Post #12

Tardigrades

     Tardigrades (sometimes called waterbears or moss piglets) are segmented micro-animals that dwell in water. They mostly live in mosses and lichens, as well as other environments such as beaches, dunes, marine and freshwater sediments and soil. Scientists have reported tardigrades under solid layers of ice and in hot springs. They eat plants.

     They were first discovered in 1773 by a German pastor, who named it the kleiner wasserbar, meaning "little water bear." They were later given the name tardigrada meaning "slow stepping." There have been over 1,150 tardigrade species identified since 1778.

     Tardigrades have four pairs of short, squat legs that don't have much going on. The largest species reach 1.2 -3 meters, and the smallest are around 3 -4 meters. They have a head, three body segments with one pair of legs each, and one more segment with the fourth pair of legs. The legs have no joints, but the feet have about 6 or 7 claws each. There are no respiratory organs, but there may tubular glands having to do with the rectum, no one knows for sure. 

    Though tardigrades aren't classified as extremophile, they can survive in extreme environments. They can survive temperatures from just above absolute zero to above the boiling point of water. They can live in pressures more intense than the deepest ocean trenches, and even the vacuum of space. They can live for over 10 years with no food or water, drying out till they are under 3% water. 

Post #11

The Maned Wolf

     The maned wolf is found in South America, and is the largest canid of its area, being about three feet high at the shoulder. this means that they have almost no natural enemies. They mostly live in semi-open places, like grasslands and low bushes. 

     Being an omnivore, they mostly eat small to medium rodents, birds and even fish. However a large portion of their diet is vegetables and fruit, 

     Their mating season is roughly from November to April, producing two to six black-furred pups. The pups will be full grown in one year, during which they mostly rely on their parents for food. 

     This mammal is the tallest of the wild canids, their long legs probably an adaption to its habitat of tall grasslands. The maned wolf's fur is reddish brown, sometimes golden-orange on the sides, long black legs, and a distinctive black mane. There is a little bit of white on and tip of the tail and under the chin. 

     The maned wolf has some similar characteristics to the red fox, but belongs to a completely different family. In fact, they are different from any other living canids studied. Some say that the maned wolf is the only animal among the bigger South American canids that made it past the Pleistocene extinction, because fossils have been found from the Holocene and late Pleistocene in Brazil.

    Below is a chart showing that the maned wolf is unrelated to the fox:

    

	Short-eared dog Crab-eating fox Sechuran fox Culpeo fox Pampas fox South American gray fox Darwin's fox Hoary fox
	Maned wolf[18](Fig. 10) Bush dog

Post #10

-Bats-

      Bats are the only mammals that can fly, unlike flying squirrels and gliding possums which can only glide for short periods of time. Their forelimbs form webbed wings, which are long and covered with a thin membrane. 

      Most bats are nocturnal, and they most often hunt and fly around at twilight. They live in caves,  their days spent grooming and sleeping. In the 1790's, some experiments were done and it was discovered that bats aren't using their eyes to navigate through the darkness, but their ears. They mostly eat insects, blood, vertebrates and fruit. 

They consume so many bugs that if bats went extinct, the insect population would be extremely high. There are over 1,200 species of bats, put into two different groups of bats: megabats and microbats. 

• Megabats are larger, and live in tropical areas. They eat fruit and nectar, and have big eyes. They use sight and smell to find food. 
• Microbats are small, with large ears and small eyes. They find their food using echolocation (sending out a small squeak from their mouth or nose to locate bugs).

Bats have been associated with witchcraft and black magic for a long time. In western cultures, bats are a symbol of darkness, and the evils of the night. They are often involved with fictional characters of the night both evil and good, such as Dracula and Batman. 
My favorite species of bat is the little brown bat and the giant golden-crowned flying fox. 

    Here's a video of lots of bats in a roof:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc8ACBiwIyE

Post #9

Laney

   Me and my mam got Laney, our dog, a little more than a year ago. She was found as a stray in Reno, and the animal shelter took her in. We got her at a fundraiser in Squaw Valley where the shelter was trying to find her a home. She is one and a half years old, and her breed is mostly unknown. I can tell there is a little bit of pitbull in her, but other than that we don't know.

