Most people identify wombats and kangaroos as Australian animals, but one in six people surveyed in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria think red foxes are native wildlife. The polling commissioned by the Invasive Species Council also revealed that one in three Australians on the east coast did not know that quolls were native. More […]
Tag: predators
Sharks have a deadly secret sixth – and possibly – seventh sense to locate prey — and it’s more terrifying than you think
Sharks have all the senses humans have – along with additional senses that enable them to detect electrical signals and vibrations in the water. Small pores on a shark’s snout, known as ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’, can detect the tiny electrical currents in the water given off by living animals and inanimate objects, such as camera […]
Fat Bear Week has returned – and the salmon are swimming for their lives
The bears have returned to the river and are packing on the pounds as another Fat Bear Week begins at Katmai national park. The 12th annual Fat Bear Week, in which the public will vote for the fattest of Katmai’s brown bears as mothers, cubs and males gather along the salmon-run at Brooks river in […]
“I was once charged – fortunately, I could run faster than the photographer I was with…”
What inspired you to get into wildlife photography in the first place? I went to a lecture by the photographer Laurie Campbell. His first slide was a robin on a spade – a cliched shot, but on that huge screen, it blew me away. If not Scotland, where would you live? Somewhere cold and snowy. […]
It clatters like a machine gun, has a deadly prehistoric-looking beak, can live for 25 years and can grow up to a whopping 1.5m tall with a wingspan of 2.6m
This odd-looking bird is a charismatic giant that can live up to 25 years in the wild. It has piercing eyes and and can grow up to 1.5m tall with a wingspan of 2.6m. For some, its cartoon-like charm is magnetic, for others it’s a menacing-looking predator. It is hunted for its meat and eggs and threatened by […]
It’s covered in terrifying quills so, what could possibly eat a porcupine?
Can any animals eat porcupines? Surely not as porcupine quills present an impenetrable thicket to most predators. But these backward-pointing defences are only effective if the rodent can keep its assailant to its rear. What animals can eat porcupines? In North America, pumas and fishers (marten-like mammals) are skilled porcupine predators, outmanoeuvring their quarry to launch their attacks from the […]
Kākāpō rising: 90 chicks swell population of the world’s heaviest parrot
The population of the world’s heaviest parrot, the kākāpō, has surpassed 300 birds for the first time in 75 years, after a record breeding season triggered by the mass fruiting of a native New Zealand tree. Ninety chicks were officially added to the population of the critically endangered birds on 1 September, pushing the total to […]
It is the largest, most formidable, cat in the Americas and one of the world’s most powerful predators, able to bite straight through the skull of its prey
In our expert jaguar guide learn all about these spectacular bigs cats, including how to identify each species, their diet and best places to see them in their natural habitat, plus conservation work. How many different species of jaguar are there? Found in the Americas, the jaguar is an endangered species with ongoing conservation work […]