Now I am stumped!

[Widowman10]

There's all kinds of stuff in Hawaii that shouldn't be there, so you never know.

like chickens

 

[xhexdx]

Lol!

Rats, mongoose, there's a species of passion fruit that strangles trees, etc.

 

[Stan Schultz]

That badgerbadgerbadger site drives me nuts...

Btw, Stan, was that picture actually taken in Hawaii? I wasn't aware there were badgers there.

--Joe

No, I'm sure there are no feral badgers in Hawaii. At least no mention was made of them in the few webpages I read, and I've not heard of any through other sources. I think my friend merely found the photo on the Internet and sent it to me because he thought it was cool, and he coincidentally also lives in Hawaii. We trade distinctive photos a lot. It keeps us on our toes.

Talk about an ecological disaster! A large, very aggressive, generalized predator that travels in packs of a dozen or more, and that builds huge, underground warrens of tunnels and dens, loose in Hawaii! That's a nightmare I don't ever want to see.

For more information on invasive species in Hawaii you can Google invasive-species hawaii site:edu -pdf.

This webpage was particularly interesting: http://www.earlham.edu/~biol/hawaii/mammals.htm

 

[xhexdx]

Great link, Stan. Thanks!

I wasn't aware they had wallabys in Oahu, but I've seen most of the others listed.

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

LOL

Have you seen the Potter version?

Yep! it's pretty cute. My favourite part is "Arrgh. A Snape! A Snaape......."

That badgerbadgerbadger site drives me nuts...

Yeah? Then you ought to LOVE this one!

 

[ZergFront]

They are obviously looking for mushrooms. But wait, what's that.....

ARRGH! A Snake! A snaaake... a snaaaaake! A snaaake! OooooOoh, it's a snaaaake...

LMFAO!! Yay, I'm not the only one here who saw that (and was going to mention that video..)

 

[Mina]

Sorry I couldn't help you identify them, Stan. I have seen the animals before but couldn't remember what they were.
Glad someone was able to help you out.

 

[Shell]

No, I'm sure there are no feral badgers in Hawaii. At least no mention was made of them in the few webpages I read, and I've not heard of any through other sources.

That would be correct. I was talking to my grandparents in Hawaii last night, and I had to ask them about it. They just laughed and said "nope, no badgers but lots of other stuff that shouldn't be here" lol

I also didn't know they had wallaby's. All the time I have spent in Hawaii, and I had no clue.

 

[ZooRex]

A friend in Hawaii sent me this photo with the name "toomanyaardvarks.jpg," but those aren't aardvarks. (Click the thumbnail for a larger image.)

Yes they look like badgers, but did anyone notice that they all look alike and none of them have shadows of any kind? This pic reminds me alot of the "jumping wolf" that was recently found to be a fake.

 

[Zoltan]

Yes they look like badgers, but did anyone notice that they all look alike and none of them have shadows of any kind?

I thought there was something odd about this photo, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.

 

[Stan Schultz]

Yes they look like badgers, but did anyone notice that they all look alike ...

Only in the sense that they're all European badgers. Otherwise, each is in a different orientation with respect to the camera, and they're all caught in different poses. Also, the individuals towards the rear are darker and smaller than those closer to the camera and flash. I vote for them being a flock/herd/bunch of different animals.

Furthermore, I've expanded the photo to the limits of my graphics program's ability and examined the images of the animals themselves. While I grant you that modern graphics programs are capable of doing some amazing things, here I could find no trace or hint whatsoever that the animals' images had been pasted onto a background photo.

... and none of them have shadows of any kind? ...

Here I'll agree with you. But if you look closely you'll see that the potted plants in the center of the photo also lack shadows. In fact, the only place we see anything that looks like shadows are behind a few of the plants along the extreme left and right edges of the photo. And, if you look closely you can almost convince yourself that there's only a trace of a hint of a shadow against the right edge of the bird feeder's pole.

I have seen this effect before. It's caused by the use of a ring flash surrounding the camera's lens. (Google camera ring-flash and get over a million hits!) The photo is taken THROUGH the flash, eliminating all but the barest traces of shadows. While this practice is often used, especially in the medical/dental fields, most professional photographers firmly decry it because the resulting photos tend to be very flat and 2-dimensional, which this one certainly is. The major drawback is that ring flashes are normally rather weak and couldn't illuminate the whole backyard as this one did. But, I suppose, that is only of matter of "More power!" (With respects to comedian Tim Allen of the TV sitcom Home Improvement.)

Because I have no way of tracing the source of this photo I can only spin a fairy tale, but it would be reasonable to assume that the photographer set up a remotely operated camera with a ring flash to catch these bandits in the act of raiding the back yard.

Some of you may suggest that you can get the same result by using a number of separate light sources, but this is most problematic. Each, separate, light source would tend to throw its own shadow and the effect would be multiple shadows instead of no shadows ... unless the photographer was able to mount them all extremely close to the lens so as to reduce the parallax to near zero. Even then it would be a tricky engineering problem.

How about a ring flash and a digital camera, then digitally manipulating the too-dark photo to lighten/brighten it? That might work.

If this photo is a fake, someone did a #$%^# good job.

 

[ZooRex]

Well I admit I was too quick to post before I put flash into account - didn't think of it till after.

You have some very good points above^ and upon learning about the social structure of badger clans in high densities, I now have loosened my skepticism a tad.

With that said, I count 23 all together. That is one huge badger family...