mammalogy

So sorry for the very short notice. The following airs here in the UK tonight (Thursday 30th June 2011), Channel 4. I look forward to it. For the Tet Zoo articles on ING and related issues, see... Inside Nature's Giants: a major television event worthy of praise and accolade. Part I! Inside Nature's Giants part II: whale guts and hindlimbs ahoy Enough mammals for the time being: crocodiles on Inside Nature's Giants (part III) Inside Nature's Giants part IV: the incredible anatomy of the giraffe Inside Nature's Giants, series 2: does Carcharodon bite? Monster pythons of the Everglades:…

One of the most remarkable pigs has to be the Bornean bearded pig Sus barbatus, one of two currently recognised bearded pig species. The other is the much smaller, shorter-faced Palawan bearded pig S. ahoenobarbus of the Philippines: genetic work suggests that S. ahoenobarbus is not a close relative of S. barbatus, but actually closer to the Celebes warty pig S. celebensis and other Philippines pigs (Lucchini et al. 2005). S. barbatus occurs on Sumatra, Bangka, the Riau archipelago and the Malay Peninsula as well as Borneo. There are two subspecies: S. b. barbatus has long cheek beards…

On March 14th 2011 National Geographic screened episode 1 of their new series Wild Case Files (here in the UK, the episode was screened on April 11th), and the reason I'm writing about it is because I featured in said episode. The first section of the show was devoted to an investigation of the 'Montauk monster'. They provided a potted history of the whole 'Montauk monster' story, spoke to all the main characters involved, and ended with me explaining how the carcasses (both the original, July 2008 specimen, and the 'Clapsadle carcass' of May 2009 and 'Gurney's Inn monster' of September…

Over the past several months months and months I've been trying to complete a series of articles on the various sac- and pocket-like head and neck structures that have evolved in such diverse mammals as apes, horses, camels and baleen whales (links to the previous articles in the series are provided below). In an effort to get the series finished, here's the next part of the series. This time, we focus on rodents, rabbits and hyraxes. Yeah, just like it says above, in the title. It's well known that pneumatisation of the skull bones is widespread in mammals: sinuses in the nasal region,…

If you're a regular reader you'll have seen the recent article on those African 'great bubalus' depictions and on how they might (or might not) be representations of the large, long-horned bovin bovid Syncerus antiquus. As discussed in that article, S. antiquus - long thought to be a species of Pelorovis - is now regarded as a very close relative of S. caffer, the living Cape buffalo. As usual though, there are quite a few additional things that I wanted to cover, so here's an attempt to tie up various loose ends [the illustrations above show radically different reconstructions of…

While chasing up sivathere stuff, I got distracted. Sorry. Among the most spectacular of extinct bovids is the Plio-Pleistocene African form Pelorovis, famous for its gigantic curved horns. These can span 3 m in fossil skulls, and were certainly even longer in the living animal. Pelorovis was built rather like a gigantic, long-horned version of the living Cape buffalo Syncerus caffer, but differed from it in horn shape, in lacking the massive boss that Syncerus exhibits on its virtually conjoined horn bases, and in having a longer, lower, more antelope-like face. The type species for the…

I don't do requests on Tet Zoo, but when enough people ask me about the same thing it does get into my head. Ever since the early days of ver 1 people have been asking me about late-surviving sivatheres. What, they ask, is the deal with those various pieces of rock art and that Sumerian figurine - discovered in Iraq - that apparently depict Sivatherium? As most of you will know, Sivatherium was a large, short-necked giraffid, originally described for S. giganteus from the Siwalik Hills of India [shown below in a well-known and oft-used illustration by Michael R. Long*] but later discovered…

Over the course of the previous 19 - yes, 19 - articles we've looked at the full diversity of vesper bat species (see links below if there are any parts you've missed). If you've been following the series on an article-by-article basis, you'll hopefully now have a reasonable handle on the morphological, behavioural and ecological variation present within this enormous, fascinating group, and will also have some idea of how the many different kinds of vesper bats might be related to one another. We've seen how bent-winged bats, wing-gland bats, tube-nosed bats, woolly bats and mouse-eared (or…

I find myself astonished by the fact that I've done it. With the publication of this article I've succeeded in providing a semi/non-technical overview of all the vesper bats of the world... or, of all the major lineages, anyway. Obviously, it hasn't been possible to even mention all 400-odd vesper bat species, let alone all the 'species groups' suggested for the more speciose genera, but I think I've succeeded in discussing all extant genera, and at least some of the fossil ones too. As you'll know if you've been following the series, we've moved along the cladogram and now find ourselves…

Among the best known, most widespread and most familiar of vesper bats are the pipistrelles. All bats conventionally regarded as pipistrelles are small (ranging from 3-20 g and 35-62 mm in head-body length), typically with proportionally short, broad-based ears and a jerky, rather erratic flying style. Compared to the majority of vesper bat species, the better known pipistrelle species (the common European species Pipistrellus pipistrellus and P. pygmaeus) are well known and well studied in terms of ecology and behaviour [composite above shows Common pipistrelle in various poses, with…

