Oriental Turtle Dove making a heart with its wings Awww… doves are so Valentines, aren’t they? Soft, pure symbols of love. And who hasn’t seen the sweet turtle doves nestling together cozily? Doves… …are another name for pigeons. …which have been characterized, not by me, as “rats with wings”! So why do “doves = love” but “pigeons = pests”?
Author: I Spy Animals
Sprinkled among the wild horses running free in Nevada were mustangs whose fur was….different. It was curly! In the winter, the wild horses’ fur grew longer and thicker to keep them warm. For some horses, that meant their fur got longer and curlier. One day, a rancher noticed these wild curly-coated horses, but didn’t think too much about them. Then a very cold winter set in.
Did you know that tigers aren’t just yellow and black?Let’s take a look at different colors they can be.White tigers have white fur instead of yellow, with stripes of different colors…like black, brown, and gold.So the two tigers in the first photo are a white tiger with a regular tiger.Black tigers have yellow fur, but lots of wide black stripes. Take a look at this one:But there is another tiger color people have reported through the years. The blue tiger!Could there be a tiger out there that looks like this?I certainly hope so! 🙂
Just get close to a seahorse. Real close. And I bet you’ll say to yourself…”unbelievable…” The silvery iridescence on the Lined seahorse above is like a powdering of stardust. Amazing! As are the details on the seahorses in the following photos. I think they will blow you away….
Have you ever seen this bird before? No? That’s not surprising; there are only about 4000 in the world. The Yellow-eyed penguin. It lives in and around New Zealand, where it lays its eggs in forest or shrub. And no huge penguin colonies for these guys…they nest out of sight of other penguins! 1st IK: Yellow band from the eyes and around the back of the head 2nd IK: Yellow face & top of head 3rd IK: Yellow eyes Below are normal and leucistic Yellow-eyed penguins: Stay tuned for a final test on all the different types…will you know your penguin?…
There was a tiger that lived in Australia and Tasmania. But it was not like the tigers you’re familiar with. It was the size of a wolf, striped; very rare and very special. How special? – It was the largest meat-eating animal in Australia and Tasmania – It had a pouch like a kangaroo, which means it was a marsupial. – Both the female AND the male had pouches – Its tail was heavy and thick, like a kangaroo tail – It could open its jaws twice as wide as any wolf or dog could… a full 120 degrees wide! Here…
The Skunk WorldIt’s Not All Black and WhiteThis little guy looks like a regular skunk…black with a two white stripes down its back.But not all skunks look like this. Not by a long shot!Skunks actually have morphs…patterns or colors that are different from the usual.Do you see the leash on that skunk? It’s a pet skunk. And when you get into pet skunks, the colors go wild!Pet skunks are de-scented so they can’t spray…a very nice feature. And people who have these pretty skunks can take them on walks and even enter them in a Skunk Show, like the one below.Not all states…
Patterned like a race car. Spots. Splashes. Stripes. Stipples. Of all the mammals on earth, only one is painted like this…
It’s not an antelope or deer, in fact, there’s nothing like it on earth. It has horns instead of antlers. Its eyesight is so keen, its vision is often compared to high-powered binoculars! Its hair is hollow. It runs as fast as a car on the highway; up to 55 miles per hour! Of all land animals, only the cheetah is faster And it’s only found in North America…..
Elusive, shy of people, a real mystery dog. This wild dog (like the Bush dog) has webbed toes. And, strangely enough, the female dog is way bigger than the male. Not too common in the world of dogs! This is the Short-Eared dog, one of the two rarest dogs in the world. Scientists trying to find him have only caught five of these dogs in 10 years! He lives in the Amazon jungle. Not in packs, like dingos, but alone. And because he’s alone in a gigantic jungle, he’s hard to find. And because he’s hard to find, no one has completed an…
They’re very hard to spot because: -they blend in with the coral – and they’re small They are as small as your fingernail. So you swim by, never seeing the little gems that clutch the coral… They are Pygmy seahorses! How many times did I miss them in my dives around Bonaire and Tahiti? Could there have been dozens of Pygmy seahorses, all watching me? Let’s look at what I might have seen if I had looked closely: They look more like little candies than real seahorses! Now let’s have a bit of I Spy fun! How hard is it…
Photograph by Natalie Manuel The King of the Jungle…the lion. Surveys tell us that most people, though they have trouble naming many other animals shown to them, can identify a male lion. That’s a relief! There are eight types of lion, most of which live in Africa. Asiatic lions, like the ones pictured below, live in the Gir Forest in India: Most lions are varying shades of color, but there are some white lions living wild in Tambavati. White lions are not albino, but leucistic; their normal tan coat color is suppressed with the chinchilla gene, but their eyes are gold-brown, not red like a true albino’s. And that big…