Coffee Achievers Days: Common Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus)

Beginning March 16: the Daily Mammal Book Club!

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Here is a common palm civet, which is also called an Asian palm civet or a toddy-cat. That second name comes from the civet's supposed habit of drinking the palm wine, or toddy, that people had left in cups to ferment, or possibly eating or drinking naturally fermented palm fruits. I wonder if they got drunk; perhaps the one in this drawing is about to sleep it off in the trees.

There are several interesting things to know about this civet, which lives in central, south, and southeast Asia. The most interesting may be its role in producing civet coffee, also called kopi luwak. Have you heard of this? Here's how it works: palm civets, either in the wild or on farms where they're kept for this very purpose, go about their ordinary civet business, which involves eating berries and fruit. Among the things they like to eat are the berries of the coffee plants that have been introduced into their range.

Well, it turns out that coffee beans harvested not from coffee plants but from civet poop, after they've gone through the civets' digestive system, make allegedly very delicious cups of coffee. And since every pound of civet poop produces only about five ounces of coffee beans, and there are only so many civets and civet-poop sifters in the world, only 1,000 pounds of kopi luwak are produced worldwide each year. And since only 1,000 pounds of kopi luwak are produced each year, and since it's supposedly so delish, civet coffee is one of the most expensive kinds of coffee in the world. A pound of it costs well over $100. Here's a video on YouTube about a California coffee shop that sells kopi luwak for $65 a cup.

Why is it so good? Well, my friend Ramona tasted it at a Santa Fe dinner party, and she said it was really no better than Dunkin Donuts to her palate (which I consider fairly cultured). But to those who think it actually is amazingly scrumptious, there exist a couple of theories as to why. For one thing, it could be that the civets are just good at picking the ripest coffee berries, and so picking the beans out of their poop rather than off the plant means they've already gone through a quality-control process. In that case, the civets that are raised on farms and fed berries picked by people would not necessarily produce especially good coffee. It could also be that the enzymes in the civets' digestive systems alter the chemical composition of the beans in some way, making them less bitter.

I would drink a cup of kopi luwak harvested in the wild if someone else bought it for me, but in the meantime, perhaps I'll start a counterfeit or knockoff kopi luwak company with new labels pasted over sacks of beans from Dunkin. I wish I could say I had come up with this pun myself, but instead I'll just repeat it: kopi luwak is good to the last dropping. Here's a source if you feel like shelling out $180 for a pound, but I can't vouch for its quality or authenticity. (Before you try it, you might also like to know that civet anal glands excrete a disgustingly foul-smelling—and tasting?—substance as a defense mechanism.)

Even though they're so good about providing us with ABC coffee beans, the common palm civets have had to act as our scapegoats, too—or rather, the Chinese government's scapegoats. During the SARS epidemic, in 2003, some researchers decided that the disease was transmitted by common palm civets and China began culling them, killing thousands in a bid to eradicate the disease, and then boasting that they had succeeded when SARS disappeared in 2004. Well, now scientists believe that bats were the real culprits, and that the disease the civets had was transmitted from humans. So yes, we gave them SARS (or the civet equivalent), and then we killed them for it.

Common palm civets are also killed as pests and caught as pets. We have a complicated relationship with this creature.

Diana Monkey (Cercopithecus diana) and Daily Mammal Book Club!

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Okay, mammals, I'm back! And I have an announcement. I'm starting a Daily Mammal Book Club. Any mammals who want to join are welcome (at least, the ones that can read). We'll read a book together and discuss it here on the Daily Mammal.

Let's have the first discussion of the first book the week of March 16. That gives everyone a couple-few weeks to get the book. And the book is My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, which is $10 on Amazon. Here is Amazon's description of it:

"When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckos, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home."

I'm about halfway through it, and while it actually has very few mammals—just the puppies and bats mentioned above, so far—it is full of hilarious characters and beautiful places. I think it will be fun to discuss it with you, and I hope you'll join in! I will give more details about how it'll work in the coming weeks.

