Recent Blog post
> Avocados are fruit, not a vegetables. They're technically considered a single-seeded berry.
> 'Mellifluous' is a sound that is pleasingly smooth and musical to hear.
>there are only 22 countries that the British haven't invaded or attacked
> there is a island in japan that is populated entirely by fluffy bunnies.
> a single piece of spaghetti is a spaghetto
> people who experience lucid dreams tend to be a better problem solvers while they're awake.
> you burn more calories by sleeping then watching tv
>a crocodile can't stick its tongue out.
> it is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky
> a shark is the only known fish that can blink with both eyes
> a cat has 32 muscles in each ears
> an ostrich's eye is bigger that it's brain
> tiger have striped skin, not just striped fur
> the giant squid has the largest eyes in the world
> most people fall asleep in seven minutes
> cats are not able to taste anything that is sweet
> snail takes the longest naps with lasting as long as three years
>kangaroos can not walk backwards
> sea lions have rhythm. they are the only animal able to clap to a beat.
> Hipopotamus milk is pink
> cows can walk up stairs but not go down them.
> one of the ingredients needed to make dynamite is peanuts
>the shortest war in history lasted for only 38 minutes.
> there are 31,556,926 seconds in a year
> cans of diet sodas will float in water but regular soda cans will sink.
> some perfumes actually have whale poo in them.
> the snow on venus is metal
> eating to much carrots will turn you into a oranges
Random Facts #1
Domestic dogs( canis familiarsis) is one of the mammal in the order of carnivorus. The history of dogs is an old tale indeed. You could say as long as there has been civilisation, there have been records of humans and dogs. Dogs were domesticated from wolves around 15,000 years ago. New evidence suggests that dogs were first domesticated in East Asia, possibly China. Over time, the dog has developed into hundreds of breeds with a great degree of variation.
DOGS – HIGHLY SOCIAL ANIMALS
Dogs, like humans, are highly social animals and this similarity in their overall behavioural pattern accounts for their trainability, playfulnes and ability to fit into human households and social situations. This similarity has earned dogs a unique position in the realm of interspecies relationships. The loyalty and devotion that dogs demonstrate as part of their natural instincts as pack animals closely mimics the human idea of love and friendship, leading many dog owners to view their pets as full-fledged family members.
Dogs can differ in appearance, function, temperament and size. Some small dogs can weigh as little as 1.5 pounds, whereas some larger dogs can weigh as much as 200 pounds. Depending on the country, there are about 138 officially recognised dog breeds, categorised into 7 different groups. Dogs fill a variety of roles in human society and are often trained as working dogs. For dogs that do not have traditional jobs, a wide range of dog sports provide the opportunity to exhibit their natural skills.
DOGS – COMPANIONS ACROSS THE AGES
It is estimated that for more than 12,000 years the dog has lived with humans as a hunting companion, protector and friend. A dog is one of the most popular pets in the world and has been referred to as "mans best friend". Whether you are poor or rich, a dog will be faithful and loyal to you and love you to bits.
A pet dog will fit easily into family life and environment, they of course need caring for as any other pet – feeding, grooming, bathing and when ill, will need a visit to the vets. Dogs thrive on affection and will happily wag its tail when showered with love and attention. Dogs will also sit and sulk if they get told off for doing something wrong.
TRAINING AND EXERCISING DOGS
A well-mannered dog must be trained properly and with patience and perseverance. You must never mistreat a dog at any time as not only is it very wrong to mistreat any animal, but some will bite in their own defense.
Larger breeds need considerably more exercise over a larger area than medium sized or small dogs. You can take them out into the countryside or to your local park or recreation ground. Here, they can run about and play games and get the exercise they need to keep them fit and healthy.
Dogs can be taught how to do things. Throw a small branch, stick or frizzbee and you can teach your dog to go fetch and bring the item back to you. Dogs have nearly 220 million smell-sensitive cells over an area about the size of a pocket handkerchief (compared to 5 million over an area the size of a postage stamp for humans).
Some breeds have been selectively bred for excellence in detecting scents. What information a dog actually detects when he is scenting is not perfectly understood. Although once a matter of debate, it now seems to be well established that dogs can distinguish two different types of scents when trailing an air scent from some person or thing that has recently passed by, as well as a ground scent that remains detectable for a much longer period.
Dogs
Ducks are birds in the Anatidae family. Ducks are also called ‘Waterfowl’ because they are normally found in places where there is water like ponds, streams and rivers.
