He doth nothing but frown, as who should say ‘If you
will not have me, choose:’ he hears merry tales and
smiles not
Tag Archives: Saint Louis Zoo – Saint Louis
Sacred Ibis
Per Herodotus, the sacred ibis protects humanity by devouring winged serpents.
Guess they work.
Sonora Desert Centipede
Me: “It’s just a quick trip to the zoo. I won’t need my flash or macro lens.”
Centipede: “I’ma pose perfectly today!”
Kangaroo
I’ve been trying to years to get a good photo of a kangaroo hopping, from the side. Thus far, this is the best I can do. Straight ahead, you don’t have to track them and if you take several shots at once while adjusting focus, some of them turn out. When they’re moving side to side, they move so fast that by the time you get them in frame and focused, they’ve usually stopped hopping or the timing works out that it looks like they’re just standing on the ground.
In a zoo environment, you can’t really get a nice long shot from which to select particular animals. That’s how they do it in Australia which, alas, is not where I am.
My hope is that the upcoming Nikon d850 will be just enough faster that the shots I want will become a bit more feasible.
Hippo
Even in infrared, the hippo is the most dangerous animal in Africa.
Green Heron
Of all the options available to describe this heron, I’m not sure I would have chosen “green”.
Blue Crane
When building birds, it is important to use all the neck bones in the set.
Babirusa
It’s always good to support your friends.
Bactrian Camel
When shade is hard to come by.
Elephant
Maybe I’m jaded, but I don’t think elephant bonsai will ever catch on.
Prairie Dog performing Winter’s Tale
Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?–a note infallible
Of breaking honesty–horsing foot on foot?
Kangaroo
You can’t go home again
Asian Elephant
Next time someone asks you “what’s up?”, you can answer “elephant trunk” without telling a lie.
Wood Louse
The better I get at taking photos of these little guys the less cute they look.
Gaboon Viper
When you have eyes on the sides of your head, it’s hard to see the pole in front of you.
Water Strider
If you zoom in on this photo, you’ll see that strider’s right eye is malformed. I do not know if it got crushed somehow or (more likely) if something went wrong when it was growing.
Given what I know of insect brains and how they handle image reconstitution, though, this may not actually be a drawback to how they interpret the world. The operating theory seems to be that each eye facet sends an image section to the brain, which folds them all together into a single concept of the world around them. Unlike our eyes, which have focusing mechanisms, each facet in an insect eye consists of a fixed lens (like a GoPro) connected to a single sensor cell (not like a GoPro), so it is quite possible that the insect’s brain can reconstruct a mental image of their surroundings just fine with eyes that aren’t spherical. They likely have some blind spots on the right, but it’s probably more like cataracts than total vision loss.
Silk Worm
I don’t understand how they trained these critters to make kimonos.
King Penguin
This penguin knows correlation is not causation and is chatting with someone who doesn’t.
Mantis
Some mantises just want to be loved.
Eastern Long Nosed Viper
This photo exists so people can use chromakey to make the snake lick anything (or anyone) they wish.
You’re welcome, Internet.