These animals have nipples on their butts and that is not the most fascinating thing about them

[sl8]

From https://www.popsci.com/hispaniola-solenodon-genome-venomous-butt-nipples#page-2

These animals have nipples on their butts and that is not the most fascinating thing about them
The tiny, venomous mammal outlived the dinosaurs, but might go extinct due to extreme clumsiness.

By Sara Chodosh March 16, 2018


A Hispaniola solenodon
Eladio Fernandez Caribbean Nature Photography

If any animal were going to outlive the dinosaurs, you probably wouldn’t guess it’d be this lil shrew-lookin’ dude. Look at it, with its little eyes and almost-creepily-bald snout. Crocodiles, deep-sea sharks—they look like they’ve survived millennia. But this guy? Nah.

But as it turns out, this little solenodon is part of one of the earliest branches of the mammalian family tree, departing from the rest about 74 million years ago. They are also one of the very few existing venomous mammals, and among a small group of animals that survived the human settlement of the Caribbean islands. Most others died off as their environment changed, but solenodons kept scurrying along in their maze of underground tunnels with their mini shovel paws.

But now, the Hispaniola solenodon is in danger of going extinct, so biologists are trying to preserve its genome for study before it disappears forever.

Taras K. Oleksyk, a molecular geneticist at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, just won the ICG12 GigaScience prize for work he and his colleagues did to provide a rough draft of the solenodon genome. The team published their work in an open access journal so anyone can use the data.

More at link.

[Shrike47]

1. No link.

[sl8]

2. Fixed. n/t

[RockRaven]

3. Nipples on their butts?

There's probably a very active subreddit for that...

[2naSalit]

4. How could anyone NOT click on that title?

After I stopped laughing loud enough to wake the neighbors!