To celebrate My Family and Other Animals, here is a Diana monkey! Like my sister-in-law Diana, the Diana monkey shares its first name with the Roman goddess of the hunt and the moon (Artemis in Greek myths). Far as I can tell, the monkey gets its name because the crescent of white fur on its head is reminiscent of the shape of the moon, the goddess' headband, or a huntress' bow. It lives in a small part of Africa that overlaps Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, and Ghana. It has to be one of the most beautiful of the mammals, I think, with its crisp white-and-black fur and orange eyes.

My sister-in-law Diana is getting this drawing for her birthday in a few weeks. The surprise is spoiled.

Something I've Noticed About Myself

When I do a drawing that I really don't like, it sort of freezes me. I don't want to post it, but it's a mammal, so shouldn't I? I mean, it's one out of 5,000, mark it down. But I don't like the drawing, so I put it off and put it off. And meanwhile, I'm staring at it as it sits on the edge of my table, waiting for me to scan it, and I think its very presence makes me not even want to draw. It's this thing that I have to deal with. Do you understand?

Last week, I drew a beaver that I really don't like. So it's sitting here on the corner of my table. I was going to post about monogamy among beavers for Valentine's Day—that's how long it's been sitting here. I think I'll just skip it for now and go on with the next one and either redraw the beaver if I have time or just suck it up and post it if I have no other choice.

Darwin Days: Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis)

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Tonight, we conclude our celebration of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday with one last look at a mammal he wrote about in The Origin of Species.

Although Darwin's work is widely available for free online (see The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, and you're probably all set), I still find it easier and more satisfying to thumb through an actual book. It's kind of like rewinding a cassette tape versus placing a needle on a record. For me, anyway. So I bought a Penguin edition of Origin. There were three different printings to choose from at my bookstore, and I picked the middle one, price-wise, which seemed to have decent paper. Turns out it's a reprint of the first edition, and Darwin produced six editions total, each quite different from the previous. All this is to say that in the sixth edition, Darwin added a second chapter dealing with objections to his theory. In that chapter, he discusses the giraffe in great detail, discussing how and why it might be advantageous for a "nascent giraffe" to evolve a long, long neck.

It seems that the giraffe is still throwing people for a loop. When I was researching giraffe photos online for reference, I found one posted on Flickr that had a long, not overly polite discussion in the comments section about whether or not it was possible for a giraffe's neck to evolve, or whether the very fact of the giraffe's long neck was proof of the creation of the giraffe as a whole being, immutable and perfect. To me, it seems a textbook example of natural selection: the protogiraffes with the longest necks were able to eat more than the others. They lived longer because they ate longer. They reproduced more because they lived longer. More giraffes were born with long necks. And so on. But people still have problems with it because the giraffe seems unique, because it requires special structural adaptations in order to operate with such a long neck, or maybe because it looks like something someone like Dr. Seuss would have had to think up.

The giraffe reference I particularly like in Origin, though, is in my first-edition reproduction. After discussing the problem of the evolution of organs of seeming perfection (like the eye), Darwin addresses the problem of the evolution of "organs of little apparent importance." In his charmingly open and self-effacing way, he writes, "I have sometimes felt much difficulty in understanding the origin of simple parts, of which the importance does not seem sufficient to cause the preservation of successively varying individuals." Darwin goes on to point out that we shouldn't be so arrogant as to presume we know what's important and what's not. And the example he uses is the giraffe's tail:

"The tail of the giraffe looks like an artificially constructed fly-flapper; and it seems at first incredible that this could have been adapted for its present purpose by successive slight modifications, each better and better, for so trifling an object as driving away flies; yet we should pause before being too positive even in this case, for we know that the distribution and existence of cattle and other animals in South America absolutely depends on their power of resisting the attacks of insects: so that individuals which could by any means defend themselves from these small enemies, would be able to range into new pastures and thus gain a great advantage. It is not that the larger quadrupeds are actually destroyed (except in some rare cases) by the flies, but they are incessantly harassed and their strength reduced, so that they are more subject to disease, or not so well enabled in a coming dearth to search for food, or to escape from beasts of prey."

