An oddball mammal, offshoot from relatively close to the base of the placental mammalian tree -- sometimes called the Syrian rabbit, but has nothing to do with rabbits. Elephants & manatees are its closest living relatives -- what, you can't see the family resemblance? Well, guess that's not surprising -- even those, it's pretty distant from.
I was surprised to read that it doesn't have very good body temperature regulation -- it lives in relatively warm climates in Africa & the Middle East & supplements its metabolic efforts with behavioral thermoregulation (basking, huddling, or sheltering), like a lizard.
At this busy tourist site they have become quite used to people and were foraging right near the path. There was a group of a dozen or so, very social.
When I saw them, I got all excited -- hey, a whole new order of mammals for my lifelist! -- until somebody nearby in line authoritatively informed us that they weren't hyraxes, they were nutrias, a S Am rodent imported for fur (that quickly lost any useful fur in the warm climate, but is disruptive to the native aquatic vegetation). I was so disappointed! Until later in the trip when we saw bona fide nutrias, which are totally different (and which I mistook for otters until I got THAT straightened out, but that's a different story.). Well, they're about the same size & color, but that's about the size of it! They have a long tail, for starters, and are aquatic like muskrats.
The "cape" in the name, BTW, refers to the Cape of Good Hope -- where European naturalists first studied all sorts of species and named dozens of them the 'Cape' such-and-such, with little or no idea of the extent of their range. They may be land animals found throughout all of sub-Saharan Africa (or beyond, as in this case), or seabirds found as far away as New Zealand.
Tags: rock hyrax hyrax shafan Procavia capensis Procavia Procaviidae Hyracoidea Afrotheria mammal fauna Rosh HaNikra Israel
Tags: rock hyrax hyrax shafan Procavia capensis Procavia Procaviidae Hyracoidea Afrotheria mammal fauna Rosh HaNikra Israel
Cutest things ever! On the escarpment right outside our dining tent. These are an oddball species from near the base of the placental mammal tree. They’re about rabbit-sized, but more closely related to elephants than to rabbits. Hyraxes retain a number of primitive mammalian characteristics; in particular, they have poorly developed internal temperature regulation, for which they compensate by behavioural thermoregulation, such as huddling together and basking in the sun.
I was going to write up a blurb about Afrotheria, but Wikipedia largely has it covered, so, cribbing heavily from there:
Africa was an island continent from the Cretaceous (which was still dominated by dinosaurs, 144–66 million years ago) until the early Miocene around 20 million years ago, when Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia. Because Africa was isolated by water, Laurasian groups of mammals such as insectivores, rodents, lagomorphs, carnivorans and ungulates could not reach Africa for much of the early to mid-Cenozoic. Instead, the niches occupied by those groups on the northern continents were filled by various groups of afrotheres via the process of convergent evolution. The small insectivorous afrotheres such as elephant shrews, golden moles, and tenrecs filled the niches of insectivores, the hyraxes filled the roles of rodents and lagomorphs, the aardvarks filled the roles of various medium size ant-eating mammals (anteaters, armadillos, pangolins, echidnas, numbats, etc.) found on other continents throughout the Cenozoic, and proboscideans (elephants and their relatives) filled the roles of large herbivores such as hippos, camels, rhinos, and tapirs.
Since these parallel worlds collided, afrotherians have not fared well. While some groups, such as elephants and their relatives, have gone on to colonize Eurasia, most of the species flow has been in the reverse direction. In Africa, afrotherians have generally been outcompeted by the boreoeutherian newcomers — whose key adaptations include better body temperature regulation — and are represented by only a small number of extant species. Afrotheria includes nearly a third of all mammalian orders currently found in Africa and Madagascar, but only 75 of more than 1,200 mammalian species in those areas.
Tags: bush hyrax hyrax Heterohyrax brucei Heterohyrax Procaviidae Hyracoidea Afrotheria mammal fauna Hwange National Park Hwange Zimbabwe July Kashawe Camp
Nobody told him -- he thinks he's a tree hyrax. Cutest things ever! On the escarpment right outside our dining tent.
