Mongolian mammals:
rodents, squirrels, hamsters + carnivores

Mongolia has a plethora of rodents, the identification of which I found rather confusing.

Marmots (Mongolian tarvaga, Bobac or Steppe Marmot, Marmota bobac) are clear enough — they are bigger than anything else, almost wombat-sized. Chinzo called the smaller burrowing mammals we saw either "Mongolian hamsters" (zuram) or long-tailed souslik (gozooroi zuram), and the drivers mentioned a bozlog (smaller than a zuram) found in the south. The guidebook to Gobi Gurvansaikhan national park says there are 18 species of pika at Yolyn Am. And then there are jerboa and voles...

The following photographs are of what Chinzo called the "long-tailed souslik" — Dinets says they are long-tailed ground squirrels Spermophilus undulatus.

The following two are both from Yolyn Am. The first looks like the same critter above, but is apparently an Alashan ground squirrel Spermophilus alashanicus; the second is a pika Ochotona dauurica.

a young Central Asian hare, Lepus tolai

At one point the van I wasn't in saw a silver fox cross the road. We didn't see any wolves, but we did see a sheep that had been killed by one, barely 20 metres from the ger I was sleeping in. I saw a pine marten at Manshir, and a hedgehog at Juuchin Gobi ger camp. [Dinets says silver foxes and martens are very rare in Mongolia, and that the animals we saw were probably a corsac fox and a sable.]

Up: 2005 Mongolia trip