Creature Feature: Monito del Monte.

In the rudimentary biology classes that most American schools offer, we are taught very few things about marsupials. They basically cover kangaroos, koalas, and maybe wombats. Marsupials give birth to babies that develop in pouches. All of them are native to Australia. That is the extent of our weird mammal knowledge.

Well, the weird can always get weirder, right?

Sourcing is cool.

This is a monito del monte (Dromiciops gliroides). It is a mouse-sized mammal native to South America, but is not a "little mountain monkey" as the name would suggest. Specifically, it is only native to the Andes Mountains of Chile and Argentina, which are not usually talked about when it comes to unique species. Its diet consists of insects and fruit- more on the fruit later. It has nothing to do with the brand of canned fruit on American grocery shelves.

So, why am I mentioning a South American mammal after that shtick about our limited knowledge about marsupials? Monito del monte is a marsupial. A South American marsupial. Consider your mind blown if you thought all marsupials were only in Australia's immediate vicinity. The opossum is commonly taught as an exception to the rule; monito del monte is not.

But it should be!

How did this happen? Long story short, Australia and the southwestern edge of South America were once very close together on a supercontinent called Gondwanaland.  For a long time, biogeologists were expecting to find ancestral marsupials in South America. They found the bones of a small marsupial, dubbed Djarthia,  in Queensland, but never found a living specimen until they found the monito del monte. Genetic evidence proved that the 11 million-year-old bones and the monito were almost the same organism. Fascinating, no?

The unique features of the monito del monte keep piling on. It is the only mammal that stores fat in its prehensile tail. It hibernates in little nests of waterproof leaves and moss when the weather gets too nippy in the mountains.  This is sounding more and more like a gecko; remember how cresties were once thought extinct? Are we sure the Geico gecko isn't wearing a fursuit? (Actually, finding a gecko in that area would be even more surprising!) Talk about weird, primitive animals!

This little fuzzball is also important for a plant called Tristerix corymbosus, a type of mistletoe native to the same area. The monito del monte eats the fruit of the plant. When the fruit is digested, out comes a seed of that particular mistletoe. The monito del monte is the only thing that disperses the seeds of this plant; it would likely go extinct along with the marsupial. Although the monito del monte is not in critical danger, it is near-threatened...but look at that face. Someone has to be captive breeding these...right? Right?

(P.S. - Apologies - these last few days have been spent with relatives in Minnesota.)

Creature Feature: Opossum.

Well, this is unusual. I actually have the motivation to write an entry on a Thursday night. Unfortunately, I just so happened to encounter two of today's animal as barely-recognizable pieces of roadkill. It's a shame; opossums are really quite interesting creatures that many readers can find in their own backyards.

Opossums are the only North American marsupials. They are omnivores and scavengers (that explains the roadkill!), so they are pretty well-adapted to human presence. They've been around since the Cretaceous; chalk 'em up as another mammal likely to survive in a man-made wasteland. If you live in North or South America, there's a good chance you can find an opossum near you. There is even one so cool that it'll get its own entry later, so we're going to focus on the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) for now.

Opossums look like giant rats at first glance. Despite all similarities, however, opossums are not even remotely related to rats. No, these things have some of the most diverse teeth of any mammals, and they will very kindly show you that they are not rats as soon as you piss them off. Those teeth say a lot.

THIS is car trouble!

There are a number of interesting things about opossum reproduction. They have a split penis and a split vagina- the latter of which led to the family name "Didelphidae." There is a placenta inside of a female opossum, but it is largely non-functional. They have a lot of young; not many of them survive. Since these are marsupials we're talking about, some of them don't even survive to make it to mom's pouch. The surviving babies learn to hitch a ride on on mommy possum's back. Kinda cute!

Opossums are known for an extremely authentic method of playing dead ("playing 'possum"). When a predator approaches, the opossum goes completely limp. As if the lack of movement, even when handled, was not enough to deter most predators, the opossum also starts foaming at the mouth, closes its eyes, and emits a nasty smell from special glands near its rear. Just about the only way to know whether a possum is really dead or not is to see its blood.

On a strange note, the name "opossum" does not come from Latin at all; the similarity to the verb "possum" is purely coincidental. Instead, it comes from a Native American word meaning "white beast." Considering how strange such a common creature is, there is really no better name. What would you call it?

Creature Feature: Marsupial Mole.

