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Movie Travel / Nature Travel / Alaska Travel / Animals / Whales / Movie Set Travel / → All Tags

'Big Miracle' Beefs Up Big Interest in Alaska Whale-Watching

Today, Big Miracle opens in theaters across the country and the timing couldn't be better with Alaska's whale-watching season right around the corner.

The film, starring Drew Barrymore, is based on the real-life rescue of several gray whales near Barrow, Alaska in 1988. Barrymore plays a Greenpeace volunteer who, along with her reporter ex-boyfriend (John Krasinski), convinces rival world superpowers to come together and help save the whales.

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Foreign Grocery Friday / Australia Travel / Food Travel / Animals / → All Tags

Foreign Grocery Friday: Australia's Kangaroo Meat, for Everything from Burgers to Curries

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're continuing our feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? Let us know!

You've seen them in movies such as Australia and Crocodile Dundee, or you've even been lucky enough to have the opportunity to pet and feed them during a trip down under. They's kangaroos, and now the fuzzy marsupials are great for more than just cuteness. They can be for dinner! Yes, you read correctly; kangaroo meat is quite common in Australia and really worth trying if you can get your hands on it.

Just like beef, roo meat comes in many different forms, from ground meat for burgers to filets for a more refined palate. We have even mentioned having a BBQ with kanga bangas, Aussie for kangaroo sausages.

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Videos / Animals / Penguins / Antarctica Travel / Lindblad Expeditions / National Geographic / → All Tags

Adorable Albino Penguin Alert.

Consider this your necessary daily dose of adorableness.

Voyagers with Lindblad Expeditions, onboard the ship National Geographic Explorer, were just chilling on Aitcho Island in Antarctica when they spotted a rare white penguin a few days ago. The cutie pie is a Leucistic chinstrap penguin (okay, so he's not totally albino), as the video explains, and he's just going about his penguin-y business.

Now is the middle of the prime summer season in Antarctica, when the cruise ships and expedition tours make landfall on the southernmost continent. Hopefully we can expect more sightings of similarly cute wild fauna before the season ends in a couple months.

Movie Set Travel / Zoo Travel / Britain Travel / Zoos / Movie Travel / Animals / → All Tags

Visit the Real Zoo That 'We Bought a Zoo' Was Based On

Cameron Crowe’s We Bought A Zoo, starring Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, and Thomas Haden Church, hits theaters today and is based on the true story of a father who moves his two children to a dilapidated zoo which they restore to its former glory.

The movie is set in the U.S. and was filmed just outside of Los Angeles, but the real-life zoo the story is based on is actually located in Devon, U.K. The Dartmoor Zoo is now the thriving home of dozens of animals including monkeys, reindeer, cheetahs and goats. The zoo also hosts special events, like photography tours, family days, and weddings.

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Animals / Costa Rica Travel / Mexico Travel / → All Tags

New Cute Animal Obsession: the Coati

It's official; our favorite cute animal this season has got to be the Coati, a South American dweller of the raccoon family. To spot one, you've got to be hanging out in a lush environment from the southwestern US on down as far as the bottom of Brazil. Lucky you.

Already in the last few months, we've spotted them going about their adorable business of looking for little tarantula and lizards to gobble up, but in two very different places: the Riviera Maya and the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica.

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Animals / Holiday Travel / Michigan Travel / Miami Travel / San Diego Travel / San Diego Zoo / San Diego Safari Park / San Diego Wild Animal Park / Zoos / Zoo Travel / Green Travel / Nature Travel / → All Tags

Three US Zoos for Spotting Baby Animals This Holiday Season

'Tis the season for happiness and fuzziness, and there are few things happier or fuzzier than baby animals. Since we're all about enhancing holiday travel,, here are three zoos—each drawn from a different region of the country—where you can see recently born cute things:

· Following up an adorable litter of Giant River Otters from January, the Miami Zoo announced a few weeks ago that they had two more live pups to show off. The pups are about a foot long and weigh just under a pound, and are scheduled to go on exhibit sooner rather than later. While you're at the zoo you should visit Juanpur, our favorite escaping Indian rhino.

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New Zealand Travel / Adventure Travel / Animals / Dolphins / Water Sports / → All Tags

Where to See (and Swim With) the World’s Smallest Dolphins and Penguins

Jaunted special contributor Eric Rosen drops us a line from way, way down under...

There’s nothing new about swimming with dolphins these days; it seems like you can hang out with the aquatic mammals pretty much anywhere from Australia to the Bahamas. But during a recent visit to check out post-quake Christchurch, I drove an hour outside the city to the Frenchified hamlet of Akaroa on the craggy Banks Peninsula to swim with some pretty special aquatic life: the world’s tiniest marine dolphins and wild penguins.