First of all, don't you love that 19th-century sentence structure, with endless commas, colons, semicolons, and then more commas? I love it. What Darwin is saying here* is that a fly-swatter is not as trivial as it seems. Fighting off flies saps a person's energy, and so it makes sense that the best fly-flighters would have a reproductive advantage. I imagine this is why giraffes have such lovely eyelashes, too.

My husband Ted has a theory that sexual selection could play a part here (see my lion post of a couple days ago). In his theory, female giraffes would be more attracted to those male giraffes who coolly switched their tails, rather than those who itched and jumped because flies were crawling all over them. It makes sense to me.

*I should note that my mammalogy is completely self taught. Two of my worst teachers ever were my two biology teachers (7th grade and 8th grade). What knowledge I have of science is from my dad (a geologist and painter) and my own curiosity and love of animals. So if I'm telling you really, really obvious things about evolution, I apologize. I'm just learning it all myself.

Darwin Days: American Mink (Neovison vison or Mustela vison)

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Welcome, readers of the Blog for Darwin blog carnival! (A blog carnival is a collection of posts from different blogs but on the same topic. I'm participating in one that compiles posts related to Darwin today through the 15th. Click the link above to read some of the other bloggers' posts.) At the Daily Mammal, we're celebrating Charles Darwin's 200th birthday (today! happy birthday!) with a look at some of the mammals that Darwin mentions in his Origin.

Chapter Six of Origin is dedicated to answering some of the problems that Darwin anticipates people finding with his theory. One of these issues is the seemingly amazing perfection of certain natural structures, like the eye, and the incredulity with which people consider that such perfection could arise gradually through natural selection. Another is the apparent lack of transition species: if species are always changing one into another, why don't we see all kinds of transition species, both now and in the fossil record? And how is it even possible that, for instance, a land animal could evolve into an aquatic one? How would the transitional species in between have lived?

That's where this fellow, the American mink, comes in. Darwin writes:

"It would be easy to show that within the same group carnivorous animals exist having every intermediate grade between truly aquatic and strictly terrestrial habits; and as each exists by a struggle for life, it is clear that each is well adapted in its habits to its place in nature. Look at the Mustela vison of North America, which has webbed feet and which resembles an otter in its fur, short legs, and form of tail; during summer this animal dives for and preys on fish, but during the long winter it leaves the frozen waters, and preys like other polecats on mice and land animals."

So, taking this mink as an example, if certain traits that lent themselves to living in the water began to be an advantage in the struggle for survival—say, water levels rose or predators pushed the minks out of their normal territory into one more waterlogged—the minks that were better adapted to aquatic living would be more likely to survive and reproduce their genes. And with successive generations, these characteristics would be strengthened, and as more and more minks were born with these adaptations, they would through greater numbers eventually take over, and perhaps we would have a new species. At least that's this laywoman's interpretation of the idea. Another example:

"In North America a black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."

Another thing to ponder is the way humans, through hunting, for instance, are creating unnatural selection. A recent study found that as bighorn sheep are hunted for their gigantic, beautiful, curling horns, those with smaller, less impressive horns are more likely to survive and reproduce. The result seems to be a decrease in horn size across the population. And since it seems that those bighorns with the biggest horns are also the most healthy and strongest, hunters are creating a weakened population. Some are calling it "evolution in reverse." Perhaps we would have seen something like this in the minks if fur farms hadn't overtaken the hunting of wild minks, and if trappers and mink hunters could selectively trap and hunt only the minks with the lushest coats.

Mink are fairly solitary and fairly nocturnal. They live in burrows beside rivers and they dine on crayfish and frogs in the summer, as Darwin noted, and small mammals like shrews and rabbits in the winter. Sometimes they use fur from their prey to line their dens. They are good at swiming, diving, and climbing.

