Four voles of Switzerland (click image to enlarge)

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Our last competitors in the mammalian World Cup are these four fellows from Switzerland. Clockwise from the top right, we have the European water vole (Arvicola aquatica), the European snow vole (Chionomys nivalis), the European pine vole (Microtus subterraneus), and the bank vole (Myodes glareolus). Some good news about these guys: they are all widespread throughout their ranges with no major threats, and IUCN classifies them as Least Concern. Yay for the voles!

Switzerland’s soccer team has made it to the World Cup several times, reaching the quarterfinals twice in the 1930s and again in 1954. In 2006, the Swiss team set two World Cup records: they were the first team to be bumped out of the competition without anyone ever scoring a goal against them, and they were the first team to not make a single penalty kick in a shootout. (Ukraine made three against them in the Round of 16, which is how Switzerland was eliminated.) This year, they didn’t make it out of the group stage, although they did shock everyone by beating favorites Spain in their first game of the tournament.

Tomorrow is the final match of the World Cup, and I may miss it because I’ll be traveling, but I won’t miss giving you the results of the Mammals of the World Cup competition! First, we need to wrap up the group results.

Group H Results

Group H was the tayra from Honduras, the pudú from Chile, the Spanish ibex, and today’s four voles (that seems unfair, now that I think about it). The voles might run around underfoot, but they’ll hardly pose a threat. The pudú is tiny. The tayra is the closest thing we have to a carnivore in this group, and the ibex has some mighty horns. So the two mammals continuing on to the Round of 16 from this group are:

Tayra (Honduras)
and
Spanish Ibex (Spain)

Spanish ibex (click image to enlarge)

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The Spanish ibex is our penultimate mammalian World Cup competitor! Representing Spain, natch, it’s a nimble goat that lives in rocky places, once throughout the Iberian Peninsula, but now only in Spain and where it’s been reintroduced to Portugal. Of the four subspecies that once existed, only two remain. The last Pyrenean ibex, Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica, died in 2000 after being hit by a tree. It was successfully cloned, if you can call it a success when your clone only lives for seven minutes. The Capra pyrenaica species as a whole, however, is doing well, its numbers increasing as it hops its way over the cliffs of Spain.

Spain’s soccer team is doing well, too. Of the 19 World Cups in history, Spain has qualified for 13. Although it’s never before done better than fourth place, it was one of the favorites to win the whole thing this year, and sure enough, Spain will be playing in the finals against the Netherlands on Sunday.

Pudú (click image to enlarge)

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The Mammals of the World Cup series is almost finished! Just two more countries after today’s representative from Chile, the Chilean or southern pudú, which is the second smallest deer in the world, the first being the northern pudú, this guy’s cousin. The Chilean pudú is less than a foot and a half tall and is vulnerable to becoming endangered because of habitat loss (join the club, little pudú) in its forest home, poaching, and domestic dogs.

There’s a Chilean metal band called Power of the Pudú, and they have a song called “Oda al Pudú,” or “Ode to the Pudú.” Check out the video below, which has translated subtitles (seemingly translated by a computer). It’s pretty good!

As for Chile’s soccer team, they have a long and sometimes disgraceful World Cup history. They’ve made it to the big tournament eight times, earning third place in 1962, when they hosted, and making it to the Round of 16 this year. But in 1990, the team was banned from that year’s tournament and the next one, too (1994), because of something that happened at a 1989 qualifying game against Brazil. Chile was behind 1–0 when a Brazilian fan threw a firework onto the pitch. The goalie, Roberto Rojas (nicknamed Cóndor) fell to the ground, his head bleeding, and the team doctor came out to have a look at him. They took him off on a stretcher, and then the Chilean team captain came out and said the team would not be returning to the game because conditions were unsafe.

Well, it turned out that the firework did not hit Rojas, but that he had cut himself deliberately in order to stop the game. It also came out that the team doctor had submitted a “fraudulent medical certificate” and that the coach had ordered Rojas and the doctor, by walkie-talkie, to stay on the ground. In the end, Rojas, the doctor, and the coach were all banned from soccer for life, the team captain who kept the team from returning to play was banned for five years, and the team was banned from the following two World Cups. In 2001, FIFA lifted the ban against Rojas.

YouTube has several videos about the incident, but they’re all in Spanish or Portuguese. Here’s one, marking the game’s 20th anniversary. You may or may not be able to understand the words, but the footage of the firework and the injury say a lot on their own.

