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Augo the polar bear cub plays with a giant red ball at Aalborg Zoo in Denmark. Augo used to be attached to his blue bucket, which he would wear on his head, but now he has a new toy. Visitors to Aalborg Zoo have been treated to the sight of Augo hugging and nuzzling his bright ball and leaping into the pool and chasing it around. A greedy chipmunk stuffs its mouth with corn on the cob. The cheeky creature pounced on the cob within minutes of photographer Barbara Lynne hanging it in her back garden in Ontario, Canada, for the birds. Barbara says: "We call her Eleanor, however we are not sure whether she is male or female. Eleanor is always a pig and stuffs her cheeks until she looks ready to explode. She runs back to her den to empty her pouches - and starts stuffing them all over again." A bear cub named Medo plays with the Logar family dog in Podvrh village, Slovenia. The Logar family has adopted the three-and-half-month-old bear cub that strolled into their yard about a month ago. |
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view Animal Pictures of the Week: 3 June 2011 as presented by: Telegraph Media Group |
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A standard joke when you go on a safari is that in your country you have zebra crossings while over here we have real zebras crossing. There is not a zebra in sight in this set of pictures, but it does feature plenty of animals crossing the road. A gopher tortoise moves towards the space shuttle Discovery, seen sitting on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, July 3, 2006. NASA inspectors found a crack in the foam insulation of space shuttle Discovery's fuel tank and managers were meeting on Monday to decide how the crack might affect Tuesday's launch. A white rhino and its baby cross a road on the drying shores of Lake Nakuru in Kenya's Rift Valley, 160km (99 miles) west of the capital Nairobi, December 18, 2009. World leaders worked through the early hours to try and beat a Friday deadline for a deal on cutting emissions and helping poor countries cope with the costly impact of global warming. Vicunas cross National Route 40, near Huancar town in the Argentine Puna region of San Salvador de Jujuy, 3,900 metres (12,795 feet) above sea level August 7, 2010. |
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view Animals Xing as presented by: Totally Cool Pix |
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Throughout military history, animals have gone to war alongside humans. Millions of horses, mules and donkeys died in World War I, as they carried the soldiers and artillery ammunition to the battle fields of Europe. “There was a great love and loyalty between the soldiers and the animals they worked with,” said registrar Toni M. Kiser, who created the exhibit “Loyal Force: Animals at War” at the National World War II Museum. During World War II, nearly 3,000 horses, provided by the Army Quartermaster Corps, enabled the shore patrol to cover more ground. “The U.S. Coast Guard used more horses than any other branch of the U.S. Military during WWII.” Most supplies and a great deal of artillery were still horse-drawn, and a mounted infantry squadron patrolled about six miles in front of every German infantry division. “These mounted patrol troops were referred to as the ‘eyes and ears of their units.’” The Photos in this post include images from the Civil War to Iraq and Afghanistan. A docile horse wears a gas mask, as a precaution against gas attacks, that was developed by "Our Dumb Friends League," a humane society in London, England, March 27, 1940. The mask might almost be a feed bag, except for the window panes and the enclosed ear muffs. In this photo release by the National Archives via National World War II Museum, Butch, a sentry dog, stands guard over Pfc. Rez P. Hester of the Marine Corps’ 7th War Dog Platoon on Iwo Jima in this undated photograph from the National Archives. The photo will be part of an exhibit, titled "Loyal Force: Animals at War" at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans from July 22-Oct. 17. A Russian man, an evacuee from the Chechen Capital Grozny, reaches out for a final pat of his dog, Jan. 21, 1995. Pets left behind as people flee the war-torn region are forced to fend for themselves. Some 200 people were evacuated from the Grozny area on Saturday, 21 by Russian forces with the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The majority of evacuated were ethnic Russian who had no place to flee during the fighting between Russian and Chechen forces. |
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view On War: Animals in War as presented by: Denver Post |
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A male orangutan named Tuan gets his teeth into a pumpkin at the Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg. Jemima the racoon enjoys a feast of pumpkin at Drusillas Park in Alfriston, East Sussex. A Japanese macaque plays with a pumpkin at the Bioparco zoo. Delivering the animals' meals in imaginative and unusual ways ensures they receive a varied and diverse diet, as well as encouraging them to think and work for their food as they would in the wild. North China leopards (Panthera pardus japonensis) also investigate Halloween pumpkin treats at the zoo in Hungary. |
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view Animals Tuck Into Halloween Pumpkins At Zoos Around The World as presented by: Telegraph Media Group |
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Driven by the forces of sexual selection, male—and, in some instances, female—animals have evolved a dizzying array of mating displays and rituals. For jumping spiders, mating can be an tricky affair—but not for the reasons you might think. According to a recent study published in Current Biology, jumping spiders communicate during courtship using ultraviolet B (UVB) light, which humans are unable to see. While scientists have long known that certain species use UVA light for communication, this was the first study to demonstrate that some are also able to detect shorter-wavelength UVB light. The male jumping spiders have specialized scales that glow white and green when exposed to UV light; in female spiders, the palps appeared green under UV light. And the absence of UVB light effectively killed the mood: As soon as either sex was exposed to light without ultraviolet rays, the other immediately lost interest in mating. While this male mandrill may look unfriendly, mandrills are social animals that live in large groups in Africa’s rainforests. Each pack is led by a dominant, alpha male. These brightly colored, or “fatted” alpha males—as seen in this picture—are the only ones to sire offspring, and have much higher levels of testosterone than the paler, “non-fatted” males. The red color on the male’s face and genitalia also indicate its dominance within the group. What the male fiddler crabs lack in body size, he more than makes up for in claws. The large claw, or cheliped—which looks like a fiddle when moved in conjunction with the smaller claw—is used for communication, courtship, and combat. The smaller claw is used for eating and building a burrow. |
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view Flash, Deception and Suicide: 10 Remarkable Tricks of Animal Mating as presented by: Discover Magazine |
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