Ducks are related to Geese and Swans in the Anatidae family. Ducks are sometimes confused with several types of unrelated water birds with similar forms, such as loons (an aquatic bird found in many parts of North America and northern Europe) or grebes (freshwater diving birds) and coots (medium-sized water birds which are members of the Rail Bird family).
Duck Characteristics
Ducks are smaller than than their relatives (swans and geese). Ducks also have shorter necks and wings and a stout body.
A female duck is called a ‘hen’, they are identified by their very-dull, brown feathers. The females have dull-brown feathers so that they can hide from enemies and predators. They can also camouflage themselves in their nests and also protect their young.
A male duck is called a ‘drake’, you can identify the male duck by its brightly colored feathers. They use these colored feathers to attract the female ducks for mating. Here is a beautifully colored Drake with a purple plumage, shiny green head coloring, silvery white body and grey wings with blue markings.
The males use their colorful plumage to attract females. However, they will lose or molt their colorful feathers when the females are busy hatching the eggs. The males will now look like the female in color and will be unable to fly temporarily. They will molt again in early Autumn and get back their colorful feathers and be able to fly again. The females also molt. They replace all their feathers and get new ones after their ducklings are hatched.
Ducks have webbed feet, which are designed for swimming. Their webbed feet act like paddles for the ducks. The reason ducks can swim in cold water is their amazing circulatory system. Their blood vessels are laid out very close to each other in their legs and feet in a network that allows the warm and cool blood to exchange heat.
This allows the warm blood going from the body into the feet to warm the cooler blood re-entering the body from the feet, and the blood going to the feet is cooled enough that the cold does not bother the duck. Thus the duck’s feet are able to tolerate the cold and not bother them. All birds have this circulatory system in their legs and feet.
A duck has water-proof feathers. There is a special gland called the ‘Preen Gland’ near the ducks tail. This tiny gland produces oil which the duck uses to coat its feathers.
The duck picks up the oil with its head and beak, and then smears it all over its body to make the outer feathers waterproof. Without this protective barrier, a ducks feathers would become water-logged and because they spend their whole lives around and in water, this water-proof barrier is extremely important. Beneath the water-proof coat are fluffy and soft feathers which keep the duck warm.
The ducks mouth is called a beak or bill. It is usually broad and flat and has rows of fine notches along the edge called ‘lamellae’. The lamellae helps the duck to grip its food so that it will not slip off.
However, ducks beak comes in different shapes and sizes. The shape of the beak and body determines how the duck will hunt for its food.
Duck Behaviour
Ducks keep clean by preening themselves. Ducks do this by putting their heads in funny positions and putting their beaks into their body. Ducks preen themselves very often. Preening also removes parasites, removes scales which cover newly sprouting feathers and also involves the removal of spreading oil over clean feathers.
Duck Habitats
Many species of duck are temporarily flightless while moulting. Ducks seek out protected habitats with a good food supply during this period. They usually moult before migrating.
Ducks are found in wetlands, marshes, ponds, rivers, lakes and oceans. This is because ducks love the water. Some species of ducks migrate or travel longs distances every year to breed. Ducks usually travel to warmer areas or where the water does not freeze so that they can rest and raise their young. The distance may be thousands of miles away. Ducks are found everywhere in the world except the Antartica which is too cold for them.
Duck Life Span
Ducks can live from 2 – 20 years, depending on species and whether they are wild ducks or ducks in captivity. Its a fact that a wild duck can live 20 years or more. Domestic ducks typically live 10 – 15 years in captivity. The world record is a Mallard Drake that lived to a ripe old age of 27 years.
Ducks And Their Feeding Habits
Shovelers – these ducks have broad beaks and sift their food for insects, nails and seed from the mud.
Diving ducks and Sea ducks forage deep underwater. To be able to submerge more easily, the diving ducks are heavier than dabbling ducks and therefore have more difficulty taking off to fly. These ducks have long and narrow beaks. Their narrow beaks are also covered will saw-like edges which help them to grab fish.
Dabbling ducks feed on the surface of water or on land, or as deep as they can reach by up-ending without completely submerging. Their beaks are broad and short. Dabbling ducks have tiny rows of plates along the inside of the beak called ‘lamellae’ like a whales baleen.
These let them filter water out of the side of their beaks and keep food inside. Dabbling ducks eat plants, seeds, grasses and other small insects and animals that they find on or under the water. Usually they stick their tails in the air and stretch their heads into the water to reach their food.
Dabblers usually have shiny colored patches on their wings. The domestic ducks are dabblers too. They are descendants of the Mallards. Dabbling ducks take off from the water in quick jumps. Ducks with longer necks dive with their head down into the shallow water and pick up their food.
