>> [Laughing] You can see -- So this is a little American alligator.

It's not a crocodile.

Okay, here we go.

Here's a couple more.

In fact, one of them just flew.

Mammals are probably the easiest group of animals for us to relate to, and that makes sense, right, because we're mammals ourselves.

But mammals have some basic characteristics.

They have a four-chambered heart.

They're warm-blooded, which means they can regulate their own body temperature.

They're covered with hair or fur.

And they have live young.

And they feed those live young with mammary glands.

In fact, that's where the term "mammals" comes from.

Now, the LowCountry is home to an incredible diversity of mammals.

Some of them are small species, like mice and shrews and voles, that we don't often see.

And then, of course, there are others that we see every day.

Let's go on a trip today and explore some of the mammals of the LowCountry.

You know, not all mammals are, you know, big, showy things like deer and bobcats and things like that.

A lot of what we have are really small.

And a field like this is a perfect place to look for small mammals.

In order to decide what lives here, we need tools, and the best tool we can use is something right here.

This is called a Sherman mammal trap.

And this thing is designed to catch small rats and mice.

And what happens is, animals kind of crawl inside, because it's baited with pumpkin seeds or -- I like to use pumpkin seeds.

Or sunflower seeds, or something delicious to small mammals.

They go in the back to get it, and when they get to the very back, they hit a little lever -- and let's see if this will shut for us -- and it slammed shut.

And then what we can do is peek inside and see if we have something in there, transfer it to another container -- maybe a clear container, where we can get a good look at it -- and see what we have.

Identify it, let it go.

You know, fields like this are really, really important for small mammals, as we said, but they're really important for things like songbirds and reptiles and amphibians and all sorts of animals.

And if we don't have fields like these, there's a lot of things that just don't have proper habitat to live.

But we're here checking mammals, so what we're going to do is check some of these Sherman traps and see what we have.

Here's one -- let's go ahead and start with this one.

I can see that the door is closed, and that's a good sign.

Next thing I'll do -- yeah, there's definitely something in here.

And it feels pretty heavy.

And every now and then when you pick up one of these traps and you feel the weight of it, it's probably time to put your gloves on.

[Laughs] You know, these are small mammals, but I'll tell you what, some of them bite really, really hard.

And it may be a little bit difficult to transfer this guy into this container, but we're going to try.

Okay, and I don't want to hurt him, but I want to get him into a container where I can have a look at him and see what species he is.

Yeah, this is a big one, for sure.

Yeah, I can tell already, but let's get him into this container.

Kind of shake him down -- there we go.

That worked perfectly.

Yeah, this is exactly what I expected.

This is a hispid cotton rat.

And these things get fairly big, and they also bite really, really hard.

Of course, not -- they're not out to hurt anybody, but what they are trying to do is just protect themselves, and you can imagine he feels pretty vulnerable right here.

Now, cotton rats are native mammals, so these aren't like the black rats and the Norwegian wharf rats and things like that that you hear about sometimes in big cities.

This is a native species that lives here, has always been here.

The other other two species that I mentioned were introduced, and they came over on ships and things like that.

So this is a native species.

And although they can be a little bit damaging to crops and things, and they can get into, you know, your tool shed and, you know, get into storage sheds and things like that, but they really aren't going to hurt anybody.

They are fed on by hawks and owls, and also snakes, and so there are a lot of predators that eat these guys.

But they may have -- this particular species, the hispid cotton rat, may have nine litters a year.

So they're very successful.

At five babies a litter, that's a lot of babies every year.

Another closed trap here.

That's a good sign.

This one's pretty light, but I'm going to have to see if there's -- yeah, there's something in this one, too.

Something small.

So I'm going to see if I can shake him into the -- And another cotton rat!

And this is a little tiny one.

This is a little tyke.

So this one is probably just barely weaned.

It's got a lot of growing to do.

And, boy, they are really vulnerable at this size.

Just about anything can eat them.

[Squeaking] Can you hear him squeaking?

And so obviously that's an alarm call, so we want to get him let go as quick as we can.

I imagine it's a little bit stressful, getting caught like this.

But we'll release him unharmed.

He'll be just fine.

Okay, we'll let this little guy go.

