Beautiful Animals

Tree sparrow.
A tidier, more refined looking version than the 3 cheeky scruffs who splash around in my bird bath on hot days ...

Hummingbirds get their own chapter in all books on fluid dynamics: they're little marvels of aerodynamic design - not to mention the envy of anyone who's ever gone on a diet

Honeybees and other insects operate on completely different aerodynamic principles, and bats use yet a third system; there was an ancient bird with a 7 meter wingspan using a 4th system, but it went extinct http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1973956/

the daily B & O

Timothy, an army explosive sniffer dog, wears the helmet of a soldier who placed it on his head at the site of a car loaded with explosives that was detonated by an army anti-bomb squad in Pradera, southwestern Colombia, Friday, Feb. 3, 2012.

fine photo there, Barry..


ok, get your thuds in gear -

Series: Tokyo city guide
Snow monkeys soak in hot springs, Japan - video
In winter Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, warm up in natural hot springs. David Levene visits Japan's Jigokudani Monkey Park in Nagano, the only place in the wild where you can view the monkeys as they relax in the steaming water - while the monkey babies show more interest playing with tourists' camera equipment.

David Levene, Ken Macfarlane, and Morgan Giles

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2012/feb/06/snow-monkeys-hot-springs-video
guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 February 2012

Deer walk in the snow in Richmond Park in west London, on February 5, 2012. (Reuters/Olivia Harris)

beautiful

the daily B & O

Thanks, everybody, for the glorious photos. Hey, Barry. I once had a cousin named Timmy--a golden retriever (a civilian).

Glad to see you back, dj.

Blue-spotted stingray:

http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/Photos-of-the-Day/2012/Photos-of-the-Day-02-07/%28photo%29/440632

the daily B's & O's

tsar, Thanks for the cute red squirrel pic. I hope the little guy was able to find something to eat and keep warm.

dj, Wabbit babies. Too bad they just ain't cute--thud. And the otters. I'm too weak to comment.

Friends:

Urban raccoons:



I watched a fascinating show about raccoons taking up residence in cities. Biologists believe that they are evolving. They're becoming smarter and lazier. They're developing heart problems from eating too much without exerting as much effort as they had to in the wild to get food.

I laughed when I saw the lengths that people were going to to keep them from getting indoors. Whatever the humans came up with, the raccoons figured out what needed to be done to get where they wanted to go.

Love em, despite certain personal encounters...

Here's one close to my heart, reminding me to find one of my dog photos, 'dogs of Volterra'.

Anyway -

'The Grey' - the Italian version: A wolf on the scrawny side runs with dogs through the deserted streets of Trasacco, central Italy, amid one of the country's worst cold spells in years. Temperatures dropped to 13 below in the north.
Photo: Antonio Oddi / AFP/Getty Images /sfgate
I worry about that wolf, but at least he or she has some pals.





A bird flies on Wendelstein Mountain in the Alps near the Bavarian village of Bayrischzell.
Photo: Christof Stache / AFP/Getty Images / sfgate

osso, Lots of animals and people are suffering from that cold spell. Hoping the wolf survives. That boid pic is s stunner. Thanks for them both.

Larval shrimp:

I'm mixed re what I know of italians and animals - read at some point that they throw dogs out of the car on their way to vacation in August (no link, just a sentence that got me), and I've no idea if that is still true, if so in some writer's observation in the first place or if it is a rampant practice, or exactly when that was in time. I never saw stuff like that, anyway. I know personally that people leave out cat food on the streets of the Aventine hill, and many places in Rome. I'm hoping someone feeds the wolf, though I suppose not feeding is the Way of the World. I think some are softies and it will get fed for now.

One of the best bits I ever read, re animals and maybe in general, was the story of the cat colony, of centuries, in piazza Vittorio Emanuele, in Rome and a Villa, by Eleanor Clark.

I have the text (where? but I know I have it. It's not that many pages, maybe I can scan it). As I remember, I had permission to use that in a class I gave, re educational purposes.

Anyway, I came here to post this -

Red panda, Cologne Zoo
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / AFP/Getty Images/ sfgate

A stag stands in a neck-high field of canola north of Cremona, Alberta. Jeff McIntosh

Cremona, Alberta?
intriguing name.

A goose in the snow at Skopje, Macedonia, as Europe's 'big freeze' continues.
- Photograph: Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

Aw, poor cold little monkey.


A grivet monkey nestles against a radiator at a zoo in Qingdao, China. A strong cold snap has also swept China, with regions north of the Yangze River experiencing drastic drops in temperature.
- Photograph: Hong Wu/Getty Images
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