ABCDeology

Dillie’s a lot like most of the other household pets on her block – she’s got four legs, a tail and tongue that will lick a friendly hand. She’s even housebroken, likes treats and to run around in the yard.

The difference is Dillie’s an 180-pound full-grown deer.

The Dewclaw is the tiny fifth claw of a dog’s leg above the other toes, so called, rather romantically, because it brushes the dew from the grass. Dogs almost always have one of these tiny talons on the inside of their front legs and sometimes also on their hind legs.

I stumbled into the image archives of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. Most of the descriptions were in German, some things semi-translated into brief summaries in English. Although I could not fully understand the text, the images are by turns gorgeous, high definition, historic and scientific.