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Rock hyraxes look like rodents but are actually related to elephants and sea cows [1]

['Jennifer Sandlin']

Date: 2025-09-10

It's no secret that I love the rock hyrax, that furry potato-shaped mammal with tiny vampire fangs and the strangest "wawa" scream. I thought I knew a lot about them already, but today I hit upon a treasure trove of new information about the weird-ass (and adorable, of course) creature that resembles a rodent but is actually most closely related to elephants and sea cows. The good folks at a very cool educational YouTube channel called "Bizarre Beasts" have put together a ten-minute educational video that provides an extremely engaging, informative, and accessible discussion of the evolutionary history of rock hyraxes.

I learned that hyraxes, which look like rodents, digest like ruminants, chew with their molars like horses, and have incisors that function like tusks, belong to a clade called "Paenungulata" which means "almost ungulates" and which formed about 65 million years ago. The three orders that make up the clade Paenungulata are Hyracoidea (hyraxes), Proboscidea (elephants), and Sirenia (sea cows like manatees and dugongs). Radiation to form those orders took about four to seven million years, and biologists don't have clear answers about which of the three orders branched off when or which are most closely related. In fact, many biologists believe that all three orders have the same common ancestor, which is an example of a "polytomy," which is, according to the video, "when speciation occurs not as a two-way branching event on a phylogenetic tree, but as a simultaneous branching of three or more species from the same common ancestor."

Furthermore, there is strong evidence that this common ancestor was probably an aquatic animal, as hyraxes and elephants (and sea cows, obviously) have a "telltale pattern of more myoglobin than more terrestrial animals and extra-charged myoglobin in their muscles," suggesting their ancestors spent time underwater. Their levels of myoglobin are "significantly higher than in species with strictly terrestrial mammal ancestors," which makes it probable that Proboscidea, Hyracoidean, and Sirenia all came from "one of the earliest known placental mammals to become underwater specialists." Fascinating!

The more I learn about rock hyraxes, the weirder I find them, which means, of course, that I love them even more. They're strange and wonderful and special in so many ways, what's not to love? As the video states:

"Hyraxes don't just have surprising relatives, their speciation represents a rare evolutionary occurrence as well!"

If you want to learn more about rock hyraxes, and lots of other animal weirdos, including river dolphins, eyelash vipers, leaf sheep sea slugs, colugos (flying lemurs), hagfish, naked mole rats, and more, check out Bizarre Beasts on YouTube. I promise you won't be disappointed, and you'll learn plenty about evolutionary biology, too!

Previously:

• Watch this tiny vampire adorably devour a tomato!

• If you need a shot of dopamine, watch this adorable vampire-esque rock hyrax munching on greens and sweet potatoes

• A treasure trove of rock hyrax videos

• Animals in an adorable munching montage

• Video provides overview of '10 Animals You Definitely Forgot Existed'

[END]
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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/10/rock-hyraxes-look-like-rodents-but-are-actually-related-to-elephants-and-sea-cows.html

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