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The Living Dinosaurs: Common Hottentot

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If you have not seen my last deviation, The Living Dinosaurs: Mokele Mbembe, go read the first part of the description. It will explain much.

Anyone who knows anything about dinosaurs will immediately pick up on the ancestry of the Common Hottentot (Anobrachius congoensis.) That short, blunt skull and severely atrophied arms... Clearly this is a descendant of the Abelisaurids, one of the most successful dinosaur lineages during the late Cretaceous. In particular it seems to be descended either from Rugops prima or a close relative thereof. During the Cenozoic, abelisaurids were selectively pressured into becoming smaller and smaller as competition with mammals grew more intense. Hottentots are the culmination of this, being the smallest nonfeathered dinosaurs ever, with a torso barely bigger than a rat's. Their small size, among other things, has aided them in avoiding the attention of the local tribes as well as European and American explorers.

The most obvious feature of the three species of Hottentot is their enormous, owl-like eyes. They are gifted with amazing night vision, even better than that of a cat's and aided by a highly reflective tapetum lucidum; however, this is at the expense of their ability to sense colour. Unlike virtually every other archosaur known, Hottentots only see in a black and white spectrum. Their sense of hearing is also quite acute, though their sense of smell is nothing to speak of. The second most obvious feature is their apparent total lack of arms. Where the manual appendages would be on a typical tetrapod are a pair of tiny, nearly useless claws, the last external remnant of what was already being reduced back in the Cretaceous. Internally the arms are not quite so nonexistent; Hottentots still possess a fully functional shoulder girdle to which are attached a pair of tiny humeri, the size and shape of rice grains. The external claws have no internal bony support and are probably used by the male to hold on to the female during mating. The third most obvious feature of the members of the genus Anabrachius is the proportionally immense hind legs and tail base. It is as if someone cut two dinosaurs of differing size in half and glued the legs and tail of the larger animal onto the torso of the smaller. Hottentots use these powerful muscles- The m. caudofemoralis is the largest muscle in their bodies- for running, an activity which they are very good at. The Common Hottentot can run at speeds of 30 km/h or maybe even more, putting them up there with the Sengis as the world's fastest animal that weighs less than half a kilogram. This, combined with their lightning-fast reflexes, mean that they're typically gone before you even know they're there. In addition their footprints resemble almost exactly those of small, generic jungle birds, with the one notable distinction of being considerably farther apart, meaning they can be very difficult to track. It is thought that they are preyed on by large lizards and possibly cats, but not enough is known of their behaviour to be certain. They are thought to be solitary but not antisocial, and the Common Hottentot at least is known to be extremely curious and prone to investigating new things in its environment.

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Enjoy! I think these fellows would make good pets. If they could be litter-trained, that is.
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