Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts

2012-08-16

How Wet Mammals Shake to Dry

Wet Mammals Prove Masters of Shake 'n' Dry Technique | LiveScience


Dogs shake about four to six times per second and can get rid of 70 percent of the water in their fur in just a fraction of the second.
CREDIT: © Dickerson and Hu, Georgia Tech




Furry mammals can shake themselves 70 percent dry in just a fraction of a second, according to new research. The study, which looked at the shaking speeds of 16 species of mammals, from mice to lions to bears, found that the smaller the animal, the faster it must shake to dry its fur.
"We think this has been evolving over millions of years of time to become so good," said study researcher David Hu, who studies biolocomotion at Georgia Tech. "Imagine if you could come out of the shower and, instead of using a towel, you could just press a button and in one-thirtieth of a second you're 70 percent dry."


Wet-Dog Shake

Why do mammals shake when wet? The simple answer, as you may guess, is to dry. Perhaps a better question is why an animal wants to be dry. According to our calculations, a wet animal could spend 20% or more of it’s daily food energy to evaporate water in its fur, if it cannot shake.



 In our study we found the largest mammals such as bears, tigers, and large dogs shake about 4 times per second while small mice shake at more than 30 times per second!


Shaking mammals generate high centrifugal accelerations when spinning. A drop residing in a mammals fur will experience an acceleration many times gravity when ejected. We found that mammals can generate accelerations 10-70 times gravity in their fur when shaking.

Source: Wet-Dog Shake


Scientists do the wet-dog shake : Nature News & Comment


Understanding how animals shake themselves dry could help scientists to develop ways to rapidly shed water from man-made equipment. Hu hopes that devices can be engineered to incorporate elasticity similar to the all-important loose skin, and suggests that even the humble washing machine could learn a trick or two from the animal world about shedding water.
Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11177


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2012-03-02

Apps For Apes

FaceTime for Apes: Orangutans Use iPads to Video Chat With Friends In Other Zoos | Popular Science

Orangutans living in captivity will soon start using iPads for primate play-dates, using Skype or FaceTime to interact with their brethren in other zoos, according to zookeepers. The great apes have been playing with iPads for about six months at the Milwaukee County Zoo, and they’ve been such a hit that other zoos plan to introduce them, too.

Apps For Apes | redapes.org

APPLES FOR ORANGS
An Orangutan Enrichment Program using iPads

The Apple iPad is a perfect device for orangutans, as their innate ability to work with touchscreen technology has already been demonstrated in facilities such as Zoo Atlanta and the Smithsonian National Zoo. With proper guidance, orangutans will be able to use their devices just like humans do-- to spend their time doing things that they enjoy. They will have access to music, games, movies, cartoons, art, painting, drawing, photos and videos. Among other things, they will be able to see photos and videos of other orangutans.




Apps for Apes (A4A) | redapes.org

Long-time Orangutan Outreach friend and supporter Scott Engel is doing his part to make the Planet of the Apes a reality...

Here Scott and Trish Khan are working with MJ and little Mahal on their iPad.




Apps for Apes seeks iPads for Toronto Zoo - Toronto - CBC News

“What we’re hoping with the Toronto Zoo is that we’ll be able to get them some iPads so they can have some enrichment sessions, and paint and play games and have fun,” he said.

He said the iPads can be put into a special casing so they can’t be damaged over-enthusiastic orangutans. In Milwaukee, the orangutans operate the devices through a fence to prevent damage.

Zimmerman said the next step is for someone to step forward and donate iPads for use at the Toronto Zoo. He’s hoping corporate donors, Apple in particular, might step up.

"We're hoping to really show them that their tool can be something that helps save the orangutans in the wild while entertaining and providing enrichment for orangutans in zoos."


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2012-02-10

How the Zebra got its Stripes

Zebra Stripes Evolved to Repel Bloodsuckers?


Conventional wisdom says a zebra's black-and-white stripes camouflage the animal in tall grass—the better to evade the colorblind lion. But a new study says the pattern scrambles the vision of a tinier biter: the bloodsucking horsefly.

