What do you feel like watching today: your favorite TV show? or a mama long-eared owl caring for her brand new fluffy chicks right now in Missoula, Montana? Maybe some penguins in the Antarctic? A litter of recently rescued kittens in their cage? Some pandas frolicking?

Live feeds of these and other creatures are available online for your viewing pleasure, and better than any nature show.  Check in once in a while or spend a chunk of time immersing yourself. It’s an innocent sort of voyeurism, and the connection it can give you to life in the wild is compelling and uplifting.

A Special Day for a Special Animal

Besides, what better way to mark the recent occurance of World Elephant Day (August 12), than to watch a herd of these gentle (and not so gentle) giants.  African forest elephants stimulate carbon capture in their environments by dispersing vital nutrients. Each forest elephant can stimulate a net increase in carbon capture of 9,500 metric tons of CO₂ per sq km of rainforest. That’s similar to the emissions from driving approx. 2,000 gas powered cars for a year.

For some elephant love, check out these cams from the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.  Or the many cams at Elephant Aid International.

And here’s one more reason to love elephants.

If you love elephants, you can even adopt one.

There are tons of live cams for nature lovers – any zoo worth its salt will have one.  Here are some of the biggest.

Explore

To browse a number of different creature-cams, check out the website Explore, a multimedia nonprofit that champions the selfless work done by individuals around the world. Not all of the cams yield interesting feeds all the time – animals sleep, after all.

The US National Park Service

The US National Park Service also operates hundreds of cams throughout our nation’s parks.  You can watch bears, sea life, bald eagles and even….a live volcano.

The Smithsonian National Zoo

The Smithsonian National Zoo has several cams throughout, like this one all about pandas.

If it’s too hot to go outside, or the news is too depressing, or you’re tired of the millionth showing of The Shawshank Redemption, try one of these nature cams, guaranteed to lift your spirits…and who knows? You could decide to be the proud papa or mama of Kitiak or Mokogodo.

YOUR TURN

Do you have a favorite animal cam you watch?  Share your find in the comments!

Photo: Andrew Rice