Author | Lightnews

pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Feb 5

A northern gannet dives into the water by the Isle of Noss, Shetland Islands, to catch its prey.
With a 180 centimetre wingspan, they are one of the largest seabirds in British waters

📷Jade Hoksbergen
#marinelife #nature #photography #blueplanet

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Feb 3

Hidden high in the Himalayas, camouflaged between the ice and rocky terrain, lives the snow leopard. As the top predator in this ecosystem, snow leopards keep countless other animal and plant populations in balance as they prey on grazers.
📍 Ladakh, India
📷 Sascha Fonseca

#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Jan 21

A Black bear cub takes an
afternoon nap up on a tree, next to a very surprised eagle in Anan, Alaska.

📷Jeroen Hoekendijk
#wildlife #photography #palebluedot

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Jan 20

During the courtship, Cuban painted snails spear the partner with a calcareous “love” dart.

Collected to near-extinction by poachers seeking to sell them as jewelry, these large, vibrantly-colored hermaphroditic land snails were listed as endangered in 2012.

📷Mark Brandon
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Dec 30

A cheetah bursts into a small group of zebras in southern Kenya, clinging onto a foal. The mother zebra launches a last attempt to push her foal away from the attacking big cat.

📷Alex Brackx
#wildlifephotography #2024 #palebluedot

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Dec 8

A mudskipper and a crab have a territorial dispute in Roebuck Bay, Australia.

Did you know? Mudskippers are amphibious fish that can—out of water—breathe through their skin and gills, provided they remain wet.

📷Ofer Levy
#wildlife #photography #blueplanet

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Dec 8

A grizzly bear stands on its hind legs and looks at the camera while fishing for salmon in Canada’s Chilko River.

📷John Marriott
#wildlife #photography #blueplanet #palebluedot

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Dec 8

Appearing on the fossil record half a billion years ago, the nautilus uses chemical cues to detect their main food sources like fish and crustaceans, and have a connective tube called a siphuncle that controls their buoyancy by directing water through internal gas chambers.

📷Enric Sala
#wildlife

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Dec 4

An elephant lies dead alongside a heavily trafficked road in Zambia, after being struck by a car on the M10 highway outside of Sioma Ngwezi National Park. Elephants must cross the M10 to reach the Zambezi River, their only water source during hot, dry months.

📷Jasper Doest
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 27

Cranberries, a #Thanksgiving staple, were a Native American superfood, used for everything from cooking to dyes for textiles to medicines.
The berry was called sassamenesh (by the Algonquin) and ibimi (by the Wampanoag and Lenni-Lenape), translated as “bitter" or "sour berries."

📷 Melanie Freeman

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 24

Now found only in India and Nepal, gharials are rebounding from near extinction. These 15-foot crocodile relatives, once 10,000 strong, dwindled to fewer than 250 adults by 2006 due to habitat loss and fishing deaths. Thanks to conservation, their population has grown to about 650 today.
#wildlife

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 22

A kākāpō on New Zealand’s Anchor Island (Pukenui), at one of the three sanctuaries working to rebuild populations of the critically endangered species. It is estimated that there are around 200 kākāpō left in the world.

📷Jake Osbourne
#wildlife #photography #endangered

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 21

A young Iberian lynx, the world’s most endangered feline species, at a waterhole in Castilla La Mancha, Spain.
Due to habitat loss, decreasing food sources, car collisons and illegal hunting, the estimated population population is less than 1700.

📷Antonio Liebana Navarro
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 21

Researchers say they discovered the world’s largest coral colony during an October expedition in the Solomon Islands: a 112x105 ft mega coral— longer than a blue whale, Earth’s largest animal. Roughly 300 yrs old, it is so enormous it can be seen from space.

📷 Manu San Felix
#oceans #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 19

In Bulgaria’s western Balkan Mountains, a flower crab spider matches a spring pheasant’s-eye bloom in a color-change process that takes a few days. The arachnid is an ambush predator: It doesn’t build webs but lies in wait to pounce on its prey

📷Georgi Georgiev
#wildlife #insects #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 19

An Arctic poppy, the northernmost species of flower, thrives on the northern coast of Greenland's mainland. A lone Arctic poppy like this was found to be the world's northernmost flower, located about 20 inches south of the world's northernmost plant.

📷Jeff Kerby
#nature #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 18

Mycena lucentipes (“glowing stem”) are one of six new species of bioluminescent mushrooms found in Brazil’s endangered Atlantic Forest. The mushrooms glow constantly, emitting a yellow-green light at a wavelength of 520-530 nanometers.

📷Henrique Domingos
#nature #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 17

A pollen-covered bat emerges from a flower of the blue mahoe tree. Found nowhere else in the world other than on the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Hispaniola, the Cuban flower bat (Phyllonycteris poeyi) are essential pollinators to many native plants on the islands.

📷Merlin Tuttle
#wildlife #photo

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 17

A bizarre photo from Australia shows a seal surfing on the back of a humpback whale. Scientists aren’t sure what’s behind the unusual behavior, but say it’s entirely possible the seal just wanted to have some fun.

📷Robyn Malcolm
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 17

A mature bald eagle drags the tail of a fish across the surface of the water after picking it up out of the Susquehanna river.

📷 Eric Esterle
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 16

A Balkan pond turtle appears to smile as a dragonfly pauses on the reptile’s nose.
Rather than consuming the insect, the turtle tipped its head upward and opened its mouth in what looked to the photographer to be a pleasured grin.

📷Tzahi Finkelstein
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 16

Fewer than five high-resolution images of the African golden cat have ever been taken in the wild. The African golden cat is Africa’s only forest-dwelling wild cat, and one of the world’s least-known members of the cat family.

📷 Sebastian Kennerknecht
#wildlife #photography

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 16

A group of baby plainfin midshipman fish still attached to their yolk sacs in British Columbia, Canada. For these fish, it’s the males that provide parental care.

📷Shane Gross
#wildlife #photography #oceans #blueplanet

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 16

Did you know? Wild kangaroos tend to favor their left hands during common tasks like grooming and feeding. Researchers say this is the first demonstration of population-level "handedness" in a species other than humans, who are mostly right-handed.

📷Jami Tarris
#wildlifephotography #funfacts

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pale blue dot @thepalebluedot.bsky.social · Nov 15

“Fire rainbow”- more properly called a circumhorizontal arc, appears in the sky over the Sanding Temple in south Tibet. The optical phenomenon is formed by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals in high-altitude cirrus clouds, creating vivid rainbow-like colours.
📷 Gesang Jimei
#photography

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