And you can see, this is a really -- these are really interesting little animals.

And I'm going to set him down right on the ground.

And he should race off.

Okay, so we have telltale signs of another mammal that's common around here.

And I think I just saw some movement.

Okay, there he is.

So here's an eastern mole.

And this is one of the neatest animals in the world, in my opinion.

We actually have two types in South Carolina.

We have the star-nosed mole and the eastern mole.

And this is the eastern mole.

Scalopus aquaticus.

And it's kind of a misnomer.

It was named because of these big limbs.

And when it was named, these were thought to be aquatic.

And that's where it gets the name Scalopus aquaticus, because these looked like aquatic limbs.

But these things are incredible diggers.

I mean, they're unbelievable.

And I wish you guys could feel how much force he has.

He can actually push my fingers apart with these incredibly strong upper arms.

And he digs -- he can dig as far -- he can dig like 12 inches in a minute in soft soil.

So they can really zip through the ground.

Now, they dig tunnels -- some shallow ones for feeding, and then some deeper ones for -- for young and -- you know, to brood young and stuff.

But they can zip through the tunnels at very quick speeds.

And look at his feet!

I mean, talk about form and function.

This animal is designed for digging, and he has tremendous muscles, and that's what he uses to push with.

He's an insectivore.

But he eats primarily earthworms.

In fact, probably over 50% of his diet is earthworms.

But he probably would also eat mole crickets, all sorts of small insects, beetle grubs, and things like that.

He has very sharp teeth.

He has a great nose.

And this allows him to smell things even underground.

Moles do have eyes, but they have very poor vision.

So they don't see well.

And if you think about it, they live most of their lives underground, so they don't have to see well.

But their sense of smell is just unbelievable.

Moles have really neat fur.

And, you know, mammals are characterized by fur.

And this fur actually can lay down frontwards or backwards.

It allows the animal to back through a burrow or go through a burrow frontwards.

These guys eat a tremendous amount, probably at least a third to maybe half their weight a day, in earthworms and other small creatures.

They have very high metabolisms, and if they don't eat, they'll die.

And so we're going to let this guy go, because we don't want to stress him any more than we have to, but he'll get down, and I'm sure -- he'll get back down in the soil, and I'm sure he'll eat some earthworms, you know, just in a matter of a few minutes to hours.

You know, I really like moles, but they can be a real problem.

I mean, if you have moles in your yard or if you have a golf course or something, these can be a serious, serious pest.

People try a variety of poisons, and there's all sorts of mythical remedies, like putting Juicy Fruit gum in a burrow and things like that.

None of those really work.

Unfortunately, the only thing that works with -- the only thing that works very well is spike traps, and of course they're lethal to the mole, but the good thing about those is, they don't kill a lot of other things in the process.

I'm going to let this guy go back into his burrow.

We've dug up a section of it, but believe me, he'll put that right back in no time at all.

So I'm going to put him back down in the same spot, and there's a hole down there.

And he's going to use it.

And off he goes.

Okay, this looks like a great place to find one of the really secretive mammals of the LowCountry.

So we're looking for flying squirrels, and what I want to do is look inside this box and see if there's anything in it.

I'm going to put a glove on, because these things bite really, really hard -- I mean, they're not out to hurt anybody, but they are capable of biting pretty hard.

Let's see if there's anything in this one.

And I'm going to do this very carefully.

And sure enough, if you look in the back right there, you can see that there is definitely a flying squirrel in it.

And there's lichens and mosses and stuff, so this is a nest.

Really cool.

Oh, it looks like there's babies in here, too.

And if you look right here, there are some babies.

Okay, so here is the southern flying squirrel.

And these things are just absolutely unbelievable.

Look at the design of this thing.

It has all this extra skin right here, and when it flies, it spreads that skin out into sort of a parachute.

And this animal doesn't just free-fall.

It literally steers with its tail.

Look at the flattened tail, which it can move from side to side and help it to steer.

Looks like it's a female -- I can see the mammary glands that we were talking about.

And a just incredible animal.

Beautiful sort of brown color to help it blend in on the back, and think about this thing -- if it's up against the sky, gliding, this would help it to blend in with the sky.

So this particular squirrel is an educational animal.

It was raised in captivity.

