by Greg Mayer
As an extra bonus felid for today, and continuing the theme of cat coat patterns as camouflage, here’s the snow leopard (Panthera uncia).
You can’t see the snow leopard or it’s pattern very well, but, of course, that’s the point. Its head is to the right.
(BTW, is anyone getting the Monty Python reference?)
Monty Python reference? The only thing that comes to my mind (from “that’s the point”) is the Dennis Moore highwayman sketch in which Moore (John Cleese) and his victims get hopelessly sidetracked into an argument about what lupines look like I(“leaves are regularly veined?”), and whether Moore could hit a particular tree with his remaining unloaded pistol: “You see the little hillock over there? Not the big hillock, the little one on the side . . . .”
The Larch.
Bingo!
GCM
If that is The Larch off to the left, I could not recognize it because it is too close. Monty Python only taught me how to recognize trees from quite a far distance away.
>>If that is The Larch off to the left, I could not recognize it because it is too close. Monty Python only taught me how to recognize trees from quite a far distance away.
Plus, the tree in the leopard picture appears to be a pine, not a larch. That could contribute to your problem too.
Perhaps it’s a Spanish pine — you couldn’t be expected to recognize one of those.
Nobody expects the Spanish pine.
Why not?
A Spanish pine would indeed be “quite a far distance away”.
1.) No one expects the Spanish pine.
2.) The Pythons provided no guide to ID of the Spanish pine, regardless of distance.
3.) There is no such thing as “the Spanish pine”. I made it up. (But the tree in the picture with the snow leopard really is a pine of some sort, and not a larch.)
Are you pining for a Spanish pine? Perhaps you’ll get better.
Well, I’m sure that the Snow Leopard has “nasty, big, pointy teeth” but other than that I’m failing to see the reference.
Yes, sili beat me to it. I don’t know why I rolled the floor laughing at that skit; I suspect that there were subliminal images hidden within the larch leaves.
You sure it’s not “Not Being Seen”?
Snow Leopard. Would you please stand Up.
Along with the larch, my first thought was “how not to be seen”
The Snow Leopard has learned the first lesson of how not to be seen: don’t stand up.
But, the snow leopard has chosen a rather obvious hiding place…
Beside the flatulent elm.
(kaboom!)
(Two sketches in one FTW!)
It did occur to me that “how not to be seen” also applied, but only after posting. The Monty Python references began a couple of posts ago with “No. 1, the jaguar”, which clearly could be seen. Perhaps “how not to be seen” was a subconscious continuation of the deliberate MPFC allusion of “the larch”.
GCM
I thought it might have been a reference to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvpbw2DEyWE&feature=related
This might be of interest to fellow felidophiles:
http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swfWatch the full episode. See more Nature.
Here’s one of our local (captive, zoo) ones