I’m a little behind this year, but I figured there was no better topic for my first Saturday Surprise post in three months than some funny critters! The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards … “began its life modestly in 2015 as a photographic competition. Since then, steered by its founders, Paul Joynson-Hicks MBE and Tom Sullam, it has grown into a globally renowned competition seen by millions of people every year, and always with wildlife conservation at its heart. The free competition, open to wildlife photography experts and novices, celebrates the hilarity of our natural world and highlights what we need to do to protect it. From a surprised otter to a swearing turtle, Comedy Wildlife’s photographs transcend cultures and ages to bring a smile to everyone’s face.” What better way to start the weekend than with a smile, yes?
If you’d like to look back at previous year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography posts, here are the links:
Ken Jensen — Ouch! — “A golden silk monkey in Yunnan China – this is actually a show of aggression however in the position that the monkey is in it looks quite painful!”
Arthur Trevino — Ninja Prairie Dog! — “When this Bald Eagle missed on its attempt to grab this prairie dog, the prairie dog jumped towards the eagle and startled it long enough to escape to a nearby burrow. A real David vs Goliath story!.”
John Speirs — I guess summer’s over — “I was taking pics of pigeons in flight when this leaf landed on the bird’s face.”
Chee Kee Teo — Time for school — “A smooth-coated otter “bit” its baby otter to bring it back to and fro for swimming lesson.”
Vicki Jauron — The Joy of a Mud Bath — “An elephant expresses his joy in taking a mud bath against the dead trees on the shores of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe on a hot afternoon.”
Andy Parkinson — Let’s dance — “Two Kamchatka bear cubs square up for a celebratory play fight having successfully navigated a raging torrent (small stream!)”
Chu han lin — See who jumps high — Mudskipper, Taiwan
David Eppley — Majestic and Graceful Bald Eagle — “Bald Eagles will use the same nest for years, even decades, adding new material to it at the beginning and throughout the nesting season. Normally, they are highly skilled at snapping branches off of trees while in flight. Possibly tired from working nonstop all morning on a new nest, this particular Bald Eagle wasn’t showing its best form. Yes, sometimes they miss. Although this looks painful, and it might very well be, the eagle recovers with just a few sweeping wing strokes, and choses to rest a bit before making another lumber run.”
Jakub Hodan — Treehugger — “This Proboscis monkey could be just scratching its nose on the rough bark, or it could be kissing it. Trees play a big role in the lives of monkeys. Who are we to judge…”
Jan Piecha — ‘Secrets’ — “The little raccoon cubs are telling secrets to each other”
Lea Scaddan — Missed — “Two Western Grey Kangaroos were fighting and one missed kicking him in the stomach.”
Nicolas de VAULX — How do you get that damn window open? — “This raccoon spends his time trying to get into houses out of curiosity and perhaps also to steal food.”
Pal Marchhart — Peekaboo — “ A young bear descending from a tree looks like he/she is playing hide and seek.”
Roland Kranitz — I got you — “I spent my days in my usual “gopher place” and yet again, these funny little animals haven’t belied their true nature.”
I hope you all have a great weekend … no doubt with this being the final weekend before Christmas, most of you will be doing last minute shopping, decorating, baking, wrapping, etc. Have fun!!! 🎄🎁🎅
This picture shows the intimate moment an endangered Siberian tiger hugs an ancient Manchurian fir tree to mark it with her scent. It took Russian photographer Sergey Gorshkov over 11 months to capture using motion sensor cameras. Sergey scoured the forest for signs of Amur, or Siberian, tigers, searching for the best place to set up his camera trap. He knew his chance of photographing one was slim, but his mind was made up. “From then on, I could think of nothing else,” Sergey says. Finally, his dedication paid off: he captured a rare glimpse of this magnificent tiger in its wild habitat.
It was on a summer holiday in Helsinki that Liina, then 13, heard about a large fox family living in the city suburbs on the Finnish island of Lehtisaari. The island has both wooded areas and fox-friendly citizens, and the foxes are relatively unafraid of humans. So Heikkinen and her father spent one long July day, without a hide, watching the two adults and their six large cubs, which were almost the size of their parents, though slimmer and lankier. In another month, the cubs would be able to fend for themselves, but in July they were only catching insects and earthworms and a few rodents, and the parents were still bringing larger prey to them. On this evening, the vixen arrived with a barnacle goose. Feathers flew as the cubs began fighting over it.
