The western Cuban nesophontid Nesophontes
micrus as portrayed on a Cuban postage stamp issued in 1982 (© Cuban postal
service)
Prior to their discovery and colonisation by
Europeans, the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea were home to a rich diversity
of wildlife, including many unusual endemic forms, most of which, tragically,
were soon wiped out by the afore-mentioned colonisation process, due in no
small way to the introduction to these islands of a number of non-native predatory
species, including rats, domestic cats and dogs, and even mongooses. However,
it is possible that some of the endemics survived to later dates than
officially confirmed – and in certain cases may still be alive today, awaiting
formal rediscovery. In a previous ShukerNature blog article, I documented the strange story of the mysterious Jamaican monkey Xenothrix (click here). Now, here is a selection of some more of these contentious but extremely intriguing Caribbean creatures that I have investigated and written about.
THE QUEMI
QUESTION
The hutias
constitute a series of coypu-related, muskrat-resembling species of rodent
found only in the West Indies. Several of
these are notorious for having been written off as extinct, only to be
unexpectedly rediscovered years later. Indeed, in two separate cases the
species in question was discovered alive several years after having been
originally described from fossils.
An
engraving from 1894 depicting the Cuban hutia (aka the hutia-conga) Capromys
pilorides – up to 3
ft long, it is the largest true
hutia, but is much smaller than the now-extinct giant hutias (public domain)
Long ago,
however, they shared their islands with some much bigger relatives, loosely
termed giant hutias. According to traditional zoological dictum, all of these
became extinct well before the West Indies were reached by Europeans, but there
is some intriguing evidence to suggest otherwise – the apparent post-Columbus
existence here of a curious creature known as the quemi.
This is the name
of a mysterious rodent mentioned by explorer Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in his 16th-Century
account of Hispaniola. It was said to be brown in colour, like this island's
hutias, but larger in size. Yet following Oviedo's report, nothing more was heard of the quemi – until
the 1920s.
That was when some bones of a large, previously unknown
species of rodent were discovered in a cave near a plantation at St Michel, Haiti, on Hispaniola. After studying
them, Dr Gerrit Miller of the Smithsonian Institution identified their owner as
a representative of Oviedo's obscure
quemi, and in 1929, within his formal description of the bones, Miller named
their species Quemisia gravis. Remains have since been found in the Dominican Republic on Hispaniola too. Moreover,
this species was apparently a traditional item of food for the native
Hispaniolans, as its limb bones have been found in early kitchen middens.
Today, the quemi is also known as the twisted-toothed
giant hutia - but whatever happened to it? Researchers believe that this
interesting rodent died out soon after the arrival on Hispaniola of the Spaniards, and certainly no later than the 16th
Century's close – yet another irreplaceable island endemic that simply couldn't
compete with the arrival of humankind and its ever-attendant array of
introduced species, particularly the black rat.
Having said that, in 1989 one researcher speculated
that Oviedo's description of the quemi may not have been a
reference to Quemisia gravis after all, but instead to Plagiodontia
velozi (aka P. ipnaeum). This is a now-extinct species of
Hispaniolan hutia known as the Samana hutia, whose remains have been found with
those of black rats, thus suggesting that it was still alive when the first
Europeans and their stowaway rodent entourage first reached this Caribbean island in 1492.
The Samana hutia may also (or alternatively) be the identity
of a second mystifying, still-unclassified Hispaniolan rodent. Known locally as
the comadreja, this cryptid allegedly survived here until the 20th
Century.
THE SPURIOUS SPANISH RACCOON
Yet another Caribbean mystery mammal
that may be hutia-related is the so-called 'Spanish racoon' mentioned in Dr Patrick
Browne's The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica (1756). Including it
in a listing of six species of mammal that he collectively termed Mus (which is
the genus housing the common, typical species of mouse within the taxonomic
family Muridae), Browne claimed that this creature was not native to Jamaica but was frequently imported there from Cuba (where it was very common). He stated that it sported
fairly rough fur; rabbit-like eyes, teeth, and lips, but wider nostrils, and
shorter, smaller ears; plus a straight, tapering, hairy tail; and that it exhibited
a vegetarian diet.
