Saturday

Christmas Lights Up a Tree Frog


Frog swallows a Christmas light!

Hard to believe that this little Cuban frog was that hungry. 

Or maybe he was overcome with the holiday spirit?

Here's what the photographer says:


Monday

Strange Ways to Go Dashing Through the Snow


What do you know about sledding?

Everyone knows about dog-sledding...the Iditarod, etc. So I had to post this gorgeous photo of a dog sledding team. Dogs have been known to sled 90 miles in one day, each one pulling 85 pounds apiece!


And then there's the more traditional sleigh pulled by one or two horses.

Thursday

Turkeys You WON'T Eat for Thanksgiving


I just had to sneak in a little post about turkeys, because there are turkeys, but then there are turkeys!

The turkey you'll eat for the holiday comes from the original American Wild Turkey, seen below:

Big Cats and Their Halloween Pumpkins!

Tuesday

A Mysterious (and Wrongly-Named) Dog



Elusive, shy of people, a real mystery dog.

This wild dog (like the Bush dog) has webbed toes.

And, strangely enough, the female dog is way bigger than the male.  Not too common in the world of dogs!

Friday

Alligators in the Sewers of New York?



Alligators!  

Dumped as babies into the plumbing of the Big Apple, they've grown to monstrous size. And they might come back up the pipes and into your bathtub... right?  

Well, just in case the picture above has you concerned, there's no hard evidence that there are gators in the sewers of New York. 

Why not?  

New York is too cold for an alligator to survive there in the wild.   :)

Of course, who knows about sewers in warm cities. Ha ha

Crocodilians are cool and toothy looking, but the three main types look a lot alike.  So let's take a closer look and see how to tell them apart:
  


Top view is cool too...



Got it?  For more croc craziness, check out my posts on gharials and false gharials.  

And after that, you might be ready to take a fun little test to see how well you know your crocs!

Tuesday

The King....Manely

Photograph by Natalie Manuel

The King of Beasts...the lion.  

Surveys tell us that most people, though they have trouble naming many other animals shown to them, can identify a male lion.

That's a relief!

There are eight subspecies of lion, most of which live in Africa. 

A small number of Asiatic lions, like the one pictured below,  live in the Gir Forest in India:


Most lions are varying shades of color, but there are some white lions living wild in Tambavati. 


White lions are not albino, but leucistic South Africa lions; That means their normal tan coat color is suppressed with the chinchilla gene, but their eyes are gold-brown, not red like a true albino's.

Lions are the only big cats that lives in groups, called prides. The pride can have up to forty members, most of which are females and cubs.


That big lion mane? Lions are the only big cats where it is easy to tell the males from the females.  Except in Tsavo, where the Maneless lions live.  

Did you know that maneless lions tend to be man-eaters?  Check those out here.

And speaking of manes, let's take a look at the different colors their manes can be: 


Amazing variety, isn't there?


 Got something to say about this?  Leave me a comment!

Thursday

Strange Deer Hunters Find


There are secrets in the world. 

Secrets we would probably never see if it weren't for hunters and photographers.  


Like coyotes who are part dog.

Strangely colored giraffes.
Sea slugs that look like candy.
Polar bears that hug sled dogs.

But in the woods near you, there lurk deer like you've never seen before.  


See the two deer at the top of this page?  The one on the right is a big beautiful buck.


The one on the left is a buck with some amazing antlers. His antlers are called "nontypical".


They look almost....melted. But deer antlers can be even more bizarre. Let's look at some nontypical deer, both on the hoof and, ahem, on the wall.  


Just to make sure we all know what a normal whitetail deer looks like, I've added one on the chart below.  So let's compare a normal whitetail to some nontyps: 







Hard to believe, isn't it?  

Now let's compare a normal mule deer to... uh...other mule deer:

These guys are incredible. 

And of course you've got to see the top five nontypical bucks ever! 





 Just FYI, the blacktail deer above are a type of mule deer.

