They got me…
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Archive for the ‘Animals’ Category
Deer savages dogs – and no, this is not an April Fool joke
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009When it comes to a fight between a dog and a cute little deer, you would expect there to be no contest.
And you’d be right. Rover limps home with his tail between his legs – and some nasty gashes into the bargain.
An increasing number of dog-owners in rural Bedfordshire are reporting attacks by Chinese water deer, whose ancestors escaped Woburn Safari Park.
Attack: Perdita suffered deep lacerations on her back, belly and neckAlthough the deer are less than 2ft tall and weigh a maximum of 31lb, the males have a secret weapon – downward-pointing fangs which can grow more than 3in long.
Latest victim was Perdita, a six-year-old Jack Russell out for a walk with Georgina Robey, 12, and her tenyearold brother Daniel. Perdita suffered cuts on her back, neck and both sides of her stomach after an encounter with a mystery predator.
Vicious bite: Chinese water deer males fight with tusks that grow up to 3in long
Vicious bite: Chinese water deer males fight with tusks that grow up to 3in longIt was only when the children’s father Loren took the dog to a vet that they realised she had apparently fallen victim to a serial-attack deer. The same vet had already treated five dogs in a similar condition.
Mr Robey, a 43-year-old electrician, said his son and daughter came back ‘distraught’ from their walk in Ampthill Park, between Bedford and Luton, with Perdita bleeding from her wounds.
‘My first thought was that she must have got caught in a barbed-wire fence but the vet put it down to Chinese water deer.’
John Wakely, of Ridgeway Veterinary Centre, Flitwick, said: ‘In 30 years as a vet I have never seen this before. But I have treated three dogs in the past two weeks and two before Christmas.’
Mr Wakely has now put up notices in the park which warn dog owners to beware.
Ampthill park committee chairman Hector Chappell said a ‘huge’ Chinese water deer population had sprung up since they began to escape in the 1920s and 1930s.
‘They breed throughout the year and are quite a menace. You don’t normally see them except at dusk because they lie down during day as their natural colouring camouflages them in the long grass. If a dog disturbed them they would bite.’
Local vet John Wakely tended to Perdita after the attack
SOURCE
10 Animals That Look Like Ladyflowers
Saturday, March 28th, 2009Oyster
The common name oyster is used for a number of different groups of bivalve mollusks, most of which live in marine habitats or brackish water. The shell consists of two usually highly calcified valves which surround a soft body. Gills filter plankton from the water, and strong adductor muscles are used to hold the shell closed.
Some types of oysters are highly prized as food, both raw and cooked. Other types, such as pearl oysters, are not commonly eaten.
Worm Clam
The Common clam worm (Nereis succinea) is a widely distributed polychaete worm. It is often referred to as a ragworm or sandworm, or simply as the “clam worm”, but these terms can all refer to any one of a number of other species of the genus Nereis (or indeed to other polychaetes). The name “common clam worm” is less ambiguous, but is also sometimes used for other Neries species such as N. virens and N. limbata.
Carnivorous Anemone
Although Sea Anemones look like flowers, they are predatory animals. These invertebrates have
no skeleton at all. They live attached to firm objects in the seas, usually the sea floor, rock, or coral, but they can slide around very slowly. Sea anemones are very long lived. Hermit crabs sometimes attach sea anemones to their shells for camouflage.
Conch
A conch (pronounced as “konk” or “konch”, IPA: /ˈkɒŋk/ or /ˈkɒntʃ/)[1] is one of a number of different species of medium-sized to large saltwater snails or their shells. True conchs are marine gastropod molluscs in the family Strombidae, and the genus Strombus.
The name “conch” however, is often quite loosely applied in English-speaking countries to several kinds of very large snail-like shells of salt-water molluscs that are pointed at both ends. That is, a conch’s shell has a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal. Other species often called a “conch” include the crown conch Melongena species; the horse conch Pleuroploca gigantea; and the sacred chank or more correctly Shankha shell, Turbinella pyrum. None of these are in the family Strombidae, but instead in other families of the molluscs
Sea Hare
The suborder Aplysiomorpha or Sea hares (Aplysia species and related genera) are very large sea slugs with a soft internal shell made of protein. These are marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamilies Aplysioidea and Akeroidea.
The common name “sea hare” derives from their rounded shape and from the two long rhinophores that project upwards from their heads and that somewhat resemble rabbit ears.
Star Nosed Mole
The star-nosed mole lives in wet lowland areas and eats small invertebrates, aquatic insects, worms and mollusks. It is a good swimmer and can forage along the bottoms of streams and ponds. Like other moles, this animal digs shallow surface tunnels for foraging; often, these tunnels exit underwater. It is active day and night and remains active in winter, when it has been observed tunnelling through the snow and swimming in ice-covered streams. Little is known about the social behavior of the species, but it is suspected that it is colonial.
Colugo Monkey
This is a colugo. According to a Berkeley University article, this “‘flying’ lemur of Malaysia is the champion of all gliding mammals, able to drop from the forest canopy, glide more than the length of two football fields, execute 90-degree turns and then alight gently on a tree trunk.”
Giant Clam
The giant clam, Tridacna gigas, or traditionally, pa’ua, is the largest living bivalve mollusk. One of a number of large clam species native to the shallow coral reefs of the South Pacific and Indian oceans, they can weigh more than 200 kilograms (440 pounds), measure as much as 1.2 metres (4 feet) across, and have an average lifespan in the wild of 100 years or more.[1] They are also found off the shores of the Philippines.
Mussel
The common name mussel is used for members of several different families of clams or bivalve molluscs, from both saltwater and freshwater habitats. The one thing that these different groups have in common, is that they have a shell whose outline is somewhat elongated and asymmetrical compared with that of many other edible clams, the shells of which are often more or less rounded or oval in shape.
The word “mussel” is most frequently used to mean the edible bivalves of the marine family Mytilidae, most of which live on exposed shores in the intertidal zone, attached by means of their strong byssal threads (”beard”) to a firm substrate. A few species (in the genus Bathymodiolus) have colonized hydrothermal vents associated with deep ocean ridges.
Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish are marine animals of the order Sepiida belonging to the Cephalopoda class (which also includes squid, octopuses, and nautiluses). Despite their common name, cuttlefish are not fish but molluscs. Recent studies indicate that cuttlefish are among the most intelligent invertebrate species.