Mammals Gallery

Mammals Gallery, Stephen Cresswell Photography

Mammals offer the photographer and naturalist such an enormous variety of traits and behaviors. Some, like the Cheetah, run, while others, including the Walrus, swim. Moles burrow, Bats fly, Sloths climb, and Rabbits hop. In terms of physical characteristics, it is mind-boggling to note that the Blue Whale is 36 million times as heavy as the Masked Shrew, even though both share the label, Mammal. The fearsome Grizzly Bear subsists on grass and other plant products much of the time, while the diminutive Shrew stalks and kills its prey and sometimes eats two times its body weight daily.

The images on this page were made on the American continents. Along with the well-known American big game species are the New World's representatives of the Marsupial family in the form of Possums, and members of the camel family—Vicunas. Also here is the unusual Rock Rabbit or Pika, which lives high in the mountains where it cuts grasses in the summer, dries them, and stores this "hay" underground for wintertime use.

Click on a thumbnail to see a larger picture and more information.