100% of all the vital nutrients required for bactrian camels to survive can be found in bactrian camels.
Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis)
The margay’s spots make it a master of disguise. If it’s stalking you, you’ll never see it in time. Here, if you look closely, you can see the camouflaged cat sneaking up on you from the bottom left hand side of the screen. It’s plan is for you to be completely distracted by the ocelot on the right.
Cotton-top Tamarin (Saguinus oedipus)
Tamarins like to eat sweet things. In India, they soak the tamarins in warm water, then, after removing them, boil the water so it reduces to a nice sweet brown sauce. Tamarin sauce goes well with papadums.
Giraffe Stag-Beetle (Prosopocoilus giraffa)
“I have been … and always shall be … your friend.”
House Wren
Birds must approach people sized before they can have a frog stuck in their throat. Until then, they make due with smaller items.
Moving Leaf Insect (Phyllium celebicum)
Some insects have adopted a method of camouflage in which they closely resemble the plants on which they live. Insectivores such as shrews, chameleons, and aardwolfs (aardwolves?) do not see these large bugs, so they are safe.
They get eaten by sheep instead.
Bison (Bison bison (Bison bison (Bison bison (Bison bison))))
It takes a while for young bison to grow their full coat of fur. Until then, to stave off chills, they wear one of their parents.
Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus)
The camels go sleeping three by three.
Hoorah! Hoorah!
The camels go sleeping three by three.
Hoorah! Hoorah!
The camels go sleeping three by three.
Then they wake up to look at me,
And they all go laying down, upon the ground.
They don’t care about rain.
Throwback Thursday
The size of this fish suggests that it is critical to sustaining a breeding population in the shrinking seas. It should be thrown back.
Giant Jumping Stick (Stiphra sp.)
The Minnesota Zoo has a “Big Bugs” exhibit going on right now. This is your chance to go see some pretty special insects that you’ll likely not get the chance to see again. There are still a few weeks left in the exhibit, so if you like weird looking critters like this, you should probably go.
Wolverine (Gulo gulo)
Despite their fierce exterior, wolverines are soft and pink inside.
Damselfly
If you were to cling to a massively tall blade of grass, you’d probably grab onto the outsides of the blade with your hands and feet and cling on for dear life.
Look at the damselfly’s feet. It’s actually holding onto each side of the blade as if that side of its body is separate from the other. In effect, if you cut it in half, each half would still be holding onto the blade.
Garter Snake
Garter snakes have stripes so they can move faster.
Eastern Hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis)
Every year, I run a little contest based on the WWF Adoption Guide and let people cast a vote (or a poem) for which animal gets to come home and live with me. One that is perpetually on the list is the Hellbender Salamander. Until that happened, I had no idea that these things existed. It was years after that that I finally saw my first one.
They’re interesting, not in the least, because they have numerous other interesting names, such as “snot otter”, “Allegheny alligator”, and “leverian water newt”. I mean, seriously, in what world is “hellbender salamander” the most innocuous choice for a name. Oh, and they’re all dying out because that’s the sort of things amphibians are doing these days. Sure would be nice if we could stop that from happening.
As mentioned earlier, the rarest animals are rare even in zoos. I visited several zoos that had them before I finally found one that not only had one on display, but also had clean water and a display that I could shoot through. So, I was finally able to see one. Perhaps it would have been easier to find them earlier if I had known that they look like someone took a salamander skin and stuffed it with random pebbles.
I’m also puzzled at its being yellow, as that’s not the colour they are in Google images, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.
August Carol
Bright shining moon …
Four lit spires,
Three dark plants,
Two cactus groves,
And a bird near a boojum tree.
Przewalskii’s Wild Horse (Equus ferus przewalskii)
A bonus Sunday post about politics.
Here you see congress.
Or maybe it’s a bunch of horses’s asses refusing to follow the one horses’s ass that’s trying, and failing, to lead.
So hard to be sure.
Black-tailed Prairie Dog performing Hamlet
“(What say you?)”
“(Nay, then, I have an eye of you.–If you love me, hold not off.)”
Cactus
Every night the moon grows fuller, more flowers open. At the height of the full moon, when all flowers open, the cactus walks the desert searching for sleeping victims to awake for pollination assistance.
Bee
Everyone knows that bees communicate the location of good flowers via the universal language of dance. Few know, however, that red and yellow flowers require the Hokey Pokey.
Leaf Me Alone
A few years back, I read an article that theorized that plants evolved their distinctive edges so that amphibians that were trying to eat them would hurt their soft mouths and go on to easier-to-eat plants. I, of course, cannot find the article today.
While I think the idea is fascinating, my fundamental problem with it is that I haven’t seen much, outside of certain oaks and holly, that show transition from a jagged-edge leaf to something more like a thorn. In fact, thorns seems to either be adapted from the whole leaf or from a branch, not from leaf “feature creep”, so to speak.
Granted, I’m not a botanist, and there could be whole families of plants I’m not thinking about. If you know of any family that shows evolution from a relatively flat and smooth leaf to something that clearly seems designed for defense, I’d be very interested in hearing about it.