The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep: The Friday Quiz: Threat Level

Stop your hunting and gathering for three minutes, and answer three questions about vanishing animals.

What rare subspecies now exists (in the wild) solely on a peninsula bounded by the Arabian Sea, The Gulf of Khambhat and the Gulf of Kutch?

Urocyon littoralis is an endangered species, the smallest of its kind in the country where it is found. Its habitat is six small islands off the coast of what nation? What's the state/province/administrative district those islands are part of? What is the common name for the group of which its species is part?

In the last release of their "Red List" the World Conservation Union changed the classification of the Cross River Gorilla and the Western Lowland Gorilla from "Endangered" to "Critically Endangered." Poaching was one significant factor noted in their assessment. What is the other?

First correct answer in each case wins a copy of my grandpappy's recipe for jackalope stew. No Googling or asking one of those sign-language-speaking gorillas for help on No. 3. One guess at each per comment, but please do your part to save the critically threatened Wombat File comments. A world without them would be intolerable.

Comments

Great questions, BT!

Posted by: BT | March 28, 2008 04:56 PM

(waiting for Bill to high-five himself)

I'm utterly baffled, but

1. The unicorn
2. Argentina
3. Because they're cross!

Posted by: gavinedwards | March 28, 2008 09:18 PM

1. Sleestack
2. Fairy Penguin, Victoria, Australia -- common name: penguin
3. Doritos.

Posted by: art | March 29, 2008 08:06 AM

More seriously:

1. Dromedary
2. USA, Hawaii, Nene Goose
3. Global Warming, duh!

Posted by: art | March 29, 2008 06:09 PM

No idea on the first two.

3. No Sign of Any Living Ones?

Posted by: hackly_fracture | March 29, 2008 06:46 PM

OK, actually, I'm really happy with these questions -- despite the lateness with which they were posted. So I'll offer some clueage in hopes that they'll take on some midweek life:

1. There's not a great deal of easily apparent physical difference between this subspecies and its somewhat more populous cousin.

2. Their numbers have been devastated by, among other things, predation by eagles, though not bald eagles.

3. This issue first became apparent to scientists in 1976.

Posted by: BT | March 31, 2008 12:08 PM

2. U.S.A., California, foxes
3. AIDS

Posted by: Jonathan | March 31, 2008 01:05 PM

3. Ebola virus

Posted by: Jonathan | March 31, 2008 01:06 PM

2. Vietnam, potbellied pigs?

Posted by: herbivorous | March 31, 2008 08:16 PM

Woo hoo for Jonathan. He gets #2 (The island fox of California's Channel Islands, which are a classic example of evolutionary trends toward "dwarfism" in island species) and #3 (Ebola, not AIDS).

Posted by: BT | April 1, 2008 09:58 AM

The eagles rang a bell. For pictures of cute tiny foxes and golden eagle:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/chis/rm/IslandFox/HTML&docs/decline2.htm

For environmentalists on a tear to save the non-native feral pig, http://www.dailynexus.com/article.php?a=9160

Posted by: Jonathan | April 1, 2008 01:41 PM

One more clue on #1 -- the animal in question is one of the beasts discussed in David Quammen's MONSTERS OF GOD.

Posted by: BT | April 2, 2008 09:53 AM

Great Horned Toad (visually hard to distinguish from the Not Quite as Great Horned Toad)?

Posted by: Jonathan | April 2, 2008 03:43 PM

Much bigger. Much bigger.

Posted by: BT | April 3, 2008 09:12 AM

Oh, of course. In the land of the sand people, these must be Banthas.

Posted by: Jonathan | April 3, 2008 11:38 AM

Arabian lion

Posted by: boxjam | April 3, 2008 04:17 PM

The "Asian Lion" is technically what we're looking for -- the last wild population lives in the Gir forest in western India. But "Arabian" is close enough, since it's this subspecies that once ranged through modern-day Iran and the Arabian peninsula as well.

Posted by: BT | April 4, 2008 12:01 AM

The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

The Wombat File is a Delaying Tactic that May Save Your Life

The Friday Quiz: Threat Level

Comments

Post a comment