Animal Pictures

Barbara J. Feldman

Browsing for animal pictures can be a fun mommy-and-me activity for preschoolers, or part of a homework assignment for older students. Today's collection includes photos from both professional and amateur photographers, but sometimes its very hard to tell them apart.

BetterPhoto.com: Animal Pictures

5 stars

BetterPhoto.com is an online photography community that offers photo hosting, contests and online photography education. This page is the first of their gigantic animal and wildlife photo gallery. These beautiful, and sometimes funny, photos are a joy to browse. Some are photo-contest winners, and others have been tagged as a favorites by community members. You can see these honors in the icons displayed below each thumbnail. There are no free memberships here, but there is a free newsletter for photography buffs.

Flickr: All Animals

5 stars

This page is from the Flickr group “All Animals” which has more than 20,000 members and 415,000 photos. A Flickr group is free to join, and includes a discussion board in addition the photo gallery. The group gallery can be explored by tags (such as nature, kitty, or deer) or by the Flickr group search function. To find photos you can use in a school report or on a website, search for “Creative Commons” but be sure to read each copyright carefully, as they are not all the same.

JungleWalk.com: Animal Pictures

3 stars

With over 10,460 animal pictures, JungleWalk is pretty big. Use the Quick Search function to find a specific species. Or, on the left-hand vertical menu, animals are categorized (dogs, horses, cats, birds, and so on) and available on an alphabetic menu A to Z. Unfortunately, what you see is what you get: these images can not be enlarged. The site exists to sell photo magnets, mousepads, and other gifts for animal lovers, but the large searchable gallery can be enjoyed for its own sake or to send animal e-cards to friends and family.

National Geographic: Animals

5 stars

“Take a look at wildlife at its best and download free desktop wallpapers.” The animal features at National Geographic always have amazing photos, but there’s more than just pictures here. There are also articles, quizzes, printable animal fact sheets, video, audio, and animal news. Fastest way to the animal fact sheets is the scrollable Animals A-Z widget in the right-hand column. Look below the Animal Features headline to find a link to the Animal Photo Galleries, where you’ll find hundreds of (beautiful) species-specific pictures.

National Zoo: Animal Photo Gallery

5 stars

“Take a virtual visit to the National Zoo by exploring the photo galleries. You can also learn about many of the species from all over the world found here at the Zoo.” These galleries are arranged by zoo exhibit: African Savanna, Asian Animals, Amazonia, and so on. The photo pages include links to species fact sheets and multimedia extras such as audio files (listen to animal sounds) or web cams where you can watch the zoo enclosure during EST daylight hours. For direct links to the animal wallpaper for your computer desktop, look under Related Links in the left-hand column.