BONUS! Two more Mongolian animals!
It's a bonus episode because some people are too disturbed by the thought of diseases to listen to this week's regular episode. I'm really sorry about that! To make it up to you, here are two adorable fluffy animals that live in Mongolia and other parts of Asia.\n\nSuper floof! Pallas's cat, AKA the manol or manul (photo by Julie Larsen Maher, looks like):\n\n\n\nI would deny you nothing, round boi:\n\n\n\nwe all died of cute right here:\n\n\n\nThe handsome corsac fox would break your heart in an instant if it felt like it:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nHello, it\u2019s a bonus episode of Strange Animals Podcast, because it turns out that some people couldn\u2019t listen to this week\u2019s episode because they get too creeped out about diseases. I feel terrible about that so I\u2019ve put together a short bonus episode to make up for it. Let\u2019s learn about two more Mongolian animals, because I am still completely obsessed with the Mongolian band The Hu and in fact I have tickets to see them live in May in Lexington! If you\u2019re going to be there too, let me know so we can hang out.\n\nOur first animal is called the manol or Pallas\u2019s cat, a type of wildcat native to parts of central Asia. It\u2019s about the size of a domestic cat with plush grayish-brown fur that gets very thick in winter. It has black spots and stripes, including a long ringed tail, and ears that are set low on the head. It is magnificently fluffy, especially in winter, with especially long fur on its belly.\n\nIn fact, it gets so fluffy that it looks a lot like a longhaired domestic cat. The zoologist Peter Pallas, who first described the manol in 1776, thought it must actually be the ancestor of the Persian breed of domestic cat, especially since the manol has a relatively short nose and flat face like Persian cats, and has a stocky build like Persians. But the manol is actually not very closely related to domestic cats, and is in its own genus instead of the genus Felis. For one thing, its pupils are round instead of vertical like a domestic cat\u2019s pupils.\n\nThe manol is solitary and doesn\u2019t get along well with other manols, not even family members. One zoo was concerned about a litter of manol kittens that had just been born, since it sounded like they were making little wheezing noises. But a closer inspection revealed that the kittens were just growling at each other.\n\nThe manol eats small animals, especially a small rabbit relative called a pika, but also gerbils, voles, insects, and other animals. It lives in the steppes of central Asia and often lives at high elevations. It mostly lives in dry habitats where there isn\u2019t much snow, especially rocky areas or grassland. Because its rounded ears are set so low on its head, the cat can hide among rocks and among plants without its ears giving away its position by sticking up too far. If it feels threatened, it will flatten itself to the ground and freeze, where it looks kind of like a fluffy gray rock.\n\nOur other Mongolian animal is the corsac fox, which lives in very similar habitats as the manol and which also grows a lovely fluffy coat in winter. In the summer its coat is much shorter. It\u2019s yellowish-gray or pale gold in color, paler underneath and with a dark stripe down the back in winter.\n\nThe corsac fox isn\u2019t very big, a little over two feet long, or 65 cm, not counting the tail, which adds another 14 inches, or 35 cm, to its length. Since it lives in areas where it\u2019s usually dry, it doesn\u2019t need to drink water very often. It gets most of its water from its diet, which is very similar to the manol\u2019s diet\u2014mostly small animals like hamsters, gerbils, and pikas, although it also eats insects, carrion, and fruit and other vegetation. Its teeth are small compared to other foxes.\n\nUnlike many fox species, which are mostly solitary, the corsac fox usually lives in small packs. The pack lives in a series of shallow burrows that the foxes either dig themselves or take over from other animals.