Mother Planet Earth

Bottlenose dolphin asks 2 Divers for Help Removing a Fishing Hook

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 17:39:00 +0000

On a night-time dive near Hawaii, 2 divers were found by a bottle-nose dolphin and it started to swim around them over and over again. When looking closer, one of them discovered the reason for this strange behavior, the dolphin had a fishing line hooked around it, hindering its ability to swim.

They cut him free, and the dolphin swam away. The fact that a dolphin would come to humans for help maybe evidence of its' intelligence, as most injured animals would never come close to a human. This is amazing to watch and a life-time experience for those two divers.

Seven different croc species rocked ancient Amazon basin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 03:14:00 +0000

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If one croc is reason enough to stay out of the water, how about dipping your toes in a place with seven different croc species including two 26-foot (8-meter) monsters, all living side by side eating just about anything that moves?

That is what life was like in the lush Peruvian Amazon basin 13 million years ago. It featured Earth's all-time croc bloc: the most crocodilian species dwelling in the same place and time in our planet's history, scientists said on Tuesday.

The scientists unearthed the croc remains in two small fossil bone beds near the northeastern Peruvian city of Iquitos.

One of the strangest was Gnatusuchus pebasensis, a 5-foot (1.6-meter) caiman with a shellfish fondness. Its shovel-like snout let it bury its head in muddy wetland bottoms and root around for prey. Its bulbous teeth were perfect for crushing shells of mollusks like clams.

"This highly specialized anatomy and lifestyle was previously unknown in any other crocodile," said paleontologist John Flynn of New York's American Museum of Natural History.

The discoveries are helping scientists better understand both the origins of modern Amazonian biodiversity and the ancient assortment of life before the Amazon River formed 10.5 million years ago. The region 13 million years ago boasted immense wetlands abounding with lakes, swamps and rivers.

"Regarding the Amazon, we are just grasping the surface of an extremely complex and fascinating history," said Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, vertebrate paleontology chief at Lima's Natural History Museum also affiliated with France's University of Montpellier.

The researchers said seven croc species could coexist because they shared an elaborate environment with plenty of food and were not all chasing the same prey.

"This mega-wetlands system fostered unusually rich communities of aquatic prey species. Over time, crocodiles evolved a dazzling array of skull shapes, feeding adaptations and body sizes," Flynn said.

With powerful jaws and teeth, 26-foot Purussaurus neivensis was the neighborhood bully. Later Purussaurus species reached 43 feet (13 meters).

Mourasuchus atopus, also 26 feet, was a weird filter-feeder akin to a whale shark or baleen whale, using rows of small teeth to sift huge quantities of small prey.

There were two other clam-crunching caimans and a species of the existing caiman genus Paleosuchus. The only non-caiman was a gavial resembling modern ones in India, with a long, thin snout for fish-catching.

The findings appear in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

15 Things You Didn't Know About Wales - that Will Make You Want to Go Immediately

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 13:55:00 +0000

The Black Mountains in the Wales countryside (Photo: Les Haines/Flickr)

It’s probably not an understatement to say that most Americans don’t know much about Wales — it may be the least-known country in Great Britain. So here are some fun facts that will make you want to go to one of the most beautiful countries in the world, one that’s steeped in history. Here’s what we’ve all been missing.

1. The country is supersmall by U.S. standards — only about 8,000 square miles, nearly the size of New Jersey — so you can see a lot in a short period of time.

2. Cardiff, the capital and biggest city (about 1.3 million people), was just voted the U.K.’s best city to live in (and one of the best in Europe), thanks to a reasonable cost of living, salaries, and a high life satisfaction, among other things.

Carreg Cennen Castle in Wales (Photo: Leah Ginsberg)

3. There are 641 castles (or what’s left of them) in Wales, some dating back as far as the 11th century. Many offer beautiful views, dark histories, and cool secret passageways.Caerphilly Castle (the biggest in Wales, and it leans more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa), Conwy Castle (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), and Caernarfon Castle (with beautiful views of Snowdonia) are must-sees.

