The Siberian saber–toothed musk deer boasts excellent eyesight and hearing, which cannot be said about the sense of smell - it is less developed in the animal.
Читать полностью…Face to face.
When the tip of a hummingbird's tongue gets into the liquid, it splits like a snake's, but not to catch odorous molecules, but to collect sweet nectar.
And the tongue itself can protrude far out of the beak thanks to the long legs of the sublingual apparatus, which wrap around the skull, just like woodpeckers
The Vancouver Island wolf Canis lupus crassodon is endemic to the Canadian island of Vancouver in the province of British Columbia. The color is gray or black. These animals lead a social lifestyle, live in flocks numbering from 5 to 35 individuals.
"We know from exhaustive DNA studies that these wolves are genetically different from their continental cousins," says Ian McAllister, an award-winning photographer who has been studying these animals for almost two decades.
"They behave differently, swimming from island to island and hunting marine animals. They are also morphologically different — smaller in size and physically different from their mainland counterparts," says McAllister.
90% of the food of sea wolves originates directly from the ocean and a fourth part is salmon.
These wolves are excellent swimmers, the record for the distance is their swim to the archipelago, located 12 kilometers from the nearest land
Sphingidae hawk moths are distinguished by their ability to hover in the air above the flower, extracting nectar with the help of a long proboscis. These are mainly twilight and nocturnal butterflies.
These are large or medium-sized butterflies. The body is powerful, cigar-shaped, often tapered at the end. The wings are narrow, elongated, their span is from 30 to 200 mm, most species have 80-100 mm.
The proboscis is usually very long, exceeds several times the length of the body, but in some hawk moth it is reduced and they do not feed, living off the reserves of nutrients accumulated at the caterpillar stage.
All representatives of the family are heat-loving insects, but many species are active migrants and fly into territories lying much to the north of their breeding grounds. They are able to fly over seas and mountain ranges (more than 3,500 m high).
The red-headed momot Baryphthengus martii lives in Central and South America in lowland and mountain forests. This bird can usually be seen at the top of a tree, waiting for prey.
Momot flies off a branch to catch an insect on the fly or to grab some small animal on the ground, such as a mouse or a lizard. The bird's beak has special notches to more reliably capture dodgy prey. Sometimes momot chases ants or termites. Also, the bird eats small fruits picked by it in flight.
The body length of this rather large bird is 42-47 cm, and the weight is 160-200 g. The silhouette is slender, the size of the trunk seems small due to the relatively long tail. The paws are thin and short. The beak is powerful and notched; black in color. A wide black stripe stretches from the beak to the eye and beyond. The head, neck, throat and abdomen are orange.
The honey buzzard not only brazenly eats honey from bee nests, from the bites of the inhabitants of which it is reliably protected by scaly feathers, but also does not neglect the larvae of these insects.
Читать полностью…What kind of whippoorwills were not here! It would seem that it is impossible to surprise us. Perhaps!
The pennant-winged nightjar Macrodipteryx vexillarius lives in Central and Southern Africa from Angola, southern Zaire and northwestern Tanzania to northeastern Namibia, northeastern Botswana and the extreme northeast of South Africa.
The length of the bird's body together with the tail is only 23-26 cm, but during the mating season, the male flight feathers on the wings grow up to 78 cm long, forming long black and white ribbons, more than twice the length of the bird.
When observing this nightjar in flight, it may seem as if it has two wings on each side. With the end of the mating period, elongated ribbon-like feathers fall out.
It is active at dusk and at night, spends the daytime sitting on the ground - or, if the ground is wet, on low termite mounds and branches. It feeds on insects, which it catches on the fly in a continuous flight resembling the flight of a hawk
The Pyrenean (Iberian) lynx Lynx pardinus differs from the ordinary lynx in a lighter color and pronounced spots, giving its color a resemblance to the color of a leopard. In winter, the fur fades and becomes thinner. It is half the size of an ordinary lynx and therefore hunts mainly small game - hares and rabbits, which make up about 90% of its diet, and only occasionally attacking baby deer.
There are very few of these stunningly beautiful animals left in the wild. Of course, huge efforts are being made to preserve and increase the population of the Spanish lynx, but according to various estimates, only about 150 adults remain in the wild.
Nowadays it is very difficult to meet the Pyrenean lynx in the wild. The main habitat is the mountainous regions of Spain. Also, a small number of individuals have been preserved in the Coto De Donana National Park.
But just 120 years ago, the habitat of the Spanish lynx was the entire Iberian Peninsula and the south of France.
The giant anteater Mangala was found as a toddler next to her mother, who died under the wheels of a car.
After a while, she became very friendly with the staff of the shelter.
Meet the beach worms.
These inhabitants of Australia (and where else?) they can reach up to 3 meters in length.