This week I have a Friday mystery fuzzball for you to have a go at identifying:
Any idea what this improbable looking beast might be? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Have fun!
Zygoma
Adventures in natural history collections
This week I have a Friday mystery fuzzball for you to have a go at identifying:
Any idea what this improbable looking beast might be? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Have fun!
Zygoma 
Anything that weird looking is either a taxidermists joke or comes from Madagascar- you’d need to look in every ‘nouc’ and cranny to identify this weasily overlooked carnivoran.
“Anything that weird looking is either a taxidermists joke or comes from Madagascar” = rule to live by.
a long, pointy snout
use to find out
small tasty treats
six legged crunchy meats
(dang it! why isn’t there an edit comment function…)
is that a faint hint of stripes towards the haunches and forelegs, or just a bad hair day?
I think that’s actually a shadow from the frame of the case.
Thanks to ch, this is easy. In my defence, I was thinking (head on – top pic): sengi, marsupial, or weird carnivoran. Second pic ruled out first two options. ch made clear the genus.
what is the size of this animal?
About 70cm
Thanks to ch and paltryman, I think I get it. But – forest or desert variety?
Going by what others have said (and looking at images of members of the family E*****idae to find a match for the improbably fine and pointed snout), I think I know what it is (though I give up on which of the two species).
It’s something to which Wikipedia attributes “a unique dentition: the canines and premolars are backwards-curving and flat.” Searching “[common name] skull” I found a picture. Truly weird. The anterior premolars are unicuspid hooks. The posterior have at least three cusps and (in side view)made me think of Ichthyoconodon. Leading to the thought: maybe Ichthyoconodon’s recurved cusps were an adaptation to dietary habits similar to this creature’s?
(The image I found is currently at
https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Euteleostomi/specimens/collections/contributors/skulls/viverrid_skulls_2006/Eupleres_goudotii/eglateral/?start=2235 )
I’d suggest eastern variety: I believe there has only been one picture taken of the rarer western species, that was only recently deemed a species. So on the balance of probability I’d say it is unlikely the Dead Zoo could have a stuffed specimen.
I will probably be proven wrong, but since we can’t see the auditory bullæ,
I can’t see a different way to tell.
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