I was in a canoe,  first thing in the morning in the Pantanal of Brazil when I saw this black howler monkey just waking up. Anyone who has been to an area inhabited by howler monkeys has probably heard their unmistakeable call — the alarm clock of the rain forest —  which can sometimes sound like a jet taking off. The attached sound file is a bit mellower than some I’ve heard, but gives an idea of what they sound like.
Feral hogs live throughout Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Texas. These are wild, not domesticated, swine but they aren’t indigenous to the Americas. It’s believed that they were brought over from Europe sometime in the mid 15th century. In Texas and other parts of the southwest, they compete with native peccaries for habitat. This attractive young lady was with a group of about twelve, including a few of her little piglets.
After selecting this image for today’s photo of the day, I realized that an awful lot of my recent postings feature an animal staring directly at the camera. Because of this I was going to try and find something else, but then I remembered the particular challenge of photographing eastern grey bamboo lemurs in the wild. It wasn’t easy. These guys are quick. I remember running through the forest with my guide as the eastern greys kept darting from one tree to another. Finally I got this guy to stay still for a second and I was able to get a quick shot. As with all lemurs, the eastern grey bamboo lemurs are prosimians, meaning literally pre-monkeys. Also including tarsiers and bushbabies, prosimians are primates that pre-date the monkeys and apes that flourished in the rest of the world — in the case of lemurs, away from the geographic isolation of Madagascar.
This little guy is a mouse opossum I came across one night in the Pampas region of Bolivia. As the name implies, they aren’t much bigger than a mouse, but they are marsupials and not rodents. There are 55 different species of mouse opossum living in Central and South America and they are all nocturnal.
I figured it was just about time I posted another koala. In a rare moment of wakefulness (they spend up to twenty hours a day sleeping), I photographed this one on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Note the spectacular overbite.
I only saw a couple of these capped herons in the Pantnal of Brazil. They are very  unique birds with their blue beaks and tassels on the back of their heads.
The comet moth is one of the largest moths in the world. It has two sets of “false eyes” on its furry wings — an adaptation to confuse predators. These guys are native to Madagascar, and this one was photographed one morning in Ranomafana National Park.
This photo of a bighorn ram was taken over the Christmas break in Yellowstone National Park. There were two of them together kicking at the snow, hoping to uncover some grass to eat. Apparently this guy wasn’t too happy with what he was finding so he took off through the snow.
