Colossal Squid

For the second time, found in a fishing net! It's so big that just one half of the lens is as big as the palm of an adult's hand!! You can read all about it at this site. And here is a video of them dissecting it (warning - the video is over three hours long).

Peregrine falcons and tracks

When my family and I were hiking in the Paint Mines, I saw a peregrine falcon for the first time in the wild, and two sets of deer tracks. One of the sets is shown in the photo below. I wonder what the deer were doing at the time?    

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Pink slugs

This is unbelievable but...hot pink slugs have been discovered in Australia! Yes, very hard to believe, but it's true. And as an added fact, they can grow to be eight inches (20 cm) long. Definitely not average slug, right?    

An elephant painting elephants

Did you know that some elephants learn to paint? But they don't paint very good paintings. But one elephant that's called "Peter" paints portraits of Indian elephants and he uses elephant dung paper. Here's a picture of him:

Preserved pigment

Did you think that we'll never know what color the dinosaurs were? Think again! Scientists have found preserved pigment in fossilized skin from an ancient leatherback turtle,a mosasaur, and an ichthyosaur. (Okay, THOSE ancient animals are not dinosaurs but the time is close!) We now think that they were black and the leatherback had white bellies.

Web Tower & Fence

There is an interesting spider web design that looks a fence, and in the middle is a weird tall thing that looks like a weird tower or something. Here is a photo of it:

(Photo: Troy Alexander/Rainforest Expedition Lodges Facebook)

Parakeets celebrating Christmas

My parakeets are celebrating Christmas with us. I made them paper stockings and a paper Chrstmas tree to go on one of their perches.
Interestingly enough, some birds like to chew on the paper, but my parakeets are staying away from the paper Christmas tree so far. I put the stockings outside their cage.