The aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the only living species of the order Tubulidentata. It subsists on ants and termites, which it will dig out of their hills using its sharp claws and powerful legs. Unlike other insectivores, it has a long pig-like snout, which is used to sniff out food. It roams over most of the southern two-thirds of the African continent, avoiding areas that are mainly rocky.
The jaguarundi (Puma yagouaroundi) or eyra cat is a small wild cat native to southern North America and South America. The jaguarundi has short legs, an elongated body, and a long tail. It has a total length of 21 to 30 inches with the tail taking 12-to-24 inches of that length, and weighs 7.7 to 20.1 pounds. The coat can be either blackish to brownish-grey (grey phase) or foxy red to chestnut (red phase); individuals of both phases can be born in the same litter. The two color phases were once thought to represent two distinct species: the grey one called jaguarundi, and the red one called eyra. The jaguarundi is closely related to the much larger and heavier cougar, having a similar genetic structure and chromosome count.
The musk ox (Ovibos moschatus) is an Arctic mammal of the family Bovidae, noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted during the seasonal rut by males, from which its name derives. This musky odor is used to attract females during mating season. Its Inuktitut name “umingmak” translates to “the bearded one”. Muskoxen primarily live in the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, with small introduced populations in Sweden, Siberia, Norway, and Alaska.
The Bourbon Red turkey is named for Bourbon County in Kentucky’s Bluegrass region where it originated in the late 1800’s. They have brownish to dark red plumage with white flight and tail feathers. Tail feathers have soft red bars crossing them near the end. Body feathers on the toms may be edged in black. Neck and breast feathers are chestnut mahogany, and the undercolor feathers are light buff to almost white. The Bourbon Red’s beak is light horn at the tip and dark at the base. The throat wattle is red, changeable to bluish white, the beard is black, and shanks and toes are pink. Standard weights for Bourbon Reds are 23 pounds for young toms and 14 pounds for young hens.
The Royal Palm is a strikingly attractive and small-sized turkey variety. Royal Palm turkeys are white with a sharply contrasting, metallic black edging on the feathers. The saddle is black which provides a sharp contrast against the white base color of body plumage. The tail is pure white, with each feather having a band of black and an edge of white. The coverts are white with a band of black, and the wings are white with a narrow edge of black across each feather. The breast is white with the exposed portion of each feather ending in a band of black to form a contrast of black and white similar to the scales of a fish. The turkeys have red to bluish white heads, a light horn beak, light brown eyes, red to bluish white throat and wattles, and deep pink shanks and toes. The beard is black.
Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes (around 1.5-2.3 metres) in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Fossil remains of dwarf elephants have been found on the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, the Cyclades Islands and the Dodecanese Islands. Mediterranean dwarf elephants have generally been considered as members of the genus Palaeoloxodon, derived from the continental straight-tusked elephant, Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) antiquus. It has been suggested by the palaeontologist Othenio Abel in 1914 that the finding of skeletons of such elephants sparked the idea that they belonged to giant cyclopses, because the center nasal opening was thought to be a cyclopic eye socket.
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