Procavia capensis
Is a rock rabbit a rabbit? Or a hyrax a cony? How about "dassie", a word coined
by the original Dutch settlers in South Africa, meaning "rock badger". Badger indeed! Even science has it wrong. "Hyrax" is derived from the Greek word meaning "shrew", (it's definitely not a shrew) and Procavia, the name of a common genus in Africa, means "before the guinea pigs".
These unique creatures have no evolutionary association with guinea pigs. They are more closely related to elephants!
"The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the conies." (Psalms 104, verse 18). In Phoenician and Hebrew, hyraxes were known as "shaphan", meaning "the hidden one". Phoenician sailors travelling round the Spanish coast 3,000 years ago called the land "Ishaphan", meaning "land of the hyrax". The Romans later modified the name to "Hispania", but the Romans must have mistaken hyraxes for rabbits, so Spain has the dubious honour of being named after an animal which doesn't even exist there!
What do we really know about these enigmatic creatures, which are so unique that they can occupy habitats ranging from rain forest to desert; regulate their body temperature almost like reptiles; derive all their moisture requirements from plant cellulose; react in a split second to a threat of predation; sprint up a rock precipice; or crash without injury to the ground following a vertical fall of 15 metres or more, all the while guiling observers into the impression that they are the fattest and laziest animals in the bush?
Forget trying to breed them like rabbits: hyraxes have a gestation period just two months less than man's, and only produce two or three young at a time.
Pound for pound, the roar of a hyrax dwarfs that of a lion, and they have an amazingly diverse vocabulary. Should you see one of these rock dwellers staring into the sun, it's not blind, as the Zulus surmise. Its eyes are protected by a special ‘umbraculum', unique among mammals.
Tucked into its niche among the spectacular large mammals of Africa, the humble hyrax has received little scientific attention. But as with all of nature's quaint secrets, the more we know, the more we know we don't know. Such is the limitless fascination of the natural world. |
