Endemic Animals of








Japanese river otter
The Japanese otter (Japanese: ニホンカワウソ(日本川獺, Hepburn: Nihon-kawauso) (Lutra nippon ) or Japanese river otter is an extinct species of otter formerly widespread in Japan.Dating back to the 1880s, it was even seen in Tokyo. The population suddenly shrank in the 1930s, and the mammal nearly vanished. Since then, it has only been spotted several times, in 1964 in the Seto Inland Sea, and in the Uwa Sea in 1972 and 1973. The last official sighting was in the southern part ...
of Kōchi Prefecture in 1979, when it was photographed in the mouth of the Shinjo River in Susaki. It was subsequently classified as a "Critically Endangered" species on the Japanese Red List. On August 28, 2012, the Japanese otter was officially declared extinct by the Ministry of the Environment. It is the official animal symbol of Ehime Prefecture.
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Japanese river otter
Trachylepis tschudii
Trachylepis tschudii is an enigmatic skink, purportedly from Peru. First described in 1845 on the basis of a single specimen, it may be the same as the Noronha skink (T. atlantica ) from Fernando de Noronha, off northeastern Brazil. T. tschudii represents one of two doubtful records of the otherwise African genus Trachylepis on mainland South America; the other is T. maculata from Guyana.The only specimen, the holotype, is mostly brownish above, wi ...
th dark and light spots, and white below. The snout-to-vent length is 83 mm (3.3 in). Several features of the scales align it with Trachylepis over the related American genus Mabuya.
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Trachylepis tschudii
Cantabrian chamois
The Cantabrian chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica parva ) is a slim mountain goat antelope, and is one of the 10 subspecies of the genus Rupicapra. It ranges the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain, with a population of 17,000 animals in 2007-2008.
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Cantabrian chamois
Miniopterus tao
Miniopterus tao is a fossil bat in the genus Miniopterus from the Pleistocene of Zhoukoudian in China. It is known from a number of mandibles (lower jaws), which were initially identified as the living species Miniopterus schreibersii in 1963 before being recognized as a separate species, M. tao, in 1986. Miniopterus tao is larger than living M. schreibersii and has more closely spaced lower premolars and more robust talonids (back groups of ...
cusps) on the lower molars. The back part of the mandible is relatively low and on it, the coronoid and condyloid processes are about equally high. The average length of the mandible is 12.0 mm.
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Miniopterus tao