Darwin Days: Lion (Panthera leo)

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It's quite fashionable to equate the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin himself. Science magazines and books sell with covers blaring "Darwin Was Wrong," "Was Darwin Wrong?," and "What Darwin Got Wrong." Meanwhile, intelligent-design and creationism proponents attack "Darwinism," and the New York Times publishes "Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live" and "Let's Get Rid of Darwinism." By creating an -ism, the New York Times pieces suggest, "Darwinists" devalue their own arguments, putting them on the same level as, for instance, creationism.

The fact, as far as I can tell, is that Darwin was right about many, many things, and most of those things that he was wrong about (mainly because things like genetics and continental drift hadn't yet been discovered, and the man couldn't do it all!) have nevertheless been built on his foundation. Many of the articles celebrating Darwin's bicentennial point out how remarkable it is that after 150 years, On the Origin of Species is still relevant. Today we'll talk about one of the ideas Darwin had before his time and that is still being studied and proven: sexual selection.

Basically, sexual selection refers to the favoring of certain traits solely because they are attractive to mates. As Darwin says in Chapter 4 of Origin, "This depends, not on a struggle for existence, but on a struggle between the males for possession of the females; the result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring." To attract females, males develop showy traits like bright feathers, big antlers, or electric guitars. The reasons why females are attracted to these things in the first place are not fully known; it could be that a male with big horns, for instance, has good genes in other ways; another theory holds that if a male can thrive despite the "handicap" of a huge tail or something, he must be pretty strong.

The lion's mane has long been a puzzle. In 1859, in Origin, Darwin wrote, "The males of carnivorous animals are already well armed; though to them and to others, special means of defence may be given through means of sexual selection, as the mane of the lion, and the hooked jaw to the salmon; for the shield may be as important for victory, as the sword or spear." The going theory for many years was that manes protected male lions from the claws and teeth of their rivals, but now it doesn't appear that's true because fighting lions don't tend to go for the head and neck in particular.

Studies in the past several years have focused on the variations in mane length and color. Researchers found that the luxuriousness of a lion's mane depended on its climate: lower, hotter, and more humid climates meant skimpier, lighter-colored manes because it can get hot under all that hair. The researchers were also surprised to learn that manes continue developing after the lion's sexual prime has come and gone. In the hottest places, older males are the only ones with manes to write home about. It makes me wonder if there could be a reverse sexual selection going on there: if you don't have a mane in a hot place, does it indicate that you're younger and therefore more virile? I don't know.

Scientists also fooled around with trying to lure both male and female lions with fake dummy lions of varying mane lengths. They found that males approached the shorter-maned dummies 9 out of 10 times, and females approached the longer-maned ones 13 out of 14 times. The males that intrigued the females intimidated the other males, in other words.

Here's a book I read part of once that postulates that all human creative culture—from art to architecture to comedy to writing books, etc.—is the result of sexual selection. In other words, men do cool things because chicks dig it: The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller.

Darwin Days: Tuco-Tucos Six Ways (Ctenomys spp.)

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The day after tomorrow, February 12, 2009, is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. (It's also Abraham Lincoln's.) I've recently begun reading Darwin's The Origin of Species, and I've decided to try to do a little something in celebration of Darwin's immense contribution. I'm going to be highlighting a few mammals that Darwin discusses in The Origin of Species, and I'll try to tell you something of what Darwin says about them. Since I haven't read the whole book, I'm going to be reading the sections that mention these mammals out of order and a bit out of context, but I'll do my best, and maybe my more Darwin-literate readers can help out where needed. I also am pretty clueless as to where Darwin's ideas have been expanded or improved upon. Incidentally, the book is actually quite accessible, and I'm sorry I didn't read it earlier. You can read it online or download a PDF at Google Books.

