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dasus t1_ja9008c wrote

>“We are redefining the mountain lion in our minds as an animal that can swim.”

I never thought of it as an animal that couldn't swim.

I think basically the only mammals that can't properly swim are giraffes and and great apes. (Some great apes do, but like humans, a lot can't.)

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LornAltElthMer t1_ja95mt6 wrote

Hippos can't swim which is kind of odd given they're the most closely related land mammals to whales.

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dasus t1_ja97hen wrote

Oh damn, true, I forgot that, as they're pretty aquatic, but yeah, you are right, they just run underwater, haha.

Eh, they're just the part of the branch that stayed in the shallows. (Whale evolution docs are cool)

Seems like going back from land to water has happened quite a few times. Taxonomy is interesting and your comment made me look a bit, and to my surprise, hippos are more closely related to cetaceans than they are to manatees. I mean, I had never given it any thought before, but I didn't realise how different manatees and dugongs are from cetaceans.

Also, seals and walruses. Weird that a hippo can't swim, but walruses can. They both look heavy enough, but guess hippos do be a bit denser.

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HippoBot9000 t1_ja97ii1 wrote

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LornAltElthMer t1_ja97xsl wrote

I'm guessing with the walruses it's the flippers that make the difference.

Just going by appearance I'd have guessed a hippo and a manatee would be more closely related, but here we are ;-)

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Ppleater t1_ja9a1k3 wrote

It's not so much that they can't swim, but rather that they can't float, so they have to move along the bottom by running along or leaping off the ground. But if they were made more buoyant I bet they'd be powerful swimmers.

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historical_regret2 t1_jaaur32 wrote

I think it’s a question of how far they can swim.

For example, Vancouver Island (tons of cougars) has historically never had a breeding population of brown bears, which is insane given its size and abundant perfect brown bear habitat.

Turns out that it’s because female brown bears can’t quite hack the swim from the mainland. Males can, and there are always a few males wandering the island, but females don’t and as such a population never got established.

So female brown bears can swim - just not the 3 km or so that it takes to island hop from the mainland to the nearest point of Van island.

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dasus t1_jabywfc wrote

Yeah, I get that it's more of a "they are good swimmers who do it voluntarily", as opposed to "someone tossed them in the water and they didn't drown".

Good example with the bears, man.

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just_some_guy65 t1_jabuiqn wrote

I also thought that was an odd statement given that most animals can

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