Mammal March Madness 2015
Sumatran Rhino Won Mammal March Madness, final bout battle details. Also enjoy this awesomeness.
PhyloPic & Wikimedia Commons: Steen, Hartman, Hassan
Fun Fact: The term MARCH MADNESS was first applied to MAMMALS. The intense male-male competition of European Hares for access to females during the breeding season was called "March Madness."
Follow the action on twitter #2015MMM (or see storify archive by clicking battle details below)
Educators- I recommend following @mmm2015letsgo on twitter as that account is curating just the bout tweets and not spectator #TrashTalk. The account is run by a high school student as an awesome prosocial contribution to the Mammal March Madness community!!
FINAL BATTLE 9PM Eastern Thursday Night, be there or be square! #2015MMM
DAILY UPDATES:
Final ROAR: Dwarf Mongoose & Sumatran Rhino ADVANCE!! (battle details).
Elite Trait: Brown Bear, Were Yeti, Sumatran Rhino, & Dwarf Mongoose ADVANCE! (battle details).
Sweet Sixteen: Brown Bear, Elephant Seal, Were Yeti, Minotaur, Rhino, Tamaraw, Mongoose, & Tenrec ADVANCE! (battle details).
Round 2:
SEXY BEASTS & MYTHICAL MAMMALS: Bear-Dog, Brown Bear, Elephant Seal, Gigantopithecus, Cath Pulag, Yeti, Leukrokkotas, Minotaur ADVANCE! (battle details).
MIGHTY MINIS & CRITICALLY ENDANGERED: Rhino, Tamaraw, Macaque, Monk Seal, Fox, Mongoose, Tenrec, & Numbat ADVANCE! (battle details).
Round 1:
MIGHTY MINIS: Fox, Mongoose, Javan Mouse Deer, Tenrec, Pygmy Rabbit, Marmoset, Dwarf Rain Frog, & Numbat ADVANCE! (battle details).
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED: Rhino, Tamaraw, Tenkile, Macaque, Monk Seal, Warty Pig, Muriqui, Lynx ADVANCE! (battle details).
MYTHICAL MAMMALS: Cath Pulag, Rougarou, Leukrokkotas, Yeti, Minotaur, Rataoskr, Unicorn, Hanuman ADVANCE (battle details- relive the magic)
SEXY BEASTS: Elephant Seal, Bear-Dog, Daeodon, Brown Bear, Kangaroo, Wolverine, Lion, & Gigantopithecus ADVANCE! (battle details).
WILD CARD: BUMBLE BEE BAT WINS! (battle details).
Photograph: Andrew Parkinson/Corbis
Mammal March Madness in the news!
NPR, Chicago Tribune, Harvard Gazette, CBC As It Happens, Discovery News, Afternoon Shift WBEZ, & Youth Scientists of Australia Podcast.
Societies & Museums are joining the twitter fun too! Harvard Natural History Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, American Society of Mammalogists, and the American Society of Primatologists are all tweeting pics of collections & animals. Thanks for making #2015MMM better than ever!
BACKGROUND:
In honor of the NCAA College Basketball March Madness Championship Tournament, Mammals Suck is featuring *simulated* combat competition among mammals. 2013 & 2014 were super awesome, but this year Mammal March Madness is BACK, smaller, rarer, and better than ever!
The organizing team Kristi Lewton (Boston U), Chris Anderson (Dominican U), Josh Drew (Columbia U) & I (Katie Hinde, Harvard U) have toiled these last 11 months (or couple weeks, whatevs) putting together an epic 2015 Mammal March Madness.
This year we have ALL new divisions! No longer will the little guys automatically be one & done, with a MIGHTY MINI MAMMAL division small mammals will be hangin’ tough until at LEAST the Final Four. And in honor of the non-mammal combatants from 2014 we have one non-mammal competitor- the desert rain frog.
I *may* have spent many years being a major Redwall fan.
We have a SEXY BEAST division of mammals shaped by sexual selection and since the fossil mammals were so hot last year, we included some sexy ancient mammals again in 2015. In our current anthropocene of catastrophic extinctions, we have a CRITICALLY ENDANGERED division of IUCN red list species that we are in danger of losing in our lifetime.
And last but not least- we have MYTHICAL MAMMALS!!!
Tut tut tut. Before you disparage such fantastical entrants- we will discuss the adaptations of the human mind that make mythical mammals salient as well as consider the ecological relevance and cultural importance of mythical beasts. And isn’t that the real truth?
2015 BRACKET
(If you are unfamiliar with brackets, check out the FAQ at the end of the post)
2015 Scientific Name Bracket
Some details: Battle outcome is a function of the two species' attributes within the battle environment. Attributes considered in calculating battle outcome include temperament, weaponry, armor, body mass, fight style, and other fun facts that are relevant to the outcome. These are one on one- head to head combat situations- um except for the mythical mammals that have multiple heads. Some random error has been introduced into calculating battle outcome & the amount of that error is scaled to the disparity in rankings between combatants.
