Category Archives: Mammals

Don’t Hog the Water

Mammals
Asian elephants bathing, Sri Lanka (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

8 August 2025

Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) love to take baths. Sometimes, when there’s not enough room for everyone in the pool, the elephants left out challenge those hogging the water.

Asian elephants in a small pool, Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Australia (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

In the wild elephants bath in rivers, lakes and watering holes, lolling in the water and using their trunks to spray their backs. At the Berlin Zoo Asian elephants are provided with a hose to take a shower, similar to using their trunks.

In 2023 the keepers noticed that an elderly elephant, Mary age 54, had developed new ways to use the hose so they initiated a year long study on elephant tool use. They filmed Mary’s hose techniques, praised her for using the hose, and gave her extra hose time. She reveled in the extra attention.

But the study prompted jealousy in a younger elephant, Anchali age 12, who has loved hoses since she was a baby. In her youth she played with them until they broke so the keepers restricted her hose use and taught her proper handling. Now another elephant was hogging the water and the keepers let her do it. Anchali started to sabotage Mary’s shower sessions.

Anchali had a potential motive, too: Mary was occasionally aggressive toward the younger elephant, who seemed to retaliate by disrupting the shower around the same time as Mary stomped toward her or slapped her with her trunk. What’s more, Anchali didn’t kink the hose when other elephants were spraying themselves, suggesting she was targeting Mary in particular.

— Science Magazine: This elephant learned to use a hose as a shower. Then her rival sought revenge

Watch Mary’s fancy hose techniques and Anchali’s reaction.

“Hey, don’t hog the water!”

video embedded from New Scientist on YouTube

Read more in Science Magazine: This elephant learned to use a hose as a shower. Then her rival sought revenge, 8 Nov 2024

p.s. Do you know that Asian elephants are the last living relative of woolly mammoths? Find out more here.

Will They Eat Your Car?

Mammals
Porcupines crossing a road (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

31 July 2025

Porcupines (Erethizon dorsatum) are herbivores and solely eat plants. During the summer, North American Porcupines eat twigs, roots, stems, berries, leaves, and other vegetation. Porcupines also eat certain insects and nuts. In the winter, they eat mainly conifer needles and tree bark.

— Wikipedia: North American porcupine

So why do folks who camp in the north woods tell stories of porcupines that crawl under cars and chew on wiring, tires, brake and fuel lines?

Porcupines love salt and find some resins, rubbers and plastics quite tasty. Any one of these substances — but especially salt — can be enough to prompt a porcupine to start chewing on a vehicle.

Porcupine showing its orange teeth (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Porcupines are especially attracted in winter when cars are coated in road salt.

Porcupines are attracted to anything salty. So winter road salt can attract them to automotive parts and rubber, including brake lines, fuel lines, tires, half-shaft boots, etc. Thoroughly hose off or wipe down vehicles and vehicle parts to remove accumulated salt. If possible, keep vehicles in a garage or erect a temporary fence around vehicles.

— Wildlifehelp.org: Pennsylvania > Porcupine Damage to vehicles

What else is salty? This doorknob on the outhouse door is salty from the hands that touched it and …

Tooth marks on the doorknob (photo by Kate St. John)
Tooth marks on the doorknob, Lawsonham, PA, 27 July 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)

… there’s more salt inside the outhouse plus tasty resin in the plywood. This porcupine was caught eating an outhouse in Alaska. He poses in a defensive posture, exposing his quills.

Porcupine eating plywood glue in outhouse, Giddings cabin, Western Arctic, Alaska (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

We didn’t see a porcupine at Redbank Trail eight years ago (today!) but there’s more to the story of the doorknob in this vintage article.

Who Chewed The Doorknob?

p.s. If you have a porcupine problem, wildlifehelp.org may have a solution. Here’s their advice about cars.

Mammoth or Mastodon?

Finland, Mammals, Musings & News
Woolly mammoth figure at Kuopio Museum, Finland, July 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)

21 July 2025

On our previous trip to Finland we visited Kuopio Museum where one of the main attractions is the woolly mammoth replica, above. Unveiled in 1999, he was modeled after a well-preserved frozen mammoth found in 1799 in Siberia’s Lena River valley. At its death the frozen mammoth was about 30 years old, weighed 5,000 to 5,500 pounds (more than 2.5 tons) and stood over three meters (over 10 feet) at the shoulder[1]. For a sense of scale that’s my husband gazing at the mammoth.

