Larry and Bette Haverfield and other pro-conservation ranchers have fought long and hard to bring the endangered black-footed ferret back to the Kansas prairie. Last month, their efforts paid off.
The Haverfield ranch contains the largest prairie dog colony in Kansas, making it a prime site for reintroducing the once-thought-to-be-extinct ferrets into the wild. And thanks to the support of 16,000 Defenders activists, last month U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials released 24 black-footed ferret kits on private ranchlands — including the Haverfield’s.
The following short article and references are meant to raise awareness. Unfortunately, there are many people who have no or little idea about tortoises. There are endangered tortoise species, there is also Lonesome George to shake humanity and how many of you don’t have tortoises as pets? Enjoy and feel free to fill in the gaps and provide further references for others.
Tortoises or land turtles are land-dwelling reptiles of the family of Testudinidae, order Testudines. Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise has both an endoskeleton and an exoskeleton. Tortoises can vary in size from a few centimetres to two meters. Tortoises tend to be diurnal animals with tendencies to be crepuscular depending on the ambient temperatures. They are generally reclusive and shy.
Beside the common knowledge on tortoise, here’s a few things about the religious symbolism of the tortoise. In Hinduism, Kurma (Sanskrit: कà¥à¤°à¥à¤®) was the second avatar of Vishnu. Like the Matsya Avatara also belongs to the Satya yuga. Vishnu took the form of a half-man half-tortoise, the lower half being a tortoise. He is normally shown as having four arms. He sat on the bottom of the ocean after the Great Flood. A mountain was placed on his back by the other gods so that they could churn the sea and find the ancient treasures of the Vedic peoples.
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You may ask yourself what does a horse have in common with a Ford Mustang? Or a Griffin with a SAAB? The answer is simple. Many car logo concepts were built starting from an animal. You may call it a tribute to animal features, I think this is human acknowledgement of the world’s only perfect designs: the animal species.
Enjoy the pictures and follow the link for a full list.
Did you know that there is a sort of crab, which can climb trees?
It is called the coconut crab, because it eats coconuts, which it finds by climbing the palm trees where the nuts grow.
Birgus latro) is the largest land-living arthropod in the world. It is a derived hermit crab and is known for its ability to crack coconuts with its strong pincers in order to eat the contents. It is also called the robber crab or palm thief, because some coconut crabs are rumored to steal shiny items such as pots and silverware from houses and tents.
This hermit crab with its intimidating size and strength has a special position in the culture of the islanders. The coconut crab is eaten by the Pacific islanders, and is considered a delicacy and an aphrodisiac, with a taste similar to lobster and crab meat. The most prized parts are the eggs inside the female coconut crab and the fat in the abdomen. Coconut crabs can be cooked in a similar way to lobsters, by boiling or steaming. Different islands also have a variety of recipes, as for example coconut crab cooked in coconut milk.
While the coconut crab itself is not poisonous, it may become poisonous depending on its diet, and cases of coconut crab poisoning have occurred. It is believed that the poison comes from plant toxins, which would explain why some animals are poisonous and others not. It may also be possible that this poison is considered an aphrodisiac, similar to the highly poisonous pufferfish eaten in Japan. However, coconut crabs are not a commercial product and are usually not sold.
Children sometimes play with coconut crabs by placing some wet grass at an angle on a palm tree that contains a coconut crab. When the animal climbs down, it believes the grass is the ground, releases its grip on the tree, and subsequently falls.
The coconut crab is admired for its strength, and it is said that villagers use this animal to guard their coconut plantations. A coconut crab may attack a person if it is threatened. The coconut crab, especially if it is not yet fully grown, is also sold as a pet, for example in Tokyo. The cage must be strong enough that the animal cannot use its powerful claws to escape.
5. If we had to name one of the animals most dangerous to humans, we would no doubt nominate wolves, bears or snakes. However, reality can be found behind a pair of tender-looking eyes. In comparison to any other animal, the whitetail deer is the species that inflicts the most harm on humans, because of all the traffic accidents they cause.
4. Speaking of faces that can be deceiving, there is another animal that is very dangerous. The actual estimate of annual human deaths due to sharks is 10; however, 100 more people die each year from being stepped on by cows.
3. Death is a reality of life and it has been proven that all mammals produce almost one billion heartbeats before dying. The mouse produces close to one billion, but its life cycle is just 850 days. The elephant has about 75 years through which to spread out those heartbeats. Humans are the exception. They are the only mammals that have a triple amount of heartbeats during a life cycle.
2. They say sharing is a way of life and perhaps some animals have taken this statement to extremes, like for example the prairie dog. The largest known colony was registered in the state of Texas in the United States. It was 160km wide, 402km long, and with 400 million inhabitants.
1. If this number is impressive, there is another that is even unpronounceable. In reality there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on planet Earth. If this is incredible, more surprising still would be to find out who took count!
August 23, 2007, Guruvayur, India—Senior mahouts, or elephant trainers, bathe an elephant in a pond during heavy rain on the grounds of the Punnathur Kotta, a palace in southern India on August 11, 2007.Trainers assemble about 60 elephants every year in the first week of July for a month of “spa†treatments following the principles of ayurveda, a traditional Indian medicine system. The palace is about 52 miles (80 kilometers) north of Cochin in the southern state of Kerala (See map of India).
“The camp is held during monsoon season, because the cool climate is best for treatment,†veterinary doctor T.C.R. Nambiar told the television channel IBNLive.
The Guruvayur Devasom, administrators of a temple in Guruvayur began the elephant-rejuvenation camp in 1985 as a way to give the elephants a rest and help them regain their health after eleven months of temple duties.
Photo source: Defenders of Wildlife
