Every year the madness seems to creep from March in April. And not just basketball. There is other madness afoot.
The basketball version of March Madness will come to a conclusion tonight. The animal version could take a bit longer. Seeing as how we are just down to the Final Roar. Yes… roar.
I had no idea this takes place, but this is the tenth year for March Mammal Madness. Although they may have to change the name. There are a few non-mammals that have done quite well this year.
If you are like me, you may never have heard of March Mammal Madness. It was created in 2013 by Professor Katie Hinde and colleagues at Arizona State University to get people to learn a bit more about various animals. They created a bracket like competition, similar to the basketball version, that takes various various attributes of animals, gives them a value and puts them head to head in what is essentially a dice roll to see who wins.
They had some interesting animals in there this year, but like I say, the mammal part is not entirely correct. For instance, a Golden Eagle is in the Final Roar this year. A bird is not a mammal. But it would still be a worthy opponent.
The eagle made it to the Final Roar by defeating our extinct ancestor, Homo habilis. It will be taking of the Wolverine to try to reach the final bracket. The wolverine got there by defeating the Emperor Penguin. Striped animals and small animals made up the other half of the bracket, so I don’t expect the rock Hyrax taking on the Okapi to be as action packed.
To be clear, they animals do not actual fight each other. The apparently use a random number generator to figure out who the winner might be. I have been reading through some of it, and there are some pretty interesting things about all the animals involved. And I would probably have much better chance of picking the winner on the animal version.
I may not pay much attention to the basketball this evening, but I will be checking in on March Mammal Madness. I’m pulling for the wolverine. Golden Eagles can fly and are equipped with talons and a big beak, but wolverines are feisty.
Go wolverines!