Category Wildlife

Which bird lays the smallest egg?

Weighing as little as two grams, the bee hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world and it produces the smallest-known egg weighing half a gram. The smallest egg on record, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, was less than 10 mm long and it was laid by a Vervain hummingbird native to Jamaica in 1998. Its appearance and flight style rivals that of some insects, especially bees, for which it gets its name. The Bee Hummingbird is also the bird with the smallest nest in the world, at only 1 inch in diameter and depth. Their eggs are also the smallest bird eggs in the world, measuring a mere 12.5 x 8.5 mm, the size of a coffee bean. A Bee Hummingbird egg is only half the weight of a standard paper clip!

The Bee Hummingbird is a tiny gem and a super brilliant one at that. The males are adorned with a vibrant crown and gorget of fiery reds, oranges and yellows. Its royal-blue back, wings and sides contrast nicely with its shimmering gorget. Females lack the iridescent crown and gorget, but still maintain the beautiful blue back and wings.

Like other hummingbirds, it feeds on nectar and insects. The Bee Hummingbird is a strong flier and very active, visiting up to 1500 flowers a day! It has a fast metabolism, and consumes up to half its own body weight in nectar a day! As it feeds, it picks up pollen on its long, thin bill and transfers it to other flowers, aiding in plant pollination. Endemic to Cuba, the Bee Hummingbird has a patchy distribution on the island. It is most frequently encountered on the extreme western end and in the Zapata Peninsula.

Credit : Whitehawk

Picture Credit : Google 

What is the largest carnivorous marsupial?

The Tasmanian devil is the largest carnivorous marsupial, known for their high-pitched squeal and aggressive temperament. They have held this title for over 80 years. Specifically, these creatures weigh between 9 and 29 pounds. A Tasmanian Devil weighing 29 pounds is as heavy as three one-gallon cans of paint. These mammals range from 20 to 31 inches long. Picture two bowling pins lined up end to end and you have the length of a 31-inch Tasmanian Devil. This mammal’s tail is equal to half of its body length. These animals store fat in their tail to use for energy. So, if you see one of these animals with a thick tail, you know it’s healthy. Thanks to conservation efforts, they are being reintroduced to Australian mainland after a 3,000-year gap. Mother devils can give birth to 50 young ones at one go. However, very few survive.

A Tasmanian Devil is a small animal with short brown or black fur with a stripe of white hair across its chest. Some of these marsupials have patches of white hair near their dark tail. This marsupial’s front legs are longer than its back ones. They have dark eyes and small mouselike ears. These animals have excellent sight and hearing allowing them to track down prey at night.

They are known for their very strong jaws. In fact, this marsupial’s jaws have a bite force of 94 pounds. That strong bite force allows them to easily consume the meat, hair, bones, and organs of the dead animals they find. Some scientists refer to Tasmanian Devils as environmental vacuums because they clean up the carcasses they find in their habitat.

Credit : A-Z-Animals

Picture Credit : Google 

The contagion in the dolphin world

While friendly close contact is essential for these acquatic mammals social bonds, sharing space and air can also quickly spread disease.

Three young male dolphins simultaneously break the waters surface to breathe-first exhaling, then inhaling-before slipping back under the waves of the Chesapeake Bay in the U.S. “A perfect sync,” said Janet Mann, a dolphin researcher watching from a small skiff.

Synchronised  breathing is something dolphins often do with close pals, such as these males, or that mothers and calves do together, said Mann. It’s a way of affirming the relationships that are so important to these highly intelligent and social mammals, like a handshake or a hug among humans. “It says, ‘We’re together,” said Mann, who is based at Georgetown University.

While such close contact is essential to dolphin social bonds, sharing space and air can also quickly spread disease. Mann and other scientists are trying to understand how a highly contagious and lethal disease called cetacean morbillivirus- related to measles in humans and first detected in Virginia and Maryland waters can spread rapidly among dolphins along the Atlantic Coast, as it did from 2013 to 2015.

Thousands of deaths

During that outbreak, more than 1,600 dolphins washed ashore on beaches from New York to Florida, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Altogether, an estimated 20,000 dolphins died from the virus, and the region’s population of coastal dolphins shrank by about 50%.

“It’s much like COVID – it’s respiratory” in how it spreads, said Mann. “When dolphins breathe together at the surface, they’re sharing respiratory droplets just like we do when we’re talking or coughing on each other.”

She realised that the key to understanding swift virus transmission was tracing dolphin social networks, much as how public health authorities have tracked the COVID-19 pandemic.

To understand how diseases circulate in social animals such as humans, dolphins, or chimpanzees scientists must scrutinise not only the biology of a virus, but also how vulnerable populations interact, said Jacob Negrey, a researcher who studies animal viruses at Wake Forest School of Medicine. “Contact networks represent a double-edged sword,” he said. “Your friends that you need are also the individuals most likely to get you sick.”