Tayra (click image to enlarge)

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We’re now in the last group of competitors in the World Cup. Just four more countries, including this one, and we’re all done with our look at the soccer tournament. Today’s mammal is the tayra, representing Honduras. It’s a mustelid, or a member of the weasel family, that is quite common in Central and South America. Tayras are not picky eaters. They mostly eat small mammals, like rats, but they also like honeycombs, birds, reptiles, and lots and lots of fruit. They are sometimes kept as pets, and when I googled “tayra pet,” I found this rather interesting historic artifact (the link is to a PDF): a short essay from 1882, reprinted in the New York Times from the London Field, about a pet tayra and animals’ trust of us. The author concludes with a rather utopian vision that contradicts what he said earlier about the viciousness of tayras, but it’s an interesting snapshot of 1882 nevertheless.

Honduras has qualified for the World Cup twice: in 1982 and this year. Both times, the team made it no further than the first round, and both times, the team did not win a single game.

Group G Results

I neglected to give the results for Group G yesterday, so here we go! Group G included the tree pangolin from the Ivory Coast, the common genet from Portugal, the silky anteater from Brazil, and the Korean hare from North Korea. The genet is the only carnivore in this group, and I don’t think it would have any trouble with the anteater or the hare. The pangolin’s armor might mean the match between the genet and the pangolin would end in a draw. Hares are pretty harmless, and as my husband Ted says, it’s surprising that the anteater can even beat the ants. So the pangolin’s superior defense takes it through to the next round. From Group G, continuing on to the Round of 16:

Common Genet (Portugal)
and
Tree Pangolin (Ivory Coast)

Silky anteater (click image to enlarge)

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I’m posting two mammals tonight, both to get a day ahead of the actual World Cup and because I really hate my second drawing and want to bury it beneath the one above, which I actually like. So first, here’s the silky anteater, also called the pygmy anteater (Cyclopes didactylus), representing Brazil. Brazil was one of the two favorites to win the whole World Cup, but it has been bounced. Tomorrow is the second semifinal game, which will be played between Germany and Spain. Holland beat Uruguay today in the first semifinal match, so there are only European teams left.

The silky anteater is a strange little beast. It lives in the trees of the rainforest, and it’s nocturnal. It eats, as its name would suggest, ants, and they’re its favorite, but it will also eat termites. It’s a small little bitty anteater, just about 8 inches long and weighing less than a pound. Apparently, it lives in a tree that has fibrous, silky seedpods, which camouflage the little anteater as he safely sleeps the day away. According to EDGE of Existence, “Its long tongue is equipped with small spikes and mucus and is perfect for gathering up ants and termites.”

Here’s an odd little cameo appearance of the silky anteater from the 1972 movie Aguirre, the Wrath of God, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski:

Korean hare (click image to enlarge)

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North Korea is a mystery in general, and a mystery at the World Cup as well. This was the first time they’d qualified since 1966, when, according to an essay published in Time a couple of weeks ago, they “thrilled the World Cup” and ushered in a new era of competition, fitness, and endurance, even though they lost their quarterfinal match against Portugal. There’s a documentary about the 1966 team that looks interesting.

During this 2010 World Cup, a few interesting stories came to light. North Korea’s star, Jong Tae-Se, while North Korean by ancestry, was born in Japan and lives there. He said that he amazed his teammates by showing them his cell phone. They are easily amused, Jong Tae-Se says: their favorite between-games activity is rock, paper, scissors. And it’s no wonder they’ve never seen a cell phone before: they’re used to invisible ones, like the one Kim Jong-Il supposedly used to communicate with the team’s coach during their World Cup matches.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m trying to be more cosmopolitan, and the first and biggest step in that direction is to seek to understand people from other places and cultures. But it is so hard to understand people from North Korea. Of course, it would be hard to understand any country about which so little is known, but when North Koreans are allowed to talk, they sound like cult members. There’s such a huge wall there, but whether it’s a wall of terror or paranoia or brainwashing or sheer deprivation, poverty, and exhaustion, I just don’t know. Newsweek worries about the North Korean team and their families. Since they brought dishonor to their motherland, losing all three of their games, including a 7-0 drubbing by Portugal, will they mysteriously disappear or face some other terrible fate? Newsweek argues that FIFA, the organization that governs international soccer, should boycott the country, as so many sports organizations boycotted South Africa. I have to say that I don’t see why we’re not boycotting the country, based on what we know of its secretive, abusive, dictatorial regime.

None of this is any business of the Korean hare’s (Lepus coreanus), a regular old hare who lives in both Koreas and in China.

Common genet (click image to enlarge)

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This crazy-looking drawing is of a common genet, also called a small-spotted genet (I think the hyphen is important, but not everyone uses it) or a European genet. It’s representing Portugal in Group G of the Mammals of the World Cup series. It’s a carnivore in the Viverridae family, with the civets and linsangs. It lives in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and it mostly eats smaller animals. It’s nocturnal and a very skilled hunter. Walker’s Mammals of the World says, “The genet’s slender and loosely jointed body allows it to go through any opening its head can enter.”

Portugal’s soccer team, which includes a player whose full name is Danny, made it to the Round of 16 in this World Cup, where it was beaten by Spain, 1-0.