Effect of zebra stripes on horseflies

In a relative sense, zebra stripes repel horseflies. That’s the latest discovery reported by Gábor Horváth [pictured here], who discovered that white horses attract fewer flies, and that Vikings knew a thing or two about how to use light for ship navigation. For details, see the study: 

“Polarotactic tabanids find striped patterns with brightness and/or polarization modulation least attractive: an advantage of zebra stripes,” Ádám Egri, Miklós Blahó, György Kriska, Róbert Farkas, Mónika Gyurkovszky, Susanne Åkesson and Gábor Horváth, Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 215, March 2012, pp. 736-745.
“The characteristic striped appearance of zebras has provoked much speculation about its function and why the pattern has evolved, but experimental evidence is scarce. Here, we demonstrate that a zebra-striped horse model attracts far fewer horseflies (tabanids) than either homogeneous black, brown, grey or white equivalents.”

BBC Nature - Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay

Coloured images revealed how light was polarised as it bounced off a zebra's coat
"We created an experimental set-up where we painted the different patterns onto boards," Dr Akesson told BBC Nature. She and her colleagues placed a blackboard, a whiteboard, and several boards with stripes of varying widths into one of the fields of a horse farm in rural Hungary."We put insect glue on the boards and counted the number of flies that each one attracted," she explained.The striped board that was the closest match to the actual pattern of a zebra's coat attracted by far the fewest flies, "even less than the white boards that were reflecting unpolarised light," Dr Akesson said."That was a surprise because, in a striped pattern, you still have these dark areas that are reflecting horizontally polarised light."But the narrower (and more zebra-like) the stripes, the less attractive they were to the flies." To test horseflies' reaction to a more realistic 3-D target, the team put four life-size "sticky horse models " into the field - one brown, one black, one white and one black-and-white striped, like a zebra. The researchers collected the trapped flies every two days, and found that the zebra-striped horse model attracted the fewest.


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2011-12-30

Siku, The Danish Polar Bear Cub. The New Knut?




The New Knut? Internet Enamored by Siku, the Danish Polar Bear | NewsFeed | TIME.com

Meet Siku, the month-old polar bear from Denmark who has inspired “awww”s worldwide with his videotaped antics. Siku’s mother can’t produce any milk, so the little bear (whose name means “ice” in Greenlandic) is being bottle-fed. In addition to his prodigious ability to guzzle milk, Siku loves to lounge around, get back rubs and snooze while sticking his tongue out.

Following in the paw-steps of the Berlin Zoo’s Knut, Siku has swiftly become an online celebrity, boasting a Facebook page with 20,000 followers where fans can watch his latest videos.

Siku will be even more spoiled than Knut, however, enjoying the “world’s largest polar bear facility” at the Scandinavian Wildlife Park, according to one of his carers, Frank Vigh-Larsen.





Skandinavisk Dyrepark



Polar bear cub in Scandinavian Wildlife Park

Scandinavian Wildlife Park is already renowned for the very high stands of the animal facilities, not least the polar bear facility covering 26.000 square meters. The information and education standards are also very high, and Scandinavian Wildlife Park is now developing a new information program about the climate changes, the sea ice in the Arctic Sea and the polar bears. This program will evolve around SIKU, who will become Ambassador for his wild cousins living in the Arctic.

The polar bears in Scandinavian Wildlife Park are part of a Global breeding program for captive polar bears. The aim of the program is to sustain a population of healthy polar bears in captivity, NOT to breed polar bears to be released in the wild. This program is short on breeding animals, and it is therefore important that SIKU enters the breeding program as soon as possible.

Because Scandinavian Wildlife Park has some of the best and largest polar bear facilities in the world, we are convinced that it will be possible for SIKU to become a normal functioning polar bear within a few years, so he can live together with the other polar bears in Scandinavian Wildlife Park.

The 'New Knut': Danish Polar Bear Cub Siku Conquers the Internet - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

'A Different Bear'

Though a number of fans have made comparisons to Berlin's famous polar bear Knut, who died in March, Vigh-Larsen told the "Today" show that Siku will have a different life.


