The Extreme Mammal Hall of Fame

The biggest (and smallest) and baddest (and cutest) mammals recently went on display in the new “Extreme Mammals” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The exhibit will run through January 3, 2010. Below are several examples of the specimens:

Below is Indricotherium, the largest land mammal ever discovered. An adult could weigh 20 tons, more than a family of African elephants. It lived in the forests of central Asia about 30 million years ago, but died out as those forests turned into grassland. Its closest living relative is the rhinoceros:



The Proboscis monkey (Nasalis gerardis) is nature’s Pinnocchio. A male’s nose can grow to 7 inches long. This extended sniffer is believed to attract the lady monkeys:



The exhibit features six real, live sugar gliders on display. These tiny marsupials can jump for extended distances by using their skin like a parachute:



The Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla) is covered with scales made from keratin, the same stuff that makes up your fingernails. If you scare them, they turn into a ball of blades while spraying you with jets of skunk-like liquid:



No list of strange mammals would be complete without the platypus. Not only do they look strange, but they don’t give birth to live young like other mammals — they lay eggs. Another strange fact: Platypuses produce milk but don’t have nipples, so it oozes out onto patches of their skin where the babies can access its nutrients:



The odd-looking mammal Macrauchenia has a camel-like body and a long giraffe-like neck and a flexible elephant-like trunk. The South American animal went extinct 10,000 years ago:



Original article here.