Dog Breed: Small Musterlander

This photo is taken from www.gundogmag.com

You know, being an animal lover sometimes do indeed come in handy when it comes to observing nature. Take my own personal experience for example, in which I'm going to post in a very short moment, can be quite entertaining and fun. Just a little while ago Johnny and I went to a trail for a walk, the sun was shinning and the sky was clear with a few puffs of clouds occasionally floating by. There were a few people walking or running with their dogs with them and one of the dog and master couple really hit my funny bone because the dog's front paws was splaying sidewards, just like how some people have splayed feet! I guess a dog's physical differences can vary from one another, just like humans do as well!

Here's some basic information on the dog... it was a Small Musterlander, its origin was not clear until it hit a "Doggy-Boom" in the 19th century in Germany, it was quite common in all of Europe for hunting but sadly it is now quite rare these days to get our hands on, so as a result, a lot of hunters are "snatching" the puppies quite quickly.

Being rare aside, this breed is still a hunting companion but they can be an active, lively and affectionate pets in homes. They are also alert, as a result of being a gun dog and very loyal, they are quite gentle with children, so adults don't have to worry to much leaving kids with them.

They are medium sized but quite strong with a touch of elegance. Their fur are a bit wavy medium lengthed.

Generally speaking, the Small Musterlander is very smart and intelligent, it doesn't take to much work or time to train them a trick or two, so in a simple description, they are eager to please.

The males hight can reach up to 20.5~22.1 in. (or 52 ~ 56cm), while females are a bit smaller, around 19.7 ~ 21.3 in. (or 50 ~ 54 cm.) weighing up to 35 lb for males and 31 lb for females.

Japanese Macaque

The photo is taken from Google. The little observation near the end is mine own.
The Japanese Macaque (Macaca fuscata), also known as the Snow Monkey, is a native specimen of Japan, it is the most northern-living as well as the most polar-living non-human primate. In Japan, they were historically known as saru ("monkey"). Nihonzaru (Nihon "Japan" + saru) is used in modern times to distinguish from other primates.

The Japanese Macaque is diurnal, which means they spend their time during the day, and spends most of its time in forests. It lives in a variety of forest-types, including subtropical to sub-alpine, deciduous, broad leaf, and evergreen forests, as high as 1650m. It feeds on seeds, roots, buds, fruit, invertebrates, berries, leaves, eggs, fungi, bark, cereals and in rare cases even fish. It has a body length ranging from 79 to 95 cm, with a tail length of approximately 10 cm. Males weigh from 10 to 14 kg, females, around 5.5 kg.

The Japanese Macaque lives in troops of 20-100 individuals in size usually subdivided into matrilineal groups consisting of many females and several males. On average, females outnumber males by 3 to 1. The females have a rigid hierarchy with infants inheriting their mother's rank. The males tend to be transient within the troop but in Jigokudani park a line of alpha males, "chiefs", has been documented.

Females will copulate with an average of ten males during the mating season, though only about one third of the mountings will lead to ejaculation. Though pregnancies only occur during the mating season.

The Japanese Macaque is a very intelligent species. It is the only animal other than humans and raccoons that is known to wash its food before eating it. Researchers studying this species at Koshima island in Japan left sweet potatoes out on the beach for them to feed on, then witnessed one female, named Imo (Japanese for yam or potato), taking the food down to the sea to wash the sand off it. After a while, others started to copy her behavior. This trait was then passed on from generation to generation, until eventually, all except the very oldest members of the troop were washing their food and even seasoning their clean food in the sea. She was similarly the first observed balling up wheat with air pockets, throwing it into the water, and waiting for it to float back up before picking it up and eating it free from dirt. An entirely altered misaccount of this incident is the basis for the fictitious "hundredth monkey" meme.

The macaque has other unusual behaviors, including bathing together in hot springs and rolling snowballs for fun. Also in recent studies, it has been found that the Japanese Macaque can develop different accents, like humans. It was found that macaques in areas separated by only a couple hundred miles can have very different pitches in their calls, their form of communication. The Japanese Macaque has been involved in many studies concerning neuroscience and also is used in drug testing relations go on year-round.

After a gestation period of 173 days, females bear only one baby, which weighs about 500 g at birth. This macaque has an average lifespan of 30 years.

Although I'm not so sure about if it's the macaque or monkey of a different kind, but they are often the subject of Buddhist myths, such as the Monkey King for example, it's a story about the Monkey King and his adventures and travels with this monk, a pig and whatever the third creature is called, I'm not so sure, a sea creature perhaps? Anyway, in the story, the monkey had a cloud that can carry him around very fast, but the only way to get on the cloud was to jump and make a summersult. I always thought it was just a story describing the monkey's agility until I saw the actual act of a real monkey doing the same thing with one hand in a zoo!! So, I guess the author really did a great job on learning the monkey's behaviors.

