Wildlife

A white ladybug is usually a newly emerged beetle, a pale species such as the twenty-spotted lady beetle, or an insect that is not a ladybug at all.

Seeing an octopus is a good sign of intelligence and adaptability, while its ink and grasping arms carry the warning side. What the octopus means as a spirit animal, in dreams, in the Bible, in Japanese and Northwest Coast traditions, in love and as a tattoo.

Bearded dragons hiss, huff, sneeze, and click. Three of those are normal and one means a vet visit. Here is how to tell them apart.

Nine spiders get mistaken for black widows in US homes and yards. The underside settles it: only true widows carry a red or orange hourglass.

No heartbeat, no breathing, 60 percent of its body water turned to ice. How the northernmost frog in North America survives an Arctic winter and thaws out in spring.

Adult size, honest prices, the legal picture in the US, and the humidity requirement that decides whether a red footed tortoise thrives or pyramids.

Listed as Endangered and protected in most states. What a spotted turtle looks like, where it lives, what to do if you find one, and the legal way to keep one.

Claw marks, print shape and stride separate bobcat and coyote tracks in ten seconds, even when both prints measure close to 2 inches wide.

Lynx tracks are 3 to 4 inches wide, round, clawless, and oddly shallow for their size. Here is how to separate them from bobcat, dog and cougar prints.

Bison grunt like pigs, bellow for miles in the August rut and snort once before they charge. Here is every sound a herd makes and what it tells you.