Category: Cute

Weekly Dose of Cute: Baby Komodo Dragon

Sure, when he gets big, this little guy will be one of the world’s largest lizards, weighing in at 150 lbs and growing to length of up to 10 feet long. He’ll be feared as a man eater, possessing a venomous bite that can be fatal. But right now he’s just a little guy, and boy, is he cute!
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Weekly Dose of Cute: World’s Biggest Bunny!

Often, the cutest things come in small packages. Not so with Ralph – at 42 lbs, he’s a record-breaking rabbit.

Ralph comes from a huge family – both his mother and father previously held the world records for largest rabbit in length and weight. And though he’s already the biggest bunny in the world, Ralph is still growing! No one knows how immense this ball off fluff will get, but however big he ends up being, he’s sure to still be 100% adorable.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Serval Kitten

See? Cartoon cute.

It may be easy to put a kitten up as the weekly dose of cute, but look at him – he may be the cutest kitten ever. Cuter, perhaps, than even that little ocelot kitten, which, until now, has earned the title of cutest kitten ever. I mean, look at him! His eyes are cartoon adorable. I didn’t know cat eyes could actually look like Puss N Boots! How could I resist showcasing this unbelievable exhibition of pure cuteness?

Anyhow, this six-week-old cutest kitten competitor was born at Australia’s Adelaide Zoo (there are actually three of them!). Servals (Leptailurus serval) are medium-sized cats originally from Africa. They are opportunistic feeders that will eat whatever they can catch, which is quite a bit since they are agile, fast and smart predators. DNA analysis suggests that they descended from the same ancestor as lions, and perhaps gave rise to cheetahs. Because they’re smaller than their cousins, that have made their way not only into the zoo industry but also the pet industry. To get around regulations about owing a wild animal, exotic breeders have interbred servals with with domesticated cats to produce a mixed breed called a Savannah, which looks like a serval but tends to be smaller. In most states, the offspring of a domestic animal and a wild animal is considered a domestic animal, so Savannahs aren’t illegal to own, though they are quite expensive and are much more difficult to take care of than a regular house cat.

(H/T Zooborns, again.)

Weekly Dose of Cute: American Pika


You may not have heard of the American Pika. Pika are small little rodent relatives most closely related to rabbits, though they look chinchilla-esque. They’re native to colder climates all over the world, including Asia, Europe and North America, and they tend to live on rocky mountain slopes where they can hide in small crevices. Because they are adapted to cold mountainsides, the pika are particularly at risk is the global climate warms, as changing temperatures could push them further and further up the slopes until they can go no higher. Indeed, studies have shown that the pika are traveling upward already.

I chose this animal for the weekly dose of cute because just last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided that the pika did not need any special protection. A year ago, they agreed to assess the health of the pika and whether it needs protection under the Endangered Species Act when the Center for Biological Diversity slapped them with a lawsuit. In their press release, the Fish and Wildlife Service had this to say:

“We have completed an exhaustive review of the scientific information currently available regarding the status of the American pika and have analyzed the potential threats to the species. Based on this information, we have determined that the species as a whole will be able to survive despite increased temperatures in a majority of its range and is not in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future.”

However, last month, author Wendee Holtcamp‌ explained in an article for BioScience that mammals like the pika that have high metabolisms can overheat in temperatures as mild as 25 degrees C (77 degrees F) if they can’t move to colder areas to regulate their temperature. Since the pikas are already near the tops of the mountains they live on, if they are forced to move upwards any more, they will have nowhere to go when it gets hotter.

Many believe the Fish and Wildlife Service was wrong not to extend greater protection to the pika, including scientists. In truth, there are less than half the number of pika that once roamed our mountains. As to whether the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision was right, only time will tell if the pika can really survive warmer climates, or if, indeed, they are on their way towards extinction in our lifetimes.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Baby Froggies!

