyed by humans and their dogs, she'll move somewhere else to give birth, and that somewhere else is often not a very good place to raise a baby. Humans' fishing activities make it harder for the monk seals to find fish to eat, and they can get entangled in fishing nets and drown, too.

Mother Hawaiian monk seals stay with their babies for about six weeks after giving birth. During these weeks, the mother seals stop eating, losing a couple hundred pounds. (I can see the magazine covers now: "The Hawaiian Monk Seal Diet: From Baby Bump to Beach Body in Six Weeks!") Most seals live in colder climates, and the Hawaiian monk seal doesn't seem to have any adaptations for its tropical home. In fact, it has the same amount of blubber as polar seals. In the hottest part of the day, it hauls itself onto the beach to take a nap in wet sand, like the seal in this picture, or in the shade. (I hope the endangered-species policies of the new administration will help them sleep a little better.)

According to Walker's Mammals of the World, "during the spring and summer adult males cruise constantly along favorite basking beaches in search of receptive females." Sounds like humans!

Rats Three Ways (Rattus lutreolus, Rattus fuscipes, Oryzomys palustris)

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It's always nice to knock off multiple rodents in one drawing. You have no idea how much the rodents gnaw at me. Forty percent of all mammals are rodents. Forty percent. As I've mentioned before, I did not consider that fact when I first thought, "I know! I'll draw all the mammal species!" In order not to spend the last few years of this project drawing nothing but rodents, I should probably draw them three days a week. Would that bore you?

This particular drawing is one of those good exercises in perfectionism prevention for me. Sometimes I'm not at all happy with my work. But then I remember that there are 5,000 species, so I'm bound to dislike at least 500 of my drawings. Weird!

Shown here, clockwise from lower left, are:

Swamp Rat (Rattus lutreolus), who lives in Australia. This rat is notable, according to its species account in Mammalian Species, because "under experimental conditions, R. lutreolus was able to tolerate long periods of water deprivation. Intake of solid food and urine output declined during this period…The ecological significance of its extraordinary tolerance for water imbalance requires study." Also, it has the shortest tail of all the rats in Australia. And other than the Tasmanian subspecies, it likes to live in wetlands.

Bush Rat (Rattus fuscipes), another Australian. Did you know there are Australian Alps? I didn't, until I read that "although mainly a lowland species, R. fuscipes occurs in Australian Alps to 2,210 m." in Mammalian Species. I could go on to tell you about what Mammalian Species describes as "a serendipitous discovery relating to dietary intake of fluoroacetate by R. fuscipes of Western Australia," but I won't. This particular species account is rather long, but in browsing through it, I see that "During major fires, R. fuscipes retreats into burrows; afterward it hides in deep accumulations of ash."

Marsh Rice Rat (Oryzomys palustris), of the eastern United States, from southeastern Pennsylvania to the Florida Keys and as far west as Illinois. This rat is semi-aquatic, and like the swamp rat, it lives in wetlands. In several states, marsh rice rats are the main sustenance of barn owls, and they're also preyed on by other owls, cottonmouths, water snakes, hawks, raccoons, foxes, mink, weasels, and skunks.

Markhor (Capra falconeri)

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This twisty goat lives in the western Himalayas, in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It's endangered due to hunting for food and "traditional medicine," warfare, and increasing competition with livestock. Hunting permits for the markhor can fetch quite a price: a couple of weeks ago some Norwegian paid US$81,200 for the right to kill one in Pakistan.

The word markhor comes from Farsi words for snake and eating, which is a little mysterious because goats don't eat snakes. It could refer to the horns, which in their ribbony way are reminiscent of snakes.

Malagasy Giant Jumping Rat (Hypogeomys antimena)

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Ah, Madagascar, an island of the strange and wondrous. The Malagasy giant jumping rat is another EDGE (evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered) species, which means that it's irreplaceable…and at risk of disappearing completely.

This nocturnal forager lives only in one small part of western Madagascar, where it forages for seeds, leaves, and fruit. It's the largest rodent in Madagascar. Like a rabbit, it has long ears and long back feet for jumping. It also occupies the same ecological niche that rabbits occupy in other places. Unlike a rabbit, it has only one or two babies a year.

The major threats to the giant jumping rat are climate change—specifically, aridification—habitat destruction, hunting, and introduced predators like cats and dogs.

Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust page for the Malagasy giant jumping rat.

Hispaniolan Solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus)

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This shaggy, shrewy solenodon lives only on the island of Hispaniola, which comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This species is one of only two in the solenodon genus. The other lives in Cuba.

The word solenodon comes from the Latin for groove-tooth, referring to an unusual feature: solenodons' lower incisors have a channel connected to a gland, through which they can inject venom. While there are a few other venomous mammals, such as the male duck-billed platypus and a couple species of shrew, only solenodons can actively inject poison with their teeth.

