With jack frost nipping at your nose and holiday spiced drinks at your local coffee shop, ‘tis the season to be on the lookout for reindeer. Even if you don’t leave carrots by the chimney for Rudolf on Christmas Eve, reindeer are handsome, hardy animals that inspire thoughts of sparkling white snowscapes, the north woods,…
Category: Creature Feature
Creature Feature: Fossa
Fossa are bizarre-looking apex predators endemic to Madagascar.
Creature Feature: Fire Salamander
We’ve seen psychedelic reptiles on this blog before. Surely, you may be thinking, the pool of psychedelic species is relatively limited. Not so fast! Poisons are incredibly important for amphibian defense, so there tend to be lots of poisonous amphibians around. And, for whatever reason, humans like to ingest these intended toxins to try and…
Creature Feature: Orchid Bee
Orchid bee cologne smells a bit like vanilla, cinnamon, and a dollop of rotting meat…
Creature Feature: Laughing Kookaburra
No one likes being laughed at. And no one likes sibling sabotage. The laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae) does both with little regard for what we find objectionable. Laughing kookaburras are the largest kingfisher species in the world and can be described as stout, stocky, and overall pretty thicc [1]. These creepy kooks, like many frightening…
Creature Feature: Slave-making ants
“Take no prisoners!” said no slave-making ant ever.
Creature Feature: Loxo and Mud Crabs
In the animal kingdom, zombies really do exist! The cause is most often some nasty (but fascinating) parasites, and you’d best believe that these parasites are truly terrifying to their respective hosts.
Creature Feature: Zebra finch
The zebra finch is arguably in the running to be the world’s next top model….organism, that is
Creature Feature: Tarantula Hawk Wasp
Read how the tarantula hawk transforms from a mean stinger to an invertebrate villain of science fiction proportions.
Creature Feature: Eastern Pacific harbor seal
These young harbor seals must learn many important life lessons before graduating to their independent sea lives!