The Tana River Gecko (Hemidactylus modestus) is a small lizard and a reptile in the Gekkonidae family of house geckos. It is also known as the Moderate Leaf-Toed Gecko.
The Tana River Gecko is brown with dark-brown mottled markings. Its tail is long and tapered. It has a light underbelly. Its five toes on each foot has leaf-shaped pads that enable it to stick to surfaces. Its nose is elongated. It has bulging eyes with vertical pupils.
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The Gunther’s Mouthbrooder (Chromidotilapia guentheri) is a freshwater fish in the cichlid family.
The Gunther’s Mouthbrooder is tan-brown in colour. The female is more colourful than the male. She has a pink belly and a metallic white stripe on her dorsal (back) fin. It has a wide, down-turned mouth.
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The Desert Monitor Lizard (Varanus griseus) is a large reptile in the Squamata order of monitor lizards.
The Desert Monitor Lizard can be a variety of colours from light-brown to yellowish to grey, with spots and 5-8 dark-brown bands. It also has dark-brown bands on its long, tapered tail. It has a large mouth. Its nostrils are close to its small, brown eyes. Its feet have toes with long, sharp claws.
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The Red-Tailed Monkey (Cercopithecus ascanius) is a primate in the Cercopithecidae family of monkeys. It is also known as the Black-Cheeked White-Nosed Monkey, the Red-Tailed Guenon, or the Schmidt’s Guenon.
The Red-Tailed Monkey has short, dark-grey to black fur, with a long reddish-brown tail. It has white cheeks and a white nose.
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The African Giant Mosquito (Toxorhynchites brevipalpis) is a small insect from the Culicidae family of mosquitoes. It is also known as the Elephant Mosquito or the Mosquito Eater.
The African Giant Mosquito has a black body with white bands on its silvery-black legs. It has bushy antennae and compound eyes. It has a dark-coloured proboscis (long nose) for sucking sap from trees.
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The Western Marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus) is a large bird of prey, a raptor and an accipiter in the Accipitridae family of hawks.
The Western Marsh Harrier has reddish-brown feathers with light coloured streaks. Its head and shoulders are pale yellowish-grey. Its legs and feet are yellow. It has orange-brown eyes with a bright yellow eye-ring. Its beak is grey-black. The female is darker, and almost chocolate brown.
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The Rattling Cisticola (Cisticola chiniana) is a small bird in the Cisticolidae family of warblers. It is also known as the Rattling Fantail-Warbler.
The Rattling Cisticola is brown and grey-brown with rufous-brown feathers on its streaked brown wings. It has a buff-coloured underbelly. It has a brown collar around its neck. Its tail is broad. It has pinkish-grey legs.
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The East African Keeled Land Slug (Limacidae sp.)is an air-breathing terrestrial mollusc in the Gastropoda order and Limacoidea superfamily of keel-backed (ridgeback) slugs. It is a land snail without a shell.
The East African Keeled Land Slug has a long white body with a mantle, a keeled (ridged) back and two pairs of retractable feelers on its head. The upper pair of feelers has eyespots at the tips. The lower pair of feelers contains sense organs. The mantle is a saddle-looking structure behind the head. On one side of the mantle is a respiratory opening, called a pneumostome. The body is also called the tail, which is behind the mantle. It has a ridge down the middle of the back of the tail. Its foot is the flat under-side of the slug. It secretes mucous that it travels on.
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African grey parrots voluntarily and spontaneously help other parrots to achieve a goal, without obvious immediate benefit to themselves. Research co-author Désirée Brucks of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany, announced this result in January 2020.
Parrots and crows are known for having large brains relative to the size of their bodies, and that they are good at problem-solving. However, earlier studies showed that crows don’t help other crows, so researchers wondered whether parrots help other parrots, explained Désirée Brucks and study co-author Auguste von Bayern.
In their new study, Brucks and von Bayern enlisted several African Grey Parrots and Blue-Headed Macaws to help the research team.
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The Balkans Long-Legged Buzzard (Buteo rufinus rufinus) is a large bird of prey, and a raptor. It is related to the Common Buzzard and the Steppe Buzzard.
The Balkans Long-Legged Buzzard can be varied in colour from light to dark, although it usually has orange-tinted feathers with dark lines, a red or orange tail, a pale head and white underwings.
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What is the difference between the Jaguar (Panthera onca) and the Leopard (Panthera pardus)?
The Jaguar and the Leopard are both carnivorous wild cats.