These are an oddball species from near the base of the placental mammal tree. They’re about rabbit-sized, but more closely related to elephants than to rabbits. Hyraxes retain a number of primitive mammalian characteristics; in particular, they have poorly developed internal temperature regulation, for which they compensate by behavioural thermoregulation, such as huddling together and basking in the sun.
I was going to write up a blurb about Afrotheria, but Wikipedia largely has it covered, so, cribbing heavily from there:
Africa was an island continent from the Cretaceous (which was still dominated by dinosaurs, 144–66 million years ago) until the early Miocene around 20 million years ago, when Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia. Because Africa was isolated by water, Laurasian groups of mammals such as insectivores, rodents, lagomorphs, carnivorans and ungulates could not reach Africa for much of the early to mid-Cenozoic. Instead, the niches occupied by those groups on the northern continents were filled by various groups of afrotheres via the process of convergent evolution. The small insectivorous afrotheres such as elephant shrews, golden moles, and tenrecs filled the niches of insectivores, the hyraxes filled the roles of rodents and lagomorphs, the aardvarks filled the roles of various medium size ant-eating mammals (anteaters, armadillos, pangolins, echidnas, numbats, etc.) found on other continents throughout the Cenozoic, and proboscideans (elephants and their relatives) filled the roles of large herbivores such as hippos, camels, rhinos, and tapirs.
Since these parallel worlds collided, afrotherians have not fared well. While some groups, such as elephants and their relatives, have gone on to colonize Eurasia, most of the species flow has been in the reverse direction. In Africa, afrotherians have generally been outcompeted by the boreoeutherian newcomers — whose key adaptations include better body temperature regulation — and are represented by only a small number of extant species. Afrotheria includes nearly a third of all mammalian orders currently found in Africa and Madagascar, but only 75 of more than 1,200 mammalian species in those areas.
Tags: bush hyrax hyrax Heterohyrax brucei Heterohyrax Procaviidae Hyracoidea Afrotheria mammal fauna Hwange National Park Hwange Zimbabwe July Kashawe Camp
Cutest things ever! On the escarpment right outside our dining tent. These are an oddball species from near the base of the placental mammal tree. They’re about rabbit-sized, but more closely related to elephants than to rabbits. Hyraxes retain a number of primitive mammalian characteristics; in particular, they have poorly developed internal temperature regulation, for which they compensate by behavioural thermoregulation, such as huddling together and basking in the sun.
I was going to write up a blurb about Afrotheria, but Wikipedia largely has it covered, so, cribbing heavily from there:
Africa was an island continent from the Cretaceous (which was still dominated by dinosaurs, 144–66 million years ago) until the early Miocene around 20 million years ago, when Afro-Arabia collided with Eurasia. Because Africa was isolated by water, Laurasian groups of mammals such as insectivores, rodents, lagomorphs, carnivorans and ungulates could not reach Africa for much of the early to mid-Cenozoic. Instead, the niches occupied by those groups on the northern continents were filled by various groups of afrotheres via the process of convergent evolution. The small insectivorous afrotheres such as elephant shrews, golden moles, and tenrecs filled the niches of insectivores, the hyraxes filled the roles of rodents and lagomorphs, the aardvarks filled the roles of various medium size ant-eating mammals (anteaters, armadillos, pangolins, echidnas, numbats, etc.) found on other continents throughout the Cenozoic, and proboscideans (elephants and their relatives) filled the roles of large herbivores such as hippos, camels, rhinos, and tapirs.
Since these parallel worlds collided, afrotherians have not fared well. While some groups, such as elephants and their relatives, have gone on to colonize Eurasia, most of the species flow has been in the reverse direction. In Africa, afrotherians have generally been outcompeted by the boreoeutherian newcomers — whose key adaptations include better body temperature regulation — and are represented by only a small number of extant species. Afrotheria includes nearly a third of all mammalian orders currently found in Africa and Madagascar, but only 75 of more than 1,200 mammalian species in those areas.
Tags: bush hyrax hyrax Heterohyrax brucei Heterohyrax Procaviidae Hyracoidea Afrotheria mammal fauna Hwange National Park Hwange Zimbabwe July Kashawe Camp