NCAA basketball fans, is your bracket ready? Mine is, but not for ball games. Since the best college stars started bolting for the NBA, such is not easy to choose which teams are best now. If you ask me to name 10 college basketball players today, I cannot do it.
But I know animals. Or thought I did. Therefore, with some patience, I have completed my full Animal Bracket. It was developed by a professor at the University of Arizona. They call it the Mammal Madness (after March Madness), but I spotted several a non mammal species on there too.
This bracket pits animals against each other in a theoretical faceoff. They do not actually fight. The contest creators pick a winner. And I found that I did not know animals such like I thought. There were many species for me were new.
If you want to create your own bracket, go to this blog site and download the blank form to fill out. There is no place to submit it. These are only for fun.
Bracket site. http://mammalssuck.blogspot.com/2018/02/march-mammal-madness-2018.html
This is my bracket filled in.
The most difficult region was the Antecessors. These are Ancestors, I suppose, but some came before and were not family? Prior to this, I did not know that word. I did not know many creatures in this category either since they are long dead. There is an awesome name on here -- the Jugulator! I thought that it would be some fierce beast, but the real one does not appear so fierce. The Thylacoleo was my convincing choice to advance.
If the true Jugulator looked like the Judas Priest creation rather than a tree rat, I would have chosen that one to advance.
The 'When the Kat's Away' category appears to be the contest creator's prerogative, since there are non mammals there also. I chose the Komodo Dragon to advance, because if those things bite you you're dead. Yes I think it can beat even the Orinoco Crocodile, that being not so stealthy.
In the 'Great Adaptations' category, I chose the Coatimundi to beat everything else including the # 1 seeded Pygmy Hippo. Hippos are more dangerous than seems, but Coatis can survive almost anything anywhere. Even I have the Coati beating the Sewer Rat in a head-to-head knockdown and Sewer Rats are not to be trifled. That rat was my choice for the winner of the 'Urban Jungle' region.
In the end I think it will come down to the Komodo versus the Coatimundi, though the Sewer Rat might surprise there. This exercise was fun and I learned about many mammals I did not know well in previous.
That's Coatimundi. It's a survivor, so adaptable. But I think it cannot withstand the Komodo Dragon's bite and claws (see top picture above).
First photo: From Flickr.com, Creative Commons by 