Akaroa is a winding hour-long drive southeast of Christchurch through the hills of the Banks Peninsula, where some of the earliest settlements on New Zealand’s South Island were founded. Akaroa actually lies quite near the center of this bulbous landmass, but it’s on the water because its harbor was formed by the collapse of an enormous mega-volcano eons ago.

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Here Kitty Kitty / Animals / American Airlines / JFK / Airports / Airport News / → All Tags

Jack the Missing JFK Cat Found in Airport Customs

Big news today from New York-JFK Airport! Jack the cat has been found alive and (mostly) well!

This fluffy orange tabby was lost by American Airlines way back on August 25 as the owner traveled from New York to California. The kitty's cage door came open before he was even onboard the plane, and Jack's disappearance made national headlines.

Finally the searches can be called off as Jack was located in the customs room at JFK. He's dehydrated and a bit skinnier, but a vet has checked him out and even confirmed that this is Jack, thanks to the chip in him. The chip company was the first the contact the owner after Jack was scanned, and everyone—including the rescue committee's massive Facebook group—is happy. Jack will be flown—this time with the cage door firmly closed—to California to be reunited with his owner and brother cat.

Here Kitty Kitty / Animals / American Airlines / Bad Ideas / JFK / Airports / Airport News / Events / → All Tags

'Cat Awareness Day' Declared at JFK to Find Tabby Lost by American Airlines

Early in September, American Airlines hired a pet detective. While that sounds hilarious, the reason for the new hire is decidedly not; American accidentally lost a cat traveling with a passenger at New York's JFK Airport back in August (the cat's cage door came open). Since then, airport staff have been keeping their eyes open for the orange tabby cat, even putting food and water out in the cargo area, where Jack would most likely be hiding out.

Alas, no hide nor hair has been seen of the kitty, but there's no giving up. Instead, this last Saturday AA [Edit: Friends of Jack] organized Jack the Cat Awareness Day, where a search party of volunteers made the issue of the missing cat known around the airport. They passed out flyers to travelers and probably looked under every row of SmarteCarts. Alas, no dice.

This upcoming Saturday will be another Jack Awareness Day, and if they're not successful, who knows how the search will progress.

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Zoos / Zoo Travel / Animals / Nature Travel / Green Travel / New York City / Cheap NYC / → All Tags

Go Visit The Bronx Zoo's New Baby Giraffe While He's Still a Baby

New Yorkers have—at best—only a couple more weeks before winter ends the possibility of outdoor fun. It's already too cold to contemplate sunbathing or anything of the sort, but there's still just barely enough time for generic outdoorsy type outings. Conveniently the Bronx Zoo choose this week to debut their one-month old baby giraffe James Marjani, who had been off-exhibit bonding with his mother until now.

The 6-foot, 100-pound baby was born on September 14, 2001, and he won't remain a baby for very long. Giraffes spend 14 months in the womb, then they drop six feet at birth, they they start walking within an hour, and then they immediately begin adding inches and pounds. Within four years James Marjani will go from his current 100 pounds to something closer to 4,000 pounds, and from his current 6 feet to somewhere around 17 feet.

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Nature Travel / London Travel / Animals / Green Travel / → All Tags

'Beast of Bushy' Terrorizing London Tourists

Rutting season, Wikipedia tells us, is the breeding time for ruminant animals such as deer, sheep, elk, moose, caribou, ibex, goats, pronghorn and Asian and African antelope. During that time, Wikipedia goes on to indicate, the males of those species become hyper-aggressive, defending their territory and fighting with each other.

So inasmuch as it's currently rutting season for the gigantic stags in Bushy Park, a usually placid environment 13 miles southwest of Central London, it's a really bad idea to get too close to the animals. You can see where this is going.

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Miami Travel / Animals / Pet Travel / Events / → All Tags

Sit! Stay! It's the Last Weekend to Catch the Incredible Dog Show in Miami

Actual real live dog shows are as hilarious as Christopher Guest's Best in Show would have you believe. But the regional ones that happen year-round have nothing on the Westminster Kennel Club show at the Garden. That's still some months off, but if you're in Miami you can catch something much more action-packed and silly: DOGS: The Show.

This isn't your boring trot-out-the-breeds and judge them in some mysterious process no one can really explain either. Nope, it's under the big top and features dogs jumping, dancing and catching frisbees. Yes, it's a dog circus!

Before you get your animal-rights shackles up, though, you should know that in each city the show visits, it partners with a local organization, in this case the Humane Society of Greater Miami, to promote adopting from a shelter. (Fun fact: shelter dogs are often the easiest to train to do tricks like the ones you'll see in the show. Many have lots of pent-up energy and an overwhelming desire to please.)

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