A North American raccoon, which
certainly does not match the decidedly rodent-reminiscent description given by
Browne for the so-called Spanish raccoon (public domain)
Interestingly, raccoons did formerly exist in Jamaica (and Cuba), but they were exterminated there by Spanish
colonists who hunted them for their meat, with the last sightings reported in
1687 (and they were wiped out even earlier in Hispaniola, by 1513). However, no raccoon species corresponds with the verbal
portrait by Browne given above, or is vegetarian, and it would be decidedly odd
to categorise a bona fide raccoon as a mouse. Conversely, the Spanish raccoon
as described by Browne was evidently a rodent. Consequently, when referring
briefly to this enigmatic animal within his standard work Extinct and
Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere (1942), American mammalogist Dr
Glover M. Allen speculated that "it was probably the larger Cuban hutia, Capromys
pilorides". Although this identification is certainly very plausible, it
has never been formally confirmed, so the mystery of Browne's 'Spanish racoon'
remains officially unresolved.
MARCANO'S
MISSING MINI-SOLENODON
Looking like large rats with very long, attenuated snouts,
solenodons may not seem very prepossessing in appearance, but they have great
zoological significance, as they represent the last of an ancient line of
insectivorous mammals stretching back 30 million years.
Now wholly confined to the West Indies, there are just two surviving species - the Hispaniolan solenodon Solenodon paradoxus, and the Cuban S. cubanus (of which only its black-and-white subspecies S. c. poeyana is still extant; no specimen of its buff-headed type subspecies S. c. cubanus has been reported since 1944). Both species are extremely rare, and have been written off as extinct on several occasions in the past, as chronicled in my three books on new and rediscovered animals.
Taxiderm specimen of the Haitian solenodon (© Markus Bühler)
Now wholly confined to the West Indies, there are just two surviving species - the Hispaniolan solenodon Solenodon paradoxus, and the Cuban S. cubanus (of which only its black-and-white subspecies S. c. poeyana is still extant; no specimen of its buff-headed type subspecies S. c. cubanus has been reported since 1944). Both species are extremely rare, and have been written off as extinct on several occasions in the past, as chronicled in my three books on new and rediscovered animals.
19th-Century engraving of the Cuban
solenodon's distinctive black-and-white subspecies (public domain)
A smaller and more obscure third species of solenodon, Marcano’s
solenodon S. marcanoi, is known only from geologically-recent skeletal
remains, found in the Dominican
Republic on Hispaniola, whose species
was formally described and named in 1962. Because they were found in
association with remains of Rattus rats (introduced onto Hispaniola by
European settlers), it is believed that this diminutive solenodon persisted
beyond Hispaniola’s initial European colonisation by Columbus during the late
1400s, but was wiped out soon afterwards by the rats once they arrived aboard
Spanish vessels during the early 1500s,
NOSEING AROUND FOR NESOPHONTIDS
Another family of unusual insectivores (or, to be precise, eulipotyphlans)
exclusive to the West Indies consisted of the nesophontids. These were shrew-like
mammals of varying sizes (one of the 6-12 currently-recognised species was as
large as a chipmunk) that supposedly died out during the 17th Century on the
cluster of Caribbean islands (Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and two of the
Cayman Islands) constituting their homeland. In 1930, however, some nesophontid
bones and tissues extracted from a mass of owl pellets discovered in the
Dominican Republic, Hispaniola, were found to be so fresh that it seemed
possible that the individual(s) from which they had derived had been killed
only a short time before. This encouraged Dr Gerrit Miller to speculate that
some nesophontids may still exist after all, but radiocarbon-dating of such
fresh-seeming pellets has so far failed to substantiate any 20th-(or
21st-) Century survival.
Representation of the Puerto Rican nesophontid Nesophontes
edithae (© Jennifer Garcia/Wikipedia CC By-SA 3.0 licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode)
Nevertheless, certain researchers have suggested that some
nesophontids may indeed have persisted until at least the early 1900s. Having
said that, a 10-week survey of West Indian mammals conducted on Hispaniola and Puerto Rico by Jersey
Wildlife Preservation Trust researchers during the 1980s failed to uncover any
evidence of current survival for them. Nevertheless, given the extremely
elusive nature of their solenodon relatives on Hispaniola and Cuba, perhaps there
may come a time when the nesophontid family will indeed be resurrected.
This ShukerNature article consists of excerpts from
my books The Menagerie of Marvels
and The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals.
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