Worker: Which animal which is white in winter and brown in summer lives throughout the Arctic and can trace its roots to an extinct animal that lived in the Himalayas?
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Vulpes qiuzhudingi Vulpes qiuzhudingi is an extinct species of fox found in the Himalayas. It was primarily carnivorous. The fossils, dating from between 5.08 and 3.60 million years ago, were found in the Zanda Basin and Kunlun Mountains of Tibet. It was named after Qiu Zhuding, a paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The species is believed to be the ancestor of "Vulpes lagopus", the modern Arctic fox, which would support the "Out of Tibet" theory: namely, that a number of current arctic species trace their ancestry to species originally from the Tibetan Plateau.
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Arctic fox The Arctic fox ("Vulpes lagopus"), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in cold environments. It has a deep thick fur which is brown in summer and white in winter. Its body length ranges from 46 to , with a generally rounded body shape to minimize the escape of body heat.
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Snow pigeon The snow pigeon ("Columba leuconota") is a species of bird in the Columba genus in the family Columbidae from hilly regions of central Asia. They are grey, black, pale brown and white birds, and two races are recognised; "C. l. leuconota" occurs in Afghanistan and the western Himalayas; "C. l. gradaria" occurs in the mountains of East Tibet and from East Nan Shan (Qinghai) to Yunnan. The birds forage in open country in pairs or small groups, feeding on grain, buds, shoots, berries and seeds. They roost at night on cliffs, breeding in crevices where they build untidy stick nests and lay a clutch of usually two white eggs. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated the bird's conservation status as being of "least concern".
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Indian nightjar The Indian nightjar ("Caprimulgus asiaticus") is a small nightjar which is a resident breeder in open lands across South Asia and Southeast Asia. Like most nightjars it is crepuscular and is best detected from its characteristic calls at dawn and dusk that have been likened to a stone skipping on a frozen lake - a series of clicks that become shorter and more rapid. They are sometimes spotted on roads when their eyes gleam red in the spotlight of a vehicle. There is considerable plumage variation across its range and can be hard to differentiate from other nightjars in the region especially in the field.
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MacFarlane's bear MacFarlane's bear is a proposed extinct species of bear that was found in Canada's Northwest Territories. In 1864, Inuit hunters shot and killed an enormous yellow-furred bear and gave the skin and skull to the Fort Anderson post manager and amateur naturalist Roderick MacFarlane (sometimes given as Robert MacFarlane) of the Hudson's Bay Company. MacFarlane shipped the skin and skull to the Smithsonian Institution where they were placed in storage and soon forgotten. Eventually, Dr. Clinton Hart Merriam uncovered the remains, which he thought had been shot very far outside the brown bear's normal range, and concluded that it was not a brown bear at all. In 1918, he described the specimen as a new species and genus, "Vetularctos inopinatus", calling it the "ancient unexpected bear."
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White stag A white stag (or white hind for the female) is a white-colored red deer or fallow deer, explained by a condition known as leucism that causes its hair and skin to lose its natural colour. The white deer has played a prominent role in many cultures' mythology.
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Alpine musk deer The Alpine musk deer ("Moschus chrysogaster") is a musk deer species native to the eastern Himalayas in Nepal, Bhutan and India to the highlands of central China.
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Brown Caucasian The Brown Caucasian (Russian: Kaвкaзcкaя бypaя, Kavkazskaya buraya ) is a cattle breed from the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Dagestan (Russia)). Found in the Caucasus region the breed is the result of crossing Brown Swiss and Kostroma cattle onto the local cattle to produce a variable breed depending on the local stock, with strains for dairy and dairy-beef production.
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Chinese white dolphin The Chinese white dolphin is a variety of Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin ("Sousa chinensis"; ). This variety inhabits the eastern portion of the species range, in Southeast Asia and Australia. Some biologists regard the Chinese white dolphin as a separate subspecies, "Sousa chinensis chinensis", from the "Plumbea"-type Indo-Pacific humbacked dolphin, which lives in the western part of the species range, from east Africa to India. However, DNA testing has indicated that the "Chinensis"-type dolphins from Southeast Asia are more closely related to the "Plumbea"-type dolphins than they are to the "Chinensis"-type dolphins from Australia.
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Agriotherium Agriotherium is an extinct genus of bears whose fossils are found Miocene through Pleistocene-aged strata of North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, living from ~13.6–2.5 Ma, existing for approximately . Materials of the late surviving "A. africanum" from Africa has suggested that "A. africanum" died out soon during the early Gelasian.