Chapter Five of The Origin of Species is titled "Laws of Variation." In a section called "Effects of Use and Disuse," Darwin posits that the shrunken state of the wings of some birds on islands where they have no predators results from disuse. There's nothing to fly away from, so generations of birds stopped flying and used their legs more, and through natural selection their legs were strengthened and their wings, eventually, made useless. As another example, Darwin discusses animals that live in underground burrows and caves and have small, furred-over, or absent eyes, thanks to disuse. It's dark down there, so eyes aren't very helpful, and gradually, they are selected out, while things like longer whiskers and antennae, which are helpful underground, are favored.

The tuco-tucos, of which there are some 50 different species, live in burrows in South America. Although they spend a lot of time underground, they do occasionally peer out of their homes, and their small but useful eyes allow them to do that without necessarily having to actually exit the premises. It's easy for them to duck back under if need be. (The amount of time they spend outside their burrows varies from species to species.)

Darwin says that he was told by someone who caught a lot of tuco-tucos that they are often blind. A tuco-tuco that Darwin kept in captivity was blind, he says, thanks to an inflammation of the eye. As Darwin points out, animals that live primarily underground don't really need their eyes, and eyes are just another thing that can get infected, so why not do away with them? (Eventually. Over generations.)

Genetic analysis of one tuco-tuco species, the colonial tuco-tuco (C. sociabilis) yielded surprising results a few years back. For the past three millennia, the colonial tuco-tuco has had almost no genetic diversity. Usually, a lack of genetic variation means doom for a species, but the colonial t-t has survived pretty well. The reason, researchers think, is that it has evolved a very social way of life, unlike the other tuco-tuco species. If everyone is related, there's no reason to compete; instead, you can help your cousins breed, since they're passing on your genes, as well as their own. (In a practical sense, I think I would be more likely to get along with everyone if they were more or less my clones, too, but personality clashes are probably not a significant factor in the colonial t-t's survival.)

According to Walker's Mammals of the World, "Systematic understanding of this complex genus is in a state of flux, and it is likely that there will be much change in the number and relationships of species…" In this drawing of the goofy-looking guys, clockwise from the upper right are C. fulvus, C. sociabilis, C. flamarioni, C. talarum, C. peruanus, and in the middle, C. haigi.

Hibernators Week: Asiatic Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus)

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Today is the last day of Hibernators Week at the Daily Mammal, so I'd like to introduce you to a bear, that classic hibernator. This particular bear is an Asiatic black bear. It lives in forests in several countries in southern Asia, including China, Japan, Iran, and Pakistan, among others. In the northern parts of its range, it hibernates, filling up on acorns and seeds to put on fat before time to head into the den. In the south, only females who are going to give birth in the winter hibernate.

IUCN classifies this bear as vulnerable, which is the last stage before endangered. Unfortunately, the Asiatic black bear is extensively hunted for its paws and its hide, and it's a victim, like nearly everyone else, of habitat destruction. But the biggest and most upsetting threat to the Asiatic black bear is the "traditional medicine" industry. I knew that bear gall bladders were used in traditional Chinese (and Korean, Vietnamese, and others) treatments, but not until just now did I know just how terrible this is—not until just now did I think about it, I'm sorry to say.

In "traditional medicine," a bears' gall bladders and the bile they produce are used to treat hemorrhoids, pinkeye, impotence, headaches, heart disease, and more. Wild bears are hunted and their gall bladders taken. In 1980, informing us that this would reduce the number of wild bears killed, China began allowing bears to be "farmed" for their bile. (It didn't reduce the number of bears being hunted in the wild. Instead, it made wild bear bile more valuable.)

And this is where it gets really, realy ugly. The "humane" method of harvesting the bears' bile is to create a permanent hole in the bear's abdomen and gall bladder, through which the bile drips. Other methods include metal catheters, repeated surgeries, and metal jackets. The bears on the "farms" are kept in cages not much bigger than they are. Their teeth and claws are pulled. They moan in pain, banging their heads on the bars of their cages. They live in terror and agony. This can go on for their entire lifetime: 25 years. Of pure torture. And there are thousands of bears undergoing this abuse right now.