   Laney is one of the strangest dog's that I've ever met. She must have been abused when she was young, because she is afraid of everyone. She is mostly afraid of men, but most of the time she just barks at everyone, even me. Me and Laney play games and she gets feisty, and looks like she'll bite me, but never has. If her teeth are out and she lunges, it always changes to a lick right before she reaches my hand. Sometimes she growls, and opens her mouth, and it makes a very funny noise. She jumps around a lot, and runs around my house. Laney likes eating food from people's plates and bags while they leave the room. 

   Laney is black and white, kind of like the dog from The Little Rascals. Her ears and the sides of her head are black, and her muzzle is white. She has a little bit of brown mixed in on her back and head. She has a black nose and dark brown eyes. 

   I don't really know how I feel about Laney, but she doesn't lack in entertainment value.

                  

Post #8

Kanye West

                                 

"Kanye West"

     Most people know Kanye West for his most popular songs, which almost everyone has probably heard. These include Clique, Mercy, Gold Digger, Heartless, Stronger, and many more. Kanye West started producing music in the 90’s, getting his first production credits at age 19. He got big in 2000, when he began producing for artists on Roc-A-Fella records. In 2001 he got recognition for his contributions to Jay-Z’s influential album The Blueprint. 

Despite Kanye’s success as a producer, he aspired to be a rapper. He had begun rapping long before producing, but many record companies ignored him. Finally the head label of Roc-A-Fella records signed Kanye, though reluctantly.

In 2003, Kanye released his debut album The College Dropout, featuring Twista and Jamie Foxx, earning him 10 grammy nominations. Between 2005-2009, he released Late Registration, Graduation, and 808’s & Heartbreak, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (collaborating with Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, and more). In 2013, Kanye produced his 6th album, Yeezus. This brought on his first tour in five years, with Kendrick Lamar accompanying him.

Kanye’s mother died in 2007, which he was pretty sad about. He and Kim Kardashian had their daughter North West in June 2013, and were married in May of 2014.

Though he is most famous for his music, he also appears in The Cleveland Show and Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

    Kanye West is full of himself and I don't like him, posting this has not changed that. He's good at producing, but not rapping in my opinion. Below are some pictures and gifs of Kanye:

        

Post #7

Charles Manson

Charles Manson was the leader of a commune known as the Manson Family. In the 1970's, he was found guilty of conspiracy to murder seven people, including actress Sharon Tate. He believed in what he called "Helter Skelter" (a song from The Beatles' White album), which he believed was an apocalyptic race war. He thought his murders would help make it happen by showing the African American people how to go about destroying the whites. He prophesied that in the end, his Family would take over and rule the cities.  Manson thought himself to be the fifth angel, the other four being The Beatles.  He was described during his trial as a "megalomaniac  who coupled his thirst for power with an intense obsession for violent death."  Manson carved a swastika into his forehead, and in 1971, he explained why: He said that it "simulated the dead head black stamp of rejection, anti-church, falling cross, devil sign, death, terror and fear."

Many of Manson's followers were very young women with troubled emotional lives, rebelling against their parents and society. For the most part, they were people who were weak-willed, gullible and easily led. LSD and amphetamines were also used to make them do his bidding. He and his cult survived by scavenging and stealing, most of their food being what the supermarkets discarded. 

Post #6

Moths

Moths are a paraphyletic (consisting of all the descendants of the last common ancestor) group of insects closely related the butterflies. The differences between moths and butterflies aren't very noticeable, but you can usually tell by looking at their antennae. While butterflies have thin antennas with small balls or clubs on the end, a moth's is thicker and lacks the club-end. 

Nocturnal animals such as bats, owls, and some species of birds often eat moths. Lizards, cats, dogs, rodents and bears eat moths as well. There are at least 160,000 different species of moths, many of them not yet described. 

Moths and their larvae are a common pest around the world, causing significant damage to forests, farms and fruit. Some kinds of moth larvae eat fabric such as clothes and blankets made of silk or wool. 

Venezuelan Poodle Moth

There are many unique and interesting species of moth. 
One example is the Venezuelan Poodle Moth. It is a 
recent species discovered in 2009 in the Gran Sabana 
regions of Venezuela. There is very little known about it, 
but it's very interesting-looking.
Another strange moth is the vampire moth. It can pierce skin and suck blood, and it has also been known to suck the tears from the eyelids of cattle. 

Other neat moths include the Atlas moth, Io moth, Leopard moth, the Brahmin moth, and many more. 