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White-bellied musk deer The White-bellied musk deer or Himalayan musk deer ("Moschus leucogaster") is a musk deer species occurring in the Himalayas of Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan and China. It is listed as endangered by the IUCN because of overexploitation resulting in a probable serious population decline.
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Cave lynx The cave lynx or Mediterranean cave lynx ("Lynx spelaeus" or "Lynx pardinus spelaeus") is an extinct felid species that lived during the Pleistocene. It is controversially discussed to be a subspecies of the modern Iberian lynx ("Lynx pardinus") and to be a junior synonym of this species.
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Asian ostrich The Asian or Asiatic ostrich ("Struthio asiaticus"), is an extinct species of ostrich that ranged from Morocco, the Middle East to China and Mongolia. Fossils date from the upper Pliocene to the early Holocene (3.6 MYA - c.6000 BC or BCE).
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Sitka deer The Sitka deer or Sitka black-tailed deer ("Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis"), is a subspecies of mule deer ("Odocoileus hemionus"), similar to the Columbian black-tailed subspecies ("O. h. colombianus"). Their name originates from Sitka, Alaska, and it is not to be confused with the similarly named sika deer. Weighing in on average between 48 and , Sitka deer are characteristically smaller than other subspecies of mule deer. Reddish-brown in the summer, their coats darken to a gray-brown in mid-late August. They are also good swimmers, and can occasionally be seen crossing deep channels between islands. Their average life span is about 10 years but a few are known to have attained an age of 15.
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Tsagandelta Tsagandelta (from "tsagan", mongolian for white, and "delta", greek for "crest") is an extinct mammal genus from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. Distantly related to modern marsupials, it is part of Deltatheroida, a lineage of carnivorous metatherians common in the Cretaceous of Asia and among the most successful non-theropod carnivores of the region.
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Cave bear The cave bear ("Ursus spelaeus") was a species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.
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Tibetan snowfinch The Tibetan snowfinch or Henri's snowfinch ("Montifringilla henrici") is a species of bird in the sparrow family.
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Dhole The dhole /dəʊl/ ("Cuon alpinus") is a canid native to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Other English names for the species include Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, and mountain wolf. It is genetically close to species within the genus "Canis", though its skull is convex rather than concave in profile, it lacks a third lower molar and the upper molars sport only a single cusp as opposed to two to four. During the Pleistocene, the dhole ranged throughout Asia, Europe and North America but became restricted to its historical range 12,000–18,000 years ago.
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Asian desert warbler The Asian desert warbler ("Sylvia nana") is a typical warbler which breeds in the deserts of central and western Asia and the extreme east of Europe (Volga Delta area east to western Inner Mongolia in China), and migrating to similar habitats in southwestern Asia (Arabia to northwestern India) and the far northeast of Africa (Red Sea coastal regions) in winter. Until recently it was considered conspecific with the African desert warbler (and called just "desert warbler"), but is now given specific status. The two are still each other's closest living relatives, and their relationships to other typical warblers are not clear. They may be fairly close to the whitethroat; particularly, female whitethroats look much like a richly-coloured Asian desert warbler. But it seems that all these three taxa are fairly basal members of the genus.
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Gaur The gaur ( , "Bos gaurus"), also called Indian bison, is the largest extant bovine, native to the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. It has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1986. Population decline in parts of its range is likely to be more than 70% during the last three generations. However, population trends are stable in well-protected areas, and are rebuilding in a few areas which previously had been neglected.
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White eared pheasant White eared pheasants ("Crossoptilon crossoptilon") are a species of "eared pheasants" that get their name because they are white and have the prominent ear tufts of the genus, not because they have white ears. The indigenous people of Himalaya call them shagga, meaning snow fowl. These gregarious birds live in large flocks, foraging on alpine meadows close to or above the snowline throughout the year. "C. crossoptilon" are found in China, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet, where they tend to inhabit mixed forests and can be found around Buddhist monasteries.
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Turkestan red pika The Turkestan red pika ("Ochotona rutila") is a species of mammal in the family Ochotonidae.The summer dorsal pelage is bright rufous and the ventral pelage is white or ochraceous. The winter dorsal pelage is pale brown and the ventral pelage is white or light ochraceous in colour. It is found in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, possibly Afghanistan, and possibly China. It is also known as the “silent” pika because it doesn’t make an alarm whistle or other vocal noises. It is rated as a species of least concern on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Endangered Species, and is considered to be near threatened in its range in China.