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avancna — Christmas Island Mammals
Published: 2006-10-27 13:12:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 2214; Favourites: 33; Downloads: 15
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Description
These three animals, the Bulldog rat, Rattus nativitatis (bottom of tree), Captain Maclear's rat, Rattus macleari, and the Christmas Island Muskshrew Crocidura fuliginoa trichura, were the only indigenous mammals to that island, aside from the local flying foxes. They all went extinct in 1903, during an unknown plague brought on by introduced black rats. Although the shrews were (probably) immune to the diseases that felled the native rats, it is strongly inferred that introduced cats killed them (the shrews, not the rats).Related content
Comments: 13
Shrews are so cute that causing their extinction should be a major crime.
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Unless, of course, you've been bitten by one.
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Those little bastards. Doesn't stop them from being the cutest tetrapods ever, tough. Did they ever bite you?
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I've never seen one, in fact.
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I had a professor who told us how he wanted to put a squeaking pupfish toy at the doorway to a bathhouse which was the entrance to an underground spring that was the last stronghold of a pupfish species. He wanted to remind the bathers every time they stepped on the squeak toy---and it made its plaintive squeak---that a species went extinct for them...
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I wonder how many species in total domestic cats have wiped out. There was that one cat that finished off an entire species of birds on its own!
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The Kiore rat is believed to have been responsible for eradicating the Stephens Island Wren from the north and south islands of New Zealand. Technically speaking, the lighthouse keeper's cat was very persistant and lucky to be there to deliver the wrens' deathblow, so to speak.
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how do you know all the technical names for these?do you study animals?
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Yes, as a hobby.
I got the scientific names from A Gap In Nature, and The Doomsday Book of Animals.
I really recommend reading the former, as the paintings are fabulous.
I must warn you, though, that it's a very depressing book...
My brother in law commented, "My God, this is so depressing: it reads like an obituary!"
Whereupon I said, "That's because it IS an obituary."
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thats an unusual hobby.you seem to know enough for it to be a profession
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I hope so: I plan to write a book.
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