Masked Ringtail Possums (Pseudochirulus larvatus) in Papua Indonesia and Papua New Guinea

Coloring always acts to enhance animal survival and promote animal sustainability. It assumes its particular expression to:

• Blend with the environment;
• Interact with light;
• Warn of unpleasant odors, tastes or textures.

All three become relevant in regard to masked ringtail possums, whose colors:

• Act as camouflage;
• Imitate sylvan plays of light and shadow;
• Portend male sternal gland scent releases.

For example, masked ringtail upper-sides always communicate grey-brown. The under-sides always convey white. Fine, super-sensory whiskers darken the lower face. A subtly dark stripe perfectly divides the head from the snout backwards. Red-brown frames facial contours. Brown-black functions as the color of the mask which encircles:

• Big, dark-adapted, rounded eyes;
• The bases of both light-fronted, small, super-sensitive ears.

Masked ringtails are native to one southwest Pacific Ocean island and two Australasian countries. Two nations indeed claim sovereignty over the world’s fourth-largest island. Indonesia considers western New Guinea part of the Indonesian archipelago while the independent nation of Papua New Guinea exists on the island’s eastern half. Masked ringtails flourish much more in the east than the west. Their territory in fact follows the island’s east-to-west-running central highlands. Scientists indeed group masked ringtail populations into high-population centers within the Central Cordillera. They pinpoint:

• Telefomin in the Bismarck Range;
• The Kratke Range;
• The Owen Stanley Range before Wau;
• The Rawlinson Mountains in the Huon Peninsula’s Saruwaged Range;
• The Star Mountains just over the border in the west.

The bio-geography of masked ringtails consequently correlates with monthly ranges of:

• 65.28 inches (1,658.11 millimeters) concerning evapo-transpiration;
• 66.00°F (18.89°C) for temperature;
• 13.57 inches 344.6 millimeters) regarding precipitation.

It covers a total of 41,574.78 square miles (107,678.19 square kilometers), or less than one-fourth of Papua New Guinea’s total area and less than one-eighth of the entire island. It depends upon:

• Subsurface geologies of the Southern Hemisphere’s deepest caves;
• Surface geologies of igneous lavas, pyroclasts (“fire-fragmented”), and volcanics and of metamorphic sandstone and siltstone.

It draws in primary and secondary forests of:

• Closer, denser, lower-canopied crowns on taller trees at elevations below 4,593.18 feet (1,400 meters);
• More even and open, smaller-canopied crowns on shorter shrubs and trees higher up.

The wildlife associations of masked ringtail possums therefore acknowledge fauna and flora of moist lowland and montane forests. Masked ringtails are Owen Stanley Range neighbors to:

• Eastern parotias (Parotia helenae) and streaked bowerbirds (Amblyornis subalaris);
• Long-footed water rats (Leptomys elegans);
• Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterflies (Ornithoptera alexandrae).

They become Huon Peninsula montane rainforest occupants with:

• Huon astrapias (Astrapia rothschildi) and spangled honeyeaters (Melipotes ater);
• Huon tree-frogs (Litoria dux);
• Matschie’s tree-kangaroos (Dendrolagus matschiei).

They count among Bismarck Range co-residents:

• Purple-spotted swallowtail butterflies (Graphium weiskei);
• Telefomin cuscuses (Phalanger matanim);
• Telefomin round-leaf bats (Hipposideros corynohyllus).

They create niches in the Papua Indonesia-Papua New Guinea-straddling Star Mountains with:

• Goodfellow’s tree-kangaroos (Dendrolagus matschiei);
• Macgregor’s giant ochre-winged honeyeaters (Macgregoria pulchra);
• Papuan whipbirds (Androphobus viridis).

Other possums accompany masked ringtails into the scientific classification of ring-tailed animals. Some of these Australian- and/or New Guinea-based fellow ringtail possums become part of nearby or overlapping wildlife associations with masked ringtails. Coppery (Pseudochirops cupreus), golden plush-coated (Pseudochirops corinnae), painted (Pseudochirulus forbesi), and pygmy (Pseudochirulus mayeri) ringtails can be grouped into the almost-neighbor and neighbor categories. The physical resemblance between masked ringtails and proximitous ringtail possums emerges as particularly strong in regard to painted ringtails in Papua New Guinea’s Bird’s Tail Peninsula. But behavioral similarities and bio-geographical preferences do not hold any stronger for masked and painted ringtails, whom the definite break between the Kratke Mountains westward and the Morobe provincial town of Wau eastward separates.

