Cats
laelaps | August 13, 2008According to a news report released last night the first confirmed remains of a scimitar-toothed cat have been found in Venezula, a contemporary of the dirk-toothed cat Smilodon. The uncovered remains are said to represent six individual sabercats, called Homotherium, including a complete skull. This makes Homotherium one of the most widely traveled and persistent of all sabercats; it has been found in Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, and the genus was present from about five million years ago to 10,000 years ago (although it became extinct in different parts of the…
laelaps | August 8, 2008Snow leopards (Panthera uncia), photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 23, 2008.
For those of you who know more about photography than I do, I have a question. I've been shooting in the raw NEF format and many of my photographs have come out looking very vibrant. When I convert the image to a format I can use on the web, however, (like jpg) they lose much of that great color and take on a sickly shade of green (like the ones above, unfortunately). Do you have any recommendations about how to convert NEF files to a web-friendly format without sacrificing too much quality?
laelaps | August 6, 2008
Anyone who keeps domesticated felids knows what it's like to be awakened in the middle of the night by a paw to the face or small feet running over the bed, but Jacquie and Mack Anderson were surprised to find a much larger cat in their house. According to an AP report they had left the french doors to their home open during the night, allowing a cougar (Puma concolor) to sneak inside their bedroom and nab their Labrador retriever. Neither the lab nor the other dog in the room barked and the Andersons didn't even know what had happened until the cougar had their dog. All they saw was the…
laelaps | August 4, 2008Grace, a female lion (Panthera leo), watches the geese and kudu in the adjacent enclosure. Her mate George dozes nearby. (Photographed on July 23, 2008 at the Bronx Zoo.)
gregladen | July 30, 2008 Sabertooth Cat, Megantereon nihowanensisl There are two kinds of "true cats." Cat experts call one type feline or "modern" partly because they are the ones that did not go extinct. If you have a pet cat, it's a modern/feine cat. This also includes the lions, tigers, leopards, etc. The other kind are called "sabercats" because this group includes the saber tooth. It is generally believed but not at all certain that these two groups of cats are different phylogenetic lineages (but that is an oversimplification).
It has been suggested for some time that the bite force mechanics for at…
laelaps | July 30, 2008A snow leopard (Panthera uncia), photographed July 23th, 2008 at the Bronx zoo.
laelaps | July 29, 2008Charlotte (the black one) and Dolly playing. Dolly went to the adoption center this past weekend.Dolly
laelaps | July 22, 2008A male Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), photographed July 15th, 2008 at the Philadelphia zoo.
laelaps | July 18, 2008You all are way too good. The "mystery creature" from yesterday is indeed a fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), photographed July 15th, 2008 at the Philadelphia zoo.
laelaps | July 17, 2008A male cougar (Puma concolor), photographed July 15th, 2008 at the Philadelphia zoo.
laelaps | July 16, 2008Two of the three male Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) born at the Philadelphia Zoo last year. Photographed July 15th, 2008.
laelaps | July 13, 2008A female snow leopard (Panthera uncia). Photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.This snow leopard is another female, the sister of the one pictured above.
laelaps | July 11, 2008Feeding "the littles" that were here a few weeks ago.I think I have confused Charlotte, a diminutive female cat my wife and I adopted about two years ago. She was just a little runt when we took her in and she never had kittens, yet she has been acting a lot like a mother as of late. Given that it is the summer and there is a seemingly never-ending supply of kittens that need temporary foster homes, there have been "itty bitty kitty cats" in the apartment since April. With the last pair (Eliza and Madeline) Charlotte started acting a bit strange. Other than just wanting to constantly bathe…
laelaps | July 8, 2008ElizaMadelineWhy start off the day with pictures of the kittens rather than a juicy science post? I think this explains it well enough;
more cat pictures
laelaps | July 7, 2008A black leopard (Panthera pardus). Photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.
laelaps | July 5, 2008One of the two snow leopard sisters (Panthera uncia) I first saw two years ago, all grown up. Photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.I'm still learning how to use all the functions on my new camera but I have to say that I think I took some of the best photographs I have ever taken on my trip to the Bronx zoo today. Although the fossas were asleep in corners of their enclosure (depriving me of any good photo opportunities) most of the other creatures I visited at the zoo were active and awake. The photographs I took will appear one-by-one each day but you'll definitely see some…