Lions

Africa has always been a very exciting place with all the world’s most exotic animals at the wild land Safari. One of the most documented animals by the National Geographic are the Lions as most of them live in South Africa. Lions are often the creature revered by humans as the most powerful creatures on the planet as we can see we have a very famous Hollywood show the Lion King, which portrays the Lions as the ruling animal over all the other animals.

The lions main source of food are usually large mammals which are zebras buffalos etc. It is easy to understand why as they themselves are a large mammal and they would need a large amounts of food. The way lions prey for food in groups and I guess it is the main reason why the lions do hunt in groups as their prey are all of bigger size.

Buffalos

The african buffalos have a very wide population in the African Safari and their success are very much due to their social behaviour. They usually congregate in herds as we often see on National Geographic and they graze the lands in herds. Buffaloes are very strong and each of them weighs 500-600kg and you can see them not just in Africa but also on ESPN where they have this Rodeo sports where riders ride them for a long period of time and it can be seen how ferocious this creature is. From the academic journal, the authors states that the buffalo uses its horns as a weapon which is often feared by its predator due to its thickness sturdiness.

Buffalos vs Lions

These 2 combination form a very interesting battle as both species work in groups. Lions hunt in groups to overcome the very strong buffaloes

I came across this video on YouTube which shows clearly the battle between Lions and Buffaloes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM&feature=PlayList&p=C6E37C0C0B6998F6&index=0

Battle at Kruger is its title and it really shows the battle between the 2 animals. While the lions became successful in singleing out a Buffalo, it was the Buffaloes who eventually emerge as winners as the rest of the herd came chasing at the group of attacking lions. The lions eventually gave up as the risk of predation becomes very high when the herd closes in as shown in the article.

According to the journal, while in many cases the lions are successful in hunting Buffaloes, there are cases where by buffaloes puncture or trample the lions to death while defending their peers. Hence the group behaviour of both animals worked similiarly against each other as congregation forms a stronger entity and it is interesting to see how these group behaviour work against each other in different situations.

Citation

1. Dangerous Lions and Nonchalant Buffalo, H. H. T. Prins and G. R. Iason, Behaviour, Vol. 108, No. 3/4 (Mar., 1989), pp. 262-296

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM&feature=PlayList&p=C6E37C0C0B6998F6&index=0

3. http://www.safaribwana.com/ANIMALS/animpages/buffalo.htm

The trailer of \’The Story of the Weeping Camel\’

I came across this award-winning documentary which was taken in Mongolia which follows through the process of uniting a mother camel and a baby camel (rare white colt) named Botok which she has rejected after its painful and difficult birth. Later which, 2 boys from the tribe went to fetch a musician who aided in the tribal process of reuniting the pair by playing music.

The documentary depicts the whole tribal process of reuniting the pair by playing some ancient music with tribal musical tools. Upon hearing the soothing music, the mother camel started to tear badly and the next thing you know, big droplets of tears were flying out of her eyes. Finally, the pair reunited and the baby camel had milk to drink and survive.

What fascinates me the most of this documentary is the strong rejection that Botok had to withstand from his mother when it was all defenseless and innocent. The way how the mother camel kicked him away when he tried to get some milk from her. Not only the physical rejection that intrigued me, it was that the exasperated emotions displayed on Botok’s face and the weeping of the calf were not induced by the pain it felt from not having milk from his mother, it was the motherly bond and love it was yearning for.

All these emotions are so human-like as human beings do come across such situations too. The way how the camels portray and display their emotions were so similar to the human beings that we could find ourselves relating to them.

Most scientists agree that humans are the only ‘animals’ who produce emotional tears. Emotional tears which are generated tears evoked by feelings and emotions of oneself. Even myself do believe this theory until I watched this documentary on weeping camels.

So what I can deduce from this documentary, the sad, soothing music was able to evoke some emotions within the mother camel. After some research on this topic, I found an article about ‘weeping camels’ where a researcher who does research on neonatal care of camels. He described what may cause the mother camel to reject its calf might be the ‘manipulation of the herd by humans’ which means the intense human interaction during the birth of Botok might lead to the rejection of the calf.

Also, the researcher also mentions that the presence of ‘long eyelashes, well-developed third eyelid and active lacrimal glands in a camel help the animal to survive sandstorms’. He added that ‘although these secretions are tears and they fulfil a specific physiological function’, he does not believe that it should be called weeping. Lastly, he also added that ‘it is nice to humanize animal behaviour because it does encourage a sense a responsibility on how humans treat animals but again he does not believe that this is sentimental weeping.’

After looking at the scientific way of justifying the weeping of the camels and watching the documentary which depicts the real actions of a camel weeping after hearing the music had left me baffled.

