My cat is a very special boy and there’s no other cat like him. Does that count?
Polar Bear on the Hudson Bay coast in northern Ontario.
I’m Indigenous and I’ve gone hunting and trapping with my relatives a few times in my life. On one of those trips we happened on a polar bear on the mud flats of the bay during the late autumn. We drove by in our freighter canoe (a very large oversized canoe with a 60 HP outboard motor) and the bear swam near us and then walked by a few hundred feet away. It wasn’t afraid but we were. We watched for a while and then fired rifle shot into the mud next to it to scare it away. From the moment it started to run to the point it disappeared as a speck on the horizon was about a minute or two. I went up later to look at the prints and the clay mud looked like a tractor had driven over it. I couldn’t believe how fast it could move on the mud. I quickly sank in my boots and could barely walk around.
One paw print was about the size of my head. I never left camp without someone nearby or a rifle in my hands.
I guess nobody can tell how big they are from photos. There’s never someone standing next to them for comparison.
Probably a Takahē in New Zealand but in captivity.
In the wild I’ve seen kiwi, kea, Kākā. I took a trip to mana island in the late 90’s, the kiwi were just wandering around during the day…
I’ve never seen the takahē.
I saw takahē in captivity too, in Zealandia. You can sort of see why they almost went extinct - their big defence move is to sit reeeeally still. Big silly chooks.
Yeah I saw the takahē in Zealandia and one other zoo. Would have been cool to see in the wild if possible in the preservation areas the have.
I petted and fed hay to the last male northern white rhino in Kenya some years ago.
He’s dead now and the remaining two females will likely die without giving birth and the species will go extinct :-(
Probably Hercules the Liger. Terrifyingly enormous animal–pictures do not do justice to how intimidating a predator of that mass is.
