When the cold season comes and food becomes scarce, hedgehogs curl up into a ball and hibernate until spring, slowing down their heart rate and breathing to consume as little energy as possible. Hedgehogs are generally nocturnal and feed exclusively on insects. To protect themselves they have a layer of about 6,000 quills, which however are not poisonous nor do they come off easily like those of the porcupine — which is a completely unrelated species.
Having admired macaws in our post of five weeks ago (zafoid.com/post/view/11622), this time we will consider a different kind of parrot, namely the parakeet. A parakeet is any one of many small- to medium-sized species of parrot, in multiple genera, that generally has long tail feathers. Shown here (in clockwise direction) is the colourful plum-headed parakeet from India, burrowing parakeets from Argentina during flight, and two images of rose-ringed parakeets.
A team of researchers from Yale University demonstrated that hummingbirds really are the champions of the bird world when it comes to attention-grabbing colours. According to the team’s findings, published in the journal Communications Biology in 2022, the diversity of colours found in hummingbirds they examined exceeds that of all other bird species combined. And not just by a little — when hummingbirds were added to an existing inventory of the so-called bird colour gamut (the full range of colors that birds can produce and detect), they increased that range by around 56%.
This colourful Javan tree frog can only be found on the Indonesian island of Java! (Check out more about more endearing frogs that can be found in Indonesia, here in this earlier post: zafoid.com/post/view/11364)
Merry Christmas to all Zafodians and to all the pets around the world.
Tom Smith Happy Christmas everyone!
Golden Retriever playing with dolphin in Australian waters (April 2017)
Macaws are a group of New World parrots that are long-tailed and often colorful. The macaws shown here are from Central (i.e. Costa Rica) and South (i.e. Brazil and Bolivia) America.
Chameleons, with the occasional dragonfly emergency landing. 😀
Chameleons' eyes are independently mobile, and because of this the chameleon’s brain is constantly analysing two separate, individual images of its environment.
Is this grey seal hovering in a gliding motion over a sandy beach? The illusion is all down to this photo's focus and perspective (courtesy of Frederic Desmette), which captured our seal friend precisely in the midst of a flop whilst it was just an inch off the ground, as it was making its way to the sea to get its lunch. Quite a mind trick, wouldn't you agree?
