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!

Allenspark on Dwellable

He Should Have Just Played Dead, Man

For those of you who are acquainted with the top-notch television show "Psych," you might be familiar with the "High Top Fade Out" episode with Blackapella.  If you are not familiar then you are very confused and wondering what is going on.  Bear with me, bad pun intended.  At one point in the episode, Joon, played by Keenan Thompson, says of a recently murdered friend, "He should’ve just played dead, man. I always said that’s what I would do if somebody was trying to kill me. Just play dead. I mean, they’d be like, 'We’re gonna kill you!' And then I’d be like - dead - and then they’d be like, 'Oh he’s dead, let’s go kill somebody else.' And then they would leave."

Despite the fact that this was a humorous scene in a humorous television show, Joon's logic is not terrible.  While it may not work all that well for a human, it does work quite well for a different animal: the Virginia opossum.

Despite the fact that one typically thinks of Australia and New Guinea when one hears the word "marsupial," marsupials are actually found throughout South America, and even in North America as well!  The Virginia opossum is actually the only marsupial to be found in North America north of Mexico, and is around the size of a house cat, European wildcat, Geoffroy's cat, African wildcat, marbled cat, margay, leopard cat, pampas cat, sand cat, oncilla, kodkod, black-footed cat, flat-headed cat, or the rusty-spotted cat.  (And yes, I am setting up a cat feature for next week). 

Originally native only to the east coast of the United States (i.e. Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, Massachusetts, etc.), it was introduced to the west coast around the time of the Great Depression, likely for use as food.  Below is a map of its range today.

Anyways.  Have you ever heard someone use the expression "playing possum?"  This expression originates from an odd but effective behavior employed by the Virginia opossum: it feigns its own death!  Scientists believe that this is an involuntary reaction on the part of the opossum when it experiences fear.  The fear reportedly has to be intense, however, as if the opossum is only mildly afraid, then it will react fiercely, screeching, hissing, and just generally freaking out its antagonist.  Who wants to mess with an angry possum?

If the opossum becomes stressed enough, though, it will collapse into a coma-like state, sometimes for as long as four hours.  While in this coma, the opossum will secrete a green fluid from its anus, a terrible smelling mixture, to make predators think that it is a gross and diseased carcass so they don't mess with it.

Of course, if an opossum becomes super stressed because it sees a car screaming down towards it on a road, I'm guessing that playing dead will only be a temporary measure.  Cars don't appear to have made that big of a dent in the populations of these creatures, as they are labeled "Least Concern" by the IUCN. 

One final thing about the Virginia opossum!  When we were on our California/Oregon driving trip in 2011, we found a hilarious poster like the one below in a shop window!  I laughed so hard!

This birthday post goes out to Chris Koreerat, happy birthday Chris!  If you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animal, and I will do my best to get a post in!

Gatlinburg City on Dwellable

Behind the Scenes at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo....AGAIN!

On Monday, my father, sister and I again traveled to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo with my grandma and grandpa and got another behind the scenes experience from Kelley Parker!  Thanks again, Kelley!  No penguins this time, but we did get to feed the tigers and river otters, as well as see the grizzlies behind the scenes again!  Here are a few pictures and videos from the awesome trip!  I will add some more pictures and videos later on, as well as some pictures and video of other animals from the zoo from both this time and last time, as I forgot to upload any last time as well!  Enjoy!

Feeding the Amur Tiger!

Siberian Tiger Rolls Around

Feeding the River Otters at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo!

Myself feeding one of the tigers!

The tiger playing with a pumpkin that we put into its enclosure for it....I will upload an awesome video of this later!

One of the other tigers staring at us from its yard.  Isn't it beautiful!

The third tiger staring up at us from below, in the enclosure that can be seen by the public.  Despite the fact that we were probably more than one hundred feet away and behind a wall with only a few tiny openings, it knew EXACTLY where we were!  How neat!

A cute picture of one of the river otters eating a trout chunk!

Another cute picture of one of the river otters eating a trout chunk!

One of the two grizzly bears.  Right before I took this picture he made a loud noise and kind of jumped at me, it scared the living daylights out of me!

Divide on Dwellable