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Thanks to Sam and Damian this week for their great suggestions! This week we\u2019re going to learn about the Asiatic linsang (both banded and spotted linsangs) and the walrus!\n\nThe banded linsang looks like a realllly stretched-out cat:\n\n\n\nThe walrus is not so stretched out:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to learn about two mammals that are not related and have nothing to do with each other, but they\u2019re both really interesting. Thanks to Sam and Damian for your suggestions!\n\nFirst, Sam suggested the banded linsang, describing it \u201cas if someone took a particularly pointy cat and just stretched it reaaaaaaaallly far while also squishing it down\u201d\n\nThe banded linsang does look a lot like a cat with a very long ringed tail, but what is it really? Before we answer that, let\u2019s find out a little more about it.\n\nThe banded linsang is about the size of a slender cat, but with shorter legs and a much longer body, just as Sam described. It lives in many parts of southeastern Asia and prefers forests, where it hunts for small animals like rodents, lizards and other reptiles, small birds, and insects. It\u2019s nocturnal and secretive, which means we don\u2019t know a whole lot about it, but we do know that it spends a lot of its time in trees. It has a face that somewhat resembles a weasel\u2019s or cat\u2019s, but with a longer muzzle. Its ears are small, its eyes are large, and it has small, neat paws with retractable claws like a cat. It\u2019s tan or cream-colored with a darker face, and has a pattern of large black or dark brown spots that make rows down its back and sides, with smaller spots on its legs. Its catlike tail is as long as its body and its neck is really long too. It sort of looks like a weasel mixed with a cat.\n\nThe banded linsang is closely related to the spotted linsang, which looks very similar but instead of big blotchy spots, it usually has smaller spots all over its body. The spotted linsang lives farther north than the banded linsang but still in southeastern Asia.\n\nTogether, both the spotted and banded linsangs are called Asiatic linsangs. There are two species of linsang that live in Africa, but they\u2019re actually not closely related to the Asiatic linsangs.\n\nUntil genetic studies were conducted a few years ago, researchers thought both African and Asiatic linsangs were related to genets. That wasn\u2019t a bad guess since genets look a lot like linsangs, slender, spotted catlike animals with long ringed tails, and they even have claws that are partly retractable. But DNA studies show that while the genet and the African linsangs are fairly closely related, the Asiatic linsangs are more closely related to the cat family.\n\nBecause we don\u2019t know much about the Asiatic linsangs, that\u2019s just about all I\u2019ve got for you. So let\u2019s move on to Damian\u2019s suggestion, the walrus!\n\nWe do know a lot about the walrus, and it\u2019s an amazing animal. It lives in the Arctic Circle in shallow water just off the coast and spends most of its time in the water or sitting on ice floes like it doesn\u2019t even notice its skin is touching ice.\n\nThe walrus is a pinniped, which means it\u2019s related to seals and sea lions, but it\u2019s the only member of its own family currently alive today. There are two subspecies, one that lives on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, one that lives on the Pacific side of the Arctic.\n\nThe walrus is enormous. A big male can grow up to about 16 feet long, or almost 5 meters, and some unusually large males are estimated to weigh as much as 5,000 lbs, or 2,300 kg. That\u2019s 2 \xbd tons, or almost twice as much as my car weighs. Females are smaller, typically only 12 feet long, or 3.6 meters, and only weigh up to about 1,800 pounds, or 800 kg.\n\nThe walrus\u2019s skin is thick and wrinkly\u2014really thick. Like, almost four inches thick in places, or ten cm. Underneath the skin, the walrus has a thick layer of blubber just like whales do,