The two solenodon species, genetic research tells us, diverged from all the rest of mammalia some 76 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs dominated the earth. This is crazily early. And the two species separated from each other about 25 million years ago, which means they're not even that closely related. (This is around the time—give or take a few million years—that humans diverged from the Old World monkeys such as this week's proboscis and Tonkin snub.)

Like other island dwellers, the Hispaniolan solenodon neglected to acquire the adaptations that would give it half a chance to survive against bigger, more intimidating predators. It was used to being a big fish (mammal) in a small pond (island), and so the humans who showed up, along with their accompanying dogs and mongooses, have been able to drive it into a perilously endangered existence.

BBC News, January 9, 2009: "Venomous mammal caught on camera." (Thanks, Clare!)

EDGE (Evolutionarily Distinct & Globally Endangered) blog, January 9, 2009: "Hispaniolan solenodons—rediscovery and footage!"

Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis larvatus)

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Well, here's a good opposites-attract companion for yesterday's tiny-nosed Tonkin snub: the proboscis monkey, which lives only in Borneo. You will have noticed his floppy nose (and it's only the males who have such gigantic honkers), but you probably don't want to stare. It's okay: I bet this monkey feels about his schnozz the same way Edmond Rostand's Cyrano felt about his: "…[B]e it known to you that I am proud, proud of such an appendage! inasmuch as a great nose is properly the index of an affable, kindly, courteous [mammal], witty, liberal, brave, such as I am!"

The proboscis monkey is not only witty and brave (maybe). It's also a good swimmer, a skilled diver, and a maker of distinctive sounds variously described as howls, growls, or honks. Sadly, it's quite endangered, too, thanks to traditional medicine, the bushmeat trade, and habitat destruction: the usual suspects.

I think these monkeys are quite charming with an endearing look to them, but the most common word the 19th- and early 20th-century naturalists used to describe them was "grotesque." Here are some passages you may enjoy.

From The Naturalist's Library by William Jardine, 1833:

"This singular monkey is at once distinguished by the extraordinary elongation of the nose, which is nearly four inches in length, and gives a grotesque appearance to the animal, at the same time far from pleasing."

From The Living World by James William Buel, 1891:

"The Proboscis Monkey…resembles a shrivelled, bowed, long-nosed, little old man or woman, and is sacred in the eyes of the natives. Its noisy outcries, malignant disposition and fondness for irritating mischief, seem to add a fresh illustration to the truth that the uncivilized animal nature is perfectly unfit for the government of self or of others."

From The Evolution of Man by Ernst Haeckel, 1903:

"…the well-shaped nose of which might well be coveted by men in whom this organ is too short. On comparing the face of this nosed monkey with that of specially ape-like human beings (e.g., the noted Julia Pastrana, Fig. 126), the former will appear a higher form of development than the latter. There are many persons who believe that the 'image of God' is unmistakably reflected in their own features. If the Nosed-ape shared in this singular opinion, he would hold it with a better right than some snub-nosed people."

Finally, an illustration from the first book quoted above, The Naturalist's Library (1833) by William Jardine. I love this illustration.

Tonkin Snub-nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus avunculus)

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This funny fur-face, whose scientific name translates to nose-ape uncle, is one of the world's rarest mammals. Only about 200 of them exist. They live in forests in a little bitty section of northeastern Vietnam near the Chinese border, where they eat fruit and bamboo and rush around up in the leaves saying "ga-ga! ga-ga!" There are two reasons we're down to so few of them: deforestation, especially for the lumber trade and to make room for cardamom farms, and hunting. The Tonkin snub is an unfortunate ingredient in traditional medicines. (At one time, it was thought that the monkey's pelt could ward off rheumatism.) I'm not sure whether it's also hunted for bushmeat; some sources say yes, but some say that it doesn't taste very good and so doesn't make a very popular dinner.

A small bit of good news came out last month, when Flora & Fauna International announced it had found a previously unknown (to scientists, anyway) population of the little guys. This group of about 20 Tonkin snub-noses was afraid of humans, possibly indicating an earlier run-in with hunters. Locals in the area told of another, maybe larger group, too.

Minke Whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata)

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It's whale-hunting season again. And for the most part, it's minke whales like this one who are being hunted. Minkes are small baleen whales that live in every ocean and some seas. (There is some controversy about whether there is one minke species or two—or more—but I'm staying out of it for now.) They weren't hunted until recently—when they were about all that was left to hunt because other baleens had been killed to near extinction. While it's thought that there's currently a pretty healthy population of them, I don't think anyone's entirely sure exactly how many there are.

An international moratorium on commercial whaling took effect in 1986. Under the terms of the moratorium, member nations of the International Whaling Commission may not legally hunt whales, except for scientific purposes or, in some cases, by indigenous populations. If a country registered an official objection to that moratorium, it is not bound by its terms. That's why Norway is allowed to kill some 1,000 minke whales a year. (It usually doesn't kill nearly that many, though.) On the other hand, Japan registered an objection but then withdrew it; now Japanese ships kill more than 1,300 whales each year under the guise of "scientific research." No one needs to kill that many whales to study them; no one needs to kill any whales to study them, really. The whales wind up, rather non-scientifically, on dinner plates.