Green Sea Turtle

Before anything happens, I challenge you to hold your breath from the second that you read this until I tell you to let go your breath and resume your breathing, I will tell you why by the end of this post.

There's a very cute Pixar animation from Disney called Finding Nemo playing in theaters some years ago saying how a father Clown Fish, Marlin, was looking for his son, Nemo, and on his journey Marlin met a Sea Turtle named Crush. Now Crush is a cool suave dude who told Marlin that sea turtles can live up to 100 years! But actually they live up to the age of 80.

So, today's topic is going to be the turtle, not the clown fish. (Sorry, Marlin, it's not your day, another time.)

Now Crush is a Green Sea Turtle, or the Chelonia Mydas, are one of the Earth's most ancient creatures. The seven species that can be found today have been around for 120 million years, that's longer than the dinosaurs. The sea turtle's shell, or "carapace" is streamlined for swimming through the water. Unlike other turtles, sea turtles cannot retract their legs and head into their shells. Their color varies between yellow, greenish and black depending on the species. One thing that I didn't know before I went to the aquarium is that the turtle's backbone is actually attached to the shell instead of inside the body like us humans! How cool is that?!

The sizes of sea turtles can be quite wide, since there are a few different of them, but to give you readers some idea, here are some fast fun facts: Kemp's Ridley is the smallest sea turtle at 30 inches long (.762m). The largest sea turtle is the leatherback - an adult can reach over six and a half feet long (over 1.8m). Adult female and male sea turtles are the same size.

Weight: Kemp's Ridley weighs between 80-100lbs (36-45 kg). Leatherback can weigh over 2,000 pounds (over 907 kg)

Now their diet can also vary, again with the different turtles and all, but their most common food sources include jellyfish, seaweed, crabs, shrimp, sponges, snails, algae and mollusks.

Sea turtles spend most of their lives in the water, where not much information can be gathered on their behavior. Most of what is known about sea turtle behavior is obtained by observing hatchlings and females that leave the water to lay eggs. Sea turtles, like salmon, will return to the same nesting grounds at which they were born. When females come to the shore they dig out a nest in the ground with their back flippers, bury their clutch of eggs and return to the ocean. After hatching, the young may take as long as a week to dig themselves out of the nest. They emerge at night, move toward the ocean and remain there, solitary, until it is time to mate.

Now the baby turtles' gender (sex) is decided by the temperature from the environment, so that means below 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30ºC) is predominately male; above 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30ºC) is predominately female. Their mating season is between March-October depending on the species.
Gestation: 6-10 weeks.
Clutch size: Between 70-190 eggs depending on the species.
When the young hatch out of their eggs, they make their way to the ocean. Very few of them survive to adulthood due to predators, pollution, global warming, oil spills and so on.


Ok, before your face turn blue due to lack of oxygen, you can breath now. But the Sea turtle is still holding its breath at this moment after you have already finished reading this post, since they can stay under water for as long as five hours even though the length of a feeding dive is usually five minutes or less. Their heart rate slows to conserve oxygen: nine minutes may elapse between heartbeats.

Great White Sharks

The photo is taken by the National Geographic webpage. I do not claim this photo as my property.

There were a series of a shark movie when I was growing up made by Steven Spielberg called "Jaws". In the movie, it depicts that there were a man killing shark attacking humans and it was destroyed in the end by a hero. And as usual, it is no doubt about what I'm trying to introduce you readers today is the shark.

There are many sharks in the world that swims in the ocean, from the Leopard Shark to the Tiger Shark to the enormous gentle giant the Whale Shark, we aren't going to talk about them yet, although eventually we will get to them one by one. Of course, the most famous of them all is the Great White Shark, all thanks to the movie as I mentioned before.

Like all sharks alike, the Great White has no real solid bones inside their body, it has a kind of soft bones called the "cartilage" which is also found in us humans, such as the in the nose, ears and between the joints. The only hard solid bones are located in its jaws, hence the movie title "Jaws". If and when a shark is being taken out of the water for too long, it can die from 1) the most obvious, lack of oxygen that it takes from the ocean and 2) it can crush itself to death by its own weight.

The Great White Shark, also known as the Carcharodon Carcharias, can be found in the warm water world wide and it can grow up to 25 ft. (or 8 m) long from nose to tail. It has rows after rows of teeth that grows out through out its life, replacing the old and damaged ones with the new and fresh ones right behind it. Each tooth can be more than 2 in. long. Wouldn't it be nice if us humans have that as well? Except for the length.

When hunting a prey, the Great White tends to "throw" its jaws out by an inch from its mouth and pull the prey back in. It's a very efficient way of hunting if you ask me. To prevent struggling prey hurting the eyes, the Great White has white eyelids that automatically covers the sensitive eye balls when hunting. It's diet includes seals, dolphins, other fish and left over whale carcass, they even eat garbage from us humans that we throw over from boats and ships.