And this will allow us to look at it a bit more closely.

He has great claws, and these claws help him to hold on when he's climbing up trees and things.

And look how big the eyes are.

And these eyes are designed to take in as much light as possible in low-light situations.

So these things do really, really well when it's dark out.

Allows them to see much better than we can, for instance, in low light levels.

They're really common.

These are all over the LowCountry.

And we don't see them very often because they're nocturnal.

And so, unless you're out at night, you're probably not going to see one.

For that matter, even if you are out at night, you're probably not going to see one.

Sometimes you can hear them.

They have a real high-pitched squeak that you can sometimes hear.

And let's look one more time at those -- that extra fold of skin.

I don't know if he's going to -- [Chuckles] You can see how agile they are.

These little guys are really, really good -- [Chuckles] Okay, I caught him again.

But they also bite, as I pointed out just a minute ago.

And this guy, although he's fairly tame, still bites.

I'm glad I wore my gloves for this segment.

Anyway, neat, neat animal, and one that is part of the LowCountry.

Okay, so this is obviously a captive deer.

But it's a good opportunity for us to look at kind of how white-tailed deer are designed.

And this particular one is a fawn.

It's got a lot of growing to do yet.

It's lost a lot of the spots, so it's developing that adult coloration, but it still needs to get much, much bigger.

This is a little male, and you can see, he's already starting to develop those little -- those little things that are going to be antlers.

They're little spikes right now.

So he's got a lot of growing to do.

First thing you notice is the nose.

These things have a great sense of smell.

This helps them to smell predators -- things that want to eat them -- and it also helps them to find their food.

They have good eyesight so that they can see things from long distances.

Look where the ears are.

The ears are mounted way up on top of the head.

And this allows them to hear, of course, danger coming.

And these animals are -- you know, they're skittish, because that's the way that they survive.

Here is a nine-banded armadillo.

In fact, this is one that was just caught in a live-catch trap.

Obviously a really common mammal in the LowCountry.

But they are amazing animals.

This particular one is a nine-banded armadillo.

It's the only one we have around here.

He's got, of course, these heavy sort of bony plates on the back, and these protect him from predators and things.

Look where the ears are -- they're mounted way up on top of the head.

And this allows the animal to hear really well.

That long snoot, and he uses that to smell out the sorts of things he likes to eat.

Nine-banded armadillos are insectivores.

They spend their entire lives digging with these great front claws, and what they do is they smell something underground -- earthworms, grubs, and all sorts of things like that -- they dig them up, and they eat them.

But they also eat fire ants.

Talk about a redeeming thing that armadillos do for us!

They will dig up a fire ant mound, they'll eat the ants, they'll eat the eggs, and pretty much everything.

In fact, that's a real favorite food of theirs.

And they actually belong to a group of mammals called edentates, which are toothless mammals.

And they do have teeth -- they have small, peg-like teeth -- but they do fit into that group.

You can see the tail -- they've got a really neat tail on them, which is also protected.

And they're super strong.

I wish you guys could feel just how strong this animal is, and they can really buck and jump.

They're very athletic.

I mean, they don't really look like it, but an armadillo can jump, you know, this high off the ground, easily.

The problem with that is, a lot of these get hit by cars.

And, you know, when they cross the road, they may very well jump into the grille of an oncoming car, which of course is not a real effective strategy.

One really cool thing about armadillos is, they always have four identical young.

So if this is a male or a female, it would have three siblings that were exactly the same.

And what happens is, one egg divides twice, and so you end up with four identical young.

Almost little clones of each other.

Armadillos can actually contract Hansen's disease, or leprosy.

There's no evidence that people can get it from armadillos, but they're very important as research animals because they can contract leprosy, which makes them really interesting.

Now, these are true mammals, so they do have fur, and if you look underneath, you can see the fur.

And because of this sort of plating on the back, they look more like reptiles or something like that, but they are true mammals.

Now, people always want to know how to get rid of armadillos.

And, you know, they're part of life here.

We're just going to have to realize that armadillos are going to dig your yard up occasionally.

There are ways to live-trap them.

They can be trapped specially with guide fences and live-catch traps -- in fact, that's how this guy was caught.