 
 

Post #5

Salem Witch Trials 

In 1692, a man named Samuel Parris' daughter Betty became strangely ill. She began uttering strange noises, diving under furniture, and contorting into strange shapes. 

Though nowadays there are known diseases that could have caused these symptoms, in their time it was thought to be witchcraft. The paranoia increased when Betty's friends began behaving similarly.

When asked why they were behaving this way, the girls accused three women of afflicting them with witchcraft. 

The three women accused were Tibuta, the Parris family's slave, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborn. 

The county magistrates held a trial of the three women at the meeting house. All the women at first denied having any affiliation with witchcraft, and they might have been let free if not for Tibuta. She then confessed that she had been approached by a tall man from Boston who sometimes appeared as a dog or a hog, and asked her to sign his book and do his work. She admitted that yes, she was a witch, along with four other women (including Good and Osborn). They were all hanged. 

Sarah Good's daughter, four-year-old Dorcas Good was questioned and found guilty as well. She was kept in jail for 8 months and had to watch her mother being dragged off to Gallows Hill to be hanged. 

One man accused of witchcraft refused to go to trial, and he was punished. Rather than being hanged, he was pressed to death under heavy stones. Three days after his death, September of 1692, eight more people were accused of witchcraft and hanged. These eight people were the last victims of the Salem Witch Hunt.

At the end of the hunt, nineteen men and women had been hanged, four had died in prison, and one been pressed to death with stones. 

At least 200 people had been arrested on accounts of suspected witchcraft,  and two dog executed as suspected accomplices of witches. 

Post #3

ALBINISM

Albinism (meaning "white," also called achromia, achromasia, or achromatosis) is a disorder characterized by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. The disorder occurs due to lack-of or malfunction of tyrosinase, an enzyme involved in the production of melanin. 

The symptoms of albinism related to the eyes include: 

• Rapid, involuntary back-and-forth movement of the eyes
• The inability to direct both eyes at the same point or to move in unison
• Extreme nearsightedness or farsightedness
• Sensitivity to light 

Albinism can occur in people as well as animals. The simptoms are most often white hair, and skin pigmentation ranging from white to brown. The lack of pigment in the irises make they eyes somewhat translucent, which means that the irises can't completely block light from entering the eye. This is why albinos with very light colored eyes may appear to have red eyes in some lighting. This is because you're seeing the light reflecting off the back of the eye and coming back out through the iris again - similar to the red-eye that occurs in flash photography.

Albinism is caused by a mutation in the melanocytes, the cell the produces melanin. In some types of the albinism, a person must inherit two copies of the mutated gene - one from each parent - to have the disorder. There is no cure for albinism, however surgery can be performed on the muscles of the eye to regain normal eye movements (surgery occurs very rarely).

Here are some images of animals affected with albinism:

Post #2

Squid

Squids have always fascinated me, and along with snakes they are my favorite animal. Since I know so little about the squid, I decided to research it more.

The squid is actually a mollusk, even though it is nothing like its relatives, the snail and the clam. The squid has a soft outer shell and inner shell, unlike most mollusks which have a hard outer shell. Squids, along with octopi and nautili, are Cephalopods meaning "head footed." Octopi have eight arms, making them octopods, while squid have ten, making them decopods.

The male squids have exciting colors that attract females during mating time, and the female chooses a male squid to mate with. The females have an ink sac hidden under a set of glands in the gills. When squids mate, the sperm is placed in the sac for her eggs to be fertilized.

Squids Will be Squids

My tentacles are twirling,

my tentacles are curling

and as for all the crew,

it's vomit they are hurling.

The ship goes up,

the ship goes down,

Up! ... Down! ... Up! ... Down!

and all the sailors start to drown.

I'm having so much fun!

And it's only just begun!

For next I'm going to eat them -

each and every one!

My tentacles are tightening,

my tentacles are whitening

and faces all are going blue

O! How my day is brightening!

Such fun, such fun on the ocean wave,

O wow, I'm having such a rave!

Ouch! Oohh! My mum, that monster squid,

has caught me out;  she yells 'BEHAVE!!!!!'

Her tentacles are flaring, tearing

and epithets she's wildly swearing.

'It's time,' she screeches 'for you to go to bed,

so stop your mayhem and your scaring!'

-Poem by Suecat 

( http://allpoetry.com/poem/9452293-Squids-Will-be-Squids-by-suecat )