Right now, a ship called the Steve Irwin operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is following the Japanese fleet in the Antarctic, "nonviolently harassing" the whalers in an attempt to make it more difficult for them to kill whales. (Apparently, even Greenpeace thinks these guys are extreme.) Yesterday, Japan asked Australia to deny the Steve Irwin access to its ports, which the ship needs to visit so it can refuel, a three-week process. Australia hasn't said what it's going to do yet. This past Monday, a Japanese sailor named Hajime Shirasaki went missing from one of the whaling ships; he is assumed to have fallen overboard and drowned. Sea Shepherd announced it would not "harass" the whalers while they were searching for its body, and the Steve Irwin crew, which has the only helicopter in the region, tried to join the search effort but was rejected by the angry Japanese whalers.

Meanwhile, a Japanese propaganda film has been posted on YouTube (read about it here; the article links to the actual movie, which I'm not watching) in an attempt to reveal Australians' hypocrisy in their strict opposition to whaling while they abuse kangaroos. I say Australia and Japan are both wrong: leave the kangaroos and the whales alone.

January 6, 2009: "Japan Seeks Australia's Help to Thwart Whaling Opponents," NY Times
January 7, 2009: "Japanese Film Says Australians Abuse Animals," Telegraph
January 7, 2009: "Angry Whalers Reject Sea Shepherd Help Offer," The Age

NOAA's Marine Fisheries Review has published a memoir by a Russian whaler in PDF form on its website. I haven't read it yet but I think I'll take a look.

Animal Planet has a show about the Steve Irwin and the Japanese fleet called Whale Wars. Have you seen it?

Common Tent-Making Bat (Uroderma bilobatum)

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I drew a group of white tent bats in the very first Mammalthon, and I think learning about that species may have been the beginning of my current love for bats and for drawing them. Tressa saw that drawing and wanted a tent-making bat of her own, so these guys are for her. Thank you, Tressa, for giving these bats a home!

The common tent-making bat lives in central and South America, from Mexico to Bolivia and Brazil, and in Trinidad, too. They've been observed creating at least nine different kinds of tents from the leaves of at least five different plant families. Some of the styles of tents they make include (and this is all according to Walker's Mammals of the World) conical, palmate umbrella, pinnate, and boat tents.

Walker's says that making a tent can be a "long and arduous process," but the good news is that a given tent will last a while—up to two months in some cases. The tents provide camouflage, shelter, a view, footholds, and a connection to the movements of nearby foliage.

Female tent-making bats roost together in a sorority-house tent, and the males roost either alone or in smaller groups.

Mammal News Roundup

Hi, Mammals!

For the new year, let's get this show back on the road. I want to draw all these critters before I'm 50, after all. I'm going out of town for the weekend, but when I get back, I resolve to draw my little heart out, and I hope you'll look at my drawings.

Here are some mammal stories from the past few weeks.

The Washington Post, in "Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop," reports that acorns are disappearing from the northeastern United States! Seriously, they're just not there, where they should be. Some botanists are freaking out—and so are squirrels. "Crazy," "skinny" squirrels are getting into garbage, "demolishing pumpkins," and getting themselves killed in starving desperation. The epicenter of the acorn mystery seems to be northern Virginia, but reports of missing acorns have also been filed from Maryland and Pennsylvania and as far away as Kansas and Nova Scotia. While this probably won't be a big problem for the oak trees themselves, it's a serious issue for our mammal friends the squirrels.

One of the selections in the New York Times Magazine's "8th Annual Year in Ideas" issue was "Eat Kangaroos to Fight Global Warming." You see, cows produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas and a significant contributor to global warming. Kangaroos don't produce methane because of the enzymes in their digestive systems. I've previously read that some scientists are trying to graft those enzymes, somehow, into cows' systems, and I don't know how that's going, but a simpler solution, at least in Australia, is to wean people off of cattle and get 'em eating more kangaroo meat. (Even better, maybe, would be vegetarianism…)

In Sizhou, China, a man who trained some monkeys to ride bicycles at a market gave one of the monkeys a beating after it didn't do what he wanted. Well, the other monkeys turned it around on him, beating him over the head with his own cane. "They may have built up some feelings of hatred toward me," the man says, according to an article in the Daily Mail.

A stranded sea lion was wandering around near the runways at the Oakland International Airport, looking at people kind of odd, according to an airport manager quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle's story on the incident. The sea lion didn't interfere with airport operations, and it was taken to the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands.

Although melting sea ice is causing a disturbing number of polar bears to starve to death, a serendipitous glut of snow geese may prove golden. Polar bears can eat their eggs, which would solve two problems. (I almost said "kill two birds with one stone.") The movement of polar bears toward land should overlap with the snow geese's egg-laying cycle beginning in about three and a half years, so we'll see then how the bears like their huevos rancheros. LiveScience has the story.

Kangaroos photo by Julian Robinson.