Untamed Americas: Mountains Pictures
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Mountains of Chile
Mountains are some of the most dynamic places on Earth - with lush forests, arid deserts, and craggy cliffs, they provide a home for some truly wild and beautiful creatures.
By definition, they dominate their surroundings with towering height. The world's tallest mountain ranges form when pieces of Earth's crust—called plates—smash against each other, in a process called plate tectonics, and buckle up like the hood of a car in a head-on collision. The Himalaya in Asia formed from one such massive wreck that started about 55 million years ago.
The Torres del Paine National Park in Chile are an incredible sight.
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Batty For Nectar
The tube-lipped bat (Anoura fistulata) is a newly identified species found in 2005 by NG Grantee Nathan Muchhala. The tube lipped bat is two-and-a-half-inches long and has a three-and-a-half-inch tongue, boasting the highest tongue-to-body ratio of any mammal in the world. If this bat were human, it would have a 9-foot tongue!
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A Puma Family
From Alaska to California, from Brazil to Patagonia, the puma is the ultimate icon of the American mountains. In one of the most beautiful places on Earth, three mountain lion (or puma) cubs (Felis concolor) go hunting guanacos with their mother. For the cubs, now fully-grown, this is one of the last times they will be together as a family. Soon, they face the toughest test of their lives: to survive in this vast wilderness without their mother...
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Jasper National Park
The largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, Jasper is wild in every sense of the word. Its landscape covers an expansive region of rugged backcountry trails and mountainous terrain juxtaposed against fragile protected ecosystems as well as the world-renowned Columbia Icefield. It’s also chock-full of wildlife, home to some of North America’s healthiest populations of grizzly bears, moose, and elk along with thousands of species of plants and insects.
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Feeling Sheepish
Male bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) gather for the annual rut to decide who gets to mate with the ewes and sire next spring's lambs. The fights can last for hours, with rams battering each other at 22mph dozens of times. The force is enough to kill a human instantly.
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A Wild Landscape
Grizzlies once lived in much of western North America and even roamed the Great Plains. European settlement gradually eliminated the bears from much of this range, and today only about 1,000 grizzlies remain in the continental U.S., where they are protected by law. Many grizzlies still roam the wilds of Canada and Alaska, where hunters pursue them as big game trophies. They are powerful, top-of-the-food-chain predators, yet much of their diet consists of nuts, berries, fruit, leaves, and roots. Although they also eat other animals, from rodents to moose.
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Sniffing Out Smells
Easily identifiable by their hump, the grizzly bear has one of the most sensitive noses in the animal world and can track a smell for miles. Grizzlies are typically brown, though their fur can appear to be white-tipped, or grizzled, lending them their traditional name. Despite their impressive size, grizzlies are quite fast and have been clocked at 30 miles (48 kilometers) an hour. They can be dangerous to humans, particularly if surprised or if humans come between a mother and her cubs.
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A Grizzly in the Grass
Grizzlies are typically brown, though their fur can appear to be white-tipped, or grizzled, lending them their traditional name. Despite their impressive size, grizzlies are quite fast and have been clocked at 30 miles (48 kilometers) an hour. They can be dangerous to humans, particularly if surprised or if humans come between a mother and her cubs.
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A Grizzly Family
Over the winter and during their deep sleep, female grizzlies give birth - usually to twins. These awe-inspiring giants tend to be solitary animals—with the exception of females and their cubs—but at times they do congregate. Dramatic gatherings of grizzly bears can be seen at prime Alaskan fishing spots when the salmon run upstream for summer spawning. In this season, dozens of bears may gather to feast on the fish, craving fats that will sustain them through the long winter ahead.
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Herd of Caribou
As summer approaches, caribou (also known as reindeer) herds head north in one of the world's great large-animal migrations. They may travel more than 600 miles (965 kilometers) along well trod annual routes. At the end of their journey, they spend the summer feeding on the abundant grasses and plants of the tundra.
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Beauty and Power
Caribou are the only deer in which male and females both have antlers—though only some females have them.