When I saw the Kuopio mammoth I couldn’t help but think of a 2006 New Yorker cartoon by Alex Gregory that shows a caveman and his wife looking at a slain beast he’d brought home for dinner. And she says, “This is mastodon. I told you to get mammoth.”(<– Click the link to see the cartoon) Her shopping complaint has stayed with me ever since and made me wonder about the animals.

  1. Were mammoths and mastodons alive at the same time?
  2. Did their ranges overlap? If so, where?
  3. Did humans encounter both beasts?
  4. Supposing #3 is true, how did Mrs. Caveman tell the difference between a mammoth and a mastodon?

Mammoths (Mammuthus sp.) are 4 evolutionary splits away from a common ancestor with mastodons, and they have a living relative, the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). Mastodons (Mammut sp.) were a stand alone branch that went extinct without splitting into descendants.

Cladogram of Elephantimorpha: Mastodon and Mammoth (chart from Wikipedia)

1. Were woolly mammoths and American mastodons alive at the same time? Yes.

Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) first evolved from steppe mammoths in eastern Siberia around 700,000 to 300,000 years ago and spread across northern Asia, Europe, and North America. Most of them went extinct 11,000 years ago. The last population remained on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean and went extinct 4,000 years ago.

Mastodons (Mammut sp.) first appeared around 27 to 30 million years ago. A well known species, Mammut americanus, became widespread in North America during the Pleistocene Epoch (2.78 million to 11,000 years ago) and went extinct about 11,000 years ago.

2. Did their ranges overlap and where? Yes. Notably in North America.

The woolly mammoth had a circumpolar range as shown on this map from arcticportal.org. Amazingly mammoths were present in both southern Finland and Pittsburgh (top edge of map). (Click on the image to see an annotated version that points to both locations.)

Map from arcticportal.org, The Arctic Gateway, source Science News (Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke)

I have been unable to find a range map for mastodons but this fossil site map of two species, M. americanum and M. pacificus, shows that mastodons were widely distributed in North America. The northern part of their range would have overlapped with the woolly mammoth.

Fossil distribution of masotdons Mammut pacificus and Mammut americanum (from Wikimedia Commons)

3. Did humans encounter both beasts? Yes. A Wikipedia excerpt about mastodons explains that they killed both. With so many woolly mammoth kill sites compared to mastodons, did Clovis people prefer mammoths? Or were they just easier to catch?

As of present, 2 definite Mammut [mastodon] kill sites compatible with Clovis lithic technology have been recorded compared to 15 of Mammuthus [woolly mammoth] and 1 of Cuvieronius [yet another elephant relative].

— Wikipedia: Mastodon

4. How did Mrs. Caveman tell the difference between a mammoth and a mastodon?

Mammoth or Mastodon? This one is easy.

Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) had tusks that circled back on themselves.

Woolly mammoth replica in Royal BC Museum in Victoria (image from Wikimedia Commons)

Mastodon species had much straighter tusks.

Mastodon replica created in Adobe Photoshop (image from Wikimedia Commons)

And their teeth were noticeably different. See the National Park Service’s Mastodon or Mammoth article for details. Mrs. Caveman knew what she was talking about.

[1] This portion of the opening paragraph is paraphrased from Wikipedia: Kuopio Museum.

Udder Support

Finland, Mammals, Musings & News
These cows have udders so heavy that they must wear bras, near Rikkavesi lake, Finland
Some of these cows have udders so heavy that they wear bras, near Lake Rikkavesi, Finland, July 2017

19 July 2025, in Finland

Pennsylvania is a big dairy farming state, ranked 8th in the U.S. in dairy production, yet for all the cows I’ve seen grazing Pennsylvania fields I’d never seen one wearing an udder support bra until I visited Finland eight years ago. Obviously this cow has a very large udder so she benefits in several ways.

In 1963 Dutch veterinarian, Evert J.S. Bron, invented a “cow bra” for animals with large udders designed to …

  • prevent damage or further elongation of the suspensory ligaments in large udders
  • prevent mastitis (inflammation of the udder)
  • prevent the cow from stepping on its teats when it stands up and/or dragging them on the ground because they hang so low.

Siberian and Nordic dairy farmers sometimes cover cow udders in winter to keep them warm so it wasn’t a stretch for a Finnish dairy farmer to adopt the support net. It’s even been adopted at a farm in Brazil after the Brazilian manager visited Iceland. See Dairy Global: Unique udder support method in the spotlight.

Support is also available in the U.S.

Screenshot June 2025: Cow udder support can be purchased in the U.S. at Caprine Supply, located in DeSoto, KS

p.s. The breed of cow pictured at top is the Swedish red-and-white.

