New Podcast Episode: Vivek Menon
The latest mammalwatching podcast is now up, in which we interview Vivek Menon founder and Executive Director of the Wildlife Trust of India. Vivek is a distinguished conservationist, scientist and author of the Field Guide to Indian Mammals (required reading for any mammalwatcher heading to the sub-continent). During more than 30 years of conservation work Vivek has had many adventures around the world. He talks about getting drenched while kayaking alongside breaching Humpback Whales, being pounced on by Clouded Leopards and having a Chimp decorate his head with parts of a colobus monkey.
Here is the YouTube trailer.
You can listen at mammalwatching.com/podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
A very happy Christmas to all who are celebrating it. And – to everyone – I hope 2022 starts well and keeps getting better and is, of course, mammal filled.
Jon
2 Comments
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Ben S
Great episode! It’s not an ebird for mammals, but I use inaturalist to keep records of my observations of mammals and other fauna, as well as to look for information: inaturalist.org. You can see my observations at https://www.inaturalist.org/people/tremarctos.
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Vladimir Dinets
I’m certainly looking forward to Vivek’s book on Indian nature reserves!
A little note: not all bird species can be reliably IDed visually, particularly if you don’t have them at hand. In many cases you need to see adult males in breeding plumage, or to hear them calling, or to have exact location/habitat data, or to see what the nest looks like (in some swiftlets), and I think recently there’s been a split or two where you need molecular data, but I can’t remember which one. So it’s not that much better than mammals. The only pair of mammal species I can think of that is completely impossible to tell apart in areas of sympatry without molecular data are Myotis arvalis and M. levis. The big difference is that lots of people have been working hard for over a century to come up with ways of identifying birds without catching them, while for mammals this has been largely neglected (or, in many cases, worked out but not published).