Rare Footage of a Humpback Whale Sleeping

What is a whale's favorite bedtime story? A whale of a tale, of course!

Although we had never really thought about how whales sleep, this video, uploaded to YouTube, shows just how the giant aquatic mammals do it in their very own way.

Courtesy of underwater photographer Kieran Bown and his Panga MX production crew, the video is a snippet from the full 20 minutes of unique footage they captured while in the Turks and Caicos Islands for a research project.

They captured this footage of an inverted humpback whale in the waters surrounding Great Sand Cay.

"The whale was completely at peace in the water," Bown says.

While humans may shift between their back and side while sleeping, whales drift into sleep and end up vertical.

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Rare footage of elusive golden cat attacking a pangolin

6 May 2014 Last updated at 01:25Help

Footage courtesy of Chester Zoo/Gashaka Biodiversity Project.

Camera traps set up to monitor chimpanzees in Nigeria's Gashaka Gumti National Park have captured rare footage of the elusive African golden cat attacking a pangolin.

Scott Wilson, Head of Field Conservation and Research at Chester Zoo, told BBC Nature: "The golden cat is the least known of Africa's felids, so any additional information and footage of it is exciting."

Africa's golden cat was caught on camera for the first time in 2002 and this is the first time it has been caught on camera in Gashaka Gumti National Park.

The cat leaps upon the pangolin, a long-tailed mammal covered in scaly armoured plates. But the pangolin then appears to escape by curling into a ball, a defensive posture, and rolling away, before the cat returns to inspect its potential prey.

It adds to the limited understanding of this rarely seen jungle cat, strongly suggesting that pangolin are a prey item.

Continued and video

Elusive Oarfish Filmed in Rare Footage

APR 8, 2014 11:30 AM ET // BY TIM WALL

Oarfish, including the 36-foot-long (11 meters) giant oarfish (Regalecus glesne), normally elude human eyes in the depths of the oceans. However, a lucky group of tourists recently filmed two oarfish in the shallow, coastal waters of Baja, Mexico. The oarfish observers were kayaking as part of a cruise run by Shedd Aquarium and Un-Cruise Adventures.

Oarfish live around the globe in temperate and tropical waters, down to 3,000 feet (915 meters) below the waves. Yet, despite the fishes' wide distribution, oceanographers and other humans rarely glimpse the four known species of oarfish in the deep sea habitat they prefer.

Most encounters with oarfish occur when the animals wash up dead on the beach, or sick in the shallows. The health of the oarfish filmed on the Baja coast was unknown. Last year, a dead 18-foot oarfish was towed to shore by a snorkeler at Catalina Island off the California coast. Then a 14-foot oarfish corpse turned up north of San Diego a few days later. The bigger fish was filled with parasites, reported Live Science, while the smaller fish was filled with hundreds of thousands of eggs, reported the AP.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/elusive-oarfish-filmed-in-rare-footage-140408.htm

Three snow leopards caught on film in China

Rare footage of snow leopards

July 2013. An incredibly rare piece of video footage has emerged from China, where a video of three snow leopards together in the same place has been captured. 

The video of the leopards was captured in the mountains of Yushu Autonomous Province on the border of Tibet. To put this in context, the first photo of a snow leopard in the wild wasn't taken until the renowned naturalist George Shaller snapped on in 1970.

There are thought to be a maximum 7000 snow leopards alive in the world, though some estimates go as low as a half of that, spread across and around the Himalayas and nearby mountain ranges in Central Asia.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/snow-leopard-video.html

African Golden Cat: Rare Footage Of Animal Recorded (VIDEO)

One of Africa's "most elusive" animals has been recorded by scientists, and shared in what may be the only publicly released video, according to CNN.

The African golden cat is extremely reclusive in nature, and thus little is known about its behavior, other than that it feeds mainly on rodents, and is nocturnal.

The footage, which was recorded by a motion-activated camera, could be used along with photos to better understand the species.

Laila Bahaa-el-din, a graduate student leading the study, told CNN what it was like to see the footage for the first time:

"I don't think I can put (capturing the video) into words. I live and dream golden cats most days. To get back to camp and put the (footage) on the computer and have this cat basically posing for the camera, it's incredible. I watched it five times in a row and pretty much didn't sleep that night."

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the African Golden Cat is "listed as Near Threatened as it seems reasonable to believe that the species could have declined on the order of 20% over the course of the last 15 years across its range, due mainly to the impact of habitat loss, hunting and loss of prey base."

In Feburary, scientists used a similar camera to captured footage of four of the world's rarest rhinoceroses in Indonesia.

One of the world's most endangered species, the Javan rhino population is estimated to consist of no more than 50 animals in the Ujung Kulon National Park.

A few weeks ago, endangered cats at the Florida Big Cats rescue had some much-deserved fun in the sun with some giant chew toys and tires.

For some more good news for cats, three adorable baby Asian fishing cats were born in a zoo in Ohio committed to protected endangered species.

To learn about supporting Panthera, the conservation group who funded most of the study, click here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/30/african-golden-cat-rare-footage-video_n_942382.html?ir=Weird%20News