It's enraging, cruel, disgusting, and inhuman. And it's also completely unnecessary. Not only does "traditional medicine" recognize a range of herbal substitute for bear bile, but Western medicine has synthesized the compound that gives the bile what healing capacity it has. (An acid in mammalian bile is especially concentrated in bears. This acid can help treat some liver ailments. But again, no one needs to take it from bears, and there's no rational reason to think it can help a headache or hemorrhoids.)

When I added the Asiatic black bear to my list of hibernators for this week, I was just thinking about how fun it would be to draw a big, furry bear. Now I'm angry. Today, the Associated Press reported on a rescue of 12 Asiatic black bears from years of torture on a "farm" in China. They were suffering from liver tumors, blindness, and ringworm, and some of them were compulsively biting the bars of their cages. The group that rescued them is called Animals Asia, and you can help it rescue bears through a donation. If you knit, there's another way you can help. The bears need surgery after their rescue, and they need to keep warm when they're under anesthesia. Knitters are helping them by making big old bear mittens for them to wear. You can find out more at this site, and you might also like to read the Animals Asia blog about its rescue efforts.

Hibernators Week: Chipmunks Six Ways (Tamias spp.)

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In one sense, I got lazy with this drawing, doing it in sharpie on top of my pencil with no shading, no blending, no colored pencil, and it's on my tracing paper sketch instead of a nice crisp sheet of vellum. No furry details, no crazy colors. But if you knew how long I researched it and how many times I tried to draw it the normal way, you would know it wasn't lazy at all. So here are six species of chipmunks from the Tamias genus. Clockwise from the top right: T. obscurus, T. quadrimaculatus, T. speciosus, T. senex, T. amoenus, and T. alpinus. All six species live in California.

Six more rodents! Check 'em off if you're scoring at home!

Hibernators Week: Raccoon Dog (Tanuki) (Nyctereutes procyonoides)

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Guess what! The raccoon dog is not endangered. In fact, in some parts of its range, it is considered a nuisance! How exciting for us, don't you think?

The raccoon dog is in the canid family, although it does resemble a raccoon, especially facially. It originally lived from Siberia to Vietnam, as well as throughout Japan, but it was introduced into Russia to provide more work for fur trappers. Now it has made its way into northern Europe, and has been found in France, Germany, Sweden, and Finland, among other countries. It is the only canid that hibernates (torpor, I think, not "true" hibernation), although in warmer parts of its range, it doesn't.

In Japan, where the raccoon dog is called the tanuki, the species is pretty common and can even be found in some urban areas. The tanuki is an interesting figure in Japanese folklore. It's a shapeshifter and a bit of a trickster, and tanuki statues can bring good luck. The most interesting and, to me, strange element of the tanuki legend is the animal's remarkably large scrotum, which it can use—in myths and stories now, not in real life!—as shelter from a storm or as a net for catching fish. I recommend this baffling series of 19th-century comic prints that show some of the tanuki's creative uses for its endowments.

Hibernators Week: Mountain Pygmy Possum (Burramys parvus)

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These teensy marsupials live in the Australian alps (and boast the saddest IUCN range map I've ever seen). They hibernate in the winter under a thick layer of snow. In the warmer months, they eat lots and lots and lots of moths, along with some other things, and also store berries and seeds to munch on when they occasionally wake from torpor. They're the only marsupial that stores food, and I think they're the only marsupial that hibernates, although I haven't confirmed that for sure. They're only about 4 inches long, with their prehensile tails adding another 6 inches on to that.

A recent study found that animals that hibernate or burrow are less likely to become endangered or extinct. The theory is that hibernation and burrowing protects them from environmental changes. Sadly, that isn't the case for the mountain pygmy possum, whose population is being ravaged by the Australian skiing industry. Is it more important to have perfectly groomed slopes to schuss down, or to keep this evolutionarily distinct mammal alive? We may find out too late.

(I'm not purposely picking the most sad-case endangered animals to share with you, by the way. Not at all. It just turns out that we humans have a whole lot to answer for when it comes to the other animals on the planet. I think my next theme week should be Mammals There Are Too Darn Many Of, just to cheer us up. But then again, there are often Too Darn Many of a mammal because there are Too Darn Few of another one, usually because of something humans did.)

