Butterfly Tongue

Butterflies have long tongues that they use to dig deep into the base of a flower instead of crawling all the way into the flowers themselves like bees do. This is because the butterflies have long spindly legs and, as the saying makes perfectly clear, only the bees have the knees.

Saharan Horned Viper (Cerastes cerastes)

Wikipedia states “In the wild they are typically ambush predators, lying submerged in sand adjacent to rocks or under vegetation. When approached, they strike very rapidly, holding on to the captured prey (small birds and rodents) until the venom takes effect.” I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s probably a fairly effective strategy.

Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana)

True story.

It was senior day at the zoo, by which I mean, the seniors from the local high school were forced to go to the zoo for their Biology class. As I was taking this photo, three young men walked up. Two of them were white, one was African American. They were all dressed in what suburban people call “urban”, but what I am led to believe that urban people call “clothes”. Their pants were loose, they had over-sized sneakers, and everything was fairly worn. They didn’t seem to want to be there.

One of them saw this critter in the tree and looked at the sign. He pointed, and said to his friends “That ain’t a red panda.” Another said “No, it ain’t.” Then the African American guy looked at it and at his friends and said “I believe that is an opossum.”

Then, as his friends stared at him, he said. “Well excuse me for speaking English!” Then they laughed and walked away together.

And that is why you shouldn’t pre-judge people.