Wildlife

An animal that looks like a beaver is usually a muskrat. Compare tails, size, teeth and sign to separate beavers from muskrats, nutria, otters, groundhogs and five more look-alikes.

Poison dart frogs need humid rainforest floor, deep leaf litter, and bromeliad pools for tadpoles. Here is what their wild habitat provides and how to copy it.

Red lizards in the US range from harmless skinks and agamas to the venomous Gila monster. Identify all eight by size, pattern, and region.

No US salamander is truly white. Blind cave species, albinos and white flecked woodland salamanders explain nearly every sighting, and the eyes tell you which.

Seeing a butterfly means transformation and renewal, and one that crosses your path, circles you or lands on you carries a personal message. What the sighting means in the Bible, across cultures, after a death and by color.

Most yellow frogs in the US are harmless native species in a yellow phase. Here is how to identify them and tell them apart from the one yellow frog that is genuinely toxic.

An orange frog in the US is usually a wood frog, spring peeper, bronze green frog, red-legged frog, a rare color morph, or a toxic red eft.

Seeing a raccoon is read as a message about resourcefulness and hidden truth. What the mask means in Native American, Christian and Japanese tradition, plus dreams, omens and repeated sightings.

Wolverine symbolism is about ferocity out of proportion to size. What the animal means in Innu and Dene tradition, as a spirit animal, in dreams and as a tattoo.

Vole droppings are green rice-sized pellets with blunt ends, left in heaps inside grass runways. How to identify them and tell them from mouse, rat and rabbit droppings.