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b"We have merch available again!\\n\\nThanks to Eva and Leo for suggesting the tenrec!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nMarooned on Mesozoic Madagascar\\n\\nIntroduction to Adalatherium hui\\n\\nThe lowland streaked tenrec:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe hedgehog tenrec rolls up just like an actual hedgehog [photo by Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons]:\\n\\n\\n\\nActual hedgehog, not a tenrec:\\n\\n\\n\\nLesser hedgehog tenrec REALLY looks like an actual hedgehog [By Wilfried Berns www.Tierdoku.com - Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons.Orig. source: eigene Fotografie, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2242515]:\\n\\n\\n\\nAdalatherium:\\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 a weird little animal suggested by both Eva and Leo, the tenrec of Madagascar. While we\\u2019re at it, we\\u2019re going to learn about another little animal found on Madagascar a long time ago that\\u2019s one of the weirdest mammals ever discovered.\\n\\nBefore we get started, though, someone sent me a book! If your name is Jennifer or someone named Jennifer mailed this book to me for you, thank you! The book is called The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird by Bruce Bercott. Thank you so much! I did not know when I started this podcast over six years ago that one of the benefits of doing an animal podcast is sometimes people send you books about animals, which is the best thing in the world. There's no note so I thought I'd give you a shout-out on the podcast.\\n\\nAs we learned in episode 318, about 88 million years ago, the island of Madagascar broke off from every other landmass in the world, specifically the supercontinent Gondwana. The continent we now call Africa separated from Gondwana even earlier, around 165 million years ago. Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world and even though it\\u2019s relatively close to Africa these days, many of its animals and plants are much different from those in Africa and other parts of the world because they\\u2019ve been evolving separately for 88 million years.\\n\\nBut at various times in the past, some animals from Africa were able to reach Madagascar. We\\u2019re still not completely sure how this happened. Madagascar is 250 miles away from Africa, or 400 kilometers, and these days the prevailing ocean currents push floating debris away from the island. In the past, though, the currents might have been different and some animals could have arrived on floating debris washed out to sea during storms. During times when the ocean levels were overall lower, islands that are underwater now might have been above the surface and allowed animals to travel from island to island until they reached Madagascar.\\n\\nSometime between 25 and 40 million years ago, a semiaquatic mammal reached Madagascar in enough numbers that it was able to establish itself on the island. It was related to the ancestors of a semiaquatic mammal called the otter-shrew, even though it\\u2019s neither an otter nor a shrew. The otter-shrew lives in parts of Africa and is pretty weird on its own, but we\\u2019ll save it for another episode one day. The otter-shrew\\u2019s relative did so well in its new home of Madagascar that over the millions of generations since, it developed into dozens of species. We now call these animals tenrecs.\\n\\nIt\\u2019s hard to describe the tenrec because the various species are often very different in appearance. There are some things that are basically the same for all species, though. First, the tenrec has a low body temperature, although it varies from species to species and also varies depending on time of year. That\\u2019s because some species of tenrec go into torpor when it\\u2019s cold, or sometimes full hibernation. During torpor the animal\\u2019s body temperature drops even more than usual. The common tenrec hibernates up to nine months out of the year.\\n\\nSecond, the tenrec has a cloaca,"