Duck Reproduction
Ducks usually look for a mate or partner in winter. Male ducks will attract the female ducks with their colorful plumage or feathers. The female ducks will then lead the male ducks to their breeding ground in spring. The breeding ground will usually be the place where the female duck was hatched. The female duck builds her nest with grass or reeds or even in a hole in a tree.
The male duck will guard their territory by chasing away other couples. Once the female lays 5 – 12 eggs, she will sit on her eggs to keep them warm so that they can hatch into ducklings. The male ducks on the other hand, will be with the other male ducks.
The eggs will hatch within 28 days normally, except for the Muscovy duck which takes about 35 days to hatch.The mother duck will keep her brood of ducklings together to protect them from predators. Animals like the raccoon, turtles, hawks, large fish and snakes are a ducks main predators and they will eat the ducklings. Ducklings are able to fly within 5 – 8 weeks. Their feathers develop very fast.
When the young are ready to fly, all the ducks will gather in flocks on large lakes, marshes or the ocean to migrate to their wintering home. When the ducks fly, they usually do so in a ‘V-shaped’ or a long line.
INTERESTING DUCK FACTS
A hen makes a loud QUACK sound while the drake has a raspy, muffled call.
Touching a duckling does not prevent the mother duck from taking care of it. It is however best to leave ducklings alone so as not to scare the mother duck away or accidentally injure them.
Ducks sleep with half their brains awake. Ducks are more likely to sleep with one eye open when they are located on the edge of sleeping groups. Ducks can detect predators in less than a second.
Duck eggshells have tiny holes (pores) that allow it to breathe. A hen’s eggs can have 7500 pores, most found at the blunt end of the egg. Respiratory gasses as well as water vapour travel through these pores allowing the egg to breathe.
Baby ducks are precocial meaning they are born with their eyes wide open, with a warm layer of down and are not fully dependant on their parents for food. Ducklings are ready to leave the nest within hours of hatching.
A ‘clutch’ is the total number of eggs laid by one bird during one nesting session. Clutch size affected by hereditary and environmental factors. When food is abundant, birds lay more eggs.
Ducks
The Cat(Felis Catus) is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family felidae and is often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from the wild members of the family. A cat can either be a house cat, a farm cat, or a feral cat, the latter ranges freely and some cats avoids human contact. Domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship and their abilty to kill rodents. there is about 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.
The cat is similar in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth, and retractable claws adapted to killing their prey. Its night vision and sharp sense of smell are well developed. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting as well as cat-specific body language. A predator that is most active at dawn and dusk (crepuscular), the cat is a solitary hunter but a social species. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by mice and other small mammals. Cats also secrete and perceive pheromones.
Female domestic cats can have kittens from spring to late autumn, with litter sizes often ranging from two to five kittens.
Domestic cats are bred and shown at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Population control of cats may be effected by spaying and neutering, but their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in large numbers of feral cats worldwide, contributing to the extinction of entire bird, mammal, and reptile species.
It was long thought that cat domestication began in ancient Egypt, where cats were venerated from around 3100 BC, but recent advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that their domestication occurred in Western Asia around 7500 BC.
As of 2021, there were an estimated 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats in the world. As of 2017, the domestic cat was the second most popular pet in the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned and around 42 million households own at least one cat. In the United Kingdom, 26% of adults have a cat with an estimated population of 10.9 million pet cats as of 2020.
History
Around 12 million years ago – Prehistoric times.
During prehistoric times, distant ancestors of the African wildcat roamed the savannah in search of food to eat.
9000-4000 BC – Ancient Egypt
In Ancient Egypt, a time when pharaohs rule the land, the African wildcat enters towns looking for food. They find mice to hunt in the grain stores and for the first time, begin to live alongside humans.
Around 2000 BC
Some African wildcats evolve to become domesticated, living with humans quite happily. The Ancient Egyptians believe that cats are lucky, especially as they keep the snakes away!
1000 BC
Domesticated cats are sold across the world in secret. Many cats live in India and across the whole of Asia.
400 AD – The Roman Empire
Ancient Rome, a powerful and important civilisation, is now getting bigger. The Romans introduce cats to Europe. They think of them as sacred animals and let them wander freely around the city’s holy temples.
1400s- Medieval Europe
Cats are no longer sacred animals. Instead, they are associated with witchcraft and treated badly. Those who own cats are considered to be witches and usually burned alive.
