Stink badger
| Stink badgers[1] | |
|---|---|
| |
| Sunda stink badger (M. javanensis) and Palawan stink badger (M. marchei) | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Mephitidae |
| Genus: | Mydaus Cuvier, 1821[2] |
| Type species | |
| Mydaus meliceps[3] | |
| Species | |
| |
| Mydaus ranges | |
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Stink badgers or false badgers are the species of the
polyphyletic group). There are only two extant species – the Palawan stink badger or pantot (M. marchei), and the Sunda stink badger or teledu (M. javanensis). They live west of the Wallace Line; the Sunda species on islands of the Greater Sunda Islands, being Sumatra, Java, and Borneo; in Borneo the badger is found in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. The Palawan species lives in the Philippine island of Palawan
as well as the islands surrounding it.
Stink badgers are named for their resemblance to other badgers and for the foul-smelling secretions that they expel from anal glands in self-defense (which is stronger in the Sunda species).[4]
Stink badgers were traditionally thought to be related to Eurasian
carnivorans (the Mustelidae), but recent DNA analysis indicates they share a more recent common ancestor with skunks, so experts have now placed them in the skunk family[4][5] (the Mephitidae, which is the sister group of a clade composed of Mustelidae and Procyonidae, with the red panda also assigned to one of the sister clades[6]). The two existing species are different enough from each other for the Palawan stink badger to be sometimes classified in its own genus, Suillotaxus.[4]
References
- OCLC 62265494.
- ^ Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, Étienne; Cuvier, Frédéric (1821). "Le télagon". Histoire naturelle des mammifères. Vol. 3 (27). Paris. pp. 1–2.
- OCLC 62265494.
- ^ a b c Stink badgers at the Badger Pages Archived 2007-08-06 at the Wayback Machine
- PMID 18275614.
- PMID 28472434.