Of the more than 4,000 mammals in the world, 1,800 belong to the order of rodents and 900 are bats or bats. It is precisely this group of mammals represented the best in Spain, with 27 species distributed in three families.

The families of mammals represented in the Iberian Peninsula are:

Threated species

Table 1. Mammals in the Iberian Peninsula

• Medium horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus mehelyi): This species is scarce in Spain, since only known breeding colonies 9 and 16 of hibernation in the southern two-thirds of the peninsula. Recently presented an inventory of important refuges for bats, made by the Spanish Society for the Conservation and Study of Bats (Secemu). These 55 shelters, caves, tunnels, mines, where breeding and hibernating mammals, which will swell the Natura 2000 network. In a colony reach 20,000 bats in winter meet, in others up to 11 different species coexist in the same cave. One fifth of these shelters are located in Andalusia.
• Bat Bechstein (Myotis bechsteinii) forest species found in the mountain areas of Galicia, Cantabrian mountains, Pyrenees, Iberian and Central, and some forests of Andalusia. He lives in hollow trees and caves, and is one of the bats rare in our country. No known population, but it seems very little.
• Eared Bat Canary (Plecotus teneriffae) is a big-eared bat, endemic to the Canary Islands. It seems very tied to the pine forests of Tenerife, La Palma and El Hierro. As with other forest bats, habitat loss is the biggest problem. 19 shelters are known where there are no major conpentraciones.
• Otter (Lutra lutra): Although found throughout the Peninsula is more abundant in the western half. Its population is not known but is estimated to reach 6,000. This is a semi-aquatic mammal that lives in rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, wetlands and the Atlantic coast. Requires banks to vegetation for breeding and not much water and food contamination
• Grizzly bear (Ursus arctos): brown bear been considered in Spain as sort cynegetic since 1973. His recovery has been one project most important is conducting EU (Programa Life). Currently there a population of 70-90 bears western Cordillera Cantábrica (Somiedo Muniellos, Ancares) and another 20-25 in eastern Picos Europe.
• Iberian lynx (Lynx pardina): this species only lives in the Iberian Peninsula and is considered the world's most endangered feline. The number of individuals is 800-1000 copies. Its range is wide, but populations are found mainly in mountain areas and scrub of Andalusia, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León and Madrid. Is currently trying to captive breeding lynx in Doñana experimental center. The recovery of this animal has also been a key objective in the Life program.
• Monk seal (Monachus monachus): of 7 species of phocids known, only two visitors to our waters: it is the gray seal, from time to ciando is sighted in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean monk seal, whose survival hangs by a thread. The last specimen Spanish monk seal was popular Peluso, discovered in 1978 on the islands Chafarinas near Melilla. He came to mount a spectacular operation to free him from a network other than he was compressing the body, until one day he disappeared. Experts believe that Chafarinas have seen in recent years, some more copies, from the population that sits on the shores of North Africa, especially Mauritania and the Sahara. Today its global range is fragmented into three clusters: the eastern Mediterranean, mainly in Greece, Turkey, Albania and Croatia, the western Mediterranean, in Algeria and Morocco, although the coast of Italy, France and Spain have been sporadic observations, and the Atlantic, home to a small colony in Madeira and a much higher on the coasts of Mauritania and the Sahara. Its world population will reach 400 copies and its future is far from rosy. In the early summer of 1997 more than 150 monk seal population died Atlantic victims of a rare disease, probably caused by red tide dinoflagellates formed by toxins produced by three species of algae, which paralyzes the nervous system of these animals. In the Cape of Gata (Almería) a small group survived until the early sixties and the Balearics disappeared in the seventies. Until 1990, the Canary Islands have been sporadic catches. Hunting-intentioned fishermen facilitated by the fact that the monk seal is conllaua-catch in nets, pollution and, above all, the progressive destruction of coastal habitats, are about to end with another species most at the beginning of XXI century.