Posted in Wildlife on Aug 8th, 2011 3 Comments »
Habitat: Mostly wild and inaccessible areas in a very limited portion of their former range within North America. Diet: Deer and smaller prey, such as beavers and hares. Threats: Habitat loss and revenge killings for attacks on wild stock. Interesting Fact: Large paws help gray wolves distribute their weight evenly on the snow. See gray [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Aug 5th, 2011 1 Comment »
Botswana is once more taking a leading role among African nations in advancing wildlife conservation as it prepares to end game hunting in favor of safaris devoted purely to photography. Archibald Ngakayagae, a spokesperson with Botswana’s Ministry of Wildlife, Environment and Tourism, announced last week that the legal process toward policy change is already underway [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Aug 1st, 2011 No Comments »
New research has revealed a surprising ancestor of the North’s most well-known species … All living polar bears can trace their genetic lineage back to a single Irish brown bear. The study recently appeared in the journal Current Biology. It cites mitochondrial DNA research pointing to the interbreeding of polar bears and Irish brown bears [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Jul 24th, 2011 2 Comments »
Lions break into smaller groups when hunting. Here they can be seen watching our safari vehicle. © Sonya Bessalel Guest blogger and WWF member Sonya Bessalel is a rising sophomore at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Piling on layers of clothing, I stepped out into the chilly morning air in Africa. Clambering into the [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Jul 21st, 2011 3 Comments »
Gray wolves are considered to be elegant predators and highly social animals that form tight, nuclear packs. A symbol of the wilderness and the predecessors to our domesticated dogs, these majestic creatures are still plentiful in rural areas all over the world. 10. Once the world’s most widely distributed mammal, the gray wolf’s range has [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Jul 11th, 2011 No Comments »
My first introduction to reef sharks came on a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a few thousand miles off the coast of East Africa. In knee-deep water just off the shoreline of Aldabra, a remote and uninhabited island along the southernmost reaches of the Seychelles, a half-dozen juvenile blacktip reef sharks [...]
Posted in Featured tours, Wildlife on Jul 5th, 2011 No Comments »
The endangered blue whale is full of contradictions. It’s the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth, yet it’s quite timid. Its heart is the size of a small car, but it feeds on tiny krill. Traveling to the coast of Sri Lanka offers a unique opportunity to see blue whales up close. There [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Jun 29th, 2011 No Comments »
The lion has forever been a symbol of strength, power and ferocity. During WWF tours to Africa, seeing the majestic species up-close is sure to be a spine-tingling experience. 10. African lions are the most social of all big cats and live together in groups or “prides.” A pride consists of about 15 [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Jun 16th, 2011 No Comments »
On our Mozambique Odyssey you’ll have the opportunity to look for five different species of sea turtles. At first glance they might look similar, but upon closer observation you’ll find quite a few ways to tell one species from another. Green Turtle You can identify a green sea turtle by its skin, which is greenish [...]
Posted in Wildlife on Jun 13th, 2011 No Comments »
Polar bears were hunted from the 1600s right through the mid-1970s. Though hunting is now regulated, current polar bear populations face a new challenge: climate change. Sea ice is melting earlier and forming later each year, leaving polar bears less time to hunt. There are currently between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears worldwide, and the [...]