I wish their whole site weren’t built around Flash, but EDGE has put togeth­er a great pack­age high­light­ing a range of species that are unique and dis­ap­pear­ing around the world.

The solen­odon, for instance, is a pos­si­ble rel­a­tive of Mada­gas­car’s ten­recs, sep­a­rat­ed by Africa and the Atlantic. The His­pan­iolan species lives only on the island of His­pan­io­la, shared by Haiti and the Domini­can Repub­lic. If you recall my post on rain­forests and devel­op­ment, or my arti­cle for Seedmagazine.com, the Hait­ian side of the island is in pret­ty seri­ous trou­ble. The Domini­can Repub­lic is doing bet­ter, but Solen­odon habi­tat there is in plen­ty of danger.

The oth­er species of Solen­odon was thought to have gone extinct from the forests of Cuba. While the Amer­i­can embar­go has prob­a­bly done lit­tle good in terms of beat­ing Cas­tro, it has ensured that Cuban forests faced less pres­sure than those else­where, and pop­u­la­tions were redis­cov­ered there in the 1970s. Less is known about them than their His­pan­iolan cousins, and that’s not say­ing much. Even the pre­ferred diet of the genus is dis­put­ed, with uncer­tain­ty about the amount of veg­e­ta­tion they will eat.

Solen­odon lit­er­al­ly means “grooved tooth,” and those grooves allow the species to deliv­er a poi­so­nous bite. They join shrews and the platy­pus as the only mam­mals with ven­omous bites. The slow loris pro­duces a tox­in from glands on its elbows, which it can use to cov­er its off­spring, and appar­ent­ly also can place in its mouth for bit­ing, but I con­sid­er that cheating.