Share Animal Pictures: For Animal Lovers

[Drakkith]

Judging from your first photo of them they look relatively young too me, six months or something maybe? Do you know their age?

They can't be more than about 3-4 months old or so. I adopted my other three cats when they were around 3 months old and the new kittens are about the same size.

 

[Bandersnatch]

Drakkith, that's enough cats to qualify you as a crazy cat lady. Or at least a crazy cat ladies' man. ;)

 

[Drakkith]

Drakkith, that's enough cats to qualify you as a crazy cat lady. Or at least a crazy cat ladies' man. ;)

I blame my GF for two of the five. She's the one that wanted to get one for each of the kiddos to add to our collection of three already. I just end up feeding them, playing with them, taking pictures of them...

 

[Rive]

Never knew that this bird ...

 

[fresh_42]

 

[kuruman]

Rafi (havanese).

 

[fresh_42]

 

[fresh_42]

Someone knows where to get snacks at night ...

 

[DennisN]

Dog Balloons That Floated To The Ceiling And Got Stuck

Some examples:

 

[BillTre]

Avian Fishing.
Found this awesome picture on the internet:

Photo credit: Wilson Chen
Interesting to me is that the hind limbs (legs/feet/talons) are in front of the forelimbs (wings) in this picture.

 

[DennisN]

Avian Fishing.
Found this awesome picture on the internet:

Gosh, what a marvellous photo!

 

[phinds]

Interesting to me is that the hind limbs (legs/feet/talons) are behind the forelimbs (wings) in this picture.

They land on branches that way too, although I think perhaps not as exaggerated.

 

[DennisN]

 

[berkeman]

I don't get it.

 

[phinds]

I don't get it.

Let's hope.

 

[fresh_42]

Hoping to be among the estimated 30%? I'm inclined to hope to get it soon, so that it is over for me - without symptoms if possible. I've heard today that some students organize Corona parties for that matter. And no, not the beer, although I bet it is the favorite brand on those parties.

 

[Mondayman]

This is our Aussie-Doodle, Penelope, or Penny for short. Shes a snuggle demon, full of love and play, and is next level intelligent. She's learned to reflect sunlight off of her tag onto the floor in front of her, and plays with it for hours.

I whole heartedly recommend doodles as companions. They are a lot of work, but they are fun and extremely intelligent.

 

[fresh_42]

I love corvidae, all kind of corvidae!

 

[BillTre]

Today is World Turtle Day!

The purpose of World Turtle Day, May 23, sponsored yearly since 2000 by American Tortoise Rescue, is to bring attention to, and increase knowledge of and respect for, turtles and tortoises, and encourage human action to help them survive and thrive.[1][2][3]

 

[Ibix]

Today is World Turtle Day!

World Turtle Day or World Turtle Day?

 

[BillTre]

Turtles all the way down!

 

[Drakkith]

Turtles all the way down!

...but what's all the way up?

 

[BillTre]

Bots all the way up from the molecular level is how I now think about life (organisms).

 

[Drakkith]

Bots all the way up from the molecular level is how I now think about life (organisms).

Bots? I'm 1/3 robot on my unary side.

 

[Rive]

I don't think I've seen owl legs before...

Neither I.

A comment there:

I just got lost for 10 minutes in a google search of “owl legs”

So did I

 

[BillTre]

Here are some Nikon Small World photo contest winners.
Found this one from 2018 (all small animals; I really like small animals, like the mites on insects. They are the microchips of the metazoans!):


This is from 2019 (not all animals):


No 2020 yet.

 

[BillTre]

Awesome Owl flight:


There was an owl lab in place were used to work.
An owl got loose in the building once and had no problem flying down the cluttered halls, silently.

 

[phinds]

The owl reminded me of a couple of the images in a absolutely astounding photography exhibit I saw several years ago called "Ashes and Snow" (you can Google it). I was so impressed that I got hard-copies of a number of the images and had a bit matted frame made for them. Even with the slight enlargement you get by clicking on the image, it still looks a lot more impressive in person:

 

[256bits]

Magawa the rat receives Gold Medal of excellence in his line of work.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...ld-medal-cambodia-landmine-detection-n1241050

 

[DennisN]

Very good and funny animal photos here:
http://videosift.com/video/2020-Comedy-Wildlife-Photography-Awards-Finalists

 

[BillTre]

Here is a time lapse video some friends of mine (Daniel Castranova & Brant Weinstein) made of the always photogenic zebrafish embryo development.
The video goes up to a 22 hours old embryo.

The egg inside the shell is about 800 um across (0.8 mm).
It uses differential interference contrast optics.
The green is marks the developing vascular system. The embryo is engineered to make GFP (Green Fluoescence Protein) in developing blood vessel cells.

The first synchronously dividing cells are going through cleavage.
After they stop dividing synchrously, the pile of cells spread over the yolk and undergo gastrulation (forming the three primary tissue layer (endoderm, mesoder, and ectoderm)) and start to form the body of the embryo.
The head forms on the left and the tailbud on the right.
The blocks of tissue that form toward the top are the developing somites (mesodermal segments) which form structures like for vertebrae and ribs, and the muscles that attach to them.
It gets twitchy near the end due to spontaneous neural activity.

This kind of thing has been a pretty standard in labs for >20 years.
It shows several of the many reasons zebrafish are popular as model research organisms:

• Fast development (they have a function neural reflex by 18 hours).
• Optically clear for 18-24 hours.
• Great embryology for studying.

• Zebrafish (thanks to Crisper) also now have many useful forward and backward genetic tricks.
• Can get 100-200 fertilized eggs from a female/ week (good for genetics).
• Generation time (egg to egg) of 2-4 months.
• Simple husbandry and breeding requirements (can be done in a warehouse-like system).

 

[Fervent Freyja]

My daughters hamster Chocolate Chip. I accidentally killed him with a lettuce, tomato, and onion medley a few days ago! I didn’t know he shouldn’t have onion and feel horrible about it. He was so cute

 

[DennisN]

Here is a time lapse video some friends of mine (Daniel Castranova & Brant Weinstein) made of the always photogenic zebrafish embryo development.

Amazing movie!

I was in a pet shop yesterday buying some toys for my cat, and I took the opportunity to watch some fish in the quite many aquariums they have. I also took some photos of fishes which I never had done before. It was quite fun, but difficult, as they almost constantly are moving around. I'm thinking of asking the pet shop to do a longer photo shoot someday with a tripod.

Here are some photos I took:

And I wouldn't be surprised if @BillTre could identify the species. I can not, I have no idea.

 

[BillTre]

#1: anglefish (maybe an altum type (I'm not an expert on these))
#2: some kind of gourami (a bubble nester)
#3: top one:?; bottom: anglefish
#4-7: cichlids of some kind (ask a cichlidophile)

First three are pretty nice pictures.
Lighting is of course important.
Reflections on the glass are often a problem. Use a dark room and if possible have your flash off at an angle so it doesn't reflect to your camera.
Fast moving fish require a short stutter time and/or quick flash

I have a small studio set up for taking pictures of small fish like zebrafish and other danios.

The fish go in the box.
The camera is behind the homemade blind to reduce reflections.
Flash is mounted above the fish box.

 

[DennisN]

Thanks for the suggestions and identifications, @BillTre !
Yes, I noticed the difficulty with reflections and also the problem with dirt on some of the glass. I thought it was fun to shoot fish, so I will probably try to do it again.