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The World’s Top Five Pygmy Animals
Sure, there are lizards and frogs out there that can fit onto pocket change. But our top five pygmies beat them out as the coolest small versions of something bigger.
1. Mammoths came in all sizes. But the most intriguing by far were the Wrangell Island dwarf mammoths. These so-called mammoths barely reached six feet in height and presumably would have suffered neckaches trying to look up to their 10.5 feet tall European counterparts.
Remarkably, these mammoths were the only ones to survive the last ice age. Low sea levels created the land bridge that got their larger predecessors to Wrangell Island, and they romped around this Arctic island until about 1700 BC. Roughly the same time that the Egyptians chanced upon leavened bread. This makes them the most recently extant mammoth population in the world.
The big question is why did the Wrangell Island mammoths shrink before they died off completely? Some Siberian mammoths diminished a bit by 12,000 years ago – when large mammals across the board were dying out as the glacial period was coming to a close. Perhaps the slim genetic pickings on Wrangell Island accelerated that shrinking process.
2. Pygmy marmosets. They’re the world’s smallest monkey species. And when they’re twins, babies and albinos, and scrunched between some lucky bastard’s fingers, well, they look like some adorable hybrid between an Area 51 alien and a Wookie.
3. Compsognathus was a chicken-sized dino about a meter long. It ran around Europe 150 million years ago on its back legs and ate lizards. Some paleontologists consider it the nearest relative to Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird. More famously, this creature appeared in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III. Also, the idea of a dino that resembles a chicken in any way, shape, or form is delightful (see illustration).
4. Pygmy hippopotamuses sound like the stuff of legend but they’re very real, at least for the moment. These seriously endangered, miniature hippos weigh in at a dainty 250–550 pounds and measure about five feet from head to tail. That’s still half as long and one-tenth the weight of your standard river hippo.
Unfortunately, the endangered pygmy hippo does not have history books on its side. Tens of thousands of years back, pygmy hippos from the islands of Crete, Cyprus and Madagascar went the way of the dodo (or rather, went ahead of the dodo, on the way that the dodo would end up going, tens of thousands of years later).
Luckily these guys breed well in captivity. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park has produced 58 of them since 1929. The captive cavorting all started with Billy, a gift bestowed on President Calvin Coolidge by Harvey Firestone (of the tire dynasty) in 1927. Most you see in zoos today trace their roots back to Billy and his pygmy loins.
5. The bumblebee bat is a victim of its own singularity. More correctly referred to as Kitti’s hognosed bat, this species carries the title of smallest mammal in the world, weighing less than 2 grams – approximately the weight of a respectably large and knobbly Cheetos.
Since it was first described in 1974 this bite-sized creature has been disturbed by collectors and tourists alike. But these days, its biggest threats are deforestation and the forest fires whose flames lick its limestone cave hideouts.
Would we care more if it were cuter? The EDGE, a conservation campaign that exists to sell the plight of endangered species to the public couldn’t do any better than this: “It has a swollen, piglike nose, relatively large ears and small eyes, which are usually concealed by fur.” Me, I think really ugly things are cute. Like pugs. Or bald cats.
