Kevin Cook: Colorado Creatures

Quaking aspens and ponderosa pines, golden eagles and yellow-bellied marmots come quickly to mind when thinking about Colorado wildlife.  Our wildlife community, however, includes various animals, fungi, and plants that exist in the shadows of our celebrity wildlife; and many of them lead extraordinary lives that make them quite interesting.  Yes, animals eat plants; but amazingly, we also have six plants and some mushrooms that eat animals!  We have wildflowers that trap their pollinators and some animals that hitchhike on other animals.  This class will look at the lives of wildlife species that defy our sense of normal living.

June's topic: Cute for Being So Ugly, and When Three Lizards Get Together 

From a certain perspective there’s ugly ugly and there’s cute ugly, and the wildlife realm offers both. One Colorado animal serves as the very definition of “cute ugly!” One of our lizards isn’t ugly but lives life its own way.