Along with being great pets most of the time, desert animals can be among some of the weirdest animals on the planet. We are used to things that live on our surface world. It is all to easy to forget that there are creatures dwelling in areas in which humans cannot reasonably function. Specifically, humans are visual creatures, so when we see creatures that live in a lightless environment, they have an unsettling effect on us.

 

Except that one. That one's cute.

Meet the Marsupial Mole. Like most marsupials, they are native to Australia (specifically the arid deserts). Most of their time is spent underground, where they do almost everything. They eat beetle larvae and caterpillars in the wild, and have been observed eating spiders and lizards in captivity as well. There are two varieties (Notoryctes typhlops and Notoryctes caurinus), both being the only extant members of the family Noryctidae.

Marsupial moles are probably one of the weirdest examples of convergent evolution ever. They diverged from the main marsupial family at about the same time as the dinosaurs went extinct. In the meantime, they have evolved to look a lot like moles mixed with Weasel Balls. They have the same reduced eyes and spaded paws as normal moles. Otherwise, they deserve to be on the "cutest marsupial" list alongside koalas and numbats.

Still kinda cute.

 

Marsupial moles are perfectly adapted to the deserts of Australia. They mate, eat, and do presumably everything else underground. Their eyes are just lenses beneath fur, making them completely blind, and they lack cute mammalian ears. Like naked mole rats, they are effectively ectothermic mammals.  They are the only mammal species in which the neck vertebrae are fused to the back of the head to provide more force when digging. They do not even require much oxygen; despite being mammals, their requirements are so minimal that the oxygen that seeps through the sand will suffice. They are so ill-adept at being on the surface that their floundering underground is reduced to an awkward waddle as soon as they leave the sand.

Living underground all the time unfortunately means that we know almost nothing about these weird marsupials.  Tunnels are extremely common; it's the actual moles that are hard to find. They can be bred in captivity, but even then, that tells us nothing about numbers in the wild. It is suspected that these furry little critters are more common than once thought, but because they are hard to record, they are Endangered on the basis of being data deficient.



The Aborigines were aware of these weird little animate cat toys as well. The Southern Marsupial mole is called Itjaritjari, which sounds a whole lot cuter than comparing it to a mole. On a tangentially-related note, we have no idea what Nintendo would call this if it ever got made into a Pokemon.

Creature Feature: Numbat.

Say farewell to the nightmare fuel from the deep sea abyss. We have tormented you with enough freaks to fill Davy Jones's locker. It's really about time that we did something cute, fuzzy, and on land. We owe you guys for those sleeping pills, right?

So, to make up for the mind-scarring, have a cute:

 

Wait. There's a horrible string attached to that cute, isn't there?

The creature above is called a numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus). Before you all say "that sounds weird," it's native to Australia. At first glance, it looks like one of the less-deadly species in Australia, but remember how crazy Afrotheria got? If the scientists are right, the numbat's closest relative was the Tasmanian Tiger. (At least there's some family resemblance this time!) They are also (erroneously) called banded anteaters and are the only fully diurnal marsupials.

Numbats are one of Australia's least threatening creatures. They are 1-2 feet long, have no intention of eating other mammals, and would make better purse pets than a Chihuahua. Numbats have a fair amount of aerial predators (read: any bird of prey) and are eaten by carpet pythons as well. Just about the only things they are remotely threatening to are termites.

 

May the great Rainbow Serpent help you if you are a termite around a numbat. Numbats eat termites. Just termites. An adult numbat can eat up to 20,000 termites per day. They dig into the earth with those cute little claws, then use their sticky tongues to lap the buggers and gnash them with their teeth. Numbats even have their days scheduled around termites, much like some of us around TV schedules.

Numbats are, however, relatively rare. Unless you happen to have a termite mound in your Australian backyard, you probably will not see them at all. They were fairly abundant until European hunters came down under and unleashed red foxes upon the wild. By the 1970's, there were fewer than 1,000 individuals remaining in the wild. The best areas to see numbats today are in Western Australia.



Endangered species bumpers often cite major mammalian predators as 'warning signs,' but we think numbats deserve to stand out on that list, too. They're a prime example of what happens when non-native species are not kept in check. Maybe, if they ever get off the endangered species list, they will join sugar gliders, Children's pythons, budgerigars, and cockatiels as yet another adorable pet from Australia. You know you'd want one. 

Prehistoric Mammal Week: Marsupial Lion.

Ah, Australia. Home of kangaroos, animal fanatics, that weird stuff called vegemite, boomerangs, and deadly spiders. Everything there, even the invasive rabbits, has evolved to tear humanity a new one. Kangaroos can drown dogs and cuddly wombats can smash one's head with their rear ends. HOW could this place get any more hardcore?



JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION. GET IN THE CAR. GET IN THE FUCKING CAR RIGHT NOW.

Actually, that's not a lion. It's a Thylacoleo carnifex, a giant carnivorous marsupial that dominated the Australian food chain for a very long time. T. carnifex was about the same size as a small lion and could climb trees like a leopard. There is a high chance that it saved some of its kangaroo meat up there for later like a leopard, too. It lived during the Pleistocene, i.e. the era of huge mammals.

For those of you wondering how we know this was a marsupial and not a big cat, dentition is still the main way of determining mammalian evolution. Marsupials have a distinctive dental formation regardless of what they eat. The teeth on T. carnifex were not like those of a modern felid.

 

Thylacoleo definitely had a nice set of teeth. Hooooooo boy did it have teeth. The marsupial lion had the strongest known bite of any mammal. It weighed half the weight of an African lion but had just as powerful a bite, making those jaws the strongest of any mammal, living or extinct. It is considered the most specialized mammalian predator in existence, sporting more than just the cool teeth.



Like most modern cats, Thylacoleo also had retractable claws - a unique feature among marsupials. It also had semi-opposable thumbs to help it grasp and capture its food. Special bones in its cervix allowed it to 'tripod,' i.e. stand on its hind legs to slash and grab its prey better. That's not a cat - that's almost a furry.
 

Actually, yeah, kinda like that. 

What happened to these badass psuedo-cats? In a word, man. Men not only hunt giant beasts for fun and profit, but they deprive other giant beasts of their food sources in doing so. There will be a recurring theme of "when humans come around, the megafauna dies" this week. A shame this guy had to go; the way things were going, we could have had marsupial Na'vi. At least they were immortalized in Aboriginal cave drawings.

Derp.

Marsupials used to be more than just kangaroos and koalas. A lot of them were more like the Tasmanian Devil, the only extant carnivorous marsupial. Most of them were considerably larger than their modern counterparts. Even though the Marsupial Lion was not a real lion, get in the car. Or at least get a spear.

Creature Feature: Wombat.

Happy February, everyone! We start off this EXTRA CHILLY IN CHICAGO month with something adorable:

The little striped bird is an emu chick; the furry creature that looks like a teddy bear mixed with a groundhog and likes cheese (or bread?) is a wombat. We don't know WHO won this round, but both of the contestants were adorable.

Wombats (family Vombatidae) are stout marsupials native to the forested, mountainous parts of south-eastern Australia.  Currently, three species of wombat in two families remain (Vombatus ursinus and two others). There used to be a looooooot more of them; like many marsupials, they had badass, Pleistocene relatives that would scare the sh*t out of most placental mammals.

The largest of them weighed up to 200kg. Be VERY glad it was an herbivore.

Wombats, like koalas and kangaroos, are herbivores. They have evolved giant incisors like placental rodents, but are not related. Like most real herbivores (i.e. not the panda), they have long digestive tracts. They have very slow metabolisms; a single meal can take up to 14 days to digest. For whatever reason, they also defecate in nigh-perfect cubes. WTF, Australia?

This wombat would like to know why people are fascinated by its crap.

Wombats are powerful diggers. They use their teeth and sharp claws to dig long, complex tunnel networks up to 100 feet long. They dig so much that their pouch has evolved to face backwards. This burrowing, by the way, makes them very bad pets.



Cute and cuddly though the wombat may be, it packs some serious defenses. First, it can run surprisingly fast. Its teeth can cut cleanly through any material mankind can throw at it, so piss one off and you're screwed. The best defense against an angry wombat is to climb a tree.

But the real kicker? Its rear is plated with cartilage. That stuff is almost as hard as bone and keeps predators from literally biting it in the butt. If a predator follows a wombat into its burrow, the fuzzy fellow may let the dingo, fox, whatever go just slightly over its back...then presses the attacker's head against the burrow ceiling, breaking its skull. OW.

Tomorrow: Kuro eats mealworms...HOTLY. :D Oh, and speaking of things that eat creepy crawlies...

Creature Feature: Bandicoots.

In Australia, nothing is as it seems. Humans and dingos are far from native. There are giant birds that look like dinosaurs and can gauge your guts out with nasty, long claws. Even the happy-looking, hopping national animal of Australia is perfectly capable of drowning your dog like some sadistic, pouched psychopath.

 
I keel you.