"Siku will be a completely different bear than Knut," he said. "He will grow up in a different environment. We have the world's largest polar bear facility here, covering two-and-a-half hectares, and when he's about two years old he will move in with the other four polar bears (at the park) and have a very normal polar bear life -- as normal as it can be in captivity."
While Berlin continues to struggle with how to memorialize its star bear Knut after he died suddenly this spring at the age of four, drowning after a seizure caused by encephalitis, Siku may carry on his legacy of promoting climate change awareness. His symbolic name is meant to call attention to the swiftly disappearing habitat of polar bears. With climate change rapidly melting the Arctic sea ice the species relies on for hunting, they could be extinct in the wild within 40 years, the zoo warns.

Vigh-Larsen asked "Today" viewers to make an effort to reduce their carbon footprints and save energy on Siku's behalf. "And if you all do that, he would be very, very happy," he said.

The Toledo Zoo - Polar Bear Cub

Every Cub Counts

The cub is a huge step for polar bear conservation worldwide. As we lose more of their Arctic habitat to climate change, the future of polar bears in the wild grows less certain with each passing year. That’s why polar bears are now protected under the Endangered Species Act, and that’s why cubs like this one have such an important role to play. We hope that folks who stop by to see this little bear will take a moment to consider the plight of our bears’ wild counterparts and think about steps they can take to preserve this species for generations to come.

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2008-06-23

Robots inspired by animals

Robots inspired by animals, ranging from a robotic salamander and cockroaches to swarms of tiny robots that can be manipulated with electromagnetic forces to create various forms.
clipped from www.youtube.com
Robots inspired by animals
Robotics researchers are increasingly turning to nature for inspiration. Watch a robotic salamander, a water strider robot, mechanical cockroaches and some cool self-configuring robots.

Want to play your favorite video game? Instead of watching characters move around on a computer monitor, why not let them run around your house?

This is the vision of the future for Seth Goldstein, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University. For the past four years, Goldstein and a team of researchers from CMU, Intel Corp., and the U.S. Air Force Research Lab have been working to create swarms of tiny robots that can be manipulated with electromagnetic forces to create various forms. He explained that the miniscule robots, which one day should be about the size of a grain of sand, basically are shape shifters -clinging together to form various 3D creations.

clipped from www.youtube.com
Shape-shifting robot forms from magnetic swarm

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Related:
New Scientist Technology Blog: Taking inspiration from Nature
Shape-shifting robot swarms will create 3D replicas
G4 - The Feed - Exclusive: Interview with Claytronics Project Lead
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2008-04-01

Honey Badger-The Most Fearless Animal on Earth (video)


clipped from en.wikipedia.org
Honey Badger

Found in the Kalahari desert, honey badgers are fierce carnivores with an extremely keen sense of smell. They are well known for their snake killing abilities, by which they will grab a snake behind the head in its jaws and kill it. Honey badgers can devour an entire snake (150 cm/5ft or less) in 15 minutes.

The honey badger is among the fiercest hunters of the desert, with prey including earthworms, termites, scorpions, porcupines, hares, and even larger prey such as tortoises, crocodiles up to one metre in size, and snakes (including pythons and venomous species).[2] Its ferocious reputation extends to attacks on animals much larger than itself.

clipped from www.badgers.org.uk

Honey badger home page

clipped from www.youtube.com
MUST WATCH: Honey Badger-The Most Fearless Animal on Earth

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2008-01-30

Animals & Pets Videos

Funny videos of Cockatoos, Parrots, Pythons, Cats, Chimps, Turtles, and more


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2007-11-26

Giant Sea Scorpion (video)

Bigger than a man!

Scientists have found the fossilised claw of a 2.5 metre long sea scorpion, a nighmarish creature living before the age of dinosaurs. German scientist Markus Poschmann, who found the claw in a quarry around 15 years ago, says scientists didn't previously know that these prehistoric animals were so big.

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