Sepia
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is not a very good picture, but it’s because the subject is very, very shy. We have a, shall we say, rather untamed yard, very weedy, and we keep finding new little pals moving in. We’ve got rabbits everywhere, and lately, to our annoyance, pocket gophers are burrowing in our front yard, and we’ve been reluctant to murder them despite the gopher mounds. And this week, this guy moved in to a nice spot under our deck. He or she is good sized, almost knee-high as he stands like that, and he’s out rummaging around in the yard fairly often, although he scurries back to his nest as soon as he spots us.
I have named our woodchuck Yuri.
I half-expect to wake up some morning and find a herd of bison has taken residence, which will be very nice…but when the wolf pack moves in, we may have to move.
These are all the same species, even the same individual, from photographs taken within a short time as it was jetting away.
You can find a larger image on TONMO.
I swear, there’s a moment in this video where the octopus looks like it’s trying to get intimate with Steve Leonard.
I must thank the reader known to me only as CAC for sending me DVDs of the Inside Nature’s Giants programs. I’ve been enjoying the dissections of an elephant and a whale in the evening — most of the organisms I cut into are millimeters long and require very sharp, thin instruments, so it’s interesting to see ones that require hip waders and backhoes.
You should all lobby your local PBS stations and tell them these would be wonderful additions to the lineup! You might also suggest that broadcasting them during the dinner hour might not be recommended.
Don’t tell Jerry, but aren’t pictures of baby kitties a cheap way to get some eyeballs? At least it’s a nice story about a few animals coming back to the wilderness.
