Many mammal species live solitary lives, at least outside of the mating season. For those, there would be little opportunity for social grooming and no wider benefit to be gained from it if there was. Self-grooming or "autogrooming" - such as licking one's own fur - may well be sufficient for them. But, of course, primates are not the only social mammals, and many of those other animals have fur in which parasites could hide, so it's reasonable to ask if allogrooming really is unique to primates.
Synapsida
A random wander through the world of mammals
Sunday 13 October 2024
You Scratch My Back...
Sunday 6 October 2024
Antilopine Antelopes: Dwarf Antelopes of Eastern and Central Africa
Oribi |
Technically, these dwarf antelopes were collectively referred to as "neotragines" and assumed to be a natural grouping within the antelopes more widely. Genetic analysis over the last couple of decades has muddied these waters considerably, not least because the genus for which the branch was named, Neotragus, turns out not to be closely related to the gazelles, and is something else entirely. Even if we look solely at those dwarf antelopes that we can still say belong to the antilopine subfamily, it turns out that they don't have a single common ancestor. Specifically, one of them is more closely related to gazelles than it is to any of the other members of its purported evolutionary branch.
Saturday 28 September 2024
Oligocene (Pt 11): Early Monkeys and Two-Ton Herbivores
Arsinoitherium |
Monkeys first appeared in Africa in the latter half of the preceding epoch, but their early record is patchy. This is likely because many of the earliest monkeys lived in areas that simply weren't conducive to forming fossils - although the fact that many parts of Africa have not had the same detailed paleontological surveys that other continents have may also be a factor. Much of the history of the primates during the epoch is a blank... but not entirely.
Sunday 22 September 2024
700th Synapsida
Evolution remained the single most common category for the past 100 posts, which is hardly surprising given how many are about extinct species, and how important it can be to understanding how the living ones got to be the way they are. However, diet and habitat, which are often linked, have overtaken animal behaviour to nab the second and third spots... although the latter has remained common. Since I pick most topics on the day, without any grand plan to even things out, that's probably just the vagaries of what I happen to have come across.
Sunday 15 September 2024
Hair, Fur, Bristles, and Spines
Hair is one of the key defining features of mammals. Apart from cetaceans, such as dolphins, no mammals are entirely hairless, although, for example, hippos and some babirusa species come very close. The original purpose of hair was almost certainly to maintain body heat, something that matters to warm-blooded animals in a way that it doesn't to, say, reptiles. Since then, however, hair has adapted to fulfil many other functions as well.Trinomys
To begin with, there is colouration, a function that hair needs to take over once it obscures the skin. The most obvious way that hair colour can help an animal is camouflage. While this is instinctively true, there have been statistical studies that demonstrate certain hair colours are, indeed, more common in animals living in certain environments. For instance, multi-species analyses of lagomorphs and cloven-footed mammals have shown that animals with grey fur are more likely to live in rocky environments. The same studies, as well as similar ones on carnivores, show that pale fur is associated with open environments, especially deserts, while dark fur is most common in those animals living in jungles, dense forests, or heavily vegetated swamps. And, surely to the surprise of almost nobody, white fur is associated with the Arctic, or with the winter coats of those living where it snows.
Sunday 8 September 2024
Antilopine Antelopes: Dwarf Antelopes of southern Africa
Steenbok |
One of these groups contains the gazelles, along with the springbok, some other gazelle-like animals, and that "first" antelope mentioned above, the blackbuck. These are, for the most part, smallish slender, fast-running antelopes living in arid or semi-arid habitats in both Africa and Asia. The second group are the dwarf antelopes, found only in Africa and quite visibly different from gazelles.
Sunday 1 September 2024
Unravelling the History of Seals
Allodesmus, a desmatophocid |
With some groups, however, we do have sufficient fossil evidence that we can look at a whole group of animals and get some idea, not just of how it originated, or where it fits in the larger mammalian family tree, but what ups and downs it has faced over the course of its existence. This can tell us what alterations in climate or geography drove changes within the group and how and when particularly evolutionary innovations developed.