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Introduction
CHAPTER 6—MAMMALS
Mammals, which include man, are with the birds, the most highly
evolved among present day animal life. Several characters in the
organisation of mammals enable its species to live under conditions which
are impossible for other groups. One among these is in its ability to
maintain a constant temperature irrespective of the temperature of its
environment permitting life in habitats impossible to groups like the
reptiles. However this does not mean that all mammals are able to live
under all environmental conditions. In India, for instance, with its varied
climatic conditions, the 317 species of known mammals include animals
adapted to all the major climatic types, but the mammals of Maharashtra
totaling 85 species are mainly forms adapted to tropical conditions.
Among 85 species in Maharashtra, 25 are exclusively Indian, 38 occur in
countries to the east, 10 in countries to the west, 8 both in the west and
east and four are cosmopolitan. The 25 Indian species include ten confined
to the southern peninsula among which a bat Myotis peshwa (Thomas,
1915) is known only from Poona and Bombay.
Three major climatic types occur in Maharashtra. The heavy rainfall
region along the west coast adjacent to the western ghats or mountain
ranges is known as Konkan, where the forests when present are tropical
wet evergreen, tropical semi-evergreen and tropical moist deciduous. To
the east of the ghats, the Deccan plateau including the Marathwada area, is
dry and open. Forests when present are of the tropical thorn type. The
forested areas of districts in the north-east i.e. the Vidarbha area are largely
tropical dry deciduous.,
The list, given below, of mammals occurring in Maharashtra or likely
to have existed is based on information available in literature, the
collections in the Bombay Natural History Society and personal
experience. The destruction of forests, cultivation of fallow lands and
change in habitats through introduction of exotics make it unlikely that the
larger mammals would occur in appreciable numbers in any part of the
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