4. There are no chain hotels in the countryside, just loads of lovely B&Bs and boutique hotels. Three faves are the Gliffaes Country House Hotel in Powys (for the ultimate upper crust country getaway), the Harbourmaster in Aberaeron (the perfect waterfront hotel for a cozy fall stay), and the Black Lion Hotel in New Quay (poet Dylan Thomas’s favorite pub, which is now an inn).

A Welsh sheep is a happy sheep - look at all that grass to eat. (Photo: Peter Adams/Photographer’s Choice RF/Getty Images)

5. The population of the country is 3 million people, but there are 11 million sheep. That makes for a lot of delicious Welsh lamb to eat (it’s the national food). It also creates lovely views of adorable animals grazing on the green grass of the hillsides.

The beauty of the Welsh coast (Photo: Joe Daniel Price/Moment/Getty Images)

6. There are 750 miles of coastline, and you can walk it all along the Wales Coast Path. If you’re game, you can walk the rest of the way around the country on the long distance Offa’s Dyke Path, which roughly follows the border between England and Wales along an 8th-century dyke. Most people just do sections, but if you’re in for the long haul, the Coast Path takes about 65 days, depending on fitness, and the Offa’s Dyke takes the average walker 12 days. You can even have your bags driven from point to point via companies like Cab-a-Bag and Edge of Wales Walk.

7. It’s one of the only countries in the world in which the government (formed in 1999) has a legal duty to promote a sustainable development agenda (aka, they have to be green by law). Plus, about 30 percent of Wales is a protected landscape: either a national park, an area of outstanding natural beauty, or a heritage coast site. Go, Wales!

The downtown area in Hay-on-Wye is packed with tons of bookstores. The festival is held in a nearby field. ( Photo: Richard Keen/Flickr)

8. There’s a world-famous literally festival every year, the Hay Festival (named for Hay-on-Wye, the unimaginably quaint town where it’s held). Authors from Bill Clinton to Toni Morrison and Arianna Huffington have taken part, and there are lots of fun activities for kids. Plus, thanks to a shared love of the written word, the African town of Timbuktu in Mali voted Hay-on-Wye its U.K. twin town. Who knew?

9. Currently, Wales has five restaurants with a Michelin star. Ynyshir Hall in Machynlleth is a favorite (the lemon tart is to die for), plus there is The Walnut Tree in Abergavenny, The Checkers in Montgomery, Tyddyn Llan in Llandrillo, and The Crown in Whitebrook. The great thing about going to Wales restaurants in fall is that you don’t have the same months-long wait for reservations that you find in cities like Paris or New York.

10. There’s surfing in Wales, and autumn is the best time to do it. Rhossili Bay on The Gower Peninsula was named the best beach in the U.K. and one of the top 10 beaches in the world, and it’s a great place to catch waves. Other hot hang-10 spots include Porthcawl, Glamorgan (mellow waves are suitable for beginners), Freshwater West, Pembrokeshire (parts of the Harry Potter flicks were filmed here, and it’s the location of the Welsh Surf Championship), and Rhosneigr Beach in Anglesey (a popular surf spot that Prince William is rumored to have enjoyed).

Related: I Hate Being Wet and Cold. So Why Did I Go Surfing in Ireland in October?

11. Michael Sheen, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Matthew Rhys, Tom Jones, George Everest (the guy the mountain is named after), and Dylan Thomas are all Welsh.

Henrhyd Waterfall is the tallest waterfall in Wales. (Photo: rich_p/Flickr)

12. Henrhyd Waterall in the western part of Brecon Beacons National Park (known as Wales’s waterfall country) served as the supercool entrance to the Batcave in The Dark Knight Rises. (Batman star Christian Bale was also born in Wales, though he insists he’s more English.)

This one is over a walking path at Bodnant Gardens, Conwy, Wales (Photo: ukgardenphotos/Flickr)

13. Everywhere you drive in Wales there are these amazing tree tunnels, made even more beautiful in the fall by the changing colors of the leaves. According to the people atVisitBritain, many are natural phenomena, while others are manmade.

