Beautiful Animals

must be a monday

Or maybe I got the plant wrong..

(photo and haiku from this site: http://thebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/blue-jay-in-winter-haiku.html

Happy dog
Dives in pool
It's a hot day.

Bad horn day.

High Seas, that photograph reminded me of this video I posted on another A2K thread a few of years ago ...
Sofie the spaniel having lots of good fun in the swimming pool!

Hey you guys. Thanks for all the posts. Taking a break from work.

Biggests:

Biggest animal on the planet, blue whale:



Biggest land animal, African elephant:



Biggest bird, ostrich:



Biggest insect, goliath beetle:



Biggest fish, whale shark:



Biggest reptile (weight, not length), saltwater crocodile:



More later.

Largest bird that can fly (open to debate), the wandering albatross with a 12-foot wing span:



Biggest snake (length), reticulated python:



Heftwise, the green anaconda is the biggest snake:



Biggest land predator, polar bear:



Biggest predator in the ocean, sperm whale:

One of the - countless - magical things about dogs is watching them checking out swimming pools before they get in. They know they can swim anywhere but they always pick the shallower water for starters - even when they dive in, not just because of the steps at one end. At least that's been my observation.

Also, people who know the world's deepest swimming pool (100 ft +) all say they get visitors who refuse to dive over the deep part; obviously they know they can't sink, especially since deeper water holds you up better than shallow water, so it can only be some kind of vertigo caused by looking over an abyss:

the daily B & O


hey, how come the bunny gets top billing all the time

High Seas, The mind boggles at such deepness. Why would anybody want such a deep pool. And my observation is the same re dogs and pools. They usually start at the shallow end.

Hey, otter. The bunny doesn't have top billing. It's alphabetical. Some animals is mighty touchy.

Nemo 33 is the deepest indoor pool in the world; deep pools and blue holes fascinate me. Something I've seen in many other pools is people in full scuba diving gear who will dive to the bottom at the shallow end, continue forward with no problems at 8 to 10 feet depth, and just stop where the pool bottom suddenly drops off another 20 ft to accommodate divers. Must be some mental block, perhaps related to fear of heights; I was told (by other scuba divers, not any medics, so it may not be true) that's somehow connected to inner-ear problems causing seasickness - fortunately never had either. Look at this guy:


This is the blue hole of Belize (400+ ft depth), an underwater collapsed limestone sinkhole surrounded by a coral reef:

All this time I wondered what "B&O" stood for but since nobody else was asking I figured I must be the only clueless one on this thread so I never asked

I'm not sure you can call this "beautiful" exactly, but it sure is delightfully weird. It's a museum sculpture, supposed to be anatomically and color correct, but quite a bit bigger so you can appreciate the detail, of a Brazilian treehopper.

hingehead turned me on to the daily bunny, and i think osso turned me on to the daily otter, they're delivered to my mailbox around noon (est) and i post them here

MJ, I absolutely call it beautiful, in an offbeat, goofy sort of way. Just did some googling of treehoppers. This is one "unusual" looking buncha bugs. Here's another:

Here's another one. This one's a doozy:

Fan horned beetle:

Omidgod, it's an insectified moose. Wow, Francis. Amazing. Thanks.

I'm not so sure I wanted to know about those bugs . Amazing.