Mammals sometimes get a reputation for being a bit boring. They’re a bunch of hairy blobs too familiar to elicit much excitement. Sure, most people’s favorite animals are mammals, but few consider them particularly exciting or unusual. This is largely… Continue Reading
In my recent article on giraffes, I mentioned that they were part of a large swath of different animals, all of them now extinct except for themselves and okapi. That article was a runaway hit by my standards, and who… Continue Reading
Africa is pretty famous for its megafauna, with a whole slew of big, weird animals. There are animals with knives for faces, tanks that run around on riverbeds and kill crocodiles, and animals with a tentacle for a nose and… Continue Reading
Last time we covered the archetypal mole, the true moles that shaped out expectations of what a mole is. They’re very much not the only moles in the world. Many, many other species have taken on a similar lifestyle, and… Continue Reading
In popular culture, very few animals are themselves. Most boil down to archetypes. The all-devouring locust, the ever-loyal and playful dog, the mountable horse. All of these archetypes are then applied imperfectly to unrelated animals. Tyranids and the Zerg are… Continue Reading
Nowadays, there’s really only one major carnivorous group within the mammals. Just to make things nice, simple, and extremely confusing, they’re called the carnivores, or more scientifically, carnivorans. If you think of any mammal that predominantly eats meat, from bears… Continue Reading
Spotted Hyenas are a very special animal to me, and so I’m glad to inaugurate my “Real Monsters” section with a post all about them. Their biology is fascinatingly alien for mammals, their intelligence puts them on par with the… Continue Reading