ARKive has some nice videos of the adorable mountain pygmy possum. I like the one that's catching moths to eat.

Hibernators Week: Fat-tailed Dwarf Lemur (Cheirogaleus medius)

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Well, I originally picked this lemur for Hibernators Week because I was under the impression that it was an estivator (see Sunday's post if you're wondering what I'm talking about). My beloved but flawed Ivan T. Sanderson told me that, as did Animal Diversity Web. But from what I can tell, that's not necessarily correct. These Malagasy lemurs go into torpor between March and November…which is winter in the southern hemisphere. It's rather hemisphericentric of us to call that estivation, isn't it? Estivation can also refer to torpor during a hot or dry season, so maybe it's not technically wrong, but it certainly is etymologically. So instead of an estivator, here's a torpid primate for you.

But the fact that the fat-tailed dwarf lemur is a torpid primate is extraordinary enough, it turns out. This guy is one of only two primate species that enter into seasonal torpid periods, and our friend here is the only primate that is torpid for such a long period. And that fat tail of his? It's literally a fat tail, where the fat-tailed dwarf lemur stores the fat reserves that get it through its torpid season. And it gets really fat, more so than I showed here.

These lemurs feast on fruit, flowers, nectar, pollen, and the occasional insect or two. They may be responsible for pollinating some of the plants in their Malagasy home, and the fact that they mark the branches they're traveling on with their feces helps create a fecund (I just looked it up, and feces and fecund do not come from the same root at all—weird, huh?) environment for parasite plants to grow on the trees. During Madagascar's wet season, fat-tailed dwarf lemurs spend their nights eating up to get those tails nice and plump while they can. When it gets dry, they curl up in little balls and drift off into torpidity.

A word about Madagascar. I'm sorry to say that the country is in turmoil right now, and demonstrations have killed about a hundred people in the past few weeks. Today, the president of Madagascar fired the mayor of the nation's capital, Antananarivo, after the mayor announced that he was now going to be in charge of the country. It's all pretty awful and unfortunate. Madagascar is one of the most special and important places on earth, biologically, and is plagued by poverty, deforestation, and violent political upheaval. I wish all the Malagasy people and animals well right now. Here is a New York Times article from today about the situation.

And now a quick word about lemurs. You might like to watch this short video of the director of Duke University's Lemur Center talking about why she thinks it's irresponsible of scientists to keep "discovering" new lemur species, a state of affairs that obviously has an effect on the Daily Mammal. I regret that I didn't get the chance to go to the Lemur Center when I had occasion to travel to North Carolina, and I hope I will get to visit someday. Of course, I also long to visit Madagascar.

Hibernators Week: Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus)

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This little brown bat, called the little brown bat—like our moon is called the moon—is quite a common fellow throughout most of North America. It eats a ton of insects every night—okay, not a ton, but at least a couple of grams, which is a lot for a little brown bat! It favors aquatically inclined insects, but will also munch moths and mayflies. It hunts through the night, coming out at dusk and returning home just before dawn.

The little brown bat is a true hibernator, but even true hibernators have to wake up occasionally. This guy, for instance, will hibernate for between a couple weeks and a few months at a time, repeating as necessary from fall to spring. Waking up occasionally may be a way for the bats to correct metabolic problems that arise from the very low body temperatures they maintain during hibernation. Hibernating little browns lose about half of their body weight and drop their body temperatures to about 10ºC (50ºF). Besides hibernation, little brown bats can use torpor, too (see yesterday's post if you're confused here!), on a day-to-day basis to conserve energy after fruitless, or rather bugless, nights of hunting.