Titled A Tale of Two Wasps, this remarkable simultaneous framing of a red-banded sand wasp (left) and a cuckoo wasp about to enter next-door nest holes is the result of painstaking preparation. The female cuckoo wasp—just 6 millimeters long—parasitizes the nests of certain solitary digger wasps, laying her eggs in her hosts’ burrows so that her larvae can feast on their eggs or larvae. The much larger red-banded sand wasp lays her eggs in her own burrow, which she provisions with caterpillars, one for each of her young to eat when they emerge.
A brown bear pulls a sockeye salmon from the shallows of a river in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. The greatest concentration of bears – and tourists – is around the waterfall at Brooks River, where viewing platforms enable visitors to watch bears catching salmon leaping up the falls.
Believe it or not, there’s a hippopotamus in there! An eye blinks open in a mud pool as a hippopotamus emerges to take a breath – one every three to five minutes. The challenge for José, watching in his vehicle, was to catch the moment an eye opened.
A Manduriacu glass frog snacks on a spider in the foothills of the Andes, in northwestern Ecuador. As big consumers of invertebrates, glass frogs play a key part in maintaining balanced ecosystems. That night, Jaime Culebras’s determination to share his passion for them had driven him to walk for four hours, in heavy rain, through the forest to reach the frogs’ streams in the Manduriacu Reserve. But the frogs were elusive and the downpour was growing heavier and heavier. As he turned back, he was thrilled to spot one small frog clinging to a branch, its eyes shimmering like mosaics.
This cutie is known by many names: thorny dragon, thorny devil, thorny lizard, and mountain devil. He’s smaller than he looks in the picture … only a maximum of about 8 inches in length, and that includes the tail. Native to Australia, this is the only species in the genus Moloch. 
The thorny dragon can live up to 20 years, and they subsist solely on … ants. They have several means of warding off would-be predators … first, of course, any predator would find those scales a bit ominous. They can also puff themselves up to look significantly larger than they are. And third, they have what is known as a ‘false head’, or a knob-like appendage on the backs of their necks. When threatened, they can tuck their real head between their forelegs, and the false head is left in its place.
Found in the rainforests of Borneo, this guy, the proboscis monkey, reminds me of my Uncle Lou! According to National Geographic, they actually use their big noses to attract mates. “Scientists think these outsize organs create an echo chamber that amplifies the monkey’s call, impressing females and intimidating rival males.” Their noses can grow to as long as 7 inches … that’s quite a schnoz!
And speaking of critters with large noses, this is the recently-discovered (2008) Pinocchio frog. Found in Papua, New Guinea, little is known about them, but they have the ability to enlarge and inflate their nose. It inflates when the male frog is calling out, and it goes down when the frog is calm and quiet. Kind of cute, isn’t he?
Meet the axolotl, also known as the Mexican Walking Fish. He is actually a small salamander and is a critically endangered species. Whereas most such amphibians grow into adulthood by developing lungs and leaving the water behind for a home on land, these guys live their entire lives underwater. They are currently only known to live in one place, Lake Xochimilco south of Mexico City.
The thing that makes them most unique is their ability to heal themselves. They can re-generate their limbs, eyes, and even parts of their brain!
The main thing that sets this markhor apart from other wild goats is the spiraling horns on its head. They live in mountain ranges from Afghanistan to northern India, but it’s the national animal of Pakistan. In Persian, the name markhor means ‘snake-eater’. Their horns can grow up to 5 feet long! That’s as long as Miss Goose is tall! Considering that these goats are only 2-4 feet tall, it seems as if their horns would make them top-heavy. 
They use their horns for digging in the ground, fighting other males for the attention of females, and stripping bark off of trees. Rather like trees, there are rings on the horns that can tell the age of the markhor.
Last but not least, how about this tiny, adorable Honduran white bat? Also known as the ghost bat, he is tiny, only about 1.5 inches long, and is found only in the jungles of Central America. Still another name for him is the “Caribbean white tent-making bat” … that’s a mouthful! It came by that name because it constructs ‘tents’ out of plant leaves by strategically cutting the leaf ribs with its teeth; it roosts in these tents during the day.
Filosofa's Word 