The most normal animals in Australia are bandicoots (order Peramelemorphia). They are small, furry critters that eat almost anything. Bandicoots are distinguished from another group of small marsupials by their tendencies towards eating grass as opposed to animals, as well as their shorter legs. The word "bandicoot" came from a word that roughly translates as "pig-rat"- an adequate name for a long-nosed, small mammal like that.


 "Anteater-rat" would also have worked. This is the aptly-named long-nosed bandicoot (Peremeles nasuta).

Bandicoots exhibit the closest thing that marsupials have to normal births: Instead of being pouched, baby bandicoots stay in the womb, attached via a small psuedo-placenta. This is pretty close to the placenta found in placental mammals, but not close enough to move the bandicoots out of marsupials.



A fair amount of bandicoot species are threatened by (as one might expect) introduced species. Cats have a field day with not-quite-mice. Foxes, adaptable as they are, see no problems with eating any furry things that they can catch. Many bandicoots are now considered endangered. 

Despite being the most normal mammals native to Australia, bandicoots are still portrayed as being not quite right in the head. The most popular example is, of course, Crash from the Crash Bandicoot games. Really, does this look like a sane animal to you?


Then again, he's also supposed to be a genetically-engineered freak. That explains that.

Creature Feature: Sugar Glider.

*Twitch.*

*Twitch.*

*Twiiiitch.*

Too many people are still against exotic pets. NOTHING cheeses me off more when an innocent question about how much an unusual pet costs is answered with, "if you want a small carnivore, get a cat or dog." Congrats; you just missed the whole point of wanting an exotic pet.

The poster who wanted to know how much a raccoon was was clearly not looking for a cat or dog. That person was probably seeking something cute, furry, and unique. You know, something like this:


Whatever it is, I didn't do it!

That furry little creature up there is not a flying squirrel. It is Australia's pouched, nectar-drinking, bug -eating version of the flying squirrel, the sugar glider (Pretaurus breviceps).

You may remember this fellow from the momonga entry a while back. These little guys are also called "momonga" in Japan due to their resemblance to a flying squirrel. Anything with a placenta is instantly a freak on Australia; sugar gliders are not squirrels at all. They are a type of possum. Like all possums, they give birth to underdeveloped young that stay in the female's pouch before venturing out into the world.



A certain someone will like this vid JUST for Adam Lambert. 

Like flying squirrels, sugar gliders glide using flaps of skin in between their forepaws. They can glide anywhere from 50-100 meters, adjusting direction using either the patagium itself or its slightly-prehensile tail. It also looks just plain adorable while airborne, so get a cage with space.

Although I have put a few creatures on this blog just because they are adorable, the sugar glider is also legitimately strange. When the conditions grow harsh in Australia, their body temperature drops substantially; they eventually go into a deep rest (up to 23 hours) called torpor. They are also one of the few mammals that has a bifurcated penis. Should you ever need to sex a sugar glider, the male has a convenient bald spot on his head.



Yes, you can have a sugar glider as a pet. Their popularity as pets has led to many a sugar glider being plucked from the wild; as always, get a captive bred baby if at all possible. Do your research and prepare accordingly. Since these creatures are nocturnal, invest in a red light to watch their nightttime activities. There are a number of sugar glider diets on the market to satisfy their odd nutritional requirements. Breeders (being breeders) have taken what little color palette that mammals have to offer and ran with it.

With adorable results. 

Creature Feature: Tasmanian Devil.

If you were ever a child, you know a little bit about the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii)  already. He's the critter that spins around in a little tornado and spouts gibberish, right?


Not QUITE like this, but EXCELLENT advertising for Tasmania.

As one might imagine, real Tasmanian devils are not quite like that. Warner Bros. got a few things right, however: The Tasmanian devil is native to Tasmania, and it does have an abnormally large head. It is the top (extant) marsupial carnivore, even though it is primarily a scavenger. Its cries are also creepy as hell:



The Tasmanian devil has a bite to back up its bark. Remember the entry on the dire wolf and how a bigger head generally implies more jaw power? The Tasmanian devil possesses the strongest jaws of any mammal. The Looney Tunes caricature is just barely an exaggeration of how much emphasis the real creature has on its jaws.

 

It is also endangered. Although Taz has yet to be listed as "critical," the species is becoming rarer and rarer. Dingoes are often cited as making the Tasmanian devil extinct from mainland Australia; remember, placental mammals are not native down there. Others, not wishing to blame everything on dingoes, add that they could not survive the rising temperatures on mainland Australia. They are also preyed upon by red foxes (another introduced canid).