Sadly, all is not well for the little brown bats currently hibernating in the northeastern United States. They are being ravaged by a strange disease called white nose syndrome. It first appeared in 2007, and it affects several species of bats in their hibernation roosts. Little brown bats, though, are sustaining the most deaths from the illness, which appears to involve a cold-loving fungus. The most obvious initial symptom is a fuzzy white growth around the nose and sometimes on the wings or other parts. Afflicted bats act very strangely, coming out of their roosts in the middle of day and the middle of winter. They seem to be starving and sometimes try to drink snow. And then they die.

The syndrome was first observed in upstate New York and has since spread to five other states. Just last week authorities confirmed the first cases of white nose syndrome in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. No one knows what's causing it or how it's spread…but it is spreading. Hundreds of thousands of bats have died from it over the last two years. The mortality rate in many affected caves is more than 90 percent. If we don't figure this out, there's a possibility that cave-dwelling bats, such helpful insectivores, could become extinct in the very near future, which would in turn have a catastrophic effect on the ecosystem.

There are two funds you can donate money to if you'd like to try to help the bats, one at Indiana State University and the other through Bat Conservation International.

Hibernators Week: Vancouver Island Marmot (Marmota vancouverensis)

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It's the middle of winter, and although I can take naps, I can't do what I'd really enjoy, which is hibernate. The next best thing is to celebrate hibernation, torpor, and estivation of other mammals. And let's start by clearing those up, in case, like me, you didn't know the differences between them. Here we go:

• Hibernation, torpor, and estivation are three types of dormancy that animals experience. (There's one more, diapause, but it doesn't really apply to mammals, so forget it for now, unless you just can't, in which case, go ahead and click on the link to Wikipedia.) Dormancy is a state of suspension or slowing of normal physical functions.

• "True" hibernation is an extreme form of dormancy. It generally takes place in the winter and usually involves curling up in a den of some kind, lowering your body temperature, and slowing your heartbeat until it can barely be detected. Only smallish mammals are true hibernators. (If you know French, you will recognize the similarity between the French word for winter—hiver—and the word hibernate.)

• Torpor is less extreme. Your metabolism and heart rate slow, but not as dramatically as in hibernation. You can wake up from torpor if you have to without too much trouble, but you will probably stumble around a bit before you shake it off.

• Estivation was completely new to me, but it's neat. It's like hibernation, but it happens in hot and/or dry times and places: it's sort of a summer version of hibernation (and in Italian, estivo or estiva indicates that something is occurring in the summer).

This week, I'll be drawing and writing about animals that practice all three of these kinds of dormancies (I think…), so I'll be using the word "hibernator" not in its pure sense but to mean torpor or dormancy. Okay? Okay.

Now. Our marmot here is a true hibernator. In the winter, marmots' hearts beat only three or four times a minute! Three…or…four…times…a…minute. So slowly. This species hibernates in its burrows from October to May. So right now, Vancouver Island marmots are snoring sweetly underground, snug as can be.

All 150 of them.

Seriously. This guy is one of the most endangered mammals in the world. Confined to just a few mountain areas of their Canadian island—and nowhere else in the world—the marmots have been victim not just to deforestation directly, but also to the effects deforestation has to the balance of the Vancouver Island ecosystem in general. It seems complex, but basically, the logging industry makes some areas more appealing to marmots than they should be, and they turn out to be very ill-suited to hibernation. And the logging destroys other animals' habitats, meaning the predator/prey relationships on the island are screwy, and now the marmot is more vulnerable than usual to its natural predators.

Like other marmots, the Vancouver Island variety has a sophisticated communication system consisting of a number of different kinds of calls. (The Mammalian Species account of the marmots says that their whistles have three harmonics, a variety of durations, and changing intensities.) You can hear some of their calls at this page from UCLA. (Your dog may take an interest, too.)

The 2010 Winter Olympics will be in Vancouver, and the games have a better-than-usual set of mascots, including a Vancouver Island marmot "mascot sidekick" named Mukmuk.

The Marmot Recovery Foundation is working to save the Vancouver Island marmots from extinction. The group operates a captive breeding and reintroduction program that is showing some success. Its website has some other information and photographs of the marmots, too.