A genuine Welsh rainbow (Photo: Leah Ginsberg)

14. The weather in Wales in the fall is a bit of a roller coaster — it’s chilly and raining one minute, warmer and sunny the next. (They say you can experience all four seasons in one day, and it’s not too far from the truth.) But there is one cool thing that comes from the change: rainbows. They’re a pretty common site in Wales.

15. Though the Sherlock Holmes book The Hound of the Baskervilles is set in England, the real Baskerville Hall that the story is based on actually sits among the moors of Wales. (The Baskerville family asked the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not to use the real location.) Now, the hall is a hotel where anyone can stay and look for the ghostly hounds of hell.

Ancient and Magnificent Trees That Look Straight Out of a Fairy Tale

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 15 Feb 2015 15:04:00 +0000

The Bowthorpe Oak is a massively thick, millennium-old tree in Lincolnshire, England that once was rumored to hold three dozen people in its enormous, hollowed-out trunk. Beth Moon photographed the leafy giant some 15 years ago and was struck by its solemn nobility and overwhelming presence. Thus began a pilgrimage that would take her around the world to document the planet’s most ancient trees.

The series and corresponding photo book, Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time, is a collection of beautiful, stoic images that feel suspended in time. Though our distant ancestors left the shelter and safety of trees some 3.5 million years ago, Moon’s work points to our enduring affinity for—and exploitation of—really, really big trees.

“They’ve survived through so much—some for more than 4,000 years,” she said. “I find it hard to wrap my mind around it and I’ve been doing this work for 15 years.”

Moon shoots black and white film with a medium format Pentax camera. She then uses a labor-intensive platinum printing process that lends these images a rich tonal scale and nearly three dimensional appearance—always on the same naturally deckled, deeply textured Arche Platine paper made by a French mill since 1492. Platinum, like gold, is a stable metal. Her prints could last thousands of years, much like the ancient trees she photographs.

From Mexico to Madagascar, she came to find that trees so grand often have wonderful stories to tell—the massive trunk of the Major Oak where Robin Hood’s gang allegedly hid out; the gnarled, gothically dense Wittinghame Yew where a Scottish noble’s murder was planned in 1567; South Africa’s Sagole Big Tree where anti-apartheid fighters found shelter in the 1970s. “Everyone has a favorite tree story, and I just love to hear them,” said Moon.

Now the photographer has epic tree stories of her own. Moon tried for three years to shoot dragon’s blood tree —a wild looking thing “kind of like a gigantic umbrella blown inside out.” The tree is found only on Socotra Island, located 150 miles east of the Horn of Africa and controlled by Yemen. It was difficult to gain access. At customs and immigration, a PBS crew in line right in front of her was detained and had all its gear confiscated by Yemeni officials. Moon fortunately had a fixer with strong tribal ties help her make it through.

Socotra once had a forest of dragon’s blood trees, but aggressive goat grazing, over harvesting, and diminishing cloud cover have left only an endangered handful of these giants straddling the island’s Haghier Mountains. SocotraIslanders—mostly goat herders, date farmers, and fishers—are allowed to tap the dragon’s blood trees twice annually to collect its scarlet resin, which they use for paints, dyes, and medicine. “This place is literally untouched by time and the weather is so hard—there’s these monsoon winds,” she recalled her nights camped out there. “To sleep right under these trees and take advantage of the best light, that’s something like I’ve never seen.”

the 10 most intelligent animals in the world

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 03:26:00 +0000

If someone insulted you and called you "animal " just dont be offended and dont care, there are animals would surely make you wondered of their intelligence, and this list of the ten most intelligent animals on earth, according to statistics were calculated scientifically :

1.Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees live in tropical forests in west and central Africa, an animal who is capable of learning and performing tasks that require an arranged thinking , and also has the best memory record than all the other animals, and the chimpanzees can easily adapt to an environment and performs the sign language in a developed way which make him could quickly communicate with a human.