So could it be coincidental that the mother camel was just weeping because a sandstorm happened during that point of time or was it that it is really overwhelmed by its emotion?

References:

‘The story of the weeping camel’: http://www.eyeweekly.com/archived/archived/article/26716, accessed on 13 April 2009.

‘Do animals cry?’: http://www.wisegeek.com/do-animals-cry.html, accessed on 13 April 2009.

You might think this is the olfactory organ of the star-nosed mole but in actual fact…

The star-nosed mole has a circle of 22 mobile, fleshy and pink tentacles attached at the end of its snout which it uses to detect food such as worms, crustaceans and insects by touch. It is its most distinctive feature- and acts as EYES!!

The star is devoted to the sense of touch, and for this purpose the appendages are covered with thousands of small mechanoreceptive Eimer’s organs. Recent behavioral studies find that the star acts much like a tactile eye, having a small behavioral focus, or “fovea” at the center – used for detailed explorations of objects of interest.

The peripheral and central nervous systems of the mole reflect these behavioral specializations, such that the small behavioral focus on the nose is more densely innervated in the periphery, and has a greatly enlarged representation in the somatosensory cortex. This somatosensory representation of the tactile fovea is not correlated with anatomical parameters (innervation density) as found in other species, but rather is highly correlated with patterns of behavior.

The many surprising parallels between the somatosensory system of the mole, and the visual systems of other mammals, suggest a convergent and perhaps common organization for highly developed sensory systems.

In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAFSJewrm8E , the amazing speed in which the star-nosed mole locates and consumes its prey is showcased. The mole is able to catch and devour its prey in a fifth of a second using its nose and tentacles to dig and then push the prey into its mouth! Its paws are used as spades to push aside the soil and then its nose goes to work! The prey is located with its astonishingly sensitive nose which is so densely packed with minute touch receptors (known as Eimer’s organs).

The nose is approximately one centimeter in diameter with approximately 25,000 Eimer’s organs distributed on 22 appendages. Eimer’s organs were first described in the European mole in 1871 by German zoologist Theodor Eimer. Other mole species also possess Eimer’s organs, though they are not as specialized or numerous as in the star-nosed mole.

Because the star-nosed mole is functionally blind, it had long been suspected that the snout was used to detect electrical activity in prey animals, though there is little, if any, empirical support for this contention.

It appears the nasal star and dentition of this species are primarily adapted to exploit extremely small prey items. A report in the journal ‘Nature’ gives this animal the title of fastest-eating mammal, taking as short as 120 milliseconds (average: 227 milliseconds) to identify and consume individual food items. Its brain decides in the ultra short time of 8 milliseconds if a prey is comestible or not. This speed is at the limit of the speed of neurons.

They also possess the ability to smell underwater as seen from this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zZcrHyqKFA&NR=1 . This is done by exhaling air bubbles onto objects or scent trails and then inhaling the bubbles to carry the smell back through the nose.

The star of tentacles is formed in a unique way so far not seen in other places in the animal world. Instead of growing in the same way fingers grow outward on a hand, they start as swellings on the face around the nose, and some days after birth they break free and move forward in the same way a banana is peeled.

Further research and observations are needed to determine if the snout of the star-nosed mole is able to detect electrical activity which would explain the speed at which the mole is able to detect and consume its prey :)

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K.C Catania & J.H Kass (1996) ‘The Unusual Nose and Brain of the Star-Nosed Mole’  BioScience Vol.46 No. 8 Sep 1996. Published by American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Edwin Gould, William McShea and Theodore Grand (1993) ‘Function of the Star in the Star-Nosed Mole, Condylura cristata’  Journal of Mammalogy Vol. 74 No. 1 Feb 1993. Published by American Society of Mammalogists.

K.C Catania (1999) ‘A nose that looks like a hand and acts like an eye: the unusual mechanosensory system of the star-nosed mole’  Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural and Behavioural Physiology, Vol 185 No.4 Oct 1999. Published by Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.

Videos accessed from http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=star+nosed+moles&aq=f 

Pictures accessed from Google Pictures.

Chimps need hugs and kisses too!!

Researchers studying people’s closest genetic relatives found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a third chimp stepped in to offer consolation. HOLD AND BEHOLD, the chimps do not differ from us when it comes to providing emotional and moral support. According to Dr. Orlaith N. Fraser of the Research Center in Evolutionary Anthropology and Paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University in England, “Consolation usually took the form of a kiss or embrace,”This is a very interesting finding as it has been noted through intense observations that, this behavior is rarely seen other than after a conflict. “If a kiss was used, the consoler would press his or her open mouth against the recipient’s body, usually on the top of the head or their back. An embrace consisted of the consoler wrapping one or both arms around the recipient.”

