The Animal Statues of Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach in South Carolina was a fantastic place to visit.  They had something for everyone, from a zoo, amazing flowers, a butterfly garden, and some amazing statues!  Today, I'm going to share some pictures of the cool animal statues with you, taken by my mother and I!  Enjoy!

A pair of jaguars attacking a tapir!

A pair of bears!  Photo Credit Julie Neher

A pair of bears!  Photo Credit Julie Neher

A pair of bears!  Photo Credit Julie Neher

  A regal looking lion!  Photo Credit Julie Neher

What look like a king penguin and a pelican

A pair of chortling penguins

What looks like a stork and a shoe-bill

Some people using giant tortoises as a means of transportation!  Photo Credit Julie Neher

This just looked really cool

Platypus

Bessie the Belligerent!

A giant anteater.  Photo Credit Julie Neher

A mammoth

A mastodon

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The Fauna of South Carolina: Cetaceans, Foxes and Otters

Here is the second in the "Fauna of South Carolina series."  Today, we are going to take a brief look at some of the cetaceans, foxes and otters that we saw while we were down there, either in the wild or in zoos.  Let's start with the otters.

River Otters ("Least Concern" by the IUCN) at Brookgreen Gardens

We saw both the otters and the foxes at Brookgreen Gardens, at their Lowcountry Zoo.  Not quite as cool as the foxes in my opinion were the river otters.  They were definitely really cool, as they were running around and playing a great deal, and we had a great view of them.  I'm not sure if I have ever seen otters playing so much, and seen it so well.  It was definitely quite a treat!  The range of the river otter is slightly weird; encompassing Oregon, Washington, and parts of California,and then extending throughout most of Alaska and Canada, and then coming down along the east coast of the United States, down to Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

Gray Fox in tree

Prior to that, we had visited the fox exhibit.  We were looking for red fox and gray fox.  If I recall correctly (which I often don't), we were having trouble seeing the gray foxes, when I noticed something moving in one of the trees.  It was the gray fox!  I had no idea that foxes climb trees!  In fact, other than the raccoon dog found in Asia, I believe not many other canids in fact do climb. 

Gray fox in tree

Gray fox in tree

Gray fox in tree

 The gray fox, like the river otter, is labeled "Least Concern" by the IUCN.  Its range stretches from most of North America, down through Mexico, Central America, and into bits of South America.  The Channel Island Fox (a very interesting animal that we will by all means talk about at some point soon) is almost certainly descended from gray fox on the mainland. 

Instead of doing the cetaceans like we previously planned today, I think we should do them some other time.  See you later!

This post is part of "The Fauna of South Carolina" series.  For the rest of the posts in this series, click HERE.

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The Fauna of South Carolina: Reptiles and Amphibians

First off, don't forget to look below to see the answer to last weeks mystery animal, and to see a couple of pictures of this weeks!

Recently, my family visited some good friends of ours in South Carolina for a few weeks.  Not only did we have a lot of fun visiting them, we saw a lot of cool plants and animals there that we simply don't have up north!  For some of you, many of these animals and plants will be routine and boring, but hopefully there will be something in here that you will find interesting!  I think I am going to split this post up into at least a few different segments, with tomorrows post devoted entirely to the Black Skimmer, a very interesting bird that I had the good fortune to see hunt!  So today I am going to talk about some of the interesting reptiles and amphibians we saw down there, and over the next few weeks we can take a look at some of the birds, fossils and other things we saw down there!

Due to the increased heat and humidity, coupled with less of a swing between the seasons (i.e. it rarely snows and drops below freezing), the south is an excellent place to see all sorts of reptiles and amphibians.  We saw a number of turtles and a frog/toad or two when we were in the south, but what interested me more were the lizards.

A Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis).  Despite its name, the Carolina anole is found in both South and North Carolina, as well as Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi.

A type of skink, but I have yet to ascertain its species, although I am almost certain its genus is that of Plestiodon

And then, of course, there's the gators.  The American Alligator lives in the same states as the Carolina anole, as well as Virginia, Arkansas and Oklahoma.  While we did see a few in the wild, all of these shots (except for that of the gator footprint) were taken at a place called Brookgreen Gardens, or at a restaurant called the Crab Shack.

This big gator we saw at Brookgreen Gardens

This is a picture of a gator footprint that I took.  You can see three of the toes very well, making it look a lot like a theropod dinosaur track, but you can see the other two toes as little holes in the ground.

This picture, and all the rest, were taken at an awesome (both food- and entertainment-wise) restaurant on Tybee Island in Georgia called The Crab Shack.

 

 

 

 

 

 This post is part of "The Fauna of South Carolina" series.  For the rest of the posts in this series, click HERE.

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