Thanks to Conner, Tim, Stella, Cillian, Eilee, PJ, and Morris for their suggestions this week!

Further reading:

Extinct Hippo-Like Creature Discovered Hidden in Museum: ‘Sheer Chance’

The golden lion tamarin has very thin fingers and sometimes it’s rude:

The golden lion tamarin also has a very long tail:

The cotton-top tamarin [picture by Chensiyuan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=153317160]:

The pangolin is scaly:

The pangolin can also be round:

The East Siberia lemming [photo by Ansgar Walk – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52651170]:

An early painting of a mammoth:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we’re going to look at some mammals suggested by Conner, Tim, Stella, Cillian, Eilee, PJ, and Morris. Let’s jump right in, because we have a lot of fascinating animals to learn about!

We’ll start with suggestions by Cillian and Eilee, who both suggested a monkey called the tamarin. Tamarins live in Central and South America and there are around 20 species, all of them quite small.

Cillian specifically suggested the golden lion tamarin, an endangered species that lives in a single small part of Brazil. It has beautiful golden or orange fur that’s longer around the face, like a lion’s mane but extremely stylish. Its face is bare of fur and is gray or grayish-pink in color, with dark eyes and a serious expression like it’s not sure where it left its wallet. It grows about 10 inches long, or 26 cm, not counting its extremely long tail.

The golden lion tamarin spends most of its time in trees, where it eats fruit, flowers, and other plant material, along with eggs, tree frogs, insects, and other small animals. It has narrow hands and long fingers to help it reach into little tree hollows and crevices where insects are hiding, but if it can’t reach an insect that way, it will use a twig or other tool to help.

The golden lion tamarin lives in small family groups, usually a mated pair and their young children. A mother golden lion tamarin often has twins, sometimes triplets, and the other members of her family help take care of the babies.

Because the golden lion tamarin is endangered, mainly due to habitat loss, zoos throughout the world have helped increase the number of babies born in captivity. When it’s safe to release them into the wild, instead of only releasing the young tamarins, the entire family group is released together.

Eilee suggested the cotton-top tamarin, which lives in one small part of Colombia. It’s about the same size as the golden lion tamarin, but is more lightly built and has a somewhat shorter tail. It’s mostly various shades of brown and tan with a dark gray face, but it also has long white hair on its head. Its hair sticks up and makes it look a little bit like those pictures of Einstein, if Einstein was a tiny little monkey.

Like the golden lion tamarin, the cotton-top tamarin lives in small groups and eats both plant material and insects. It’s also critically endangered due to habitat loss, and it’s strictly protected these days.

Next, both Tim and Stella suggested we learn about the pangolin. There are eight species known, which live in parts of Africa and Asia.

The pangolin is a mammal, but it’s covered in scales except for its belly and face. The scales are made of keratin, the same protein that makes up fingernails, hair, hooves, and other hard parts in mammals. When it’s threatened, it rolls up into a ball with its tail over its face, and the sharp-edged, overlapping scales protect it from being bitten or clawed. It has a long, thick tail, short, strong legs with claws, a small head, and very small ears. Its muzzle is long with a nose pad at the end, it has a long sticky tongue, and it has no teeth. It’s nocturnal and uses its big front claws to dig into termite mounds and ant colonies. It has poor vision but a good sense of smell.

Some species of pangolin live in trees and spend the daytime sleeping in a hollow tree. Other species live on the ground and dig deep burrows to sleep in during the day. It’s a solitary animal and just about the only time adult pangolins spend time together is when a pair comes together to mate. Sometimes two males fight over a female, and they do so by slapping each other with their big tails.

Unfortunately for the pangolin, its scales make it sought after by humans for decoration. People also eat pangolins. Habitat loss is also making it tough for the pangolin. All species of pangolin in Asia are endangered or critically endangered, while all species of pangolins in Africa are vulnerable. Pangolins also don’t do well in captivity so it’s hard for zoos to help them.

Next, Conner wants to learn about the lemming, a rodent that’s related to muskrats and voles. Lots of people think they know one thing about the lemming, but that thing isn’t true. We’ll talk about it in a minute.

The lemming grows up to 7 inches long, or 18 cm, and is a little round rodent with small ears, a short tail, short legs, and long fur that’s brown and black in color. It eats plant material, and while it lives in really cold parts of the northern hemisphere, including Siberia, Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland, it doesn’t hibernate. It just digs tunnels with cozy nesting burrows to warm up in, and finds food by digging tunnels in the snow.

Lemmings reproduce quickly, which is a trait common among rodents, and if the population of lemmings gets too large in one area, some of the lemmings may migrate to find a new place to live. In the olden days people didn’t understand lemming migration. Some people believed that lemmings traveled through the air in stormy weather and that’s why a bunch of lemmings would suddenly appear out of nowhere sometimes. They’d just drop out of the sky. Other people were convinced that if there were too many lemmings, they’d all jump off a cliff and die on purpose, and that’s why sometimes there’d be a lot of lemmings, and then suddenly one day not nearly as many lemmings.

Many people still think that lemmings jump off cliffs, but this isn’t actually true. They’re cute little animals, but they’re not dumb.

Next, let’s learn about two ext...