Golden fur and feathers sit right between yellow and brown, and nature makes that color two ways at once. In mammals, a warm form of melanin called pheomelanin paints coats reddish-gold. In birds and frogs, carotenoid pigments from food add
Most yellow animals get their color from food. Plants and algae make yellow-orange pigments called carotenoids, and animals that eat them — or eat the insects that eat them — can move those pigments into feathers, skin, and scales. That
In a world full of leaves, green is the ultimate camouflage — yet most green animals cannot actually make green pigment. Green frogs, lizards, and parrots usually combine two tricks: a layer of yellow pigment over skin or feather structures
Blue is the rarest common color in the animal kingdom, and it hides an amazing secret: almost no animal actually makes blue pigment. A cardinal is red because of red pigment in its feathers, but a blue jay is blue
Animals are white for very different reasons. Some, like polar bears and snowy owls, evolved pale coloring as camouflage against snow and ice. Others are white because of genetics: albino animals cannot make the pigment melanin at all, while leucistic
Black animals get their color from melanin, the same pigment that darkens human hair and skin. When an animal’s body produces a lot of melanin, its fur, feathers, or scales turn deep brown to jet black. Scientists call an unusually
A group of moose is usually just called a herd. But here’s the honest answer behind the trivia question: moose are among the least herd-forming animals in the entire deer family. Adult moose live alone for most of the year,
A female elk is called a cow. A male elk is a bull, and a baby elk is a calf. Elk share this cattle-style naming with the other giant members of the deer family, moose and caribou, while smaller deer
A baby caribou is called a calf — the same term used for the young of other large deer like moose and elk, and for baby reindeer, since caribou and reindeer are the same species. Caribou calves are usually born
Most deer give birth to one or two fawns per year, and for a healthy adult white-tailed doe, twins are actually the norm. First-time mothers usually have a single fawn, does in their prime on good food commonly have twins,
Wild elk typically live around 10 to 13 years, though cows in lightly hunted or protected herds can reach their late teens and occasionally their early twenties. Bulls generally live shorter lives than cows, often under 10 years in the
Bats live astonishingly long lives for their size — many species commonly reach 10 to 20 years in the wild, and some individuals have survived past 30 or even 40. By the normal rules of mammal biology, that shouldn’t happen.
Elk can run at speeds of up to around 40 to 45 miles per hour in short bursts, making them among the fastest large animals in North America. Just as impressive is their endurance: elk can hold a ground-eating trot
Moose grow the largest antlers of any living deer. A mature bull’s rack commonly spans 4 to 5 feet from tip to tip, and the biggest Alaska-Yukon bulls can exceed 6 feet of spread, with a full-grown pair of antlers
Caribou can run at speeds of up to about 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) in short bursts, making them one of the fastest deer species in the world. They can’t hold that top speed for long, but what really
No — skunks do not truly hibernate. In cold climates they enter torpor: a lighter dormancy in which body temperature and metabolism drop modestly and the skunk sleeps away the coldest stretches in a den, but wakes periodically and will
Yes — female reindeer grow antlers, and they are the only deer species in which females routinely do. Even more interesting: males typically shed their antlers in late fall or early winter, after the breeding season, while females usually keep
Yes, deer are social animals, and most of the deer you see are traveling in groups. For white-tailed deer, the most common arrangement is a small family group built around an adult doe, her fawns, and often her daughters from
The snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) is the boreal forest’s shape-shifter: a two-to-four-pound hare with enormous, fur-soled hind feet that work like snowshoes, and a coat that molts from summer brown to winter white and back every year, triggered by day
Biologically, hearing an owl means something specific and rather good: a healthy predator is claiming territory or courting a mate close to you, which in turn means your neighborhood has the rodents, trees, and quiet an owl needs. Most owl
The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a true bear — the eighth and most specialized member of the bear family — found only in the cool, wet bamboo forests of the mountains of central China. It’s a study in contradiction:
Wild turkeys sleep in trees. Every night, shortly before dark, a flock flies up 20 to 60 feet into the limbs of large, mature trees — a behavior called roosting — and stays there until first light. It surprises people
Owls can rotate their heads about 270 degrees in either direction — three-quarters of a full circle — without moving their bodies and without cutting off blood to the brain. Two anatomical tricks make it possible. First, owls have 14
The rule for storing food in bear country is simple: nothing with a scent ever stays in your tent, your pack, or the open — not food, not trash, not toothpaste. Where you’re car camping, everything scented goes into a