Archive for the ‘Endangered Species’ Category

The largest insect in world in terms of weight

Could you imagine an insect that wieghs 2.5 ounces? That is heavier than a sparrow and is 3 times heavier than a mouse. That is amazing. This amazing insect, the giant Weta was found in New Zealand by a former park ranger. The giant weta is bigger than any other known type of insect.

The search for the giant weta.

Mark Moffett,  53 years of age and a once upon a time park ranger, went on a quest to find this insect. The insect resembles a cricket. Its wings can stretch out seven inches from its body. The weta is an interesting insect and it has only been found on the Little Barrier Island in New Zealand. There are more types of the weta. They are smaller and can be found thought out New Zealand.

The finding of a Giant Weta

Mark tells how he and two other people had spent 2 nights tramping the trails of the remote Little Barrier Island looking for a giant weta. They spent much time looking in the area growth but seemed to be having no luck. Then they spotted one up in a tree. It was a female. He coaxed the giant weta down with a carrot. The female giant weta really enjoyed the carrot and was eating away at it while sitting in his hand. They hurried up and took some pictures before she ate so much carrot she may become sick. Then they placed her back up in the tree. The giant weta is a extremely endangered species. They did not want to do anything to cause any harm to come to the female. The giant weta discoverd by Mark and his friends is the largest one ever recorded.  Some would think she would be a very scary insect, but she reminds me of a giant grasshopper which I find very interesting

Giant Powelliphanta Hochstetteri

The giant Powelliphanta hochstetteri is a member of the amber snails. They are a subspecies of the giant, meat eating ground snail which is a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk of the snail family Rhytididae. The snail is found in New Zealand. They are listed by the New Zealand Department of Conservation as a threatened species. The main reason for their declination has been found registered on their shells, and it’s caused by humans. As humans cut down the woodland areas, the snails grass-covered areas are being destroyed. The result is the snail is more subjected to their eggs being eaten by prey. The prediators would have to be reduced to allow the snail to start populating the New Zealand area again.

The Shell

The shell of the Powelliphanta is very shiny and full of color. It is the perfect shell to add to a collection of shells. The patterns on the shell are a bit different between the species. They tend to consist of very exquisitely marked designs with many varieties of spirals. Their shells come in many colorful shades of red, brown, yellow and black. The snail is also suffering from decline due to the people wanting a shell for their collections. Collecting the shells became illegal in 1982.

Albino Powelliphanta Snail

While a group of people from the Waimea Tramping Club were in Kahurangi National Park located in Flora Stream, they noted several of the Powelliphanta snails during their morning tramp. When it rains a bit, the snails come out. It was during this walk in Flora Stream that the group found a rare albino giant Powelliphanta hochtetteri snail. The group was thrilled as this was such a rare find. It had a typical shell with the golden brown colored bands but it’s body was a pure white color. It seemed to glow it was so white. The typical color for the snail is a deep black. It was called a, “fascinating find.”

The harvest mouse living in Britain, is a very small rodent. It is so tiny that it can climb two stalks and use them as stilts to survey the area for any thing dangerous such as the farmers cat. The rodent is evasive but also an endangered species. This tiny guy as he stands holding onto the two stalks with only his back feet entwined around them like little fingers scratches his nose. He also wraps his tail around one of the stalks for balance. The Harvest mouse is very good at sensing danger. They can sense a dangerous animal coming their way through the vibrations of the vegetation.

The tail when wrapped around a stalk is used like a brake or an anchor to the stalk. It enables the mouse to balance and be able to eat, or as this one did, scratch its nose. They read the vibrations of danger approaching through the bottoms of their feet. The vibrations travel through the ground as a bigger animal is approaching and right up the stalk of the plant where the mouse is eating.

The mice like to eat cereal and different types of grass.

Since the harvest mouse has been placed on the endangered species list, there are measures being taken to try to insure that the mouse doesn’t simply disappear off the earth as so many other species have.