Here we are, so close to the very end. I am pleased and surprised to find that we're now looking at the vesper bats within Vespertilionini - the clade that (in the topology I'm using here: that of Roehrs et al. (2010)) includes the pipistrelles and noctules and their closest relatives. We'll get to those extremely familiar bats soon. As usual, they have a bunch of far less familiar close relatives... or alleged close relatives, or possible close relatives... and it's those bats that we'll be looking at here. After, that is, that we deal with lobed bats and butterfly bats. They aren't members…

By now (if, that is, you've been following this thrilling, roller-coaster ride of a series) we've gotten through the better part of vesper bat phylogeny: we've climbed 'up' the vesper bat cladogram and are now within the youngest major section of the group. Recent phylogenetic studies have recognised a serotine clade (Eptesicini or Nycticeiini), a hypsugine clade (including Savi's bat and a load of relatives), and a clade that includes pipistrelles and noctules (Vespertilionini). Seemingly fitting somewhere within these three clades - or, perhaps, close to them - are a list of oddballs…

As we've seen throughout this series (see links below for previous parts), recent phylogenetic studies have found a number of 'pipistrelle-like non-pipistrelles' to form a novel clade previously unsuspected from morphological studies [composite above shows - l to r - Hypsugo cf. joffrei (from Kruskop & Shchinov (2010)), Neoromicia capensis (from Fernloof Nature Reserve), and Laephotis botswanae]. Following Roehrs et al. (2010), I'll refer to this as the 'hypsugine group'. Hypsugines occur across the Old World and Australasia, and at the 'core' of the group are the Hypsugo species.…

A group of mostly mid-sized pipistrelle-like bats of Africa and the northern continents are known as the serotines (Eptesicus) [species shown here is the one generally known simply as the Serotine E. serotinus: photo by Mnolf, from wikipedia]. Here in Europe this is - along with pipistrelles, noctules and long-eared bats - one of the most familiar of vesper bat groups. As we'll see, this group is anything but boring: it includes some weird big-eared species as well as the only bats known to breed within the Arctic Circle and a 'giant' species that eats birds. Substantial confusion has…

A group of serotine-like bats that occur in North America, Cuba, tropical Africa, Asia and Australasia have often been grouped together in a 'tribe' called Nycticeini (or Nycticeiini: both spellings are used in the bat literature and I'm unsure which has proper precedence). Tate (1942) used this name for an assemblage of species grouped together due to the absence of the second upper incisor. Nycticeins also tend to have a near-horizontal dorsal border to the naked muzzle and a slow, steady flight. The name is obviously based around the generic name used for the so-called evening bats (…

Once upon a time, a huge variety of small to very small vesper bats - basically all of those that possess a simple tragus, a shortish face, two pairs of upper incisors and two upper and two lower premolars - were lumped together as the pipistrelles. You don't have to have a detailed or expert knowledge of vesper bat diversity or morphology to realise that at least some of these characters are primitive across Vespertilionidae, or have evolved repeatedly in disparate lineages. When these observations are combined with the morphological and molecular differences present among the many species…

Vesper bats. Well done with sticking with it all so far - I have lots of non-bat stuff I want to cover, but (for reasons soon to be explained) I need to get this series finished. With this article - part XI in the series (XI) - we are not at the end. But we are at the beginning of the end. Look at the cladogram below to see where we are, and follow the links below if you want to know what happened before. We arrive now at Antrozoini... The Pallid bat or Desert bat Antrozous pallidus of western North America and Cuba is a large (wingspan 37-41 cm; mass 20-35 g), fairly scary-looking, big-…

About 12 species of big-eared Australasian bats are known as the, err, Australian big-eared bats and New Guinean bats. More formally, they are the Nyctophilus species. They're also known from some of the islands that surround New Guinea (like the Lesser Sundas), and also from New Caledonia (an endemic New Caledonian species, N. nebulosus, was named in 2002). Their presence has also been claimed for Fiji, but the evidence for this (based on specimens stored at the Natural History Museum in London) is inconclusive (J. E. Hill, in Parnaby 2002). Together with the New Guinea big-eared bat or…

Hey, if anyone out there is bored with the bats, just gimme a shout. If you're loving it, say so, and urge me to post more - there's still a lot to come! Yes, welcome once again to the vesper bat series: for previous installments see the list of links at the bottom of this article. We continue our trek through vesper bat diversity with another of the clades often regarded as a 'tribe' within the vesper bat 'subfamily' Vespertilioninae: the house bats or yellow bats, conventionally grouped together in Scotophilini. House bats - the approximately 15 species of Scotophilus - are handsome,…

Now that all the fuss about modern-day sauropod dinosaurs has died down, we can get back to the serious business of vesper bats (incidentally, I do plan to cover the mokele-mbembe - in serious fashion - at some point in history). For previous parts in the vesper bats series, please look at the links below. A group of about 17 species of American bats (occurring from Alberta down to Chile and Argentina) are known collectively as the hairy-tailed bats or hoary bats (Lasiurus*) (together with the Silver-haired bat Lasionycterus noctivagans, they're also sometimes known as tree bats). Most…