Serbia’s Five Most Fascinating Beasts
Certain regions have a worldwide reputation for the diversity of their wildlife: the plains of Africa, the rainforests of South America, or the waters of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. It is easy to dismiss a small, landlocked nation, like Serbia, in highly developed Europe, as holding just a few rabbits, foxes, and deer. However, it turns out that Serbia, home to rivers, lakes, mountains, forests, and five national parks, is also home to some surprising animals. Here are five of my favorites.
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Credit: http://www.arkive.org/wildcat/felis-silvestris/[/caption]
5: The Wildcat (Felis silvestris)
If you were to see what looks like a large, striped, tabby housecat in a Serbian forest, there would be a chance you had really seen a rare European wildcat, subspecies Felis silvestris silvestris. Almost ten thousand years ago, ancient people domesticated members of the same species to create the cats we now keep as pets.
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Credit: http://food-properties.com/raw-burbot[/caption]
4: The Burbot (Lota lota)
Also known as bubbot, mariah, freshwater ling, lawyer, coney-fish, and eelpout, the burbot is unique for being the only member of the cod family to live in fresh water. This means that fishing from a riverbank in Serbia, you could catch a fish related to big-name, deep-sea commercial species like pollock, haddock, and Pacific cod.
No animal in this countdown is unique to Serbia, but the burbot’s range is exceptional, wrapping around the whole northern hemisphere — you can catch it anywhere from Serbia to Siberia to South Dakota.
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Credit: http://www.arkive.org/slow-worm/anguis-fragilis/[/caption]
3: The Slow Worm (Anguis fragilis)
Is this a worm, like its name suggests? Well, it’s blunt at both ends, doesn’t grow much bigger than a foot, and likes to burrow in the ground. But no — its eyes, visible mouth, and scales show that it has to be a reptile. It’s long, thin, and legless — a snake, then, right?
Guess again. The slow worm is actually a species of legless lizard. You can tell it from a snake by the fact that it blinks: snakes lack opaque eyelids. Also distinctly lizard-like is its ability to autotomize, that is, to shed its own tail, leaving it wriggling to distract a predator while the rest of the lizard escapes. The tail eventually grows back, though shorter, and contains cartilage rather than new bones.
To pile on the fun facts, the slow worm gives birth to live young about three inches long, and is one of the longest-living lizards, (one specimen in a zoo survived fifty-four years.)
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2: The Wels (Silurus glanis)
The wels catfish — long, thin, scaleless, and whiskered like the burbot — is made exceptional by its size. Specimens in excess of 6 feet and 100 pounds are routine, and some sources, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, claim it can reach 15 feet and 660 pounds.
Being a fish nut, I read about the wels as a small child. More recently, though, it has caught the public eye with multiple appearances on Animal Planet’s River Monsters, with a video showing wels hunting pigeons, and with pictures of a 280 lb. specimen caught in February 2015. In Serbia, adventurous anglers pursue them in the Danube, where guides report occasional catches close to 200 lbs.
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Credit: http://www.arkive.org/edible-dormouse/glis-glis/[/caption]
1: The Edible Dormouse (Glis glis)
This one is so weird in so many ways. It uses the plantar glands in its paws to secrete a sticky substance that helps it climb smooth surfaces. Like the slow worm, its name is misleading — it is more closely related to squirrels than to mice, and looks more like a squirrel, too. Also like the slow worm, it is capable of some autotomy — an incredibly rare ability among mammals. The skin on its tail slides off easily, leaving would-be predators who grab it with a handful of fluff.
Yet though the “mouse” part of its name is misleading, the “edible” part is not. The edible dormouse was an important delicacy in ancient Rome, so much so that they created specialized containers, called “gliaria,” for rearing them. Large, lidded terra cotta pots with internal ledges and air holes, gliaria were intended, with their dark, confined environments, to make wild-caught edible dormice think it was time to prepare for hibernation. The Romans fed the dormice nuts and fruit until they had put on a thick pre-hibernation fat layer, and then prepared them, serving them stuffed or roasted and dipped in honey. Today, some people in Slovenia continue to eat the edible dormouse.
The rest of us can just shake our heads at the inventiveness of both evolution and human cuisine.
Sources:
McClane, A.J. A.J. McClain’s Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes of North America. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1965.
