Extreme Mammals

Found only in Thailand and Myanmar, the bumblebee bat is no bigger than a bumblebee and weighs only about as much as a dime. This is just one of the unusual animals featured at Extreme Mammals, where you can meet some of your more bizarre relatives. How about you. Are you extreme? Well, yes and no. On the normal side, we are warm-blooded, have hair, nurse our young and have three middle ear bones. Like ancestral mammals, we have sharp front teeth and grinding back teeth. On the extreme side, our brains are remarkably big for our body size. Our thumbs can close against our fingers with both strength and delicacy. Our tail is just a remnant of a few hidden bones, and our body hair is very sparse. How about walking around on two legs? What might seem to humans like the most normal thing in the world is actually one of our most unusual features. The only other mammals that travel primarily on two legs all hop like kangaroos. Walking human-style is rarer in mammals than laying eggs! Photo: Dr. Merlin D. Tuttle/Bat Conservation International/Photo Researchers