Dolphins are extremely playful animals and often swim close together, sometimes even touching fins. “We call it holding hands,” said Mann.

“The males stay pretty coordinated with each other. The females sync, but not as regularly. They sync mostly with their offspring,” adds Mann. That difference in behaviour may help explain why males died in greater numbers during the most recent cetacean morbillivirus outbreak – a hypothesis the researchers are examining.

Depleted populations While Atlantic bottlenose dolphins are not endangered, NOAA considers their coastal populations to be “depleted”, meaning “below optimum sustainable population”.

Outbreaks of the virus emerge here every 25 years or so. And they strike dolphins and their close marine relatives elsewhere, including some endangered whale species.

University of Hawaii researcher Kristi West called the disease – which causes skin lesions, pneumonia, brain infections and a suppressed immune system – “the most significant threat to dolphins and whales on a worldwide scale”.

While viruses naturally occur in the wild, human disruption of marine habitats has made animals more vulnerable. “The disease becomes an even more significant threat when we combine it with other stressors that dolphins and whales throughout the world are facing,” said West. AP.

Picture Credit : Google

11-year-old boy finds 30,000-year-old woolly mammoth?

YEVGENY Salinde, an 11-year-old Russian boy, has found a 30,000-year old perfectly preserved mammoth carcass near his home in Russia’s far north. Experts believe this is the second most well preserved mammoth specimen ever discovered. A similar find like this hasn’t been encountered in a century.

Paleontologists did not only find a skeleton, like initially expected, but a complete carcass – skin, meat, fat hump, organs and a tusk. Scientists estimate the mammoth was 15 to 16 years old when it succumbed in the summer because it lacked an undercoat and had a large.

The total weight of the remains is more than 500 kg, and that includes the right half of the body with soft tissue, skin and hair, skull with one ear, a tusk, various bones and even reproductive organs, the Dolgano-Nentsky administration website announced.

It is believed to be the second best preserved mammoth discovery and the best mammoth find since 1901, when another mammoth was discovered near Beryozovka River in Yakutia, the paper reported.

Zhenya discovered the body 3 kilometres from Sopkarga polar meteorological station, where he lives with his family.

His parents informed scientific experts about the discovery after which the mammoth was taken to Dudinka in a helicopter and put in an ice chamber there. After the remains are studied, Zhenya the mammoth will move to Taymyr natural history museum as a showpiece.

Credit : NDTV

Picture Credit : Google 

Where can you find the gorilla?

The gorilla lives in the dense forests of equatorial Africa. It is the largest and most powerful of the ape family. The gorilla is extremely strong but it is a unduly disturbed. But other animals are very much afraid of it: few of them will dare to attack a gorilla because they know they would have the worse of the encounter.

A full-grown gorilla stands nearly 2 metres tall, with a massive body and very muscular arms and legs, and can weigh over 200 kilograms. Its jaws jut out and it has a broad, flattened nose and huge beetling eyebrows.

There are two main kinds of gorilla: the lowland gorilla that lives in the rain forests of western Africa, has a dark grey coat; the mountain gorilla which lives in the eastern regions of Zaire-Uganda borderland at altitudes of more than 3,000 metres, has black fur, Little is known about the ways of these big apes. This is because gorillas are very shy animals and also because they were first found only during the last century.

Gorillas usually live in groups which include both young and old. They build rough dwellings in trees a few metres above the ground. These dwellings look like platforms made of branches and twigs.

Gorillas do not spend all their lives in the trees. During the day they wander about on the ground looking for food. They feed on leaves, roots and fruit which the forest has in plenty. Gorillas walk in a crouching position, but every so often they stand up straight on their long hind legs.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Why reindeer migrate?

In spring the Lapps leave behind the woodlands of the south where they spend the winter and set out for the pastures in the northern mountains. The Lapps move in small family groups, leading their herd of reindeer along established tracks which usually follow the courses of river. The rivers are still frozen and the Lapps us them as safe roads for their sledges, laden with provisions. The reindeer are used to following the same route and move along slowly, feeding as they travel.

Half-way through the journey, when spring breaks, the Lapps pitch their tents for a period lasting several weeks. It is at this time that the baby reindeer are born and the tribe has to wait until they are able to walk by themselves. The young reindeer do not take long to learn how to trot about and the herd moves on once more. The destination is the far north where the tundra, the ‘cold desert’ of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, ends and the Arctic Ocean begins. The reindeer herd spends the short summer on the grassy shores and on the islets along the coast before travelling south once more.

Lapps consume large quantities of reindeer milk and use it to make delicious cheese. When the icy north wind blows and the family is gathered together in the tent the mother prepares a hot drink by dissolving chunks of reindeer cheese in hot water. This drink provides a great deal of energy and warmth.

Lapps have hunted reindeer since the earliest times and have kept small numbers, but breeding them in large herds is comparatively recent.

 

Picture Credit : Google