The #1 Day For Lost Pets

Mammals, Musings & News
(photo from Wikimedia Commons)

4 July 2025

July is National Lost Pet Prevention Month and today, July 4, is the #1 day for pets to go missing as the Post-Gazette explains: ‘Scariest day of the year’: Festivities lead to spike in missing pets

It’s all because of fireworks. We like them but our pets do not. Cats hide(*). Dogs panic and run. Some dogs, when trapped indoors, will destroy the house.

CBS Boston interviewed pet owners and shelter experts with tips on how to prepare. Some pet owners are about to find out how their pets react.

video embedded from CBS Boston on YouTube

My sister-in-law in Massachusetts has a new dog that has a bad habit of bolting just for fun. She knows she’s going to have her hands full tonight.

If you have a pet, here are resources on how to prepare in advance:

(*) p.s. I had a cat that would crawl into a cat-sized hole under the basement stairs. There was nothing we could do. We just had to wait until she came out.

Pronghorns are How Fast?

Colorado, Mammals, Travel
Male proghorn in Wyoming (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

23 April 2025: Grouse Lek Extravaganza with She Flew Birding Tours.
Day 5: Dusky grouse lek, Sharp-tailed grouse lek, Walden Reservoir, Arapaho NWR, to Walden

Today in addition to seeing two species of leks we will encounter pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), the fastest land animal in North America and the second fastest land animal on Earth. I hope to see them run!

In Pennsylvania we’re quite familiar with white-tailed deer so let’s compare the two.

Pronghorns are the same shoulder height as white-tailed deer but they weigh a lot less. When fleeing danger both show white rumps/tails, but when it comes to running pronghorns are really really fast. This table shows the biggest differences between the two.

TraitsPronghorncompare to deerWhite-tailed Deer
Speed55-60 mph in 0.5 mi
35 mph for 4 miles		TWICE as fast30 mph in short bursts
Average weight of male60-70 poundsHALF the weight140 pounds
Height of jumpgets stuck at fencesCANNOT jump7-8 feet high from a standstill

55-60 miles per hour sustained for half a mile!

video embedded from Channel 6 on YouTube

But they can’t jump, so fences shut them in. That’s why they are running on the road below. (The narrator mistakenly calls them deer.)

video embedded from Big Sky Videos on YouTube

Why do pronghorn run so fast? This 10 minute video is a Deep Dive into paleolithic history and the predator that lived in North America that prompted them to run. If you don’t have 10 minutes, watch the first part.

video embedded from Paleo Analysis on YouTube

p.s. And by the way, their closest relatives are giraffes and okapi, not antelopes.

I Am Not An Antelope

Cats, Cows and Cardinals: More Info on Bird Flu

Mammals, Musings & News

13 January 2025

After hundreds of snow geese died in eastern Pennsylvania on New Years Day of suspected avian influenza, there has been more attention on H5N1 in PA. The current focus is on the danger to domestic poultry and how we can avoid catching it ourselves from live or dead birds. Here are three avian flu topics you may not have heard about.

Cats

Did you know that cats and dogs can catch H5N1 by contact with dead or sick birds or their droppings? If your cat or dog mouths or eats a bird with avian influenza, he can catch the virus.

Cats like to drink milk and on dairy farms they drink it before it’s pasteurized. That’s how we found out it’s possible to catch bird flu from raw milk. According to Your Local Epidemiologist, “Fifty percent of cats that drink raw milk died.”

Update on 17 January 2025: Veterinarians recently discovered that cats also can catch H5N1 from raw pet food and it is just as deadly as drinking infected raw milk — 50% die. Two brands have been recalled. See: Cat deaths linked to bird flu-contaminated raw pet food, sparking voluntary recall.

Cows

Farm cats gave us the clue that infected dairy cows express the virus in their milk. The fact that cows caught bird flu was a surprise itself. Pigs are the usual domestic mammal pathway but last year H5N1 jumped from poultry to cows and then mutated to spread cow-to-cow.

Cardinals … and backyard birds

The wild birds that catch H5N1 avian influenza are waterfowl (ducks, geese), shorebirds, wild poultry (turkeys, grouse) and the birds that eat them: raptors (hawks, eagles, falcons) and scavengers (crows, gulls, vultures). Backyard birds are not susceptible. Your Local Epidemiologist explains:

What about bird feeders? Birds that gather at feeders (like cardinals, sparrows, and bluebirds) do not typically carry H5N1. The USDA does not recommend removing backyard bird feeders for H5N1 prevention unless you also care for poultry. The less contact between wild birds and poultry (by removing sources of food, water, and shelter), the better.