A little proof that the mini version of just about anything is cute:


Photo credit: Julie Larsen Maher/WCS via Zooborns

These little tykes are the Bronx Zoo’s newest arrivals: baby Kihansi Spray Toads (Nectophrynoides asperginis). While they might just look like any other toad, this species is unique. Females give birth to fully-formed babies, not eggs like most amphibians. There are no tadpoles here – baby toads come right out of mom looking like mini versions of their parents.

Unfortunately, you can’t observe this amazing phenomena in the Kihansi Gorge of Tanzania, where these toads are from, because the Kihansi Spray Toad is extinct in the wild. When a hydroelectric dam was built there in 2000, it destroyed the toad’s habitat. The dam is vital to the Tanzanians, as it generates 1/3 of their total electrical supply, but that’s no consolation to the Kihansi Spray Toad that, like its name suggests, lived in the mist that used to spray from the many waterfalls that flowed into the gorge.

Realizing the dire situation that these toads were in, the Tanzanian government allowed the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to collect almost 500 toads (a small number of the over 17,000 that were estimated to live there at the time) to begin a breeding program in New York. Now, the toads have vanished from the gorge, due to the loss of habitat and the deadly fungal disease chytridiomycosis, and have been officially listed as extinct in the wild by the IUCN, while the New York colony has expanded to almost ten times it’s original number.

The WCS plans to reintroduce the toads back into the gorge within the next few years. A system of sprinklers has been put in place to replicate the toad’s habitat that was lost when the dam was built. Eventually, the WCS hopes that the remarkable Kihsani Spray Toad will be able to live where it originated, instead of thousands of miles away in a zoo.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Baby Tern

The Hawaiian archipelago has a lot of amazing and adorable creatures. Here’s a great shot of a baby white tern, or Manu-o-ku, c/o my lab mate Tonatiuh. It was taken by National Geographic explorers in 2005 while they were in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

When people think of Hawaii, they think of the 8 main islands where people live, but the archipelago stretches another 1,200 miles and includes many islands and atolls with vibrant coral reefs and amazing wildlife. This area is so special it’s practically off limits to everyone but scientists, protected by NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary program. The protected area, called the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Monument is huge – almost 140,000 square miles. For comparison, the entire state of California covers an area of about 163,000 square miles. It’s bigger than the Great Barrier Reef, or all the national parks combined. You can learn more about the over 7000 native species of fish, turtles, marine mammals, and seabirds at the sanctuary’s site.

White Terns (Gygis alba rothchildi), or “Fairy Terns” as they are often called, are beautiful all-white seabirds with black rings around their eyes. They feed primarily on fish caught by diving at the water’s surface. While they have to return to land daily, they can fly as far as 120 miles from shore. They grow to about a foot in length, and are found on many of the subtropical islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans. This little fledgling would have been incubated by both its parents, who take shifts for the 36 days it takes for the baby to develop. Interestingly, these birds do not build nests, instead an egg is laid in some natural nest-like depression. Approximately 7,500 White Terns breed on the Midway Islands, part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Monument.

Weekly Dose of Cute: Bongo, baby!

No, not the small little drums. I’m talking about Bongos, the vibrant antelopes:

c/o the Houston Zoo and ZooBorns

Bongos are a kind of large antelope native to the lowlands and some mountains of Africa. They’re at least two different subspecies: Tragelaphus eurycerus eurycerus (the lowland bongo) and Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci (the eastern or mountain bongo). Both subspecies are facing constant threats; the lowland bongo is listed as near-threatened by the IUCN and the mountain bongo is endangered, with more specimens in captivity than in the wild (~400 in Zoos in North America). The eastern bongo is one of the most threatened large mammals in Africa, with the most recent estimates numbering less than 140 animals, far below a minimum sustainable viable population. Captive breeding is this subspecies last shot at survival.

On a completely side note, this reminds me of a Manu Chao song… I’m the king of bongo, baby, I’m the king of bongo-bong. King of the bongo, king of the bongo…