2.Dolphins

Dolphins are extremely social animals. They can find their relatives separated miles away in the sea for unknown reason but they have their own language to communicate. The most significant aspect about the dolphins is that they never sleep with their systems due to their incredible piece of brain power and aesthetic sensibility.

3. Elephants

Elephants exhibit mirror self-recognition, an indication of self-awareness and cognition. Elephants are known to use tools, but not as advanced as that by chimpanzees. They are popularly thought of as having an excellent memory. Elephants appear to have some ritual around death and show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind.

4.Squirrel

This animal's dogged persistence and impeccable memory have made it the nemesis of gardeners throughout its vast range. Most squirrels display an impressive array of tricks and strategies that help them survive. For starters, these clever creatures are essentially woodland animals that have adapted to living alongside humans, eating out of bird-feeders, flower gardens and whatever food might be lying around. They are also able to store and cache food for leaner times, and then find their hidden morsels many months later. They may also pretend to hide food in order to confuse potential thieves, which researchers believe shows an advanced level of cunning and intellect.

5.Rats

Although they are hated by humans, rats are rather smart creatures in their own right. As one of the most hated rodents on the earth, rats are pretty well inclined, and are adapted in many of the same ways we as humans are. Metacognition is an ability that only humans, and a few other primates have; this gives them a stronger sense of intelligence, and the ability to problem solve in much the same ways that we do, as human beings. Keen sense of smell also helps them get through tough situations.

6.Pigs

Pigs have an extremely active social life. Mom pigs have been known to sing to their young to calm them. Pigs eat together, sleep together, and also walk together for no reason other than they like each other’s company. Pigs can communicate with each other via an impressive series of different vocal noises. Pigs are smart enough to defecate away from their homes (assuming they have the space), to steal food from other animals and each other, not get lost – even when far from home, and have even been known to create new places for plants to grow on purpose. Most importantly, pigs have exhibited the ability to learn from past mistakes and not make them again. They can be extremely sneaky when they want. Maybe now you will appreciate all that bacon you’re eating a bit more.

7.Octopus

The Octopus is the most intelligent invertebrates. They show impressive spatial learning capacity, navigational abilities, and predatory techniques. It has also been claimed, but strongly disputed, that octopuses practice observational learning.

8.Sheep

Scientists and researchers stated that sheep have an incredible kind of instinctive ability and intelligence beyond your imaginations. If threatened, they make large groups and run away together from predators. Sheeps can remember and identify animal faces and also human faces.

9.African Grey Parrot

African Grey parrot is a species found in West and Central African rain forest. Parrots have long been able to demonstrate that they can imitate human speech. These birds communicate with each other through the songs, calls and body language. African Grey’s can easily be trained to have conversations and activities. They managed to imitate, create voices and sound perfect household.

10.Dogs

Dogs are pack animals by nature and can understand social structure and obligations, and are capable of interacting with other members of the pack. They are known to be highly intelligent and very easy to train by humans.

Cute Dogs‬ Waiting to Be Served!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 01:07:00 +0000

The Sun Bear...!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 11:21:00 +0000

The sun bear is a bear found in tropical forest habitats of Southeast Asia. It is classified as Vulnerable by IUCN as the large-scale deforestation that has occurred throughout Southeast Asia.The sun bear is one of the smallest bears, at around 1.4 meters (4.5 ft long) and weighing up to 100 lbs . During feeding, the sun bear can extend the exceptionally long tongue 20--25 cm (7.9--9.8 in) to extract insects and honey.

Elegant !

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 09:02:00 +0000

Get off my lawn!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 03:54:00 +0000

He's done !

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 02:10:00 +0000

Wonder what these wolves are staring at .

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 02:07:00 +0000

Anybody else prefer living in the country?!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 02:05:00 +0000

Cute pandas

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 01:58:00 +0000

A bear looking for fish

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 01:56:00 +0000