— YLe: H5N1 Update – January 7

The PA Game Commission agrees that backyard birds are not susceptible and adds that we should always keep our feeders clean to stop the spread of disease.

Clean your feeders every couple of weeks. Wild Birds Unlimited tells you how at Bird Feeder Cleaning & Care, including a video.

And … “If you notice multiple sick or dead birds over a short period of time, you should strongly consider leaving feeders down and baths empty to not make any potential outbreak worse.”

For more practical information on H5N1 and other infectious diseases follow Your Local Epidemiologist on Substack.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons at these links: cat, cows, cardinal)

They’ve Changed Because of Us

Climate Change, Mammals, Musings & News
African elephants with and without tusks (photos from Wikimedia Commons)

7 January 2025

We’ve often heard and seen how species change their behavior because of humans. Birds now spend the winter near us because of our bird feeders. Mammals originally fled cities, then moved back into them (deer and raccoons). But an article in the Guardian caught my attention when it described physical changes in animals’ bodies wrought by human pressure. Here are two examples.

African elephants without tusks

During the Mozambican civil war, heavy poaching by fighters meant that African savannah elephant numbers plunged by more than 90% in Gorongosa national park. With populations now in recovery and representing one of the most important examples of global restoration, many of the female elephants have no tusks – a consequence of tuskless elephants being less likely to be targeted by poachers, say researchers. The same change has also been recorded in Tanzania.

— The Guardian: Shrinking trees and tuskless elephants: the strange ways species are adapting to humans

The map shows where this has happened: Tanzania (north) and Mozambique (southern half of red area).

Map of Mozambique and Tanzania in Africa (merg of two maps from Wikimedia Commons)
Shrinking mahogany trees

Mahogany trees, native to Central and South America, have disappeared from large parts of their historic range. Two of the three species are listed as Endangered yet some individuals survive by adapting. Because the largest trees are always cut down, only the shrubby ones survive and they’re the ones that reproduce. As a result, mahogany trees have shrunk in the wild.

Mahogany trees have become shrubby in the wild (photos from Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s how human pressure changed the range of Endangered big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) in South America: Historic range at top, 2008 range at bottom.

Historic and 2008 range of big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) in South America (maps from Wikimedia Commons)

Elephants and mahogany are just two of six examples described in the article. Read about more species that evolved under human pressure including cliff swallows in Nebraska that have shorter wings at Shrinking trees and tuskless elephants: the strange ways species are adapting to humans.

So many things have changed because of us.

His Winter Cache Bloomed 32,000 Years Later

Mammals, Plants & Fungi
Arctic ground squirrel with stuffed cheeks, Russia (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

17 December 2024. Old news from 2012 with a recent update.

Food is scarce in the arctic during winter and early spring, so arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii) fatten up for hibernation and cache food for later use.

Arctic ground squirrel in Russia, eating flowers and seeds (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

When they wake up in April they have seeds in their cache to fall back on before the arctic blooms.

32,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, a ground squirrel stored food in his midden that he never ate. If everything had remained frozen no one would have known about his cache, but climate change is melting glaciers and ancient ice. Eventually the squirrel’s cache was exposed.

Melting glacier (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Twelve years ago Russian scientists collected the squirrel’s cache and found intact seeds within so they cultivated them in the lab. The fertile seeds grew into a 32,000 year old plant, the oldest on Earth.

After they published their findings they continued their research and cultivated more seeds, identifying them as Silene linnaeana in 2021. This is the same genus as bladder campion.

screenshot from Molecular taxonomic identification of a Silene plant regenerated
from Late Pleistocene fruit material at researchgate.net

Here’s a sample blooming in the Sahka Republic of Russia in June 2023 (from iNaturalist).

Silene linnaeana (photo from iNaturalist.lu)

What will happen to this squirrel’s cache 32,000 years from now?

Arctic ground squirrel (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Where’s The Best Place To Find Raccoons?

Mammals
Raccoon in a tree (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

9 December 2024

If you wanted to find a raccoon, where would you look? Hint: Don’t bother searching in rural areas.

According to the NGS video below, there are 100 times more raccoons in the city than in the country, but we rarely see them. If you live in a city or suburb …

  • Is there a raccoon in your neighborhood?   Definitely
  • … in your yard?   Probably
  • … in your attic or crawl space?   You might be surprised.

Find out more in this short video from National Geographic.

video embedded from National Geographic on YouTube

Now go check the attic!

p.s. Back in 2008 I watched a family of raccoons nosing around my Greenfield neighborhood. They were aiming for my backyard! Fortunately they never got in the house.

City Raccoons