herbivore
laelaps | November 7, 2007
Today's photo, like yesterday's, was taken at the Philadelphia Zoo, and I was fortunate enough to be able to catch the Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) as they were entering the water. I'm sure everyone has heard of their aggressiveness via television documentaries and other sources, but few have heard of the fact that hippos sometimes consume flesh. While hippos occasionally nibble on or play with carcasses in African waterways, in severe drought conditions they sometimes kill prey (as in one account of an impala running into the water to avoid Wild Dogs, only to be killed and consumed by…
laelaps | October 30, 2007
Most of the wildlife photographs I feature here were taken at zoos, but every once in a while I get a chance to photograph some indigenous creatures, White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) being the only relatively large mammal in the area. In fact, New Jersey has an overabundance of the deer, and it's strange to drive late at night and not see at least one along the side of the road (or even trying to cross it). While there were always deer here, they owe much of their population growth in the last 200 years to human development of land, especially the clearing of forests for lawns or…