It's almost exactly a year since I offered an alphabet of birds, so maybe it's time to balance the ledger a bit by offering a companion alphabet, of mammals. Where possible I'll offer per letter one species or group from Australia and another from overseas, with some brief comments in the photo caption. For a couple that's not possible, and for a couple of others I haven't been able to cut it down to two, but I'm hoping that won't disturb you too much. In a couple of cases I've not been able to illustrate any common names, so have used the genus names instead. I know, it sounds like cheating, but it's in the rules - I can show you a copy of them if you like.
A is for antechinuses, anteaters and Aye-aye
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Yellow-footed Antechinus Antechinus flavipes, Chiltern NP, northern Victoria. Still |
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| Giant Anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla, Pantanal, south-western Brazil. This is one of the mammals I've most wanted to see since reading all of the Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough series many decades ago. They are superb. While lots of animals eat ants (terrible food, but abundant, like gum leaves) there are just four species of The Anteaters, all South American, and in fact among the very few of the ancient South American mammals that survived the collision with North America. I posted in more detail about them here. A Giant Anteater can be over two metres long and weigh up to 50kg. |
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Aye-aye Daubentonia madagascariensis, Pangalenes Lakes, eastern Madagascar. |
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| Long-nosed Bandicoot Perameles nasuta, Lake Eacham, Atherton Tablelands, tropical Queensland. This little beauty came in to a simple feeding station at the lodge where we were staying. Bandicoots comprise an entire Order of omnivorous medium to small marsupials, restricted to Australia and New Guinea. There are 8 living and 3 extinct bandicoot species in Australia. This one lives right along the east coast, including in suburbia, feeding on insects, small lizards and their eggs, fungi and various plant materials. |
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| Bontebok Damaliscus pygargus, Bontebok NP, south-western South Africa. This beautiful antelope is found only in the heathy fynbos system of this part of South Africa. It is a conservation success story, with the population reduced to less than 20 animals when the original Bontbok NP was established in 1931; 17 were captured and moved there. Later this proved unsuitable habitat and herd was removed to the current site near Swellenberg in 1960, where they thrived so that some 2000 Bontebok have been established in other parks. (Until recently the Bontebok was regarded as the same species as the more numerous Blesbok from eastern South Africa, but its species status is now recognised by antelope experts.) |
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| Cheetah family Acinonyx jubatus, Amboseli NP, Kenya, mother and two of three almost grownup children in the late afternoon, with no other vehicles around. We watched them for half an hour as the sun set and nearby Mount Kilimanjaro glowed - a wonderful experience and privilege. Our local guide had only seen them in Amboseli once, and our experienced South African guide never! Because you're reading this I'm assuming you've watched plenty of wildlife docos featuring this fastest land mammal on earth (up to 100kmh over short distances) so I'll leave it there. |
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| Sunda Colugo Galeopterus variegatus mother and baby, Bukit Batok NP, Singapore. Yet another extraordinary mammal I'd long pined to see; I actually saw them a few years ago in Malaysian Borneo, but this view, just a couple of metres away, was amazing. There are just two species in the entire Order, so they have no near relatives at all (the other species lives in the Philippines). They are commonly - and entirely erroneously - known as 'flying lemurs', but they are not lemurs (which of course are restricted to Madagascar) and they glide, not fly. We can see part of the gliding membrane on the mother's front leg, but it extends from the neck along the limbs to finger- and toe-tips, enabling it to glide almost horizontally for 100 metres and more. |
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| Günter's Dik-dik Madoqua guentheri, Shaba Nature Reserve, northern Kenya. There are four dik-diks, diminutive antelopes, in this genus, all from southern and eastern Africa in arid environments. This one's range is centred on the semi-deserts of northen Kenya, Somalia and southern Ethiopia. |
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| Spotted-tailed Quoll Dasyurus maculatus, Arthur River, north-eastern Tasmania. And yes, I owe you a justification! I could/should have entered this under Q for quoll, but a) I already had a candidate for that, and b) I didn't have one for Australian Ds - so D for Dasyurus it is. Feel free to boycott it. If you haven't then this was taken many years ago (pre-digital camera days for me) when I took a group on a boat trip up this river in remote Tasmania. There were others on board too, and when this magnificent animal came poking around while we were ashore for lunch - no-one outside of our group took any notice! I was gobsmacked. This is the largest of the three quoll species - a big male can be nearly a metre long and weigh up to 9kg, a formidable predator. It is in the same family of carnivorous marsupials as the antechinus which opened today's proceedings. This species (also known, obscurely as Tiger Quoll, though tigers aren't noted for their spots) is found in wetter eastern Australian forests below the tropics, with an outlier in the Queensland tropics. |
E is for echidnas
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| Short-beaked Echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus, Canberra. And while I couldn't find any other mammals, either Australian or otherwise, to illustrate E, these wonderful mammals would have got a guernsey anyway. One of the only two living groups of monotremes - egg-laying mammals - in the world (along with the Platypus of course) these slow, shy daytime mammals are toothless, living on the eggs and larvae of termites and ants, plus fat grubs, which they access by ripping open nests and rotting logs with powerful front claws. This species is common enough right across Australia from the alps to the deserts, and is also found in Papua New Guinea. Also in New Guinea are three species of long-beaked echidnas. (Which can mean trouble at trivia nights when they ask how many species of monotreme there are; are they being uninformed and expecting 'two', or clever and wanting 'five'?) |
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| Yes I really do like echidnas. This is the only echidna 'train' I've ever seen. Up to 10 males will follow a receptive female for up to a month, unable to stop to feed or rest unless she does for fear of missing his place in the queue. Eventually she will stop and the lead males dig a trench around her to access her without getting stabbed, and the strongest one gets to father her leathery egg, which hatches in 10 days. The blind puggle stays in her pouch until its spines form, then is left plugged into a nursery burrow for months, fed by her every few days. And enough now of echidnas, wonderful though they be! |
