Beautiful Animals

Geez, Robbie, you should have warned me...


so totally beautiful, I can't find the words.
And you know I am wordy.

Brace yourself, kid. More to come. When I posted the pic of the black leopard, I mentioned that it would be on my list of top-ten most beautiful mammals if I had such a list. I've been working on the list. Four down (black leopard, tiger, friesian, and wolf). Six to go.

I'm guessing but I think this is a mongoose kitten.

Snow leopard

I saw a black leopard in a cage at the LA Zoo* and I could hardly believe my eyes that it was caged like that. I'm guessing that was in the sixties. Decades later, I figure it was in transition.

Later -
*The small firm of us and a good designer we worked with got a go ahead for redoing the children's zoo there. I even wore a wool dress to a meeting..
I wasn't a designer on that one but my later business partner was the key designer and our firm was following up.
Anyway, Imagineers came in and blew us and our sense of the animal connections away with their mechanistic stuff. Well, that was our take.

I remember that leopard long time going.



I think you need a mutt in your ten, but none of my beeswax.

HH, My guess is your guess re the kitten. And OMG, too cute. The snow leopard is a stunner. Thanks, kid.

tsar, I'm going to be kind. No comment on the video.

Fallow deer:

I kinda took this off another thread. It was too cute. RP posted it.....

Well I certainly hope that pigeonesque bird escapes that perfect storm of an animal attack.

Not really a pigeonesque bird:


On the contrary:

Real-Life Fox And The Hound Best Friends Will Melt Your Heart
http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/real-life-fox-and-the-hound-best-friends-will-melt-your-hear

Wonderful photos, thank you tsarstepan.

A selection from the Guardian's This Week in Wildlife -
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2013/dec/06/week-in-wildlife-in-pictures#/?picture=424316456&index=0


A puffin drops the sand eels it was carrying after being chased by a gull on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. The islands are home to 23 species of seabird, including nearly 40,000 nesting pairs of puffins – an 8% rise from 2008.
Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters




A squirrel clutches a nut in Saski Park in Lublin, Poland.
Photograph: Wojciech Pacewicz/EPA


This one puts me in mind of Calvin Trillin discussing exceptionally delicious food.


American white pelicans take off in Everglades national park. The birds breed in inland regions, and winter along the warm southern coasts of California, the Gulf Coast and Florida.
Photograph: Andy Newman/AP




Grey seals play underwater by the Farne Islands, whose substantial colony of grey seals arrives each autumn to have their pups.
Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters




A baby hippo bobs next to its mother, in Kenya's Masai Mara game reserve.
Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP




A golden-crowned sifaka lemur leaps from one tree to another in the Marojejy national park in north-east Madagascar.
Photograph: Wu Xiaoling/Corbis

Some photos from back in October -
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2012/oct/12/week-in-wildlife-in-pictures

A rutting stag bellows in a wildlife park in Aurach, in the Austrian province of Tyrol.
Photograph: Kerstin Joensson/AP




A pigeon leaves footprints on snow-covered ground near Krasnoyarsk, Siberia.
Photograph: Ilya Naymushin/REUTERS




A baby brown-throated sloth (Bradypus variegatus) plays at the Sloth Sanctuary in Penshurst, Costa Rica. The country's government has recently passed reforms that ban hunting as a sport.
Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images




A critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper being reared on the Chukotsk peninsula, Russia. Twenty critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper chicks have been successfully bred in captivity in Britain and released into the wild.
Photograph: Anastasia Sestnova/Wildfowl and/PA




A young kudu antelope in a zoo in Berlin.
Photograph: Tim Brakemeier/EPA

I particularly love the red squirrel and pigeon photos. Great selection Osso!

Me too, Tsar. Of course, I like slothy too.

From today's sf chronicle -

That white stuff is freezing my paws: At 6 months old, Eva is getting a little big to be riding on her mother's back at the zoo in Novosibirsk, Russia.

PHOTO BY ILNAR SALAKHIEV/ASSOCIATED PRESS

What a spectacular collection of photos. Thanks to each and every one of you. You are all good kids.

Resplendant quetzal: