They're cute but god do they look grumpy in that first picture!
Tan Eggs
"When I'm a small prey mammal and I've evolved to survive the barren rocky landscape by optimizing into a tan egg"
For posts about animals that loosely fit the description above. While the animal does not have to hit all the requirements, it should hit some of them:
- Type: Prey
- Class: Mammalia (mammal)
- Habitat: Barren rocky landscape
- Appearance: Similar to a tan egg
Origin:
I think they're silently judging me for wearing their piss as a perfume
Are these the critters which are unexpectedly closely related to elephants?
It's a smörgåsbord of critters...
His brain is like an elephant’s, while his stomach is like a horse’s. The skeleton, however, is akin to a rhinoceros’s. The hind feet are entirely different from these animals, more like a tapir’s. Peeking into the mouth of a hyrax, you may recognize similar upper incisors from rodents’ teeth, upper cheek teeth from rhinos, and lower cheek teeth like a hippo’s. They even have two teeth in their upper jaw that resemble elephant tusks. The overall anatomy of a hyrax, however, is like that of elephants or horses. source
Phylogeny is full of surprises:
Hyraxes are more closely related to elephants and manatees than they are to groundhogs.
Groundhogs are more closely related to us than they are to hyraxes.
Source: MinuteEarth tree of life explorer