Mammalia’s Most Wanted: The Results

Thank you very much to the 35 people who cast their votes for their top 10 most wanted mammals.

Almost 150 species were mentioned in the 350 votes – interestingly this proved a more diverse list than last month’s 10 best mammals. Not surprising really: even if we share similar views on the world’s finest mammals, we have gone on to see different things which adds an extra amount of variation into this mix.

I’ve crunched the numbers and in first place … extreme drum roll … we have a tie, with the honours shared between Okapi and Narwhal (14 votes apiece). They are followed by Red Panda (10 votes), Wolverine (9 votes) and Giant Panda (9 votes).

Giant Pangolin and Mainland Clouded Leopard also makes the upper ranks (sort of) depending on how strictly you interpret the classifications.  Five people voted for “Giant Pangolin” while a further four voted for the non-specific “Any Pangolin” (so they ought to be bloody happy with a Giant). Similarly, six people voted for “Clouded Leopard” and another three for – specifically – “Mainland Clouded Leopard”.

The top 24 species most wanted species are
1. Okapi – 14 votes
1. Narwhal – 14 votes
3. Red Panda – 10 votes
4. Wolverine – 9 votes
4. Giant Panda – 9 votes
4. Mainland Clouded Leopard* – 9 votes
4. Giant Pangolin** – 9 votes
8. Bush Dog – 7 votes
8. Polar Bear – 7 votes
10. Sun Bear – 5 votes
10. Aardvark – 5 votes
10. Snow Leopard – 5 votes
10. Giant Anteater – 5 votes
10. Mountain Lion – 5 votes
15. Aye Aye – 4 votes
15. Numbat – 4 votes
15. Walrus – 4 votes
15. Gorilla – 4 votes
15. Bay Cat – 4 votes
15. Javan Rhino – 4 votes
15. Eurasian Lynx – 4 votes
15. Black-footed Ferret – 4 votes
15. Platypus – 4 votes
15. Marsupial Mole – 4 votes

• includes votes cast for “Any Pangolin”
• includes votes cast for “Clouded Leopard”

Its a pretty good list I reckon, even if pro-carnivore and absent of many orders. I still want to see about one third of these. If anyone wants to organise an Okapi search then it seems there are a lot of punters.

Also interesting to see that only seven of these are mammals that I would describe as seriously hard to see (i.e even if you could get to the right habitat you’d need to be very lucky to see one in a couple of weeks): Okapi, Mainland Clouded Leopard, Giant Pangolin, Bush Dog, Bay Cat, Javan Rhino and Marsupial Mole are all very hard animals to bump into. I guess Giant Panda is also in the seriously hard basket right now, though hopefully Foping Reserve will open again one day because it isn’t hard to see there.

I wonder what this list will look like in 10 years? I suspect 10-15 years ago it would have looked quite different to how it looks today. Back then I didn’t know of any reliable sites for Aardvarks, Wolverines, Snow Leopards and several other species that I was longing to see. And these would surely have gotten more votes (well they would certainly have gotten my votes!).

Jon