Adorable obscure critters

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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby cmsellers » Tue Nov 13, 2018 2:50 am

As I noted on the previous page, I am posting interesting-looking rare breeds of livestock. This is my third post and second poultry post on the subject.

Here is the beetle green Cayuga duck.
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This is the silver-spangled Appenzeller Spitzhauben chicken. They come in several other colors including gold-spangled (white on buff) and several solid colors, and are named because their crests resemble the hats worn by the women of the Swiss Appenzell canton. There is also an Appenzeller Barthuhner which is somewhat less common and resembles other European bearded varieties.
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Almost all turkeys sold commercially are two breeds, neither capable of reproducing naturally. However there are a handful of heritage breeds still around. Here is the Bourbon red turkey.
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And personally, I think the most striking of all turkeys is the Royal Palm turkey.
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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby cmsellers » Wed Nov 14, 2018 5:41 pm

I'm gonna do an all-chickens post because there are a lot of cool-looking chickens, mostly bantams.

Faverolles are not bantams, but I posted a similar-looking bantam in my first post. There are a lot of European bearded breeds of chicken, but the faverolle chicken and barbu d'uccle bantam are two of my favorites, because they have so much floof.
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While Wyandottes are not a rare breed, the blue-laced red Wyandotte is a rare and striking color form. They also come in a bantam variety.
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Cochins come in large and bantam sizes, but the frizzled varieties, which like the Sesbatopol geese have feathers that curve backwards, only come in bantam size in the US. However I've never seen a blue frizzle like this for sale in the US, so I'm not sure if they might come in full size in Europe.

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Sebrights are some really striking "true bantams" (no full-size breed), which come in gold and silver (and some non-standard colors), though weirdly I cannot find pictures of both breeds together, or even a good picture of both sexes of the silver variety (which I like better).
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Rosecombs are another true bantam breed, with the black being IMO the most striking.
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Finally, I've known about silkies since I was a kid, but they look ridiculous and this pattern, the partridge cuckoo, is new to me. There is a dispute as to whether they are large bantams or small regular chickens. And yes, those are fully-grown adult chickens.
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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby JamishT » Thu Nov 15, 2018 12:22 am

When I was kid, we had some Bantams. At one point, we had the Bantam rooster and an Araucana rooster that was much larger. The Bantam terrified the Araucana, because he gave not a single fuck.
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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby cmsellers » Thu Nov 15, 2018 1:07 am

I noticed that there seems to be an inverse correlation between aggression and bird size in birds. Cassowaries, ostriches, and emus actually aren't all that aggressive, it's just that when annoyed they can do some real damage. Parrotlets, lovebirds, chickadees, and hummingbirds can be quite aggressive though. Water birds, however, follow the opposite pattern: swans and geese are way meaner than ducks, and skuas are meaner than seagulls which are meaner than terns. Or it's possibly statistical noise, and it's just that tiny aggressive birds are more memorable.
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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby cmsellers » Sun Dec 09, 2018 7:04 am

So I realized I never posted about prehensile-tailed porcupines.

Here is a video of a cute one:
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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby cmsellers » Mon Dec 10, 2018 4:03 am

Apparently posting videos (or just videos of one animal?) isn't appealing, so back to photos, mostly.

This is the pacarana, the only living member of a family which included the largest ever rodent, the horse-sized Josephoartigasia monesi. It is limited to the western Amazon, parts of the tropical Andes, and some of the lowland rainforests of western Colombia.
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And despite what I said, here is a video of one cleaning itself, and worse, a vertical video:


Moving away from South America to the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, we have the Gough bunting, a monotypic taxon (only member of the genus) found only on Gough Island.
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Meet the Inaccessible Island rail, also a monotypic taxon and the smallest extant flightless bird and a tiny ball of floof.
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More floof
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And moving back across South America to the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, meet the Antipodes parakeet. It is neat because it is one of only five species of ground-nesting parrots, the second southernmost parrot in the world, and with the kea of New Zealand proper, one of two parrots known to regularly prey on other animals, namely the chicks of nesting seabirds.
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Crossing the Tasman strait and the entire continent of Australia, we come to the western edge of Western Australia. Y'all know about the quokka, which is mostly limited to islands off the coast of Western Australia, but two species of hare-wallaby are now entirely restricted to two islands of the WA coast.

Meet the banded hare-wallaby, a monotypic taxon.
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Finally, meet the rufous hare-wallaby. There is one other species in its genus which is widespread, but two species in the genus are extinct and this one is almost extinct.
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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby Anglerphobe » Mon Dec 10, 2018 7:27 pm

In some cases, I think motion is necessary to convey an animal's full cuteness. The Epaulette shark I posted way upthread is reasonably cute as a still image, but considerably disarmed without its adorable waddling walk.

In the spirit of contribution, here are some Old World monkeys.

Blue monkey
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Native to central Africa. Also known, charmingly, as the diademed monkey, for the decoration on its forehead.


Diana monkey
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Of Liberia and the Ivory Coast. This one has my favourite colouration. It's a really beautiful animal, named for the Roman Goddess because of the crescent shape on its forehead (similar to the "diadem" of the related monkey above).


Talapoin
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Two species, native to West Africa. Both of these images are of the Gabon Talapoin, which is Africa's smallest monkey. The slightly larger Angola Talapoin has subtly different markings.

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Javan Lutung
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Native, of course, to Java. There are two common colour morphs, as shown here.

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Re: Adorable obscure critters

Postby Grimstone » Tue Jan 01, 2019 8:08 am

phpBB [video]
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