This study removes doubt that consolation really does what the term suggests: provide relief to distressed parties after conflict. The evidence is compelling and makes it likely that consolation behavior is an expression of empathy,” de Waal said. De Waal suggested that this evidence of empathy in apes is “perhaps equivalent to what in human children is called ’sympathetic concern.’” The INTERESTING BIT is that the  behavior in children which  includes touching and hugging of distressed family members and “is in fact identical to that of apes, and so the comparison is not far-fetched,” he said. Another interesting finding is that while chimps show this empathy, monkeys do not.  The reason? LOOK BELOW!!

It comes as no surprise that chimps exhibit behaviors common among humans. With such genetic similarity, it stands to reason they at least have the potential for such behaviors.  HOWEVER,The only question is – with so much close-proximity interaction between humans and apes across the centuries, do the apes originate this behavior all on their own or has it been assimilated by observing such behavior among humans? Either way, I have no doubt the chimps do so, not out of mimicry alone, but due to genuine emotional need. Such interactions apparently serve an important socially homeostatic function (Waal, 1978) terms them reconciliation (i.e. contact between former opponents) and consolation (i.e. contact of the aggressed party with a third animal). According to ths data, kissing is characteristic of reconciliation and embracing of consolation.

OR.. it could be purely communication!

Body contact is of utmost importance in maintaining social harmony in a chimpanzee community.When the fighting is over, the loser will approach the winner and weep, crouch humbly, or hold out its hand. The victor usually responds by gently touching, stroking, embracing, or grooming the defeated chimp.  Chimpanzees will often groom each other for hours.Chimpanzees use a multitude of calls to communicate. After being separated, chimpanzees often embrace, kiss, touch, stroke, or hold hands with each other.(Roman& Christphe, 2005)

What do we learn from this? Well, be it for consoling purposes or purely as a mean of communication, the chimpanzees are presenting themselves as good models in terms of showing affection and sympathy and this is something human beings can start learning from.

REFERENCES

Orlaith N. Fraser , Filippo Aureli (2008), Reconciliation, consolation and postconflict behavioral specificity in chimpanzees, American Journal of Primatology, Volume 70 (12), P:1114 – 1123

Roman M. Wittig & Christophe Boesch, (2005), How to Repair Relationships – Reconciliation in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Ethology, Volume 111(8), P: 736 – 763

Chimpanzee Cultures, Edited with Richard Wrangham, W.C. McGrew, and Paul Heltne. Foreword by Jane Goodall. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-674-11662-3.

It’s that time of the year again, when the waters to the south of Singapore bristle with excitement and some hot, steamy action. A few days after the full moon in less than a weeks’ time, just after nightfall… the activities will begin. Hordes of fish will gather in frenzy because they can sense the upcoming action. While the corals prepare for a mass orgy, the fish prepare for a huge buffet. Soon the corals become swollen, and then pink bundles burst out from each of the coral polyps, releasing millions and millions of eggs and sperm into the water.

What’s going on? The corals do it. So do the giant clams, sponges and a whole lot of other marine organisms that are quite immobile as adults. Because they are immobile, these organisms exploit the aqueous environment that they live in to help them mate; They release their eggs and sperm into the water, a process termed broadcast spawning, which allows the eggs and sperm to fertilize externally and produce motile larvae for the propagation of the species. To view an awesome video clip of a spawning coral, please click on the link entitled “Coral Spawning” here.

For many species of the hard corals, synchronous mass spawning has been documented all over the world, with that from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia being one of the most well-documented, but this actually occurs in Singapore (Guest et al., 2002) too! Although we do not get thick mats of spawn slick here in Singapore, it is still one of the most breathtaking events on the reef here, THE annual mass spawning of corals, where multi-species of corals spawn in synchrony.

Now broadcast spawning allows for efficient mixing of the gene pool, but why would different species do it together?? The highly nutritious eggs attract hordes of fish that could easily deplete much of the coral babies. By producing an over-abundance of spawn at one go, the predators are overwhelmed, thereby increasing the chances of survival of each coral baby. Simply imagine you are at a buffet, with a great spread in front of you. No matter how delicious the food is, there is only so much that one can consume at a go! This spares the rest of the coral larvae (a.k.a. fish food), till they are ready to settle down and grow into an adult coral colony.

So if you decide to go swimming in the sea in the next few weeks, expect the water to be a little more turbid or have a different smell, and you might also see more schools of fish out in their feeding frenzy!

References
Guest, J.R., Baird, A.H., Goh, B.P.L. & Chou, L.M. 2002. Multispecific, synchronous coral spawning in Singapore. Coral Reefs, 21: 422-423.