Beautiful Animals

Tapir:

A coati in the Federal Wildlife Conservation Centre on the outskirts of Mexico City, having been rescued from a home along with two other coatis. More than 2,500 different animals are rescued annually in the country, 70% from illegal animal trafficking.
Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

Never having heard of coatis before, I did a bit of Googling to find out more:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati

Seal meets girl. Seal falls in love with girl. The End.

http://vimeo.com/18479035

That's adorable!

MsOlga, I think you found the next animal, coatis, to star in a Hollywood animated comedy.

His face has a very lively personality.

Yeah, now that you mention it, tsar, he'd be a natural!

olga, Thanks for the adorable coati. I know of them and a little about them. Raccoon relatives. Smart and active. They've got definite star quality.

j, That was amazing. The seal was very gentle. I was worried. (When am I not?)

Raccoon dog. Looks like a raccoon, but it's a canid.

Rock hyrax (closely related to elephants):

I can see the family resemblance Roberta. (((scratches noggin)))


They're feisty little buggers.

Very nice. My eyes got a little moist there.

Aw. My first memory of having to write about something in school was when we we got an assignment to pick a subject from the encyclopedia in the school library, this in fourth grade. I picked out the volume with letter C at random, and opened it somewhere in the middle and on the page was a photo of a coati and some paragraphs about it. Funny I remember that all this time later.

tsar, Feisty is right. Baboons ain't nuttin' to mess with. Thanks, kid.

Couldn't resist this one:

The UK's DailyMail is full of photos showing off the new penguin beach/pool (here are a couple). It's really very impressive. I'm not generally a fan of zoos or aquariums, but the penguins and the kids look like they're having a great time.

With a beach, pool and round-the-clock childcare, it has everything a pampered penguin could want.
And judging by all the exciting splashing and diving yesterday, the inhabitants are delighted to be in their new home.
London Zoo yesterday unveiled England's largest penguin pool, a spectacular enclosure that will one day house a 200-strong breeding colony.

Window on wildlife: One-year-old zoo visitor Macu Rorke watches the penguins through one of the underwater viewing areas.

Pie fight?

Ah, so that's where you find your magical pictures - always wondered about it! Moving on - today being Memorial Day we might post about military doggies:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/slideshow/military-dog-adoptions-soar-osama-bin-laden-mission-13535860
They're braver than we are (I think) and love us (I know) but jumping off a plane wearing weird goggles and a parachute must take some extra training

I saw an amazing sky-diving photo of military dogs being trained to jump out of planes the other day. I wish I'd thought to post it. I think the caption indicated it was some kind of altitude-record for the dogs that were jumping. I remember wondering if they were as scared as I'd be.

Those photos and their link have been posted here several times.
http://able2know.org/topic/135039-22#post-4598600
for instance.

Thank you!!! It's exactly the one I was thinking of! This SEAL and his dog Cara broke the world's record!

That's why I think they're braver than we are - we all have some reasonable expectation our parachutes will open, but doggies jump out on blind faith in us.