A Blue Flyer or female Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus). Unlike the predominantly red males the females have blue-grey fur. Amazingly female red kangaroos are usually permanently pregnant, except on the day they gives birth. They have the ability to freeze the development of an embryo until the previous joey has permanently left the pouch which occurs after about 235 days. The ability to halt development of a fertilised egg is known as diapause, and evolved in response to the extremely variable climatic cycles of the Australian outback. Paroo-Darling National Park, Outback New South Wales, Australia.
This is what 36 tonnes of mammalian flesh and bone doing a belly flop looks like. Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) re-entering the water after breaching with its pectoral fin still visible. Humpback pectoral fins often reach up to 5m (or 16ft) and are proportionally the longest of any whale at about one third of their body length. The humpback is one of the larger rorqual species of baleen whale with adults rangeing in length from 12–16 metres (39–52 ft) and weighing approximately 36,000 kilograms (79,000 lb). The deep blue sea offshore from the coast of Port Stephens, NSW, Australia.
Sunset over Belougery Spire, the Breadknife, and Crater Bluff in the Warrumbungles. The first European to sight and explore the area was John Oxley in 1818 who named the range the Arbuthnot Range. The Aboriginal name 'Warrumbungles' from the Gamilaroi tribe meaning 'crooked mountains', soon took over as the most frequently used name. The mountains are volcanic dykes of peralkaline trachyte and were once part of a large shield volcano, that first erupted about 17 million years ago and stopped about 13 million years ago. Warrumbungle National Park, NSW, Australia
