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Eulypotyphla
Eulipotyphla (, from '' eu-'' + ''Lipotyphla'', meaning truly lacking blind gut; sometimes called true insectivores) is an order of mammals comprising the Erinaceidae (hedgehogs and gymnures); Solenodontidae (solenodons); Talpidae ( moles, shrew-like moles and desmans); and Soricidae (true shrews) families. Taxonomic history Historically, these animals were grouped with others such as treeshrews, elephant shrews, and colugos, under the broader category Insectivora, comprising all small insect-eating placental mammals. Wilhelm Peters identified two sub-groups of Insectivora, distinguished by the presence or absence of a cecum in the large intestine. In his 1866 ''Generelle morphologie der organismen'', Ernst Haeckel named these groups Menotyphla and Lipotyphla, respectively from ''μένω'' ("remain")/''λείπω'' ("lack" or "leave behind") + ''τυφλὸν'' literally "blind", as in ''τυφλὸν ἔντερον'' ("blind intestine", from which the Latin ''intestinum ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hispaniolan Solenodon
The Hispaniolan solenodon (''Solenodon paradoxus''), also known as the agouta, is a small, furry, shrew-like mammal endemic to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (in the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Like other solenodons, it is a venomous, insect-eating animal that lives in burrows and is active at night. It is an elusive animal and was only first described in 1833; its numbers are stable in protected forests but it remains the focus of conservation efforts. Its smaller sister species of the same genus, Marcano's solenodon (''S. marconoi'') became extinct after European colonization. The Hispaniolan solenodon and the rat-like Hispaniolan hutia live in the same habitats and are the only surviving mammals native to the island. Discovery In 1833 the Russian Academy of Sciences received a new specimen from Haiti. Puzzled by the animal, curator Johann Friedrich von Brandt named it ''Solenodon paradoxus''. (''Solenodon'' means "grooved teeth".) No more information was known other t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Order (biology)
Order () is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized by the nomenclature codes. An immediately higher rank, superorder, is sometimes added directly above order, with suborder directly beneath order. An order can also be defined as a group of related families. What does and does not belong to each order is determined by a taxonomist, as is whether a particular order should be recognized at all. Often there is no exact agreement, with different taxonomists each taking a different position. There are no hard rules that a taxonomist needs to follow in describing or recognizing an order. Some taxa are accepted almost universally, while others are recognized only rarely. The name of an order is usually written with a capital letter. For some groups of organisms, their orders may follow consist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new word or phrase ( lexeme) in the target language. For instance, the English word ''skyscraper'' has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example in German, in Portuguese, in Dutch, in Spanish, in Italian, in Turkish, and ''matenrō'' in Japanese. Calques, like direct borrowings, often function as linguistic gap-fillers, emerging when a language lacks existing vocabulary to express new ideas, technologies, or objects. This phenomenon is widespread and is often attributed to the shared conceptual frameworks across human languages. Speakers of different languages tend to perceive the world through common categori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, Philosophy, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biology, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ''ecology'', ''phylum'', ''phylogeny'', ontogeny, and ''Protista.'' Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the debunked but influential recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"), wrongly claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny, using incorrectly drawn images of human embryonic development. Whether they were intentionally falsified, or drawn poorly by accident is a matter of debate. The published artwork of Haeckel in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilhelm Peters
Wilhelm Karl Hartwich (or Hartwig) Peters (22 April 1815 – 20 April 1883) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer. He was assistant to the anatomist Johannes Peter Müller and later became curator of the Natural History Museum, Berlin, Berlin Zoological Museum. Encouraged by Müller and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, Peters travelled to Mozambique via Angola in September 1842, exploring the coastal region and the Zambesi River. He returned to Berlin with an enormous collection of natural history specimens, which he then described in ''Naturwissenschaftliche Reise nach Mossambique... in den Jahren 1842 bis 1848 ausgeführt'' (1852–1882). The work was comprehensive in its coverage, dealing with mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, river fish, insects and botany. He replaced Martin Lichtenstein as curator of the museum in 1858, and in the same year he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In a few years, he greatly increased ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colugo
Colugos (), flying lemurs, or cobegos (), are arboreal gliding euarchontogliran mammals that are native to Southeast Asia. Their closest evolutionary relatives are primates. There are just two living species of colugos: the Sunda flying lemur (''Galeopterus variegatus'') and the Philippine flying lemur (''Cynocephalus volans''). These two species make up the entire family Cynocephalidae () and order Dermoptera, from Ancient Greek δέρμα (''dérma'') "skin" and πτερόν (''pterón'') "wing". Characteristics Colugos are nocturnal, tree-dwelling mammals. Appearance and anatomy They reach lengths of and weigh . They have long, slender front and rear limbs, a medium-length tail, and a relatively light build. The head is small, with large, front-focused eyes for excellent binocular vision, and small rounded ears. The incisor teeth of colugos are highly distinctive; they are comb-like in shape with up to 20 tines on each tooth. The incisors are analogous in app ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elephant Shrew