The tennis balls used at Wimbledon are often used to set up safe nesting places for them where they can hopefully avoid predators. Because of the small size of the mouse, it tends to have a lot of predators.

The mice are also known to freeze and die during the winter months. They tend to place their nest in hedges that are close to ground level. This does not provide them with much protection from the weather or predators. They don’t hibernate, but do sleep for long time frames during the cold winter months. When the weather is a bit more mild, they wake up and eat some of the food supply they put away for the winter. They even sometimes take little adventures out side their nest looking for some more food.

A baby white rhino was heard bleating loudly as it had gotten it’s head trapped in the v section of a thorn tree. The baby’s mother had been shot twice, once in the heart and once in the head. All for the horn that sticks out of her head. They had hit the baby on the head with a machete, did they assume it would die of it’s wounds, or did they leave it to just starve to death. The baby was found in stuck in a tree that was close to it’s dead mother.

They lived on a game farm close to Pretoria. You would think a place like that would be safe, but they have said at this time, they have already lost 287 animals to the poachers. In 2007 there were 13 lost. The demand for the horn by Asians must have really grown. We have a poaching crisis happening in South Africa.

The baby’s head was swollen after being trapped there and trying to get out for so long. It had rubbed up an down on the trunk of the tree till it’s neck was raw. With it’s paws, it had dug ruts into the ground. The baby was seriously hurting both emotionally and physically. It took the vet an hour and a half to work the little rhino’s head out of the crook in the tree. At only 3 weeks of age, the baby has lost it’s mom.

The game farm owner is mad and frustrated over losses such as this. The poachers have got to be stopped. He would like to see them shot and killed as they do the rhinos. It they are caught, they are set free.

The chaos will not end until more stringent measures are taken. The word needs to get out about this massacre of the rhinos. It needs to stop.

In the area of Cambodia and Laos, the Irrawaddy dolphin is shrinking in numbers. The dolphin is considered to be sacred by many living in there and at this time, there are found to be only 85 living in Southeast Asia’s, Mekong River. There is much concern that the dolphin will completely die out.

The number of dolphins isn’t many for a species and the offspring are suffering from a low survival rate. It the calves don’t start surviving, it could mean the species could become extinct. Very few of the newborns each year become adults. If younger ones don’t start surviving as the older ones are dieing, this is a sure sign of them going extinct.

The dolphins were counted by Li Lifeng, the director of WWF’s Freshwater Program and his team by a technique called,”photographic mark-recapture.” The is done by identifying the dolphins by special unique marks on their dorsal fins. This way of counting species has also been used on other animal groups.

There are also Irrawaddy dolphins living in the Irrawaddy River located in Myanmar, and the Mahakam River in Indonesia. These dolphins were not included in the count but all three groups are a concern for possible extinction.

Along with the loss of a sacred animal in the area, tourist come to the area to see both the dolphins and the whales. This would cause a decline in the tourism market.

There needs to be a combined effort of all, the fisheries, the communities and the Dolphin Commission to save this sacred animal from extinction. The WWF is committed to helping them out to make sure this species survives.

This cave spider is very interesting as well as smart when it is needed. When he gets hungry and is hunting for food, he is doing that flawlessly.

This cave spider inhabits the west coast of North America. This species is the red list of IUCN threatened species. The legs are biggest parts of this spider. Most spiders catch their prey with their jaws. Now see how tricky this guy is. When the cave spider catches its prey first he disguise, so that the victim does not notice his presence. The most common hiding is to buried himself in the ground. He will first take a good look at the situation and then move to the suppression and attack.

Spiders have eight legs, thats four pairs. There are various kinds of spiders that live in all parts of the world and the sting of some species can be very dangerous or even deadly. Spiders are carnivorous. They feed on insects. Killing them with poison injected through the chelicerae. They live at same place as insects. Spider in his body contains a gland that secretes a sticky substance that hardens in air. With so incurred thread spider weaves a network that serves him in hunting. So the insects that get catch in the spider webs he will kill and then he eat. The spider is also, one might say, a great environmentalist, for using spider web he will capture, feed, but also clean the environment from harmful insects, and that way many illnesses that are very dangerous for people. The largest spider is a tarantula and most poisonous is black widow.

