Share Animal Pictures: For Animal Lovers

[BillTre]

Yeah, dirty can be a big problem too.
Also dirty water, although it could be used as an effect.

If you try shooting in a store, and have a camera with a separable flash, you might try putting a 1/4" bolt (fits the mount on many cameras and flash units; may different in Europe, due to metric system) on a plastic spring clamp which could be cliped into the top of a tank. I find it handy.

You are lucky to be in Europe.
There is much better access to a wider variety of tropical fish through the hobbyist industry there.
Germany is particularly good for this.
Sweden has one of the best danio taxonomists in the world.

I had a business for a while, importing obscure species of danios and their relatives and (obtaining imports other brought in), and either selling them or breeding them and selling eggs, to labs that did not have them and/or could not keep or breed them.

 

[Bystander]

fun to shoot fish,

In a barrel?

 

[phinds]

I thought it was fun to shoot fish

Hey, that's just mean !

 

[BillTre]

Its a challenge if they are fast, quick moving darters.

 

[Drakkith]

Hey, that's just mean !

Only for the fish.

 

[strangerep]

#2: some kind of gourami (a bubble nester)

Honey gourami?

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

And,... (TIL)... that angelfish and discus are also categorized as cichlids.

 

[BillTre]

Cihclids are a large and diverse group.

They have complex behaviors, evolve fast, and have parental care.
I have several friends who have kept small cichlids that spend a lot of their time hiding/breeding in shells, like a fiddler crab (shell dwellers).
Some cichlids eat the scales off of other cichlids as a major nutritional component. They have a handedness to their mouth so they specialize in eating scales from one side of their prey.

 

[strangerep]

Cihclids are a large and diverse group.

Indeed, as are Cichlids.

 

[fresh_42]

 

[wrobel]

 

[phinds]

Saw this cool pic online. Praying mantises. Just had to post it here:

 

[DennisN]

Many laughs to be had here, e.g. a poodle who is great at the piano :

 

[BillTre]

 

[fresh_42]

Animal lovers won't even understand what is funny about that sign!

 

[BillTre]

This is an amazing video of juvenile striped eel catfish tightly schooling.

This fish at the top of the pile mostly stay there.
Fish in the lower parts go down in the front of the school to contact the substrate (catfish are often bottom feeders).
After the pile moves over them they seem to come back up the aft end of the school.
Thus, a positional churn of individuals in the lower part of the school.

 

[BillTre]

Much younger fish, similar schooling behavior.

 

[Keith_McClary]

Not quite on topic, perhaps:
https://www.comicskingdom.com/bizarro/2020-11-29

 

[wrobel]

Two cool birds:

long ago my friends bought a parrot from a sailor and presented the parrot to their little son at his birthday. Soon they found out that the parrot taught the boy to speak heavily offensive. They did not know how to get rid of such a nice bird

 

[BillTre]

Find the leaf insects:

This picture is from a NY Times article about Papua New Guinea leaf and stick insects being the the females and males of the same species.

 

[BillTre]

I have been seeing news reports about ghost sharks recently.
I had not heard of that term before, but thanks to this NY Times article I now know that it refers to chimeras.
There are lots of stupid common names for fish like aquatic animals that make sense. usually, I prefer scientific names, but they are difficult for most people and they tend to change a lot (especially during the current era of refining biological taxonomy due to the great increase of genomic information in the last few decades.)

Chimeras (not the mythical beast) are cartilaginous fish, as are sharks, rays, and skates.
They were named after the mythical beast because they look like they might have been peiced together from a variety of different animals.
Their internal bone-like structural members are made of cartilage rather than bone (same as sharks and rays).
Similar to sharks and rays, they have a sub-terminal mouth (mouth under the animal's "snout").
Structurally, their tail is similar to that typical of a shark, with the vertebral column extending into the dorsal (top) "fin part" of the tail (unlike "normal fish" where that part of the vertebral column of vesitgeal and rarely in the actual "fin part" of the tail.

these are some examples of shark tail morphologies:

picture from here.

They mostly live in deep water and have little economic value, thus are not well know nor much studied.

 

[BillTre]

Blanket Octopus

Blanket Octopuses are incredibly elusive and sensitive creatures.
Very few videos exist of these octopuses, and they also exhibit the most extreme degree of sexual size-dimorphism (females being larger than males) known in any non-microscopic animal.

“Imagine a female the size of a person and the male a size of a walnut,” said Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Leeds in England. The female blanket octopus also has behaviours particular to her moods – when she feels insecure, she unfurls her fleshy colour-shifting cape (video below).

 

[strangerep]

Blanket Octopus [...]

I marked your post as informative but, after reading a little more about them on Wikipedia, it will probably give me nightmares - especially the bit about how the gigantic female rips off the tiny male's mating "arm" and keeps it. (Now think about a human analogy... Lorena Bobbitt,... or worse,...)

 

[BillTre]

especially the bit about how the gigantic female rips off the tiny male's mating "arm" and keeps it.

I think that is pretty common among octopus species.

 

[fresh_42]

Merry Christmas downunder!

 

[DennisN]

I had the honor of seeing and filming this beautiful swan performing lots of "swan stuff" today in a pond in the rain. After a while it got comfortable and got very close to me, which made be back off a bit...
After all, they are big birds!



(Music: "Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky)

 

[BillTre]

After a while it got comfortable and got very close to me, which made be back off a bit...
After all, they are big birds!

Sounds better if you call them dinosaurs (which they are!):
"After all, they are big birds dinosaurs!"

 

[DennisN]

Sounds better if you call them dinosaurs (which they are!)

Yes, I know. And this one was definitely the T-Rex of the pond.

 

[fresh_42]

Sounds better if you call them dinosaurs (which they are!):
"After all, they are big birds dinosaurs!"

This view makes us rats, and puts surfers in danger from the megalodon.

 

[strangerep]

I had the honor of seeing and filming this beautiful swan performing lots of "swan stuff" today in a pond in the rain.
[...]
(Music: "Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky)

It's a good think there was only 1 (male?) swan, else you'd have to choose very different music. -- I once spent a few weeks in an airbnb place beside a large pond frequented by multiple black swans (and a pelican). But it wasn't very peaceful when the swans were around. The dominant male would always be chasing the other males, biting their tails as they fled, or chasing the females, also biting their tails if they fled, trying to avoid being raped.

After a while it got comfortable and got very close to me, which made be back off a bit...

It was probably just hoping you'd toss some bits of bread. That happened often at the airbnb place: whenever a resident would emerge onto a balcony the swans would gather in the water close by, hoping for some bread. The pelican used to sit patiently on a rock in the middle of the lake, also waiting. When someone emerged, it would fly over and paddle nearby, waiting for a handout.

 

[astrodummy]

Here is my dog, Freya. She's a 2yo Shetland Sheepdog.