Not surprising that both the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara have famous prides called the Marsh Lions. This is the perfect territory to have when the wildebeest migration is elsewhere - the game come to you

After more than 800 years I am personally relieved to hear we no longer have inter-university poop contamination.

Our new study found white tailed deer full of infectious SARS-Cov-2 virus, much evidence of transmission and many spillover events - just in Iowa nytimes.com/2021/11/02/sci…

The mother offspring bond is a theme I'm trying to cover in my photography. The symmetry in this bond is reflected here - the baby elephant's head is pushed up against the knee and the other "eye" is the back of her knee

New birdwatching friend - a young lion watching a European swallow as I try to photograph the swallow! - love the way the swallow is going into serious banking to avoid the lion!

How does it do that without choking? Like humans, the ostrich tongue moves back towards the throat when it swallows, but it has a special pocket & seals the trachea to prevent food going down the wrong way. Special birds for sure.

Kurt Vandegrift, Suresh Kuchipudi & our team found high levels of Covid infection in white tailed deer and that could act as a potential reservoir for humans nytimes.com/2022/02/07/hea…

Our White-tailed deer team have found Omicron in 14% of deer on Staten Island, evidence they may become reinfected after Delta and it is primarily in yearlings who move about a great deal nytimes.com/2022/02/07/hea…

All the indicators show that abundnace of secretraybirds is declining fast so IUCN have made them threatened. These birds, once thought to be cranes, are in fact raptors. Download free photo community magazine at pawstrails.com

Are trumpet pitcher plants behaving like wolves and hunting in packs? Unfortunately not ... while the number of insects caught per patch goes up with more leaves prey capture per leaf did not so for this predator there was no advantage or disadvantage of foraging in groups.

These Trumpet Pitcher Plants in the Florida long leafed pine ecosystems are well adapted to get limiting nutrients from invertebrates. A habitat that once dominated land from Virginia to Texas and depends on fire and yet we are so scared about fire as a management tool.

Eastern Diamond back Rattlesnake in the early morning light of northern Florida - they flick their tongue up and then in and then out and down - in between they take the tongue into the mouth and press against the Jacobson's organ to check the scent.

Can you tell the age of a rattlesnake by the number of segments in a rattle? Not accurately I would say. Each segment is indeed the remains of a skin slough and these increase with age but the rate depends on food availability and some snakes loose sections of their tail.

4 of the 5 brothers hunting in the last light of the day, looked as though they were hunting zebra but they caught a baby Eland right in front of us. Cheetah taking Eland is not really credible but only 1 did the hunting while the other 4 caused confusion

Do you have a cool shot of a black-backed jackal? then you could still get it published in our e-magazine next week - PT Aware. Upload immediately to our Pawstrails.com website: pawstrails.com/register

Have you a cool shot of a black-backed jackal?⁠ then you could still get it published in our e-magazine - PT Aware that will be published next week - upload immediately to pawstrails.com/register

Sons of sons.....Vancouver Island and my son carries my grandson out across the bay after a beautiful day here in wonderful British Columbia.

The offspring of Black-backed jackals are helpers at the den and help gather food for the next litter and this increases their inclusive fitness. Learn more about these meso-predators in our upcoming free e-magazine at Pawstrails.com

Our new e-magazine of PT Aware on black-backed jackals is available and can be downloaded at pawstrails.com/magazine/editi…

A black-backed jackal grabs a morsel of food from the talons of a vulture. While they clean up carrion they also play an important role as mesopredators limiting the abundance of the smaller ungulates.