We should not be really happy to meet this type of spider, because we could get unpleasant surprise.

There is a lot of stories and things being published about apes lately with the soon arrival of the new movie, “The Planet of the Apes.”

Maybe this ape was wanting to apply for a position on the video.

A black Macaque, a very extremely endangered type of ape, stole camera man, David Slater’s camera when he was on a 3 day filming trip.

David was concerned about his equipment. The ape accidentally hit the button to take a picture. After realizing where the noise had come from, he continued to hit the button taking 100′s of pictures of himself.

The apes are mischievous and curious creatures. The result was a lot of comical and good pictures of the ape.

Apparently, David did get his camera back and I suppose it was still in one piece. We now get to enjoy a few of the pictures.

This is such an unusual turtle. It has a nose like a pig. The pig nosed turtle is found in New Guinea and the northern parts of Australia.

The numbers of the Pig nosed turtle have dropped drastically over the last 30 years. It has been estimated that the population has declined over 50% just since 1981.

The eggs of the turtle are collected and sold at the market along with the meat of adult turtles that are captured while laying their eggs on the beaches.

This turtle has become an worldwide preservation image. There is no other known reptile closely related to it. The turtle is able to live in the freshwater of ponds and rivers but it has to surface to breathe air.

One amazing feature about this turtle is that it’s ability to be a male or female turtle depends on the temperature of the ground that the mothers lays the eggs in.

The pig nosed turtle is also the last of it’s family of turtles, the Carettochelyidae.

If something isn’t done to stop this over harvesting of this unique turtle and it’s eggs, we will be seeing another member of the animal family as extinct.

The population of the Stalker Shoebill stork is declining. It likes to live in marshes that are flooded and full of thick vegetation. They live in the freshwater areas and also like spots where vegetation is floating around.

Some of the reasons for it’s declining is the areas it lives in being destroyed. They are also hunted and captured to be sold.

The stork is a very uncommon species and is very endangered due to the small population. Back in 1988 it was considered a threatened species, now in 20 is being assessed as vulnerable.

The Shoebill stork sorta looks like something you would only see on films, not in real life.

The bird has been around since the ancient Egyptians and Arabs. There are drawings of the Shoebill stork by the ancient Egyptians. The Arabs called the stork, abu markub, meaning one with a shoe. They were referring to the storks shoe like bill.

The bird is a very big bird in the stork family. It’s name comes form it’s shoe like bill.

The bird is about 4 feet tall and weighs about 12 pounds. The wingspan of a Shoebill is about 7.7 feet.

A full grown bird is mostly gray but when they are younger they are browner in color. The stork lives in the tropic area of eastern Africa in the large swamp lands that run from Sudan to Zambia.

After a freight ship hit ground and broke apart on a distant British South Atlantic territory, there have been thousands of the endangered penguins covered with oil.

The oil is also a threat to the fishermen out to catch lobster that they catch and sell for a living in the distant territory.

The ship was going from Brazil to Singapore. On board it carried 1,500 metric tons or 1,650 tons of fossil oil. It was also carrying a cargo of 66,000 tons of soy beans.

There were no deaths as a result of the grounding of the ship. All 22 crew members were rescued before the boat ended up in two pieces.

As of now, the Nightingale Island has oil circling around it. The incident is becoming a disaster.

It is possible that over 20,000 penguins could be affected by the oil. Of the 500 checked so far, over 250 of them were covered in oil.

Nightingale Island is located in the Tristan da Cunha chain. It is located in the middle area between Africa and South America. There are possibly 200,000 penguins living in Tristan da Cunha. That number includes close to 1/2 of the globes number of northern rockhopper penguins which is an endangered species.

The breeding grounds of the penguin may very well be affected by the oil spill.

Along with the spill is the danger of rats that may have been on the ship making it to the islands and eating the eggs and small chicks of the penguins and other birds natural to the area.