F is for foxes and fruit bats
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| Grey-headed Fruit Bats Pteropus poliocephalus, mother and baby, in central Canberra. There are some 200 species of fruit bats (also unfortunately known as flying foxes, though that would at least keep them under F here!). They are found throughout the Old World tropics, and south to southern Africa and Australia. Most are large, though there are also many are very small ones, which are sometimes known as blossom bats. This species, the largest in Australia, is found along the east coast and has been expanding south for a while now so there are colonies in Melbourne and even Adelaide where they arrived only in 2010. Despite the name, they actually don't actually eat fruit, but crush it to swallow the juice; they also consume nectar and play important roles in pollination and seed dispersal. |
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In Australian discussions of ecology and wildlife conservation 'fox' is a bad word indeed, G is for gorillas and gerenuks |
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| Southern Gerenuk Litocranius walleri, Shaba NR, central Kenya. These ridiculously graceful arid land antelopes may be on the way to evolving like a giraffe, with long legs and neck enabling them to reach foliage inaccessible to most competitors. Moreover they will stand up on their hind legs to get even higher inyo the foliage. They are found from northern Tanzania through Kenya to southern Somalia, with another species in the Horn of Africa. |
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| Mountain Gorilla mother and baby Gorilla beringei in Bwindi Impenetrable NP, western Uganda. This was an extraordinary moment in my natural history life, and one that I had to work hard for in the steep mountain forests. There was also the satisfaction that this family, along with some other habituated groups in the park, was both heavily protected and providing a reliable income to local communities. Mountain Gorillas are a subspecies of the Eastern Gorilla; there are perhaps only 1000 left in the highland forests of western Uganda, Rwanda and the DR Congo. I wrote more about them, and Bwindi, here. |
H is for hyraxes and Hypsiprymnodon
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| Yellow-spotted Rock (or Bush) Hyraxes Heterohyrax brucei Tarangire NP, northern Tanzania. There are six species of hyrax (or dassie, though I think that's mostly a South African term) across most of sub-Saharan Africa. They are all solid short-tailed medium-sized herbivorous mammals (weighing up to 5kg) which are surprisingly agile. It's fun to be able to say that their closest living relatives are elephants and dugongs/manatees - it's true but it's still a pretty distant relationship. This species lives on rocky outcrops through much of east Africa and across the continent in western Angola. |
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| Hypsiprymnodon or Musky Rat-kangaroo Hypsiprymnodon moschatus Atherton Tableland, tropical Queensland. This is an intriguing little diurnal species endemic to the Wet Tropics area of northern Queensland. It is the smallest kangaroo, the most ancient living kangaroo species (giving us an idea of what the ancestral kangaroo may have looked like), and the only one that doesn't hop. I think that it's one of the most fascinating of all Australian mammals. |
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| Common Impala Aepyceros melampus, Lake Mburo NP, Uganda. To be honest, as much as I like impalas, this one probably wouldn't have made the cut here if there were any more unusual i-mammals available to me. But as it is I'm quite happy to feature it, as a representative of the plains antelopes of eastern and southern Africa. Impala comes from the Zulu language, and the species is an important food item for many predators. |
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| Another excitingly memorable moment was seeing these young brothers looking for dinner (and probably mischief) along the Rio Piquíri; we were in a small boat. Jaguars Panthera onca are the only true American great cats (ie genus Panthera) and the third largest in the world, between a Lion and Leopard in size. They have a notably powerful bite that can pierce turtle shells and mammal skulls. They are comfortably aquatic and in the Pantanal caimans (South American crocodilians - more on them here) form an important part of the diet. |
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| Young male Eastern Grey Kangaroos Macropus giganteus sparring while using their tails as props, Tidbinbilla NR near Canberra. They are amazing mammals whose abundance can lead to complacence on our part. They are one of the largest, and almost certainly the commonest, of the 60 or so members of the family Macropodidae. So much to say about them, but perhaps I'll just direct you to the first of a two-part series I wrote a while ago, here. |
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| Cape Klipspringer Oreotragus oreotragus, Augrabies Falls NP, north-western South Africa. (I'm almost sure I've got the species right, especially re the non-white belly.) Until recently only one diverse species was recognised, across much of Africa, but more nuanced examinations now reveal 11 of them. They are stocky little antelopes, specialists in rocky landscapes. They remind me of Euros Macropus robustus in Australia. Both are nimble but powerful and totally at home in boulder piles and on cliff faces. One of my (many) favourite antelopes. |
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Ankarana Sportive Lemur Lepilemur ankaranensis, Ankarana NP, northern |
M is for mongooses and marmosets
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| Yellow Mongoose Cynictis penicillata, Augrabies Falls NP, northern South Africa. This one is found only in dry south-western Africa, but there are 34 species found throughout sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. They are medium-small active carnivores, some highly sociable, others solitary. They hunt invertebrates, birds and, famously, reptiles including venomous snakes. To this end they have evolved chemical defences against certain aspects of snake venom. Probably the best-known and most 'popular' mongooses are the Meerkats of southern Africa, but I understand that certain cartoon movies have cast mongooses as villains. Shame on those movies I say! |
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| Black-tailed Marmoset Mico melanurus, Pantanal, south-western Brazil. The marmosets and tamarins are a family of tiny South American monkeys, with at least 47 species but that won't be the full tally. They are found mostly in the Amazon basin and Atlantic coast rainforests, though this one is well outside of that. They are highly sociable, and males play a much greater role in child-care than those of other primates. Tree sap is an important food for many species, along with insects and fruit. |
NEXT POSTING THURSDAY 23 APRIL
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