Elephant shrews, also called jumping shrews or sengis, are small insectivore, insectivorous mammals native to Africa, belonging to the family Macroscelididae, in the order (biology), order Macroscelidea. Their traditional common English name "elephant shrew" comes from a perceived resemblance between their long noses and the trunk of an elephant, and their superficial similarity with shrews (family Soricidae) in the order Eulipotyphla. However, Phylogenetics, phylogenetic analysis has revealed that elephant shrews are not properly classified with true shrews, but are in fact more closely related to elephants than to shrews. In 1997, the biologist Jonathan Kingdon proposed that they instead be called "sengis" (singular ''sengi''), a term derived from the Bantu languages of Africa, and in 1998, they were classified into the new clade Afrotheria. They are widely distributed across the southern part of Africa, and although common nowhere, can be found in almost any type of habitat, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treeshrew
The treeshrews (also called tree shrews or banxrings) are small mammals native to the tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia. They make up the entire order Scandentia (from Latin ''scandere'', "to climb"), which split into two families: the Tupaiidae (19 species, "ordinary" treeshrews), and the Ptilocercidae (one species, the pen-tailed treeshrew). Though called 'treeshrews', and despite having previously been classified in Insectivora, they are not true shrews, and not all species live in trees. They are omnivores; among other things, treeshrews eat fruit. As fellow members of Euarchonta, treeshrews are closely related to primates, and have been used as an alternative to primates in experimental studies of myopia, psychosocial stress, and hepatitis. Description Treeshrews are slender animals with long tails and soft, greyish to reddish-brown fur. The terrestrial species tend to be larger than the arboreal forms, and to have larger claws, which they use for digging up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desman
Desmans are aquatic insectivores of the tribe Desmanini (also considered a subfamily, Desmaninae) in the mole (animal), mole family, Talpidae. This tribe consists of two living species found in Europe: the Russian desman (''Desmana moschata'') in European Russia, and the Pyrenean desman (''Galemys pyrenaicus'') in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and the Pyrenees. Both species are Endangered species, endangered, the Russian desman Critically Endangered, critically so. They have webbed paws and their front paws are not well-adapted for digging. Desmans were much more diverse and widespread during the Miocene, with two genera, ''Gaillardia (mole), Gaillardia'' and ''Magnatalpa'', being present in North America. Both living species are thought to have derived from the fossil genus ''Archaeodesmana.'' Species *Genus ''Desmana'' **Russian desman (''D. moschata'') **†''Desmana kowalskae'' **†''Desmana nehringi'' **†''Desmana inflata'' **†''Desmana thermalis'' **†''Des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrew Mole
A shrew mole or shrew-mole is a mole that resembles a shrew.https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shrew%20mole Species with this name include: * Five species in the subfamily Uropsilinae, or "shrew-like moles", native to China: ** Equivalent teeth shrew mole (''Uropsilus aequodonenia'') ** Anderson's shrew mole (''Uropsilus andersoni'') ** Gracile shrew mole (''Uropsilus gracilis'') ** Inquisitive shrew mole (''Uropsilus investigator'') ** Chinese shrew mole (''Uropsilus soricipes'') * Two species in the tribe Urotrichini, or ''himizu'', native to Japan: ** Japanese shrew mole (''Urotrichus talpoides'') ** True's shrew mole True's shrew mole (''Dymecodon pilirostris'') is a species of mammal in the family Talpidae. It is endemic to Japan (Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu) and is a common species above 1000 meters in grassland, shrubland and forest. Sometimes this speci ... (''Dymecodon pilirostris'') * One species in the tribe Neurotrichini, native to Pacific North America ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mole (animal)
Moles are small, fossorial, subterranean mammals. They have cylindrical bodies, velvety fur, very small, inconspicuous eyes and ears, reduced hindlimbs, and short, powerful forelimbs with large paws adapted for digging. The word "mole" most commonly refers to many species in the family Talpidae (which are named after the Latin word for mole, ''talpa''). True moles are found in most parts of North America, Europe (except for Ireland) and Asia. Other mammals referred to as moles include the African Golden mole, golden moles and the Australian Marsupial mole, marsupial moles, which have a similar ecology and lifestyle to true moles but are unrelated. Moles may be viewed as pests to gardeners, but they provide positive contributions to soil, gardens, and ecosystems, including soil aeration, feeding on slugs and small creatures that eat plant roots, and providing prey for other wildlife. They eat earthworms and other small invertebrates in the soil. Terminology In Middle English, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solenodon
Solenodons (from , 'channel' or 'pipe' and , 'tooth') are venomous, nocturnal, burrowing, insectivorous mammals belonging to the family Solenodontidae . The two living solenodon species are the Cuban solenodon (''Atopogale cubana'') and the Hispaniolan solenodon (''Solenodon paradoxus''). Threats to both species include habitat destruction and predation by non-native cats, dogs, and mongooses, introduced by humans to the solenodons' home islands to control snakes and rodents. The Hispaniolan solenodon covers a wide range of habitats on the island of Hispaniola from lowland dry forest to highland pine forest. Two other described species became extinct during the Quaternary period. Oligocene North American genera, such as '' Apternodus'', have been suggested as relatives of ''Solenodon'', but the origins of the animal remain obscure. Taxonomy Two genera, '' Atopogale'' and '' Solenodon'', are known, each with one extant species. Other genera have been erected, but ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
