What is your favorite animal, living or extinct?

So, what your favorite in God’s creation that is either alive presently or is extinct? It can be one or both.
I’ll start with the Tamisiocaris, in fact if I wanted to I would put all the critters of the Cambrian Era in the list due to how wacky and wierd and alien they are. But the Tamisiocaris just seems like a giant alien shrimp that would try and suck off my face.


The animal that is still alive today is the seal, and not any seal in particular, just all of them :blush: I loves seals due to how chubby and cute they are and how silly they are when they interact with humans and each other. sealkin

2 Likes

Grey wolf (largely due to its cultural and folkloric links)
Eurasian spoonbill
Great egret
Northern Lapwing

Save the wolf, I have seen all of these in the wild. Seeing a flock of Lapwing in flight the marshes around london is as good as anything on an Attenborough documentary

2 Likes

What a great thread idea!

Bird wise, It would have to be the Eurasian Jay:


Followed by the Great Crested Grebe:

In the insect category, out of the many praying mantises I’ve had, these two incredible leaf mimics have been my favourite.

First, Choeradodis rhomboidea:



and Deroplatys desiccata

TRIGGER WARNING arachnophobes! :wink:
Finally in the spider category, it has to be the Diving Bell Spider, which I’ve been lucky enough to see once in the wild! (this is an underwater shot, the silvery stuff is air trapped around the abdomen. The spider constructs underwater web pocket which it fills with air. The spider often spends its entire life underwater, only returning to the surface to refill its air supply.)

image
and pretty muchany jumping spider:
image

Looking forward to seeing what others choose as their favourite animals.

3 Likes

Same. Never thought of spiders, I had to deal with a huge jumping spider of some type a week ago and it was a nightmare to get rid of. Here in Oklahoma in the fall/winter many creepy bugs start to enter into homes and its always a pain in the neck to deal with them.

2 Likes

See to me, that just sounds like fun :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

2 Likes

If mythic creatures are allowed I’d have to go with the Texas Heeler which are possessed with the mind melding powers of a Vulcan. The only frustration is never getting to give a command because they always already know what you need.

5 Likes

A lovely dog @MarkD! I think your dog’s breed and my dog’s breed must share some common ancestry somewhere!

2 Likes

Your border collie has that ever alert look. I’ve never had one, but I’m pretty sure border collies were used in breeding most of the good herding dogs, including Smokey’s mother, an Australian shepherd (actually an American breed), and his father, a cattle dog AKA heeler (a true Australian breed). His personality is closer to that of a heeler.

We have another dog who we suspected included the same cross as Smokey. This is Heidi on the right at the age of 2 along with our old dog Fletcher, a pure bred, blue merle Australian shepherd who we inherited from Lia’s aunt and uncle when they died. We loved the breed but couldn’t deal with such a demanding coat. So we prefer to have a cross that includes some Aussie. Heidi is 11 now and Smokey is 4.

4 Likes

I’ve always loved lions, which may have something to do with the fact that I first read Narnia just about the time that The Lion King movie came out.

For local creatures, I love our state animal, the moose. I’ve only seen one 3 or so times in the wild, but this is from our local wildlife park:

5 Likes

I will take this down a somewhat darker road . . .

My favorite species is Sus domesticus, for this reason:

12 Likes

Well done. Those are pretty perfect, I like the sauced ones like these a little better than the dry rub version, but would not turn either away.

1 Like

I’m more of a Bos taurus man, myself, preferably, in steak form… rare with chips and a glass of red wine.

1 Like

I’ll put in a plug for the car-sized armadillo known as the Glyptodont.

6 Likes

What a big lad :smiley: Crazy that things like that use to roam the earth, I can see these things at fairs or zoo’s with kids riding on them.

2 Likes

I thought we were still on the dinner theme, and was going to say armadillo isn’t bad, if it’s stewed nicely. They hunt them out where I live. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

In Louisiana they are called “'possums on the half shell.” ( And seriously can be carriers of leprosy)
Serously, my favorite animal is the Road Runner or Chaparral. They are very interesting birds, relatively social, and we have one that makes the rounds in our community, usually coming around the same time each day in its quest for grasshoppers and lizards. I also like lizards, so have a little angst about that. As I understand it, only member of the cuckoo family in our region.

6 Likes

I know, right? Given that they were around until fairly recently (one of the megafauna), it doesn’t seem that improbable to me that people rode them!

3 Likes

Since we are now getting into the Ice Age, I might as well say my fav ice age animal is the giant sloth, just so crazy that these giant critters use to roam around long ago. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

5 Likes

God bless the megafauna, such cool creatures that unfortunately didn’t make it around to our time, You telling me the shark and croc last this long but the giant sloth and giant armadillo die? This is a bad trade off in my opinion.

2 Likes

I’m not sure that I have a favorite animal, but here is a list of humorous photos of wildlife in BBC that were (somewhat) heartwarming.

5 Likes