The Great White is the world's largest and most dangerous predator shark alive. Due to its violent nature, it has been a prize target for sea anglers and by souvenir hunters for its teeth and jaws. As a result, fully grown Great Whites aren't as common as they once were.

Reply to Marvin.

Dear Marvin:

So I've gotten your attention on a frog's legs shooting out from another's frog's mouth, huh? I was shocked and curious as you are when I first heard it and no, unfortunately, the the frog who gotten its head inside another's throat didn't make it out alive. But it is an interesting fact that animals cannibalize as much as us humans do.

Thanks for your question and hopefully to see your comment again soon.

Tammy

American Bullfrog

American bullfrog, aka Rana catesbiana, comes from Eastern and Central North America, they were introduced into parts of Europe. They can grow up to 8 in. (20 cm), excluding their legs. So that means they are one of the largest frogs in North America. Just to give you an idea how big they are, they can grow up to the size roughly the size of a basketball, if the environment allows them to grow.

To satisfy their massive size, they, of course, eat practically anything to everything that they can fit into their mouths, which includes, small birds, small snakes, ducklings, fish, turtles, rats and even bats! Hunting bats means those bullfrogs are nocturnal and that's also when they start calling out loudly. The males have this pouch under their chin that blows up like a balloon to amplify the sound.

Just want to shock you readers a bit, sometimes those bullfrogs do eat their own as well, I've heard a true fact when I was in the aquarium that there were two frogs trying to eat each other and it ended as one swallowed the other one head first with the other one's legs sticking out the mouth.

A Thank you post.

Dear Anonymous and others:

Thank you so much for visiting my animal blog, it encourages me to write on about animal conservation and their behavior. Your comments, sharing and most of all, your questions are most appreciated.

Thanks a lot and come again,
Tammy

PS. This picture is at Universal Studios in San Diego, California with Frankinstine and his bride.

Stone Fish

Stone fish: or the Synanceia verrucosa, also came from the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Their size can grow up to 12 in., or 30 cm long.

Wow! I just read on the animal encyclopedia saying that those stone fish are a relative of the lion fish! So, that means they are poisonous as well! But unlike the lion fish, their "poison darts" are not their fins, but their sharp spines. If stepped on those sharp spines, the poison can inject enough dosage to kill a person. That means, they are one of the most dangerous fishes in the planet.

Its diet contains small shrimps/krills and fishes.

Another difference between a stone fish and a lion fish is their appearances, stone fish is very well camouflaged with its surroundings such as rocks and sand, while the lion fish is majestic in the fish kingdom.

PS. I challenge you to find the stone fish in the picture and tell me where you see the fish. Enjoy and have fun!

Sea Otter

Whenever I passed by the sea otter exhibition in the aquarium while volunteering, the sea otters always manage to get my attention by posing extraordinary cute postures, like rubbing its cheeks and such. But then I realized that the face rubbing is actually the otter's fur cleaning routine and it just happened to clean the fur on his face. How disappointing was that for me when I found out!

Speaking of fur, sea otters, or the Enhydra lutra, have no blubber, or fat, in their body to keep warm, so they got extremely dense fur to keep them from suffering hypothermia. Just an example how dense their fur is, their fur has already more hair fibers for us humans from head to toe just by the simple size of our thumb. So, keeping their fur clean and clear is very important for their survival. Unfortunately there is a recent oil spill in Gulf of Mexico, USA that is damaging the environment which cause lots of marine animals, including sea otters, and birds their lives due to the spill. Because the oil ruins the fur/feathers of animals that can be deadly for them. Birds can't fly away when necessary, marine mammals with fur can't keep warm and so on. Unless, there are people who are kind enough and lucky enough to see them and rescuing them and washing the oil out, then those animals can have a chance for survival.

Now, the fur isn't the only thing that's amazes me, it's also their HUGE appetite, one sea otter can eat up to 25% of their body weight, that's equivalent of humans eating 100 quarter pound hamburgers per day in order to survive. Sea otters mainly eat fish and crabs, but they are also an expert on eating clams by smashing small stones to crack open the shells to eat the delicacy inside. They put those small stones inside their pouches in their armpits when not using. Sort of like our small belt pouch.

Sea otters are the only otters that live their entire lives at sea, but they stay close to the coast, usually with and in giant kelp, which is the fastest growing seaweed in the world.

A female sea otter usually have one pup per litter and she floats on her back to let her pup feed.

When a pup is fully grown, it can reach up to 5 ft. (1.5m) long, including the tail and it can be found in Northeastern Pacific Ocean, inshore from Aleutian Islands to California.