Beautiful Animals

Little Beauts and so nimble.
Better not let my daughter see this.

"Dad ? can we get baby goats, can we, can we, can we----infinity

LOL! I am now craving to add baby goats to my zoo!

I once had three little goats.

they are major duty poop machines...

but cute.

Okay there went my craving! LOL!

Meishan piglets

shar pigs.

Those are soooooooooo cute! Look at dem widdle wrinkly faces. I love this thread. I had no idea that so many of these beautiful and wondrous creatures even existed!

Two elephants get their trunks in a tangle as they have a play fight in a river. An African elephant from Namibia met another from Botswana at the Chobe River, which runs between the two countries. Photographer Eric Webber sat in a boat just 20 feet away as the Namibian elephant swam to the middle of the river and the Botswanan elephant waded in to join him. Eric, from Texas, United States, said: "They sniffed each other briefly and then entwined trunks. Our guide explained that this was a way for elephants, especially younger elephants, to greet each other - kind of like a handshake."
Picture: Eric Webber/solent

Two polar bear mothers fight as their young cubs look on. The females had been out looking for food for their families when a dispute broke out over territory in the frozen expanse. The picture was captured by photographer Curtis Bouvier in Wapusk National Park, Canada.
Picture: Curtis Bouvier/Solent News & Photo Agency

Sugar fermentation smells horribly. Dogs can smell thousands of times better than we can, so I'm sure they can smell at least some cancers. There are links on Edgar's thread on how cancer cells ferment sugars instead of using oxygen, like normal cells. That's why cancerous cells light up on PET scans:
http://blog.cleveland.com/medical/2009/03/is_my_chemo_working_new_use_fo.html

If I remember correctly, I have heard that wolves can smell sickness in humans and other animals.

That would make sense, help them select the weakest to hunt.

Irish... love the polar bear confrontation picture. Wish their situation could improve. The future doesn't look too bright for polar bears.

He'd make an excellent B-movie monster, especially in IMAX 3D!

BELGIUM—Forest of La Cambre, near Brussels, 1981.
© Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos






WARSAW, Poland—February 2005.
© Mark Power / Magnum Photos

Thanks all for the wonderful pics and comments. I'm too pooped to be specific, but I looked at everything and enjoyed it all. One question. Rosborne. What are those sea creatures?

Black jaguar:

One is a Venus' comb shell and the other is a Sally Lightfoot Crab.

Another Day in Pictures set from SF Gate -

"Roller bear: A crow keeps its distance as a polar bear rolls around in the snow at the Berlin Zoo."
Photo: Johannes Eisele / AFP / Getty Images



"Teddy gets a massage: Otto pumps his paws against his stuffed bear like a cat kneading a blanket. He is one of three Tasmanian wombats who have moved into the Albuquerque BioPark Zoo's newest exhibit, the only such wombat enclosure in North America."
Photo: Susan Montoya Bryan / AP



"These boots were made for sleeping: For some reason, Caitlin Dixon's gumboots make Ollie the otter fall into a deep slumber - even when she's lying on ice cubes. The pup was stranded and rescued off of Santa Cruz when she was a few weeks old. Now she resides at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach where Dixon is a mammalogist."
Photo: Jae C. Hong / AP