Hell, Tazzies are not even safe on their namesake island; there is a cancer there that gives the devils nasty facial tumors. Being on an island will no doubt lead to a nasty bottleneck, but if cheetahs and humans can survive that, surely these vicious beasts can endure it...right?



Thanks, canids. Thanks a lot.

If the species does wind up going extinct, at least the Tasmanian devil will forever be immortalized as a classic cartoon character. That's pretty cool, even if it does not do justice to the awesomeness of the real animal. 

"They Actually Eat That:" Kangaroo.

 Kangaroos are the most well-known animal in Australia. They hop, they have pouches, and they kickbox. Roos are look like deer-rabbit hybrids that bounce on their hind legs to Westerners; they are generally thought of as happy creatures from the Land Down Under. What's not to love? As The Simpsons put it, "I dare you to look at a kangaroo and not laugh."

They're usually funny.

Oh, and they're also eaten on a regular basis by people in Australia.

They Actually Eat That?!



Behold, the Australian coat of arms. Australia is the only nation that eats an animal present on their national emblem. This practice goes all the way back to the Aborigines; it's not like the Europeans went "hey, let's eat those things." It's more like the Aborigines already knew what little fauna in Australia was not poisonous.


Even this thing can SEVERELY INJURE YOU, white people.

Again, the real question becomes why not eat kangaroos? They are Australia's equivalent of deer. Except for the hopping, kangaroos and deer share a lot of the same machinery - herbivorous teeth, large ears, and so forth. Do you have any objections to eating deer?


Dooo yooouuu?

Furthermore, kangaroo meat is actually quite good for you, especially if it is not farmed. Kangaroo meat is low in fat and very high in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), one of the best anticarcinogens around. It is also very tender and can be used in many of the same dishes as beef. Good eats, even if some wildlife funds do not like the idea.

Creature Feature: Thylacine

While we're on the topic of animals being wiped out due to over hunting, behold the thylacine/Tasmanian tiger/Tasmanian wolf (Thylacinus cynocephlaus):



That is not a cat, dog or mongoose. It is a marsupial. Yes, a marsupial, like kangaroos, koalas and wombats. It has no relation to canids or felids, but instead evolved similar adaptations via convergent evolution. Props to the Tasmanian devil for being a carnivorous marsupial; Looney Tunes probably saved its life. (Even then, having such an inbred population has its problems.)


And then he got cancer.

The thylacine filled the same 'niche' that canids and felids did elsewhere in the world. It was an apex predator, meaning that, as soon as it became an adult (with a possible length of up to 6 feet long for males), there was a huge sign saying 'do not mess with me' stamped on it. Like a wolf, it hunted in packs and ran its prey to exhaustion. For those of us with dirty minds, both males and females had pouches (use your imagination for what was in the male's pouch). It sounds so badass and familiar that it's really hard to believe that the thylacine's dead.



So, what the hell happened? Humans.

Not Europeans. Humans. Again, the 'native people' are far from blameless. Do not let James Cameron's psychedelic movie fool you. Natives can do bad things, too, namely bring over dogs.


Yes, this. Don't look at me that way.

Dogs ate what the thylacine ate...and then some. Although arguments can be made over whether the two species actually hunted at the same time of day or not (again, dogs can easily hunt at night), dogs + humans = game over for the thylacine. The Europeans brought over even more dogs and a few other weird, pouch-less predatory mammals. They also had guns, which screws every other predator over. In short, the thylacine lost its niche.

When two species compete for a niche, one invariably falls. That's why people are so mad at the Burmese pythons in the Everglades; they are competing with alligators for the natural resources in the area. Also, they're giant snakes, so everything is blamed on them anyways.


All right, we'll call it a draw!

In this case, however, the thylacine also went out for a LOT of the same reasons that wolves were targeted in the Americas. They ate livestock and competed with everybody's neighborhood dogs. There were huge bounties placed on the thylacine's head, much like a certain wolf bounty offered by a certain disgraceful politician.



You wanna know what would happen if humans had succeeded in removing wolves? The picture above and insane deer overpopulation. Removing apex predators is never cool. (It is, however, important to remember that the fauna SUPPORTING them was what made them badass to begin with.)



Despite its extinction, the Tasmanian Tiger/Wolf remains an icon in Australian culture. They still use it on stamps and Tasmania's coat of arms. Some people even claim to have seen living thylacines. Most people would call them crazy, but sightings persist to this day.


I don't know what this is, but the Kabbalist symbols make me question its credibility.