All of the masked ringtail’s ring-tailed possum neighbors are arboreal, cecal-fermenting (“intestinal pouch-processing”), coprophagous (“feces-eating”), folivorous (“leaf-eating”) nocturnalists. Masked ringtails indeed favor:

• Braving branches and trunks thanks to opposable big toes and thumbs and prehensile (“grasping”) tails;
• Getting food reversed into the caecum for digesting, eliminating, re-ingesting, and re-vacating;
• Ingesting day-passed feces to maximize nutrition, sanitation, and security and leaving fewer night-passed wastes to thwart detection by predatory raptors and reptiles;
• Maximizing nutritional intake by cutting and grinding food thanks to the upper jaw’s 6 incisors, 2 canines, 6 premolars, and 8 molars and the lower jaw’s 4 incisors, 6 premolars, and 8 molars.

They finalize all of the above-mentioned activities from day-occupied tree hollows and nests.

The first official masked ringtail taxonomy comes in 1911 from the industrious expertise of Professor Friedrich Förster and Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2^nd Baron Rothschild (February 8, 1868 – August 27, 1937). Today’s scientists continue to identify as masked ringtail hallmarks:

• “False little hands” (Pseudochirulus);
• “Bewitched, enchanted, masked” faces (larvatus).

Other hallmarks emerge in ringtail possum records for dimorphism (“two body [sizes]”) and fecundity, with females fattened from:

• Litter-delivering 1 – 2 newborns during year-round breeding;
• Pouch- and back-carrying pre-adults.

All hallmarks merge to sustain active-avoiding:

• Agro-industrialism;
• Globally-warmed climate change;
• Road-building;
• Suburbanization.

They owe success to protected areas which ironically protect traditional masked ringtail predators: arrow-, bow-, club-, fire-, and trap-wielding villagers.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Asaro Mud Man with unique clay mask, Kabiufa (~3 miles [5 km] from Asaro), Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea: Jialiang Gao peace-on-earth.org, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Asaro_Mud_Man_Kabiufa_PNG.jpg

Distribution data from IUCN Red List: Chermundy/ IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, species assessors and the authors of the spatial data, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Masked_Ringtail_Possum_area.png

Huon Peninsula in Papua New Guinea: NASA World Wind, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Huon_Peninsula_NASA.jpg

view of the Owen Stanley Range from Ower's Corner, 31 miles (50 km) east of Port Moresby: Colin Freeman (ColinF at English Wikipedia), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OwenStanleyRangeOwersCornerView.jpg

ca. 1910 oil on canvas by Joszi Arpad Koppay (March 15, 1857 - September 2, 1927) ~ National Portrait Gallery, London: Kristofer M. Helgen, Roberto Portela Miguez, James Kohen, Lauren Helgen/ZooKeys, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Lord_Lionel_Walter_Rothschild_-_ZooKeys-255-103-g003-bottom_left.jpeg; via Pensoft Publishers / ZooKeys @ https://zookeys.pensoft.net/showimg.php?filename=oo_25946.jpg

Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Genova, Ser. 2, Vol. XVIII (XXXVIII), Tav. II: Public Domain, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/annalidelmuseoci38muse/page/n742/mode/1up

Mount Bosavi, Southern Highlands province, Papua New Guinea: panvorax, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Bosavi_pad_pan.jpg

dense forest on mountain spurs: Owen Stanley Range, Bulldog Track, Papua New Guinea: Colin Freeman (ColinF at English Wikipedia), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mid_mountain_forest_PNG.jpg

H. Grose Smith and W.F. Kirby, Rhopalocera Exotica, Vol. I, Papilionidae (1887-1892), Plate XXI, Fig. 1, between pp. 48-49: Not in copyright, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/rhopaloceraexoti01smit/page/n147/mode/1up?view=theater; Not in copyright, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/9914490

Ekuti Range, central Papua New Guinea. Bulldog Road rounds spur on middle right.: Colin Freeman (ColinF at English Wikipedia), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ekuti_Range_Bulldog_Track.jpg

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