Mammalogy

Mammals

The Amathole Museum’s mammal collection, known as the Shortridge Mammal Collection, is one of the largest of its kind in Southern Africa. It holds roughly 34,000 specimens spanning 17 orders, 66 families and around 428 species, collected from across South Africa and further afield over more than a century.

Among them are approximately 222 type specimens the reference specimens against which a species was first formally described. The collection is named after Captain Guy C. Shortridge, a former director of the museum whose fieldwork and mammal surveys across southern Africa in the early twentieth century laid much of its foundation. It remains an active research resource today, used by South African and international researchers for taxonomy, biogeography, and DNA barcoding projects such as the SABOL initiative run through SANBI.

Afrotherian Group

Elephants, aardvarks, golden moles, elephant shrews and hyraxes look nothing alike, yet all belong to a single group called Afrotheria: mammals whose common ancestor arose in Africa tens of millions of years ago, before the continent’s isolation from the other landmasses. Their outward differences hide some telling shared features: in elephants and hyraxes, for instance, tooth structure and foot anatomy point back to the same ancestral blueprint. The Shortridge Collection holds specimens across several of these groups, offering a physical record of one of the more unexpected chapters in mammal evolution.

Dassie (Rock Hyrax)

Procavia capensis

The rock hyrax, known locally as the dassie, is a common sight on rocky outcrops and koppies across South Africa, often seen basking in groups on sun-warmed rock in the early morning. It looks something like an overgrown guinea pig, but its closest living relatives are elephants and manatees a relationship visible in details such as its tusk-like incisors and the soft, padded soles of its feet. Dassies live in colonies of up to several dozen animals, sharing lookout duty against eagles and other predators while the rest of the group forages and suns itself.

Aardvark

Orycteropus afer

The aardvark is the only living species in its order, Tubulidentata, and one of the more distinctive diggers on the African continent. Almost entirely nocturnal, it uses powerful claws to break open termite mounds and ant nests, then draws in prey with a long, sticky tongue that can extend up to 30 centimetres. Its burrows, often abandoned and reused, become shelter for everything from warthogs to owls and reptiles, making the aardvark one of the continent’s quieter ecosystem engineers.

Golden Moles

Family Chrysochloridae

Golden moles are small, blind, burrowing mammals found almost nowhere outside southern Africa, and several species occur nowhere else in the world but a narrow stretch of South African coastline or a single mountain range. Their eyes are covered by skin and fur, and their dense, water-resistant coat has an iridescent sheen that gives the group its name. A number of golden mole species are considered Critically Endangered, and the Shortridge Collection’s holdings over 1,200 specimens across six genera have made it an important reference point for recent conservation genetics and DNA barcoding work, including a SANBI/SABOL sub-sampling collaboration.

Elephants

Loxodonta africana

The African elephant is the largest living land mammal, and one of the most recognisable. Elephants live
in close-knit matriarchal herds led by an older female, with strong social bonds that persist across
decades. Their trunk, containing tens of thousands of individual muscles, is used for everything from
stripping bark to greeting other elephants to drawing up water. The museum’s elephant displays sit among
its most visited exhibits, and the species’ close evolutionary link to two unlikely relatives the dassie and
the aardvark’s fellow Afrotheres makes it a natural anchor point for this section of the collection.

Elephant Shrews (Sengis)

Order Macroscelidea

Despite the name, elephant shrews are not shrews at all, and their nearest relatives are elephants, aardvarks and golden moles rather than any true shrew. The name comes from their long, flexible, trunklike snout, used to probe leaf litter and soil for insects. Sengis are fast and alert, capable of short bursts of speed along cleared paths they maintain and patrol within their territory, and they pair for life in a number of species an unusual trait among small mammals.

Carnivores

Order Carnivora

South Africa is home to a wide range of carnivores, from the leopard and caracal down to genets, mongooses and the black-backed jackal. The Shortridge Collection holds dry skins and skulls across much of this range, many collected decades ago from areas where some of these species have since become far scarcer. Skulls in particular are valuable to researchers, since tooth wear and jaw shape can tell a story about diet, age and even the health of a population at the time it was collected.

Rodents

Order Rodentia

Rodents make up close to half of all mammal species worldwide, and South Africa’s share of that diversity from vlei rats and gerbils to the striped mouse and the Cape porcupine is well represented in the collection. Small and easily overlooked in the field, rodents are disproportionately important to ecosystems as seed dispersers and as prey for owls, snakes and small carnivores. The museum’s small mammal holdings, gathered through decades of trapping surveys, form one of the largest reference sets of this kind in the region.

Bats

Order Chiroptera

Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight, and South Africa hosts well over 50 species, from the tiny banana bat to the large fruit-eating epauletted bats. The collection includes both insectivorous and fruit bat specimens, gathered from roosts, caves and buildings across the region. Bats are notoriously difficult to identify from external features alone, so museum specimens with skulls and wing measurements preserved remain an essential reference for correctly naming species recorded in the field.

Primates

Order Primates

Chacma baboons and vervet monkeys are the two primate species most familiar to South Africans, both highly social and adaptable animals that have learned to live alongside people in ways that sometimes bring them into conflict with farms and towns. The collection’s primate specimens document this presence across the region and provide a comparative record against which population and distribution changes over the past century can be measured.

Antelope and Other Hoofed Mammals

Order Artiodactyla

From the diminutive blue duiker to the eland, South Africa’s antelope species are among its best-known wildlife, and many appear in the museum’s mounted displays as well as its skeletal and skull collections. These specimens are often used to teach horn and skull identification, since many antelope species are difficult to tell apart without close examination of these features.

Shrews

Order Eulipotyphla

True shrews are small, fast-metabolising insectivores, distinct from both the elephant shrews of the Afrotherian group and from rodents, despite a superficial resemblance to both. They are seldom seen alive, being both tiny and largely nocturnal, which makes museum specimens especially useful for establishing which species occur where.

Pangolin

Smutsia temminckii

The Temminck’s ground pangolin is the only pangolin species found in southern Africa, covered in overlapping keratin scales that make it unique among the region’s mammals. It is heavily threatened by illegal trafficking for its scales and is now one of the most heavily protected species in South African law. Any pangolin material held by the museum carries particular scientific and conservation weight given how rarely the species is seen or collected today.

Hares and Rabbits

Order Lagomorpha

The Cape hare and scrub hare are the two lagomorphs most likely to be encountered across South Africa, both fast, solitary grazers rather than burrow-dwelling like true rabbits. Specimens in the collection help distinguish between the two species, which look similar in the field but differ in habitat preference and some cranial features.