1700s – New America
Adventurers discover the Americas, and with it, a huge plague of rats! Cats are sent across on large ships to control the problem and become popular with the American people.
1800s – Victorian Britain
During Victorian times, cats become popular pets in Britain. Sadly, cats are still cruelly mistreated and abandoned and many live on the streets.
1914-1918 – First World Wars
Cats became heroes, serving in the First World War. They have important jobs, like sniffing out poisonous gas on the battlefield and controlling rats on war ships.
1927 – The beginning of Cats Protection
As cruelty is still a problem, Cats Protection is created to help teach people about how to look after cats. They also begin to home unwanted cats, placing them in happy homes with new owners.
Today
Cats are one of the most popular pets. There are all lot of them in homes across the whole world! Although the African wildcat looks different to our pet cats, they share some of the same behaviours even today – from hunting and sleeping to the need to be alone.
Hunting Abilities
Like their wild relatives, domestic cats are natural hunters able to stalk prey and pounce with sharp claws and teeth. They are particularly effective at night, when their light-reflecting eyes allow them to see better than much of their prey. Cats also enjoy acute hearing. All cats are nimble and agile, and their long tails aid their outstanding balance.
Communication
Cats communicate by marking trees, fence posts, or furniture with their claws or their waste. These scent posts are meant to inform others of a cat's home range. House cats employ a vocal repertoire that extends from a purr to a screech.
Sense
•> Vision
Cats have excellent night vision and can see at only one-sixth the light level required for human vision. This is partly the result of cat eyes having a tapetum lucidum, which reflects any light that passes through the retina back into the eye, thereby increasing the eye’s sensitivity to dim light. Large pupils are an adaptation to dim light. The domestic cat has slit pupils, which allow it to focus bright light without chromatic aberration. At low light, a cat’s pupils expand to cover most of the exposed surface of its eyes. The domestic cat has rather poor color vision and only two types of cone cells, optimized for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green; its ability to distinguish between red and green is limited. A response to middle wavelengths from a system other than the rod cells might be due to a third type of cone. This appears to be an adaptation to low light levels rather than representing true trichromatic vision.
•> Hearing
The domestic cat’s hearing is most acute in the range of 500 Hz to 32 kHz. It can detect an extremely broad range of frequencies ranging from 55 Hz to 79,000 Hz. It can hear a range of 10.5 octaves, while humans and dogs can hear ranges of about 9 octaves. Its hearing sensitivity is enhanced by its large movable outer ears, the pinnae, which amplify sounds and help detect the location of a noise. It can detect ultrasound, which enables it to detect ultrasonic calls made by rodent prey. Recent research has shown that cats have socio-spatial cognitive abilities to create mental maps of owners’ locations based on hearing owners’ voices.
•> Smell
Cats have an acute sense of smell, due in part to their well-developed olfactory bulb and a large surface of olfactory mucosa, about 5.8 square centimetres (29⁄32 square inch) in area, which is about twice that of humans. Cats and many other animals have a Jacobson’s organ in their mouths that is used in the behavioral process of flehmening. It allows them to sense certain aromas in a way that humans cannot. Cats are sensitive to pheromones such as 3-mercapto-3-methylbutan-1-ol, which they use to communicate through urine spraying and marking with scent glands. Many cats also respond strongly to plants that contain nepetalactone, especially catnip, as they can detect that substance at less than one part per billion. About 70–80% of cats are affected by nepetalactone. This response is also produced by other plants, such as silver vine (Actinidia polygama) and the herb valerian; it may be caused by the smell of these plants mimicking a pheromone and stimulating cats’ social or sexual behaviors.
•> Taste
Cats have relatively few taste buds compared to humans (470 or so versus more than 9,000 on the human tongue). Domestic and wild cats share a taste receptor gene mutation that keeps their sweet taste buds from binding to sugary molecules, leaving them with no ability to taste sweetness. Their taste buds instead respond to acids, amino acids like protein, and bitter tastes. Cats also have a distinct temperature preference for their food, preferring food with a temperature around 38 °C (100 °F) which is similar to that of a fresh kill and routinely rejecting food presented cold or refrigerated (which would signal to the cat that the “prey” item is long dead and therefore possibly toxic or decomposing).
•> Whiskers
The whiskers of a cat are highly sensitive to touch. To aid with navigation and sensation, cats have dozens of movable whiskers (vibrissae) over their body, especially their faces. These provide information on the width of gaps and on the location of objects in the dark, both by touching objects directly and by sensing air currents, they also trigger protective blink reflexes to protect the eyes from damage.
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