The Jaguar and the Leopard have dark rosette-shaped markings on their cream to yellowish-brown fur.
The Jaguar has larger and fewer rosettes than the Leopard. The rosettes of the Jaguar are mostly without a gold centre.
The Jaguar is stockier and more muscular than the Leopard.
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The Gemsbok (Oryx gazelle) is a large ungulate (hoofed) mammal. It is an antelope. It is also called the Oryx Gazelle, Gemsbuck, or South African Oryx.
The Gemsbok has light-brownish-grey fur with lighter patches towards it rear. It has a black stripe from its chin to the lower edge of its neck, and to its shoulder and legs. Its tail is long and black. It has a muscular neck and shoulders. Its legs have white ‘socks’ with a black patch on the front of its front legs. Both the male and the female have long, straight horns. The female has longer, thinner horns than the male.
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The Scimitar Oryx (Oryx dammah) is a large ungulate (hoofed) mammal. It is an antelope and a bovid. It is also known as the Sahara Oryx or the Scimitar-Horned Oryx.
The Scimitar Oryx has white fur with a red-brown chest and black markings on its forehead and down its nose. Both the male and the female have large, thin, straight, hollow horns that curve backwards. The female has thinner horns than the male. Its tail has a tuft of hair at the end. Its large, spreading hooves are adapted to living in the desert.
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The Blood Parrot Cichlid (family Cichlidae) is a freshwater fish in the cichlid family. It is also known as the Parrot Cichlid, due to its beak-like mouth.
The Blood Parrot Cichlid can be bright orange, red, yellow, or grey
It is a hybrid cichlid, which is a combination of breeding two different cichlid species. Its mouth is narrow and vertical, which is considered to be a person-made breeding deformity.
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The Blue Masked Lovebird (Agapornis personata personata var.)is a small bird in the Psittacidae family of lovebird parrots. It is also known as the Blue Lovebird. It is a colour mutation of the Yellow-Collared Lovebird (Agapornis personatus), which is also called the Masked Lovebird.
The Blue Masked Lovebird has a black head, blue body, and a white collar around its neck. It is white on its upper chest. The color occurs naturally in the wild. It has a wide white eye-ring around its eyes. Its beak is pinkish.
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The White-Cheeked Turaco (Tauraco leucotis) is a medium-sized bird in the Musophagidae family. Turacin is the red pigment in its feathers.
The White-Cheeked Turaco has a green forehead, neck, throat, chest, and upperparts. Its rounded crest is glossy dark-blue. Its tail is deep greenish-blue. It has crimson-red underwing feathers. Its cheek is white and its beak is red. It has red eye-rings. Its fourth toe can rotate forward and backward.
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The Hottentot Teal (Spatula hottentota) is a bird in the Spatula genus of dabbling ducks.
The Hottentot Teal male is dark-brown with a paler face, throat, chest, and side. It has a blackish mark near its ear. The back of its neck is spotted with black. It has an iridescent green speculum. It has brown eyes. Its beak, legs and webbed feet are bluish-grey. The female is brown and not as colourful as the male.
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The Madagascar Tree Boa (Sanzinia madagascariensis) is a non-venomous, colubrid, arboreal reptile in the boa species of snakes. It is a boid (pronounced bow-id). It is also known as the Malagasy Tree Boa.
The Madagascar Tree Boa is greenish, such as olive-green or bright green, depending upon the colour of the rain forest leaves and trees. In dry areas, it can be orange-brown. It has patterned scales of dark markings with whitish inner markings. It has dark eyes.
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The Abyssinian Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus) is a large terrestrial bird. It is also known as the Northern Ground Hornbill.
The Abyssinian Ground Hornbill has black feathers with white primary feathers. The male has a patch of blue featherless skin around its eyes and an inflatable patch of bare red skin on its neck and throat. Its beak is long and black with a reddish base. On top of its beak is a black hard structure called a casque. The female is similar to the male, but with dark blue bare skin. Both the male and the female have long eye feathers that look like eyelashes.
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The Featherfin Squeaker (Synodontis eupterus) is a freshwater fish in the catfish family. It is also known as the Featherfin Synodontis and the Featherfin Catfish.
The Featherfin Squeaker is dark-brown with a high feather-like dorsal (back) fin. It has light, yellowish spotted markings all over its body and fins. It has a sucker mouth and a wide head.
It is called a Squeaker because it communicates with each other in squeaking noises.
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