Black-handed spider monkey (click image to enlarge)

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These incredibly agile monkeys live throughout Central America. They’re very social, swinging through the treetops in groups of 20 or 30, munching on fruit, leaves, and flowers. They’re important distributors of fruit seeds, dispersing them through their digestive system. Unfortunately, the black-handed spider monkey is endangered due to habitat loss.

Brush-tailed phascogale (click image to enlarge)

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The brush-tailed phascogale (also called the tuan or the brush-tailed marsupial mouse) is a marsupial that lives in a few scattered regions around the edges of Australia. Brush-tailed phascogales (perhaps I’ll call them BTPs) are arboreal, nocturnal, and solitary—in other words, they scamper around the treetops at night, all alone in the moonlight. They like to eat lizards, birds, insects, and small mammals like mice, and they’re pretty agonistic, a zoological word meaning combative. BTPs can make a few different noises, and I like the way Walker’s describes them:

“When disturbed, P. tapoatafa utters a low, rasping hiss, which apparently is an alarm note. When angered, tuans emit a series of staccato ‘chit-chit’ sounds. Sometimes, when excited, tuans slap the pads of their forefeet down together while holding an alert, rigid pose, thus producing a sharp rapping sound. At times they also make a rapid drumming noise by quick vibrations of the tail.”

That all sounds quite similar to my daughter’s 5th-grade band in their first week together after the teacher told them, “You can make as much noise as you want before you pack up.”

The IUCN classifies the BTP as near threatened. Its numbers have been declining because of habitat loss and alteration and, to a lesser extent, being eaten by foxes and cats.

Gemsbok (click image to enlarge)

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At long last, an update for the Daily Mammal. For those who hadn’t heard, about a month ago my husband and I adopted two kids, a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old. It’s going wonderfully—we love them so much—but becoming a mother to two half-grown humans all of the sudden has definitely changed my world, and it’s taking some time for me to get it all reorganized. I’ve actually finished 7 mammal drawings, but I haven’t done the research or writing on them. I’m going to start posting them now, trying, as always, for daily posting, and, also as always, probably falling short.

The gemsbok is a large antelope in the oryx genus. It lives in southern Africa and, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know, is not really in any danger of extinction. In fact, its numbers are increasing in some places. While there was a time when the gemsbok’s range was constricted by human encroachment and development, the animal’s value as a trophy for hunters means it’s not likely to die out on private land anytime soon. Plenty of gemsboks are thriving in protected areas, too.

Here’s a video of a mother gemsbok defending her calf from a pair of hungry cheetahs.

My lion

V's lion

C's lion

The Daily Mammal will be back to normal (or some semblance thereof) soon. Perhaps with some new mammalogists!

Screenshot from The Sister Project

There’s a nice interview with me and profile of this site over on The Sister Project, a wonderful network of blogs that look at the idea of sisterhood from many different perspectives. (Even if you’re not a sister, but a brother or an only child, you’ll find something to like there.) Check it out!

JR

Gray fox (click image to enlarge)

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The gray fox lives in the southern half of North America, from the southmost edge of Canada down to Colombia and Venezuela, avoiding parts of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains. They prefer foresty areas, mostly, or brushy desert areas. They love to eat cottontails, mice, voles, shrews, and birds, but they also eat a good deal of fruit and vegetables.

A really special thing about gray foxes is that they are one of the only canid species (the other is the raccoon dog) that can climb trees well, thanks to their curved claws that let them get a good grip on the tree bark. Margaret has a couple climbing her apple trees and eating her windfalls, and so this apple-sniffer is for her. (She might find this website’s extensive guide to gray fox tracks and scat useful, too!)

Four species of hutia (click image to enlarge)

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Hutias are largish rodents that live only in the Caribbean. While 26 hutia species are known to have lived in historic times, we only have seven species left, thanks probably to hunting, habitat changes, and the introduction of predators to the hutias’ island homes. Hutias live mostly in foresty or rocky areas, and they eat mostly plants, along with some smaller animals like lizards. The hutias seen in this drawing, from left to right, are Geocapromys ingrahami, the Bahamian hutia; Geocapromys brownii, the Jamaican hutia; Capromys pilorides, the Cuban hutia; and Plagiodontia aedium, the Hispaniolan hutia.

The Bahamian hutia is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN and is considered endangered and protected by law in the Bahamas. It lives on coral atolls and likes to eat fruit and seaweed. The IUCN also considers the Jamaican hutia vulnerable. The Jamaican hutia is nocturnal, and while none of the hutias are particularly well studied or understood by scientists, the Jamaican one may be the most mysterious. The Cuban hutia is not endangered, not yet anyway. It’s good at climbing trees, but it prefers to stay close to the ground. Like my dogs, Cuban hutias engage in playful wrestling and tumbling about together. Finally, the Hispaniolian hutia: it’s listed as endangered by the IUCN (one step worse off than vulnerable). While this hutia is also pretty mysterious, scientists think it’s nocturnal and good at climbing.

It’s likely that the first meat Christopher Columbus ate in the New World was a hutia. Archaeologists have found much evidence indicating that hutias were an integral part of the pre-Columbian diet, and they’re still hunted for food in some areas. If you have an entrepreneurial bent, you may like to read this excerpt from Microlivestock: Little-Known Small Animals With a Promising Economic Future that focuses on the hutia and its potential as a farm animal.

With this drawing, rodents are 27 percent of Daily Mammals and 40 percent of actual mammals. The rate is improving, but there are still many, many rodents to draw!