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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!