testmeat photoblog

this is sasha, sasha is margay. i knew nothing about margays before i met her, apart from the fact they have beautiful eyes. after perusing wikipedia turns out there are quite a few cool facts about these creatures. they're natives of latin america and are fairly rare, listed as 'near threatened' animals. they're skilled, agile climbers whose ankles can turn 180 degrees, meaning they can climb head-first down trees. they can jump up to 12 feet from left to right, or right to left if they're in the mood. and most impressive of all they can mimic the sound made by their prey to lure them closer. all impressive stuff. i took this photo the first time i went up to sasha's cage, and even at 55mm the camera was still pretty close to her. when i went up the second time i was warned not to get too close as sasha could put her claws through the cage and swipe in a blink of an eye. that's one fact that could have been useful to know before our first meeting.

here's the original