What is a Mammal?
- Written By: Diana Bocco
- Edited By: Bronwyn Harris
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Copyright Protected:
2003-2013 Conjecture Corporation
A mammal is member of the Mammalia class of animals, and includes many familiar creatures, including humans. There are more than 5,000 species, most of which live on land, excluding a few species such as dolphins, whales, and manatees. A mammal can be recognized by a series of unique characteristics, which include the following:
- Mammary glands. A mammal can produce milk to feed its young, as opposed to other species, which feed their offspring with solid food. Young are born alive, except for a few species, such as species in the monotremes order, which lay eggs.
- Warm blood. Animals in this class have warm blood, which helps them maintain steady body temperature. They also have a heart with four chambers, a unique characteristic that allows the lungs to receive oxygenated blood in proper amounts. These animals have bodies that are all covered with some kind of hair or fur that helps with heat preservation, and even aquatic mammals have hair at some point during their life.
- Neocortex. A mammal posses a brain section that does not occur in any other animal class. The neocortex is the section that controls language, motor commands, and conscious thought. While birds and certain reptiles seem capable of experiencing some of these characteristics, the neocortex is still unique to mammals.
- Size. Mammals have the largest difference between the smallest (bats) and the largest (blue whale) species: a 53 million-fold. No other animals come even close in comparison.
- Skeleton. Animals in this class have fewer bones than other animal classes; they also have a rigid rib cage, solid hip attachments, specialized adapted teeth, simplified limbs, and increased size of the brain case.
- Adipose tissue. Mammals have a larger percentage of fat deposits than any other animal class; this helps them with energy storage and thermal insulation. A mammal can survive a longer time without food or water than any other species on Earth.
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GenevaMech
Post 4 |
@ Georgesplane- Are you ready for this? The news you ask for is sobering. Of the approximately 5500 mammal species, 22% are threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. This includes many iconic species like the lion, snow leopard, cheetah, tiger, elephant and other mammals. To be placed on the red list, a species must be threatened, endangered, or critically endangered. Some of the greatest species are down to populations that rank in the hundreds, and hundreds of mammal species (a couple percent) will likely to be extinct within a generation. This loss of biodiversity far outpaces the speed of evolutionary processes. If you need a more sobering perspective, off all the major species in the world, the IUCN has identified 38% of them as threatened, endangered, or critically endangered. Another small percentage of all species is extinct in the wild, or have gone extinct altogether. Although some may point out that conservation efforts have reduced the number of species on the red list, you must also take into consideration that 86% of the species on the list that changed from 2007-2008 moved closer to extinction. A sterile world with very little biodiversity is an extreme possibility within the next few hundred to thousand years. |
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Georgesplane
Post 3 |
@ babalaas- Does anyone know what the number of endangered mammal species is? I am curious to know if mammal evolution is occurring faster than they are going extinct. I wonder if the rate of extinction is anywhere near sustainable, or if we are slowly marching towards a planet devoid of biodiversity. I read about a lot of controversy concerning biodiversity loss, and I am just trying to gauge how serious of a threat it is. |
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Babalaas
Post 2 |
This is a great article. The article was short and to the point. One fact that surprised me was the bit about the total number of species. I would have thought that there were far more than 5400 species. After reading that number, the prospect of losing a mammal species to human caused extinction much more upsetting. I would have thought that there would have been somewhere in the tens to hundreds of thousands of species of mammals. I now have a greater appreciation of endangered mammals. |
