New Species Added: Basselope!
It's time to finally to announce a secret I've been keeping for weeks: the addition of an incredibly elusive animal to the repository collection!
Meet the basselope: a rare species that was thought to be extinct until a last surviving individual was rediscovered in 1986. Thanks to some incredible breeding successes in the subsequent years, the basselope population rebounded successfully. Now found in all continents but Antartica, modern basselopes have proven to be a highly adaptable species, and populations in different regions display a wide range of phenotypic variability.
Basselope, while not domesticated, regularly choose to den in human homes. The North American population has a particular fondness for couches.
The "jungle" phenotype has lost their antlers over time, likely due to ease of movement through dense plants and vines. They are known for their habit of swinging their ears through the air as they move: while the origin of this behavior is unknown, it's theorized this adaptation may be both a form of enhanced thermoregulation and a way of communicating with conspecifics.
One isolated population of basselope has begun to shed their antlers seasonally, and they have begun a new annual tradition of posing against a backdrop of their previous year's accomplishments.
One of the most elusive morphs is the "arctic" basselope. Despite sharing a range with other basselope populations - which is not all that far north - they're known for developing a strikingly colored and oddly jingly winter coat. The genes responsible for this seasonal color expression are as of yet unknown.
More super-rare, never-before-seen basselope photos can be found here!
Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission from the basselopes to use these and all photos of them in the repository as references, including for works that will/may be sold.
The Animal Photo Reference Repository is an independent, permanently open-access project and funded entirely by donations, which allows me the creative freedom to have way, way too much fun on April 1st.
