Nature by Inthu » Uncategorized

Octopus

inthu — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:39:44 +0000

The octopus is a cephalopod that inhabits many diverse regions of the ocean, especially coral reefs. Octopuses are characterized by their eight arms, usually with sucker cups on them. They are highly intelligent, but have a very short life span.

Octopus

Cephalopods:

Cephalopods are invertebrates. Their inside organs are protected by a mantle, which consists of a thick covering of skin and muscle. Cephalopod means “head foot.” Other cephalopods include squids, cuttlefishes and chambered nautiluses.

Anatomy:

Octopuses have a soft body and eight arms. Each arm has two rows of suction cups. An octopus uses its mantle to breathe. It has ‘mantle slits’ behind the eyes. It draws in water through the slits into the mantle. Two gills remove the oxygen from the water, then the slits close and the water is released through a tube called the “siphon.”

Moving About:

Octopuses use their mantle to swim. They tighten all the mantle muscles at once, squeezing a blast of water from the siphon, causing the octopus to launch forward. It can control its speed by controlling the force of the water. They can also control the direction they go. Some octopuses also use their arms to crawl across the ocean floor.

Diet and Digestion:

Octopuses eat many different kinds of sea creatures. They like oysters and clams. They use their suction cups to pull the shells apart and get the food inside. They also like lobsters and crabs. Octopuses have a sharp beak. They use it to break through an animal’s shell. Then it kills the animal with poison that the octopus makes in its mouth.

Reproduction:

The octopus mother lays thousands of eggs. She guards them for weeks. When the baby octopuses are born, the eggs burst open and the tiny octopuses swim out. The mother octopus will die soon after her eggs hatch. She will never see her babies again. Many babies will be eaten by fish, birds or other creatures.

Defending Themselves:

Octopuses face many dangers in the sea, but they do have ways of protecting themselves:

Camouflage – They have special coloring to help them blend in with their surroundings.
Hiding – The octopus can change colors which can confuse their enemies. They can also hide in holes in the rocks.
Ink cloud – The octopus squirts a dark, inky liquid into the water and then swims away to safety.

Panther

inthu — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 09:28:44 +0000

A black panther is a large black cat. Black panthers are melanistic colour variants of several species of larger cat. Wild black panthers in Latin America are black jaguars (Panthera onca), in Asia and Africa black leopards (Panthera pardus), and in North America may be black jaguars or possibly black cougars (Puma concolor – although this has not been proven to have a black variant), or smaller cats.

Black panthers are also reported as cryptids in areas such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, and for these (if they do exist) the species is not known. Captive black panthers may be black jaguars, or more commonly black leopards. Black panthers have sometimes been regarded as forming different species from their normally-colored relatives.

The name “panther” is often limited to the black variants of the species, but is also used to refer to those which are normally-colored for the species (tawny or spotted), or to white color variants: white panthers.

Black Panther

Polar Bear and Grizzly Brown bear GOT TOGETHER

inthu — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:57:08 +0000

I read in BBC that a Polar Bear and a Grizzly bear was put in a zoo together, and they made babies. And the babies were brownish whitish.

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a grizzly bear

Scientists can now answer the question, following the first study of a polar bear/grizzly bear hybrid.

Only one hybrid bear has ever been seen in the wild, so the study evaluated two hybrid bears kept in captivity, which are among 17 such bears known to exist.