But, you ask, are there nontyp deer in art? You bet:


I like the way his antlers connect together in the middle, though as far as I know that's not possible in real life :)

If you want to see more nontypical deer, you can visit here (a clean and trusty website) and click on the yearly calendars... there are some amazing photos that I wasn't able to put on my blog.  

And leave me a comment!

Friday

Attack of the Jellies!


They aren't fish, so their name has been changed...

...to Sea Jellies

Which I like better than their old name... Jellyfish.

A sea jelly is made of the top part, called the umbrella, and the bottom part, called the bell.

Many live upside down, looking like plants on the ocean floor.


Monday

Weird Hats That Birds Wear


I was 6 years old when I realized that birds wear hats.

It came from the Roadrunner. You know, the bird that was always foiling Wile E. Coyote's plans. I loved watching that cartoon, and I naturally thought that roadrunners were tall, long-legged, and wore hats with ornate purple feathers on their heads.

So imagine my shock on the family's road trip out West, when my parents stopped the car and pointed excitedly along the road saying, "Look, girls! A roadrunner!"

I looked, saw nothing. I stood up and leaned out the window and searched frantically. 

THIS is what I saw:


THIS is what I was looking for:





Huh??

Turns out, the real roadrunner is a fast, foot-high creature that blends amazingly into his desert surroundings. He has a tiny tuft on his head for a hat...and that's about it. No purple plumes anywhere.

Well!  Another childhood belief utterly smashed.  But I found out there are other birds out there with hats that are unbelievable. Some are pretty, some are scary, and some are just...indescribable.

So here they are, weird hats that bird wear!

First, the pretty hats:

That Tufted Titmouse is just so cute.


Now the hats of royalty:

Mmmm, beautiful!


Some very silly hats:

Hah.  I would have named that Kingfisher the Court Jester Kingfisher.   :)


Here are some pretty scary hats:

Those guys look very....hungry


And some hats that are a bit hard to believe:


So how about this bird below and his weird hat?  Do you know what bird he is?  Leave a comment if you do...




Saturday

From the Mixed Up Files of Animal Colors





So I was cruising around the internet when a photo caught my eye.  

It's a cat, but the strangest cat ever.  I just had to show you.

This is "Venus", the cat with two faces!

There are other cats that have half & half colors on their faces, it's true.  I particularly like these two, below:





And there are some that, like Venus, have different colored eyes, like this kitty:
 





















But Venus is special because she has both; different color blocks on her face AND different colored eyes.


Pretty amazing.  And now Venus is famous... and showing God's glory in the stunning creature he made!



Thursday

The Skin of the Seahorse



Just get close to a seahorse. 

Real close.

And I bet you'll say to yourself..."unbelievable..."  

The silvery iridescence on the Lined seahorse above is like a powdering of stardust.  Amazing!  

As are the details on the seahorses in the following photos.  I think they will blow you away....


Wednesday

The Zebra's Dark Side




The black zebra...

Sometimes, a zebra is born with strange stripe patterns and large areas of black...even spots.

These photos illustrate some of the variety possible in the stripes or, in the top and bottom photo, spots of the zebra. Kind of amazing...

Saturday

When Dogs and Coyotes Cross


This is supposed to be a coyote pack.  But it's not.  It's a pack of coyote-dogs.

In Bouquet Canyon, where I grew up, we owned five acres in the National Forest (it wasn't forested, though; it was like desert - juniper and sagebrush). We were basically in the middle of nowhere. And we had dozens of cats.  Well, I should say a succession of dozens of cats. These cats were safe from harm around our house and our dogs but like most cats they were too... curious.  

So in the night they wandered up into the canyon hills behind us.

And in the night the coyotes were so hungry, that they wandered down from the canyon hills behind us.

Friday

That Creature Sitting Next to You



You swing onto the Portland train one morning, find a seat and sit down.  You look across the aisle, and there.  There is a wild dog of some sort staring back at you. 

Quite a shock.  

It looks very like a fox, or a coyote.  Maybe.... a wolf?  

You know that if it's a wolf, you better back away as quietly as possible, with your umbrella at the ready.  But if it's a fox or coyote, you can probably safely leave him alone.  

But how will you know what to do?