Curiosity Cabinet

3 Curious Things About Wildlife

July 30, 2024 / 0 Comments

I think I could do a post every month that was just interesting facts or news about wildlife, but I will attempt to mix it up a little. Here are three, not really related, but hopefully interesting, stories about animals that caught my attention this month.

Good news from Spain and Portugal as populations of the Iberian Lynx have recovered to the point where it has been removed from the endangered species list. Too many endangered species stories go the other direction, so it’s nice to have good news for a change. Similar good news from Kazakhstan, as Przewalski’s horses have been reintroduced for the first time since the 1960s.

Two Iberian lynx. One is grooming the other, much like domestic cats would do.
Iberian lynx. Photo by MedioTuerto via The Guardian.
Two people release a Przewalski's horse from a large crate. It gallops across the open grassland.
Przewalski’s horses being reintroduced to Kazakhstan. Photo by Miroslav Bobek via Scientific American.

Hippos are best known for their terrifying presence in the water, but new research has uncovered how quickly the can move on land. Unlike other mammals who can both trot and gallop, we now know that hippos can only trot, but that doesn’t stop them from moving quickly enough to lift all four feet off the ground.

Three young hippos run towards a river.
Juvenile hippos running towards a stream. Photo by Timothy A. Gonsalves CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Moving from wildlife to domestic birds, the Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds is a delightful set of bird portraits from photographer Luke Stephenson. Each picture is deceptively simple, yet collectively, the reveal the vast diversity of domestic birds.

Two portraits of domestic birds. A green and yellow parrot on the left and a pink and black finch on the right.
Two of the many bird portraits from the Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds by Luke Stephenson via Pretty Pretty.

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