Born to be round: pearlscale goldfish

What's cuter than a sweet little goldfish? A sweet, round little goldfish. I shall introduce you to a particular variety that is born to have a "golf ball" appearance, the pearlscale:

Cute little thing, huh? Due to their body shape, they tend to be slow swimmers and tend to be best kept with other "fancy" varieties of goldfish, so that competition for food is equal. Their name, as you might be able to guess, comes from the round white covering on top of each of their scales.

Pearlscale with telescopic eyes

"I shouldn't have eaten the whole tub of flakes."

"Can't... get up..."

Love them :)

Ball of fluff

Russian Dwarf Hamster, courtesy of Cute Overload :)

Fat little birds looking moody special

I'm back... and this time I have a very specific gallery of images to show you: fat little birds looking especially moody. Don't believe I can create a whole post on such a niche topic? Well, here...

Hummingbird (image credit: John Wise)

A little owl (image credit: Mike Watson)

There, I proved you wrong, didn't I? Who knew there were so many moody little birds. Maybe they're tired of being called cute.

I'm afraid I don't know the species of the birds that aren't captioned, but feel free to enlighten me...

Introducing something with fluff... the pika

An American pika

I've covered some birds and fish now and so I'm going to move into mammal territory - with the pika. There are actually 30 different species of this guy, and they come from the same family as rabbits and hares, but the thing they have in common is that they're all alpine/mountainous creatures, living in crevasses/burrows.

Adult and juvenile black-lipped pikas (China). Image credit: David Blank

Another pika, species unknown

Some people may be wondering whether the pika was inspiration for the Japanese-originated Pokemon, Pikachu. I really have no idea, but there is a similarity there.

Round 'n' cute birds in plush form...

Slightly cheating here as these aren't 'real' animals, but I thought they qualified for a post as they are extremely round and extremely cute :)

These are felt birds, by Mahteeka, and are based on real species. Some previews:

Scarlet Tanager

Blue Jay

Black-Capped Chickadee

More featured here, where there are contact details on buying any or commissions :)

The Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker proves you can be lumpy AND cute

Image credit: Charlene-SJ

This truly is a weird little fish. The Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker is a lesser known creature, but that doesn't stop it being any less cute (at least I think so). They grow up to 1-5 inches (5 being exceptionally huge). The weirdest thing about them is that they have little sucker pads on their tummies, which makes them stickable to almost anything. You know, like those ornaments you sucker to the inside of car windows. Most of them are apparently found in the North Pacific.

image source: islandwood.org

According to The Featured Creature, a Japanese aquarium placed balloons inside of their lumpsucker tank. Apparently the fish loved it. Photographic evidence:

source: divematrix.com

source: divematrix.com

And if that wasn't enough, here's an awesome video of one of these guys in action. The little eel-type fish can't get enough of it, he's like 'what even ARE you?!'.

The moral of this post: you don't need fur or feathers, or even complete symmetry, to be round 'n' cute.

Chaffinch collapses under own weight of adorableness

Image credit: ronbose8

At least it looks like it, anyway. I think it is a chaffinch but I've had to identify it myself - so someone correct me if I'm wrong please :)