But I think it's unrealistic to think that we're going to get rid of armadillos.

I think they're here to stay.

It's fortunate they're kind of cute, neat animals, but I realize a lot of people are not wild about armadillos.

But as I said, they're here to stay, for sure.

Okay, so I think we've had a good look at this guy and we're going to let him go.

So let's go ahead and let him go on about his business.

Okay, so here is a possom.

Possoms are pretty cool.

First of all, it's the only marsupial we have in North America.

And that means it's a mammal with a pouch.

This is a female, and so she has a pouch, and her babies are born very, very small, and they move up into the pouch, and they feed there and get bigger, and they stay protected within the pouch.

And then eventually they'll come out and they'll climb around on Mom's back, and one day they fall off, and Mom doesn't really come back to get them, and they're pretty much on their own.

So you'll see very small possums that are fending for themselves.

They look just like the adults, only quite a bit smaller.

They have some other really cool things -- one is the tail.

I mean, the tail is prehensile.

And these things don't typically hang by the tail, but if they're climbing, they can use that tail to help them hang on in the branches.

Their feet have tremendous dexterity, and they can use these to catch small animals.

They can use them, of course, for climbing and things.

They have a thick coat of hair, and this protects them in the winter.

They have ears -- good hearing, for sure, and then also, I'm staying away from the teeth, because they have 50 teeth!

More teeth than any other terrestrial mammal.

And if you get bitten by a possum, it hurts.

I've been bitten a couple of times.

So you've got to be really, really careful with these animals.

Now, possums do not contract rabies very often.

Their body temperature is lower, and they just don't typically don't get rabies like some other mammals -- not to say they can't get it, because they can, very rarely.

You know, a lot of people don't like possums.

But they're really neat animals.

Now, they do show up in your yard sometimes, and they'll eat dog and cat food out of your pet's bowl, but for the most part they really don't hurt anybody.

If you leave them alone, they're going to leave you alone.

Now, one of the other cool things about possums is, if you really disturb one and it gets really scared, it has the ability to play dead.

So it will turn over, and it looks completely dead, [Chuckles] when in reality, it's just basically faking and waiting for the danger to pass.

But how cool is that -- an animal that can play dead when it gets in trouble!

One of the most recognizable of all mammals is the raccoon.

And you can see this one over my shoulder -- he's looking for fiddler crabs in the marsh here.

And that's one of his favorite foods.

These marsh raccoons, when fiddler crabs are available, they just love to eat them.

They have great hands for catching them, they have great dexterity in their hands.

And they also, of course, have good strong teeth for crunching them up as well.

And so these guys will actually take things that they want to eat, and they'll dip them in the water.

Used to -- people used to think that it was because they didn't have sufficient salivary glands, but the real truth is, they just like to dip things in the water to kind of help separate them and just kind of help wash out the stuff that they don't want to eat.

Not only are raccoons at home in the marsh, they do really well in your yard as well.

If you leave a pet food bowl outside, a raccoon is very likely to come in and visit it and eat whatever he can.

These things are true omnivores, so they'll eat a variety of things, from, you know, small animals like the fiddler crabs we talked about, to various vegetation, things like that.

And they're going to make a living wherever they live, for sure.

One thing about raccoons, though, is, you don't want to try and pick one up or try and catch one.

They are tough customers!

And you could get hurt really badly if you tried to catch a raccoon.

[Thunder rumbling] Okay, as you can see, the weather has taken a little bit of a turn for the worse.

But we're in for a real adventure now, because this house right here, this abandoned house, is primo habitat for one of the LowCountry's most elusive and really cool mammals.

So what we're going to do is have a look around and see if we can find some of them.

All right, it's pretty dark in here, but I think if we look around, this looks like great habitat.

Oh, here we go, this is exactly what we're looking for.

This is a really unusual bat.

It's called a big-eared bat, a Rafinesque big-eared bat.

And this is a species of special concern.

It's protected.

But it's characterized by very, very long ears -- I mean, the ears are about that long.

And this is a species that used to roost quite a bit in sort of upright trees, and it still does, where they're available.

Hollow trees, cypress and things, in the swamp.

Unfortunately, a lot of that habitat is gone, so they rely on houses like this, old houses, that are close to the swamp, so that they can roost.

