Elk in Estes Park: Up Close and Personal With Primos!

Recently, my family and I went up to Estes Park for the night.  I set up my Primos Truth Cam at our hotel, and didn't actually get any hits that night, but we got some most excellent pictures of elk, one of those members of the family Cervidae (like deer), from the very next morning!  Here are some of the best pictures from the Primos Truth Cam!

 

 

Check out that massive rack of antlers!

 

 

That was pretty exciting!  Those elk, or wapiti (the Native American term for elk, meaning "white rump") were no more than ten feet from us on our balcony!  I can upload more pictures later, but here is one final picture of the elk that we took at our cabin thingy!

I also wanted to let ya'll know that some of our polls closed the other day!  We had four polls about different things that you all wanted to featured on the blog, and three of them closed!  Here are the three different polls, what all of the voting options were, and who won!

Poll #1:  Animal You Would Most Like To See Featured

Corythosaurus: 5 Votes
Inkayacu: 6 Votes
Pallas's Cat: 7 Votes
AND OUR WINNER IS:
Bear-Dog: 8 Votes

For those of you who aren't entirely sure what these animals are, Corythosaurus is a Hadrosaur, a type of dinosaur, and Inkayacu is a fossil penguin found in South America.  The Pallas's cat is, of course, a cat.  And the bear-dog....well, we will learn more about this dude soon enough!

Poll #2:  Baby Animal That You Would Like To Be Featured

Sitatunga: 1 Vote
Geoffroy's Cat: 3 Votes
Aardvark: 4 Votes
Gentoo Penguin: 4 Votes
Tenrec: 4 Votes
Sifaka: 4 Votes
Stingray: 5 Votes
AND OUR WINNER IS:  A THREE-WAY TIE.  We will have to have a post with three baby animals in it!
Tasmanian Devil: 6 Votes
Sand Cat: 6 Votes
Aye-Aye: 6 Votes

Breakdown of the animals whose names do not make it clear what they are: Sitatunga is an antelope, aardvark is an animal that is featured HERE, tenrec is a hedgehog-looking creature from Madagascar, and the Sifaka is a lemur from Madagascar.

Poll #3:  Extinct Animal You Would Like To Hear More About

Megalania: 3 Votes
Opabinia: 4 Votes
Dire Wolf: 4 Votes
Dwarf Malagasy Hippo: 4 Votes
Cotylorhynchus: 5 Votes
AND OUR WINNER IS:
Thylacine: 7 Votes

Megalania is a gigantic relative of the Komodo dragon, Opabinia is a little creature that we will talk about later, the dire wolf was a larger relative of the gray wolf, the dwarf Malagasy hippo was just that: a dwarf hippo that lived on Madagascar, and Cotylorhynchus is also something that we will talk about later!

I will get more polls up hopefully sometime today, but in the meantime, keep in mind that we have a fourth poll open: the "Important Scientist Whose Discoveries You Would Like To Hear More About" poll.  Choose either Robert T. Bakker, David Attenborough, Matthew Mossbrucker, or Thomas R. Holtz!  Make your voice heard!

And since today is Thanksgiving, let's all take a moment to say what we are grateful for!  I'll start: I am thankful for raccoons.  Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

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