Just as predicted from #2013MMM (cough cough, JOSH!)
Early rounds, the battle occurs in the better-ranked species' habitat (home court advantage). BUT once we get to the ELITE EIGHT, battle location will be random: forest, semi-arid desert, intertidal zone, or snowy tundra.
The Wild Card Battle starts it all off March 9th.
battle location in WILD Card determined by coin toss.
FULL SCHEDULE:
M 3/9 Wild Card!
T 3/10 1st Round Mighty Mini Mammals
W 3/11 1st Round Critically Endangered Mammals
T 3/12 1st Round Mythical Mammals
F 3/13 1st Round Sexy Beasts
M 3/16 2nd Round Mighty Minis & Critically Endangered
T 3/17 2nd Round Mythical & Sexy Beasts
W 3/18 Sweet Sixteen
M 3/23 Elite Trait
T 3/24 Final Roar
TH 3/26 FINALBATTLE of MAMMAL MARCH MADNESS
We’ll live tweet the battles in the evening (~8PM Eastern, #2015MMM) and then the storify will be posted here. Everyone will be able to see this permanent record of the throwdowns and outcomes. And don't think you just get to have fun without any learning. Expect fun facts about the species' ecology, social behavior, evolution, and reproduction.
We are excited to announce that after playing in 2014, the amazing artists from Cirque de Rouge Tattoo Shop in Washington DC will be doing original art of all the species in 2015! Check out Charon Henning, Cas Loll, Kim Ewell, Allen McFadden, Shannon Freed, Cyn Rudzis & more to come!
(I CAN'T EVEN STARE DIRECTLY INTO THE AWESOMENESS)
And Adam Cole over at Skunk Bear is also cooking up some awesome for Mammal March Madness. Keep an eye out for updates here at Mammals Suck & follow the twitter hashtag #2015MMM.
To get an idea of how many people are playing, please send in a photo of your holding your bracket! Print the bracket, and take a picture with it & email it to mammalmarchmadness@gmail.com. Last year players posed with fossils, lab jazz, taxidermied mammals, in costumes, and in groups! (reminder to self: I still need to mail out prize packs to 2014 photo winners below).
So many great bracket photos; picking winners was really hard.
BRACKET FAQ
What do the numbers next to the Mammals mean?These correspond to the relative rankings among the species. 1 is the highest/best ranked team in the division and 16 is the lowest/worst- the number assigned is referred to as "seeding" but its functionally interchangeable with ranking (seeded/ranked are therefore also interchangeable).
The single elimination bracket battle favors the strongest teams until you get out to the semi-finals: 1 plays (crushes) 16, 2 plays 15…
What do the numbers next to the Mammals mean?These correspond to the relative rankings among the species. 1 is the highest/best ranked team in the division and 16 is the lowest/worst- the number assigned is referred to as "seeding" but its functionally interchangeable with ranking (seeded/ranked are therefore also interchangeable).
The single elimination bracket battle favors the strongest teams until you get out to the semi-finals: 1 plays (crushes) 16, 2 plays 15…
Oh and just like the military, or the hunger games, and to some extent in academia- it’s up or out. As soon as a species loses, it’s out of the tournament.
What is an "upset"?This is when a low ranked team beats a high ranked team. 9 beating 8 isn't a super impressive upset. In the actual NCAA tournament upsets happen when a 12 will beat a 5 or an 11 will beat a 6, once every few years a 15 will beat a 2 in the first round. For example,
“Coming off its 11th national championship the season before, UCLA was ready to make another run through the 1996 NCAA tournament as a No. 4 seed. But in his final year as coach, Pete Carril and his 13 seeded Princeton offense got the best of the Bruins, stunning Jim Harrick’s squad in the first round with a last-second basket on a backdoor cut.”
Damn!
What is a “Cinderella” team?A "cinderella" team is a low-ranked team that progresses multiple rounds of the tournament systematically beating higher ranked teams.
So should I always pick the better-ranked mammal?No! Real fans don’t abandon their favorite mammals just because they are pathetic at this kind of battle (although hopefully well-suited to their particular ecological niche). For example, my primate picks in 2013 performed dismally because of my well-established monkey agenda was in direct opposition to reality when the apes totally wiped the floor with them. People will clown you if your bracket is TOO conservative by always picking the better-ranked team.
Also the rankings are not infallible and there are upsets in nature too. Upsets are what make March Madness exciting. Like if Silver Pika beats Sumatran Rhino in Round 1- OMG NO ONE SAW THAT COMING!!!!! (but I think we can feel pretty certain that is very unlikely to happen).
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