Okay, here we go, here's a couple more.

In fact, one of them just flew -- one of them just flew.

But there's still one more over here.

This is another Rafinesque big-eared bat.

And look at the ears on this thing!

Just a fabulous little animal!

Has a wingspan of about 12 inches or so.

Bats are not big.

I mean, they are little guys.

A typical bat has a wingspan of about 12 inches.

It may weigh half an ounce or so.

So bats, because they fly -- you know, they're the only real true flying mammals -- they have to be very lightweight.

Okay, you see this bat hanging upside down.

And so this animal is literally hanging by its feet.

And it's going to stay here all day.

Now, about dusk, it's going to head out into the woods, into the forest, and it's going to literally catch thousands of insects -- things like mosquitoes, no-see-ums, all sorts of biting flies and things -- on the wing.

I mean, it's going to fly and capture them and eat them, and it's going to perform a very, very important and significant benefit to us.

It's going to keep us from having to spray a lot of pesticides and things like that.

Oh, my gosh, look at this!

This is guano -- bat poop, basically.

And so you can see all these stained areas where bats have been roosting right here.

Look, they've kind of -- the paint is kind of peeling off and stuff.

And it's stained from -- from the fecal droppings of the bats, and so what's happened is, they've been roosting here for so long that they've made this enormous pile of guano.

Now, guano is amazing stuff.

It's very high in nutrient quality.

In certain areas, it's used as fertilizer for gardens and all sorts of things, because it's so rich, but there's a -- a lot of bat poop right here.

You see lots of areas here where it's stained, where bats have been roosting.

Boy, there have been thousands of bats in here.

Okay, here is a bat, and I'm going to see if I can get a grip -- and I'm going to be a little bit careful, and I have gloves on to protect my hands, and I'm going to see if I can just -- I've got gloves on -- he's trying to bite through the gloves, but he can't.

And I'm going to get a good grip on him.

So this is a -- this appears to be a big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus.

Fabulous little beast, very common in houses and barns and things.

In fact, it does really, really well around people.

And it likes to roost in old houses like this abandoned house that we're in.

So this is primo habitat for a big brown bat.

[Chirping] Okay, I don't know if you guys could hear that little chirping noise.

Bats echolocate, and they actually vocalize quite a bit.

And this is their way of determining where insects are.

So what they do is, they fire out these sounds, and these sounds bounce off objects and come back, and then the bat's brain can analyze how close the insect is, how big an insect it is, whether it's the kind he likes to eat.

I mean, it's just an absolutely amazing way to locate and catch prey that's flying around in the air.

It would be hard to catch any other way.

I mean, they are awesome, awesome animals.

Very lightweight, huge wings for their size, and they're designed for just a really, really neat existence.

And let's get a close look.

One of the things that you'll notice is, the wing is basically just a modified hand.

In fact, chiropterans are this group, and they literally mean "hand wing."

And that's because, if we look at it really close, you'll notice that the thumb sticks out at the top of the wing, and then each one of these long bones is a finger bone, and so imagine your hand spread out, and then with webbing in between -- of course, modified and lengthened a tremendous amount.

So this animal, the whole arm is designed into -- into a flying apparatus or a wing, and that's where they get the name "hand wing."

This is very delicate material, too, so I'm being real careful not to hurt it.

Notice I'm wearing gloves.

Bats bite, and bats can carry rabies.

So I'm being very, very careful, but I've got a stout pair of gloves on, and I'm being -- handling him in a way that he can't bite me.

Now, I do not recommend ever picking up a bat, because, as I said, bats can bite, and they can certainly break the skin on a bare finger, a bare hand.

Bats have fairly impressive teeth, and when you look at them up close, they're just wicked-looking teeth.

But they eat insects, almost exclusively.

There are examples of species in other parts of the world that eat other things, like fruit bats and things, but our bats are insect-eaters, and they eat literally thousands and thousands of flying insects.

Okay, we're going to put this little guy back, and I think he'll crawl right up in here.

There we go.

So that was a really great field trip, But remember, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The LowCountry is home to an incredible diversity of plants and animals, but the only way to really experience these things is to get out in the field and see them for yourself.

Thanks for joining us.